Sunday, November 27, 2005

All Earthly Blogging is Fleeting

B and S showed up for a brief visit last Sunday. I've known them a long time, and they remind me how much I enjoy long time friends. Even though we haven't seen each other much, due to work things, when we get together you can just leap right in and start swingin' the bat. I think the time of awkwardness for getting back with long time friends is a sort of middling time, a week or two. People do change, in ways that they would notice and adapt to if they were around regularily, but it's a bit of a shock when you see a bunch of small changes over a few days. You get over it, but the that reconnecting time is odd...

Anyway, we went to lunch, (good lunch!) and well, I got off a one liner that broke S up! I mean, it was funny, but she laughed so hard it got me laughing at that! B sat there a bit nonplussed as the lunch conversation was takin' a Saturn V right to the gutter! We pulled it out, but it made my afternoon, and I was going to put it up here. Then I let it go...

Yesterday, I found that S's sister is very ill and may pass away. She has gone to be with her, and I send her deep, long term love and support. So I'm puttin' this up to remind me to catch the blooms when they're fresh, and share them on the blog. You never know how long your blogroll will go on!

Monday, November 21, 2005

Off to that Great Chicken Run in the Sky

With the probable exceptions of Vartina and Diamanda Galas, the tune that has most annoyed my friends over the years is the now late Link Wray's Run Chicken Run. I always that this was unfair; if I ever directed a low-budget Smokey and the Bandit, that would have been my 'chase the moonshiners through the hills' car chase music!

Mr Wray, thanks for so many cool tunes!

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Between C-SPAN and Oprah, life is starting to look more a game of The Sims.

People gesticulate wildly, babble on like howler monkeys on crack, and eventually curl up in a fetal ball in a pool of their own urine. And those tend to be the happy people!

The Sims reveals the dirty secret behind Life, as brought to you by therapy; happiness consists of routinization and stuff. I was tempted to add "lotsa stuff", but hell, "lotsa routinization" also applies. I know this, because even though I bought him a toilet with a heated seat, a toaster oven, and Wi-Fi, my Sim still lies in a pool of his own urine, but at least this time he does it in the bathroom, so my gameplay must be improving. You've got to get him in an even tighter routine! If you don't he'll fail, and it will be your fault!

Go ahead, tell me that's not how you're feeling about your own life. Life's events are incessant, and you'd better hit your marks like the machines you purport to be operating, or you'll eventually set fire to yourself in a 2x3 room, and it won't even be a cool fire like those monks from the Vietnam War, it'll be a charcoal brickette soaked in too much lighter fluid kinda fire! In some sort of Cosmic Justice, your life will go towards making some creature-in-another-dimensions burger get done before halftime. All because you let too many newspapers stack up on the lawn. Remember that the next time you think of just....Taking Off!

The Oprah side of the equation is definately the 'stuff' side. Oh, you can yak about books or Life Changing Events all you like, the one people remember is the one where everybody got a car! Isn't it interesting how both in The Sims and life, taste and sensitivity are trumped time and time again by gaudiness and 'uniqueness' both of which have theraputic value for you! It doesn't matter that the color you've chosen for the walls makes Safety Orange look subtle, as Long As It Makes You Happy. And how many of you out there just now went, "Well, yeah!" 'Nuff said.

It's unfair that I stick C-SPAN with the 'routinization' blame, but, hey, Washington Journal shows up every single day at the same time, (repeated later in case you were too slothful sitting in your Atomic Recliner to actually try and call in early in the morning!) so they can't be too far off the beam. But I always tip my hat to the various hosts of that show, because between the lying, obfuscating guests and the insane ranters who always call in on the wrong line, they keep their cool no matter what. Now that's a role model! They deserve sainthood before some twit who saw Jesus in a Taco! Why is it the Ben Afflecks who get the Save The World shots in movies, when the guy who should have that role is Brian Lamb? Hey, why am I lumping C-SPAN in with these other things I'm complaining about, given the praise I just gave? Oh, yeah...it's about politics.