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Thursday, July 8, 2004
Sleep Sheep
Two or three nights a week I can't sleep at all or wake up around midnight and then don't go back to sleep. What's the trouble? Probably panic attacks and stress due to this refried moving business. What are the sheep I employ to help me back to sleep? For a number of years when awake in the middle of the night, I would get whatever book lay nearby and read until the book fell over. The all-time champion put-me-to-sleep book is James Michener's Poland. Recently, though, I click on the TV and go to the TV Guide channel to see what's on. All night fairly good movies run on a variety of channels. The Learning Channel repeats its house-fixing shows until about 3:00 A.M. when it's infomercial time. MSNBC repeats its evening line-up. Lately I have watched movies. TV is becoming very potty-mouthed, but not quite as bad as the original movies. For TV the movies get bleeped quite a bit. Twice I have seen Orange County which spouts pottyisms left and right and cleaned up, it is almost incomprehensible at times. Very comical film. Next week I head for the beach and wouldn't you know, I saw Jaws II again just in time to keep me watching for shark fins all summer. The shark in that movie is scarey but not scarey, too. CGI work has come so far since then! The poor shark looks like a big plastic toy. Last night I watched a rarity, a movie with not one woman in the whole thing, not even as a person on the street. The title, Disorganized Crimereliably predicts the action. Both criminals and cops flub their way through a mildly amusing story.In my career as an insomniac I must have seen every infomercial that has been made and the third and second most annoying are the Jack Lalane juicer hostess with her gigantic teeth, and Ron Popeil selling kitchen accessories accompanied by a woman who never once looks away from his face. Somehow you feel she must have inside information and knows that anytime now old Ron P. is going to unzip his human skin to reveal his identity as a reptile from Planet X. She doesn't want to miss it. The entirely most annoying infomercialist is Tony Robbins emitting untold wattage, cheering, yakking, and boosting. He's so exhausting that he has on occasion put me to sleep. He IS the product he's selling. If the testimonials from customers are sincere, that man is a god to those who have bought his tapes. His speaking engagements look like religious revivals with him passionately preaching the gospel of himself.I have never watched a Tony Robbins infomercial all the way through, too, too, gooey. It's better to lie in the dark staring at the ceiling and just wait for morning.
Monday, July 5, 2004
The Fourth of July
It is the morning after the Fourth of July the night before and I got almost no sleep at all due to the way local enthusiasts persevered with their fire works. At 7:20 A.M. on the morning of June 5 a few fireworks still kaboom from nearby yards. Do I think the noise demonstrated mad, crazed love for America? No, it showed great love for fireworks. I wonder how many people on this block would take up arms in defense of America, fight here or be willing to take the war to some enemy overseas. Would I? No, unless an enemy appeared here on my block and began shooting. I think I'd become entirely martial under those circumstances even if all I had to fight with is an iron skillet I can barely lift with both hands.
I wouldn't just stand around waiting to be shot.
Under no circumstances, though, would I, personally, go overseas to fight anyone. I do get choked up when I hear a beautifully rendered patriotic song, so the idea of one nation standing together against everybody bad on this planet who might harm us...that is kind of affecting. I myself, however, would absolutely refuse to serve in the military unless an enemy came here. I think when I hear some nice kid say, "I guess I'll go in the military," when asked what they're going to do after high school, oy, that's terrible. They all say it's because the military will educate them. Rats. The whole point of the military is to kill people who intend to harm us. It's all about killing. Someone who joins up as a mechanic or a warehouse worker or something like that...then they get killed or injured in Iraq and everyone is so sorry for them. Why? The military is not a jobs program any more than it is an educational institution or a system to correct juvenile offenders. It is about killing other people who are OK for us to kill because they tried to kill us first. I don't see anything wrong with us sending military units to attack those in other countries who have attacked us or our bases and embassies. On the other hand it makes no sense to me to do all this fighting in Iraq to free people from an oppressive regime. The second we're gone another oppressive regime will take over because that is what they like. It's such an authority oriented part of the world. Dad is a little god to his family. Law enforcement can cut off body parts or do capital punishment at the drop of a hat. Those people want to be roughly ruled. They like a "strict" government. Us killing some of them in the hope that those alive and remaining will suddenly exercise the political patience of most Americans is absurd. Speaking of the Middle East, it doesn't bother me a bit to see on TV vast assemblies of persons in some far away country jumping up and down, shooting off guns and yelling, "Death to America." They are half way around the world, so who cares? If they brought that scenario to my street, however, I would feel a war had come my way. So the day after the Fourth of July, I believe I would defend my country as it exists right here on my street. And I hope the neighbors would help. However, better everyone should behave so I don't have to get out the skillet.
Saturday, July 3, 2004
Rise and Whine
I'm so down and out about this refried moving process that I can hardly stand it. To prevent unnecessary whining, I'm trying to think of all the things for which I can be thankful.
1. Kind friends who helped me through the yard sale.
2. A kind friend who insisted on driving me across town so that I wouldn't have a heart attack on the freeway.
3. A kind friend who helped me sort through papers and pictures of the past so I wouldn't be crying by myself.
4. A kind friend who dragged me out to see a funny movie when I was very far down.
5. A kind friend who showed up to take me to lunch because I am so moldy and need to be cheered up.
6. A nice stranger who found an agency for me, one that takes unwanted household items.
7. A woman (and her husband) from the agency who came to get a ton of stuff and in the process told me about her child who is going through life with a shunt in her head and constant seizures...and the woman was so cheerful and loves the child and is thankful to have her.
8. Another woman from the agency (and her husband and father) who has five children and only earns minimum wage at this non-profit organization but was happy, and cheerful, going out on her own time with her own vehicle to get things for those who have nothing.
9. A cleaning lady who is able to bring order out of the chaos of this week and leave the house looking and smelling great...although quite a bit emptier.
10. Enough money so that although my circumstances right now are inconvenient, I am not afraid of what will happen to me.
11. Calamine lotion and anithistamines to get me through cottonwood season.
12. Last and best, Lydia, Dan, Benny, Sadie in Virginia, calling and blogging funny stories about life with the little kids.
I could go on. It is amazing how good I have it in a world of people who are really in trouble. I asked the agency people about those for whom they were collecting stuff. Well...the agency finds and equips households for women who have children and nothing else...women coming out of prison, out of shelters, women who have been burned out. This is for the sake of the children. Their mothers get all the agency services because helping the mother helps the child. Imagine having to live in a shelter because you are so afraid of a violent spouse, and then he's finally in jail, but now you have no home to return to, nothing but the clothes on your back and a bunch of children to take care of. That is pathetic. The agency workers were so glad to get ANYTHING; half a can of coffee, a can of Crisco wih a little left in it, old towels and sheets, the worst bed on the planet... I said, "This is not very nice." The social worker said, "It beats nothing." True.
So, really, when I get up in the morning, I shouldn't rise and whine.
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Allergens...99
Me...........1
Cottonwood trees are trying to kill me...and succeeding, too. Yesterday I went out and about for quite a while, lovely day! Sunshine, blue sky, temps in the low 70's, and COTTONWOOD FLUFF EVERYWHERE!!! When I got home from the movie at about 9:30 P.M., I hustled indoors to turn on the lights, etc., and then went back outside to sit and enjoy the beautiful night for a little while. Then I went to bed. About midnight I woke up struggling to breathe, choking on goo down the back of my throat, gagging, coughing and, soon, throwing up. Spots on my face were itchy, hot, and swolen. That's how it went until about 9:00 A.M. when I stopped throwing up but continued to feel as though I must for most of the day. Now I've had tea and it stayed down, but the goo goes on...down the back of my throat, a river of heavy, choking slime in response to all that cottonwood yesterday. The hot, itchy spots are worse than ever in spite of frequent applications of Calamine lotion. Everything in the ecosystem serves a purpose. The only purpose for cottonwood discernible to me is that it keeps me off the streets for the months of June and July. Keeps me indoors gagging, throwing up, and trying not to scratch itchy spots. I suppose some little creatures absolutely must have cottonwood trees in order to survive. Well, I don't care. I want those trees to go and the creatures can go with them. DIE, YOU NUISANCE LIFE FORMS!!!
Monday, June 28, 2004
Yard Sale
Mood:
 irritated
I hate yard/garage sales as both purchaser and purveyor. Mostly I don't want to do this because I remember how much I hated the yard sale I had when we moved here from St. Clair Shores. People would stop and go through all the junk and then try to do a deal. For example I had a fan new in the unopened box and the price was two dollars. This was one of those big floor fans. I already had a bunch of them and wanted to get rid of one. One man stood holding the box, turning it this and that way and thinking and finally he said in a sneery voice, "What makes you think I believe this thing is really new. You coulda glued an old broke fan into a new box." I said, "It's new." He tries again, "Well, seems to me the least you could do is open the box and let me see if there's really a fan or if it's just a buncha junk in there." I said, "Fine. Open the box." He opened the box and stared at what was clearly a brand new fan and then said, "For all I know this is a scam and it don't work. How am I supposed to know it works?" I said, "Buy it. Take it home. Plug it in." He said, "Well, the reason I'm suspicious is if it worked, you'da offered me to go in your house and plug it in." I said, "I have a better idea." He says, "Yeah?" I replied, "Stick the plug in your nose and see if the fan runs." He seriously asked, "Are you serious?" I averred, "Absolutely." He hedged, "I didn't never hear that before. Did you ever see it to work?" "Yep, I attested, "everyday. If I'm not near an outlet, I do that. Vacuum, hair dryer, whatever. But then I am a highly electrically charged person. It might not work for you." He stuck the plug in his nose, one prong into each nostril. The fan didn't run. I said, "Well, that's a shame. You don't have enough juice to run a fan." To shorten up the story, I ended up giving him the fan.
Monday, June 28, 2004
I Want A Line Of Poor People
One way for you to know if you're crazy is to stand in front of the mirror and ask yourself this question, "Self, would you like to move across the country and start over?" If you saw yourself nodding yes, that means you are out of your mind.
I have to do that...fast...right now...no messing around. Not nod my head 'yes'...MOVE. I had the yard sale but the house still holds enough items that everyone in this hemisphere could have something and I wish they would come and get it. Whatever happened to those charities that for years have begged for old shoes, glasses, knickknacks, clothes, ANYTHING. Good question. Purple Heart and the Cancer Foundation have no number in the phone book. Well, the Cancer Foundation does, but that number gets you Parelli's Pizza. Salvation Army pick up is booked solid two months ahead. St. Vincent de Paul has a tough baby on the desk who snarls, "Whadaya got?" When I told her, "A whole household", she says, "Yeah, whadathat mean?" As I began to enumerate, she interrupted, "You all get that all in yo cah and take it to drop off yosef." Says I, "Wow! What DO you pick up?" Says she, "Nuthin but twenty bag." Says me, "Hey, I'll put it all in bags if that's what you want." She grunted, "Whada you mean "it"?" Sigh. I don't think they want my stuff. What I want to know is, where are all these desperately poor souls we hear about from the Democratic candidate? Charities have so much that they aren't taking any more. Poor people must have become an endangered substratum. When I moved here from St. Clair Shores, all the charities came at once and just about duked it out in the yard over who got what. THOSE were the good old days when poor people made artifacts just fly out the door at Good Will, etc. So here's a piano, a complete set of Pfalzgraf dinner ware, furniture, blahblahblahblah...all the items found in a home. If John Kerry would kindly line up the local poor, I have nice things for them. They don't have to wait for a government program to make their circumstances more comfortable. I'm right here wishing for people who would like to have my stuff...right now...no messing around...fast. I wonder if I got a megaphone and drove around yelling, "Free everything at my house," would I get any takers? Nevermind the Statue of Liberty, give ME your huddled masses yearning for beds/irons/shoes/shelving/dishes...
I Vote For The Pink Monkey
You may care about the candidates. Your friends and family may care, but you people define minority. The rest of us want to move on. One TV channel advertised an upcoming series with JUST ANYBODY showing up to rant. Each episode's ranters must survive online voting. Then the winners winnow out via tournament procedure. Finally it's down to one person by national election time. They want America to write in this "person". That's whom I intend to vote for. I don't care if the person is a three headed pink and green ape with no teeth and a speech defect. I invite you to become informed about this and to join me at the polls as we grab this chance to put a real live monkey in the White House. That makes you nervous? Too, too new? Ask yourself this question. Would a monkey send thousands of Americans to die in Iraq and have the whole thing end without us getting all the oil @ $2,00/barrel? NO, A MONKEY WOULD NOT. A monkey would just jump around and smash up the White House and defecate and scare the help and how bad, in comparison, would that be? Four years of damage to the White House looks cheap to me.
A monkey in the White House would do a lot for press conferences, too. We'd see a new breed of journalists, more the Tarzan type than those good old hacks presently quacking the usual. With a monkey it wouldn't be about politics, mostly about ducking when the "President" threw imappropriate organic matter...things like that. Admit it. You'd watch more White House coverage. "Hee hee, haw haw, did you see what the President did at the latest G-Eight summit, cackle, short?":-)
Alright, alright. I know the Constitution requires Presidential candidates be X---years old and born in the USA. Does it actually say the President can not be an ape? Maybe, I need to look it up, I guess.
Sunday, June 27, 2004
The Yard Sale
I hate yard sales. The only reason for doing this is to save me from throwing away things that others might want or need. I would give away everything, but friends who helped insisted that I put prices on things and when I didn't, they did. OK it is an awful experience. Someone stands looking at a perfectly good boombox with $5.00 on the pricetag. She wants to know if it works. I say it does. She holds out her hand to her husband for the money. He feels all over the boombox as if checking for splints and subcutaneaous tumors. Suspicions face. After massive and completely unnecessary effort, he pops open the battery compartment, snaps it shut again, and, holding the boombox in one hand and THE POWER CORD IN THE OTHER, says in an outraged manner, "This thing runs on batteries," and motions his family to walk onward all in a manner calculated to make me ashamed of my sorry self for selling that AC electric boom box WITH A BATTERY COMPARTMENT IN IT!!!!!. Hunh? Yeah, that's what it's like to have a yard sale. Then here comes a little tiny boy all by himself. Pat and Sue, helping me, are all concerned. Pat says, "Poor baby, he'll walk out into traffic and get killed." I wasn't just devastated about it, knowing the character of the neighborhood, but Pat had to try to find his family. She walked him all the way around the block and finally located his home....the place where everyone is naked all the time, there are no curtains, and sometimes they come out and smoke illegal substances on the back steps that way. Oy. Pat returned shaking her head. I said, "Nice of you, but unnecessary. Kids from homes like that are unkillable. Only loved little people with a responsible Mom and Dad knocking themselves out to do a great job...only those kids walk out in traffic, get kidnapped, contract fatal diseases." And that is the truth. Yard sale. It gets a person out where she can smell the community. Cough. Hack. OK, how about the old lady and her cohorts possibly off the boat from Bolgadavia...they felt over each milimeter of yarn and yelled to me and to one another, "Issa THICK!!! Issa THICK!" nodding to one another in a meaningful way on and on and on and on and then they all walked away. Sue said, unbelieving, "They didn't buy anything after all that." No, they didn't buy anything. They think they are the yarn police. Then there were the endless streams of relocated rednecks who long and thoughtfully felt every single item on all five tables, asked a million questions, made me listen to stories of far away places in the Ozarks, and bought nothing. My, my.The next time I have a yard sale will be the thirty-third day in the thirteenth month.
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
That Blow Out show is just so much a window on the dark and also green human heart.
The owner needs to succeed with every ounce of his anatomy and he is obsessed with that need like no one I have seen ever. That's how Napoleon felt. That is how Gengis Khan saw life. I want. I want. I want. He has only one thing ever on his mind. All that hugging and kissing and so forth and so on....nah. He isn't fillin'it. It's all about manipulation and control. Why do the employees put up with it? Why do they blatantly kiss up both physically and verbally? Because each hair job brings in hundreds of dollars. It is all about money. Are they in any way psychologically attached to him? Nah. If those hair cuts suddenly cost 20-30 dollars, they'd be gone. The owner also is interesting in that he has the heart of the ultimate Jewish shopper; he NEVER SETTLES. Not in the smallest increment. He ALWAYS gets exactly what he wants down to the finest adjustment.
No energy expenditure is too much. No amount of heaping shame on others is too much meanness to do. He is surrounded by an almost visibly throbbing, humming energy field of I want, I want, I want. Imagine if that man cared about anything important. If you had to bet on how many books he and his entire staff have read in their whole lives, what number would you pick? People like that make it tough for school teachers because when you tell Bubba, "You need to be well read or you will be poor," Bubba says, "Yeah? How about those completely illiterate vampires on the Blow Out show, huh?" Not incidentally, are the hair cuts good? No, they are transformingly wonderful. That salon will burst at the seams and become a chain as big as McDonalds because this media exposure lets the whole world see a place where you can go in ordinary and come out looking excellent....for hundreds of dollars plus you have to let a lot of vampires kiss you. That show is one truly interesting bit of reality programing. Finally about the owner I find interesting his antennae. He so fully concentrates on the work place as a whole money-making entity that he has invested his body into the building. He hears and sees through the walls, sinks, and chairs and he knows to the milimeter when something needs fixed and goes right away and deals with it. That is exactly what experienced teachers have about school. I can have a room full of children devoted to rocking the house and I will infallibly hear the one thing said by one child which is trouble waiting to happen and I'm on it immediately. Without that sense, a teacher is a clueless shrieker at everyone, soon ignored by all. In the hairjoint, all that mindless babble and yakkety yak is going on, but the owner hears the one thing said which is going to be trouble and BAM he's got somebody out in the alley telling them the word. How did he hear, how did he see? He's got good antennae. I said, if only that man cared about something important, he'd be an asset to God. I think, though, that he'd be a good lesson to a young person starting out in any endeavor; care that much, try that hard. Just don't be that guy.
Yes, the entire bunch of them remind one of the last days of the Roman Empire, but that whole-souled focus, come shameful stupidity, come botox, come scenes of undead sentiment, flat out eyes on the prize demeanor...it leads to the goal line well before the competition arrives.
Last and ultimate point...1)If you could have your hair LIKE anyone of them, which would you pick?
2) If you could have your hair CUT by anyone of them, which would you pick?
I like the pink hair and if I ever get thin, I am going to have my hair done christmas snow white with rainbow highlights and have it cut about a foot long all over and afroed. Yes, even a heavyweight(HEY!! I'm talking ...er,figuratively here. OK another bad word choice.) philosopher like me can be diverted into the shallows.
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
It Didn't Live Up To The Memory
When I went to sleep yesterday, Turner Classic Movies was on with the sound off.
When I woke up, Ninotchka was just coming on. I was very tickled because I saw it once in 1964 and have never forgotten it, wondered if I would feel the same about it now. Back then I thought it so romantic. Also I thought Greta Garbo very beautiful. If I were seeing it for the first time today, I would think nothing much of it or of her, so either I or the times have changed or both. It is considered one of those movie greats like Casablanca. For one thing the acting seems wooden, as though for each emotion the actors had been taught to do one thing in one way to register what they were feeling, with the result that in a movie with a lot of that feeling, they keep doing the same thing in the same way over and over and over and over again. They seem afraid to move their faces. They recite the script quickly and pretty much expressionlessly. Greta Garbo seems to me to be just ordinary looking except for the improbably painted lines where her eyebrows should have been. I thought the story not so much romantic as weird at least on the part of the male lead. He kept sucking the oxygen out of the air, so much so that it was a wonder Greta Garbo could breathe. She got no personal space whatsoever. At one point I actually thought he sat on her as they were side by side on a large sofa. Perhaps the director was yelling at him to move closer. In the kissing scenes each time, he grabbed her shoulders and sort of chubbed her up and then resolutely chomped onto her like you would take on a too fat sandwich, all with his shoulders up around his ears.
This viewing, the best parts were about Russia. Back in Moscow Ninotchka is having friends for dinner. Someone asks what she will serve. She says, "Omelet." The friends arrive and each takes a carefully wrapped egg from his pocket, except for one whose egg broke in transit. The friends say how beautiful is the room where Ninotchka lives and ask how many people live there. When she says 3, they are shocked at such privilege. Now and then everyone in the building walks through her room on the way to the bathroom and then back out. The hair style of everyone in the film was awful beyond hope. The male lead's hair was greased so tightly to his head it looked like high gloss paint; then there was the silly Hitler moustache. The hair style of the French fashion maven opposing Ninotchka...that was even worse..shockingly so. It was what you might do to baby hair if you were really trying to dude up the baby. The script is both clever and witty. I see it was written by Billy Wilder. So, I was disappointed pretty much. It did not live up to the memory.
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