It's Halloween!

Time to scream it's Halloween!

The moon is full and bright

And we shall see what can't be seen

On any other night.

Skeletons and ghosts and ghouls,

Grinning goblins fighting duels,

Werewolves rising from their tombs,

Witches on their magic brooms.

In masks and gowns

On haunted streets

Knock on doors

For tricks or treats

Every child is king or queen,

Carved out pumpkins light the scene

Cast iron cauldrens bubbling green

For on this night it's Halloween!

National Stats

I was scanning my mail and read an article in the OPENING BELL an email
published for the NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION the other morning and came across an article that said: "Report: 2,500 teachers punished for sexual misconduct in five year period." I have no children in school these days, but it still sounded alarming over my first cup of coffee of the day.

I decided for some reason to see what kind of information I could find on the
i-net and came up with some general facts that put a little perspective into
the community around me and the nation as a whole.

Here are some general national statistics. All are approximates and none or
few have been researched and documented by myself other than to relay what I
read here and there.

Population
301,139,947

annual births
4,000,000
11,000 births per day

annual deaths
2,400,000
6,500 deaths per day

annualtraffic fatalities
39,000
106 traffic fatalities per day
(almost half alcohol related)

annualrape/sexualassault
191,000
(523 reported sexual assaults per day)

annual teachers terminated
for sexual assault
500
(1.3 teachers let go per day. I did not find a source that reports how many
teachers are terminated in general per day)

total national crimes annualy
23,440,000
64,000 crimes comitted daily
(1 out of 4,700 people will be involved in a crime today)

annual homicides
20,000
54 homicides daily

annual suicides
30,000
82 suicides daily

annual deaths from illicit drug use
17,000
46 per day
(that includes overdose, traffic fatalities, and homicides related to drugs)

annual deaths from perscription medication
32,000
87 per day
(Now there is food for thought, far more people die from perscription abuse
than illegal drug abuse.)

Well that's it for today, I am going to go bury my head back in the sand.

A DAY AT THE BEACH

Story time again. Some may not know anything about Sam Gambol, who he is and what he has done, but I know Sue does. She motivated me to complete my sci-fi story into a novel size book. but Sam has sat quietly in a corner waiting patiently for me to complete my current project EYES.

So I thought maybe a little background story to ease back into the Travelogged mode might be in order. Travelogged being the original idea for the title. Sam Gambol began in my mind in high school as a college kid turned into a mechanical tank for the military (bionic man style I guess). after his adventures as Tred Boy the cyber soldier, he lead a revolt of peaceful resistance that ended up with the pulling of his brain matter out of his defunct war machine and stuck in a cryonics lab for thousands of years to finally be defrosted and inserted into a standard vat clone body and reindoctrinated into society. But unfortunately time left Sam unprepared for the new society and Sam opted for training in space mining where he was sent out as an apprentice on a tour of duty with an old astro miner named Pick. They became involved in the company wars and ultimately Pick lost his life over sabatage inflicted by rival miners, but the blame was placed on apprentice Sam who lost an arm in the accident and yet to this day Sam blames himself for the death of his partner. Being near death when discovered, Sam was refrozen for another several centuries before being defrosted with his old vat clone body with new technology and a replaced arm. In debt and out of phase with the new world once again, after working for the oldest man alive (that was never cryonically frozen) as a dectective, Sam was eventually inducted into service to Earth Data Central, a defensive alliance army dedcated to keeping human free-space safe from invaders.

This is some of his story:

A DAY AT THE BEACH

There is a reason why Sam Gambol became an explorer scout, preferring the quiet solitude of uncharted space to the dread responsibility involved in his previous line of work. Let’s just say that for Sam, a day at the beach was no walk in the park.

Ok, you got me, I didn't know what to write about the last couple days...

TOENAIL CLIPPING COLLECTION

Lately, I've been noticing just how large my collection of toenail clippings has been getting.

Everytime I have clipped my toenails since a was very young, I have accumulated every bit of my clips and amassed them into a zip lock plastic baggy which later was replaced with a wooden box originally intended for pet cremation. The fine crafted contaner somehow came into my possession sans cremated pet. It seemed the proper resting place for my cut cuticals.

Collecting the toenail clippings has been hard. It is difficult to assimilate them because of how the clippings fly around all over the place when clipped. some times the cats will attack one before I can retrieve it and I am forced to dash about the house in pursuit of my evasive critter in custody pf a loose tonail.

Perhaps some day I will send them out to be bronzed (my toenail clippings, not the cats) like baby shoes and then put them on ebay, because face it, there just isn't enough weirdness on ebay yet...

Ok, I don't really have a toenail clipping collection, but I do think of starting one every time I clip my nails. Is it because I am bored and my mind wonders? I don;t know, but sometimes there will be a very uniqu clipping that stands out and I think to myself "If I actually did save my toenail clippings, this would be the one I always pulled out to look at..."

Golden Drawers

I wear cotton knit jockey briefs. And I wear only one brand. I pay $24.00 per pair in extortion money for that privilege. I have tried others. Many, many others; but for all the cost, cotton knit jockey briefs without banded legs are the only underwear I wear in total comfort. There is only one brand that I have found that produces the right combination of fit, comfort and support for my apparently rare and unique requirements.

I grew up with generic cotton briefs. 12 for $3.00 I believe were the common White Front brand Mom always bought us. Men’s for Dad, boy’s for me. I gave little thought in my youth to the properties of underwear until junior high school gym class and the introduction of gym shorts and jocks. Jock straps were uncomfortable, but reassuringly protective when combined with a shock doc protective cup. Gym shorts on the other hand were loose and allowed free motion and it was only in comparison that I soon discovered just how uncomfortable cotton briefs had been all my life.

I began to study and explore the complexities of the world of undergarments. Breaking free of paternal white cotton oppression I rebelled the tyrannical reign of cotton briefs and searched for an alternative life choice much to the dismay concern and complete lack of enlightenment on my parent’s part. In a final act of desperate compromise, my Mom offered to buy me colored cotton briefs, but I declined and sought to go out on my own and purchase my first article of clothing without supervision.

Boxer’s seemed the logical choice to me at the time, being new to the garment industry in general and naïve in the nuances of underwear hierarchy I was in awe to walk down the aisles of various brands of cotton briefs until I located the small display of colorful plaid printed boxers in packages of three. After carefully examining the color varieties and combos I settled on a package and brought the conspicuous unmentionables to the check out counter grabbing a pack of handkerchiefs to hide the obvious boxers I held in my hand.

I later learned that this embarrassment that I felt over displaying my underwear in public lent to similar situations like buying condoms, KY jelly and women’s hygienic products as well. But I have successfully braved all these events at various times in my life with the tried and true method of incorporating tunnel vision that I perfected on that day. Focus on the prize, blank out the mind, breath deep and steady and keep putting one foot in front of the other. It is the technique I recommend to all young men faced with similar situations. I found the same procedure might be applied to marriage, but not nearly as well or with the desired effect.

Boxers did not meet all my expectations. I felt like a freak although no one could tell what I wore beneath my Wrangler’s, or could they? I walked around wondering what they were really seeing when girls would look at me and giggle, and classmates stared and then quickly glanced away to avoid eye contact. Did they know? Could they know? Well I didn’t care. I did but not really. Doesn’t that sound like typical teenage angst? The truth is the boxers I wore were tight around the leg, the elastic in the waist was scratchy, they ballooned in the middle, and I discovered over the years from the different versions I have tried, buttons catch and pop off, snaps unsnap leaving a gaping hole for tangly dangly mischief to occur, and the excess material seems to wrinkle and crease causing them to bind at inopportune times. Boxers are not for me.

During a mad disco phase of my life I briefly considered stretchy nylon/spandex bikini briefs like superman wears. I soon discovered why Superman is always portrayed standing. Sitting in bikini briefs for any period off time cuts the circulation off to the legs. Good thing Superman can fly, he could never walk anywhere. Bikini Briefs are not for me. But I must say I did look good in them.

Jockey shorts are too clingy, silk briefs too needy, flannel too warm, thongs, well thongs are simply masochistic torture gear that if not properly monitored require a team of proctologists to remove, and last I checked, insurance won’t cover the procedure.

I finally found the undergarment for me. Cotton knit brief jockeys. They represent the best of all worlds. Soft gentle loose fitting for maneuverability, cross over flap with no buttons or snaps, elastic waist band that supports yet doesn’t confine, and leg seams without elastic that allow for range of motion that I find reassuring.

So although I may complain of the cost and often threaten to switch brands, I am a one undergarment man and pray every night before I go to bed that my guardian angel watches over corporate stability and protects the integrity of the fashion line that features my unmentionables for now and ever more.

YOU LEFT ME IN THE DARK

I am done with this song, I don't even want to start on the troubles I went through to record this (all of my own doing). Go to my music page to play the song if you like.
RFL music YOU LEFT ME IN THE DARK

Another Six Weeks In My World

In response to Jan's

Another Day In Her world

I am posting

Another Six Weeks In My World

a rambling of my experience with Mom's Dementia. The story kind of drags on and on so I thought I would try linking the document to this site. Something new for me.

Day is done

Ok, I was going to write a serious piece about my Mom and our last few weeks together, but I got caught up in song writing burning the midnight oil until the wee hours of the morning. So I decided to post my new song but in the light of day I realized that thanks to em and her recent post I apparently pirated the tune to

Death Cab's I Will Follow You Into The Dark

So I decided that it is sad, but pretty and hauntingly lyrical and I would record it anyway and post the song, but production lagged and I decided I need some piano in the mix, and lost some enthusiasm for my lack of originality and to make a long story short the song isn't recorded yet.

So this is my post of excuses. The dog didn't eat it, I just ran out of time so this is all I have ofr the day. Late and uninformative.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Two Cows explain moosic

60s Rock 'n' Roll: You have two cowbells.

80's: You have 2 white cows. They play that funky music.

Ambient: You have two evergrowing pulsating cows.

Baroque: You have two cows and they are identically identical.

Bebop: Cows don't matter, man. Just be cool.

Big Band: You have two cows. You give one of them all of the 1st Trumpet parts. The other is extremely jealous.

Blues: You had two cows. One o' them died while still a calf. The other done you wrong an' gave her milk to another man.

Blues 2: You have two cows. Only two cows. You write several sets of lyrics for those cows to make it look like you have a large repertory of cows. No one seems to notice that you just keep playing the same two cows over and over.

Bluegrass: You have two cows. They fall in love, then one of them dies. Also, you work in a coal mine and drink heavily.
British Punk: You have two bulls that spend all their time getting drunk at the pub and shagging fat cows.
Celtic: You have two cows. They're both very drunk all the time and are usually sailing to someplace or other.

Classical: You have two cows. They're sound asleep.
Classical 2: Golden Age: You have two cows. One is deaf, and the other dies before reaching adulthood. Their mooing is revered by countless thousands for centuries.
Contemporary: You have two cows that are radically different than your friends; you therefor shove your cows in his or her face proving how 'revolutionary' you are.
Creedence Clearwater Revival: You have two cows. You primarily sell the milk from one cow until you find that the other one produces far superior milk, so you switch to the second cow's milk and become a millionaire. Four years later, the first cow becomes resentful of the second cow, so you decide to get an equal amount of milk from both cows, resulting in far less profit for you. This results in the second cow leaving the farm, and years afterward, you and the first cow sue the second cow because the milk that it produces now is far too similar to the milk that it produced when you owned it.
Emoo: You have two dark, brooding cows who get no respect from their dads and constantly moo about it off-key. The mooing is overly sappy and difficult to listen to, and you don't really know for sure if it's cool or not.
Emoo 2: You have two cows. So what? You're gonna die anyway.
Folk: You have two cows. They trade in their leather for natural fiber skins, eat organic grass, and try to organize your other animals to topple the Bush in your yard.
Frankie Goes to Hollywood: When your two cows go to war, a point is all that you can score.

Funk: You have two black cows from outer space. And now they’re back.
Glam Rock: You have two cows, one is a boy and one is a girl, you can't tell which cow is a boy and which cow is a girl but you're pretty sure both are gay anyways.
Gospel : Can I get a "moo"? ("Moo!") I said, can I get a "moo"? ("Moo!") 'Cause you got two cows, brother, and they're comin' home in glory to the Land o’ Milk and Honey!
Grindcore: You have two cows. You're such a faggot. I freakin’ raped your cows.
Heavy Metal: You have two cöws. Mü. (they get rich selling black Mü Tshirts)
Hip Hop: You have two cows. They moo about ghetto life from their personal recording studios in their $20,000,000 barns, then hop in pimped-out trailers to head to the World Moosic Awards.
Indie: You have two cows whose music tastes are so superior, they refuse to listen to anything besides vinyls of unlabeled, obscure bands.
Industrial Rock: You have two cows, one of which joins Ministry while the other produces some poor quality remixes of FLA's early work.
Intelligent Dance Moosic: You have two cows who would die for the Aphex Twin.
Jam Band: You have two cows. They think grass isn't just for grazing.
Jazz:You have two cows. One plays the drums with it's udder and the other blows on his horn as if it just got milked.
Metal (Black): You wanna sacrifice the cows to the Dark Lord. They're not virgins (because you sodomized and deflowered them), but you slaughter them anyway.
Metal (Death): You have two cows. You give them to the Black Metal guys. You then sing about how you sacrificed them to the Dark Lord.
Metal (Doom): You have two stoned cows. They graze a swampy graveyard at night, while the grim reaper watches from the mist.
Metal (Gore): You set your two cows on fire and rape them. They revive as zombies. You rape the zombies.
Metal (Gothic): You've got two cows. Both want to marry each other. One cant, so they attempt to kill themself and fail. The other then kills himself. Then there is much weeping. The end.
Metal (Nü): You've got two cows. Nobody likes you, and your dad raped you. You wanna kill yourself.
Metal (Power): The warrior must rescue two cows from a dragon. He reaches the Castle and slays the dragon. (Insert Solo Virtuoso here.) Two cows are finally safe.
Minimalism : You. You. You. You. Have. You. Have. You. Have. You. Have. Two. You. Have. Two. Two. Cows. You. Have. Two. Cows. You. Have. Two. Cows. Cows. Have. You. Two. Cows. Have. You. Too. Two. Cows. Have. You. You. Have. Cows. Cows. Cows. Cows. Cows. Cows.
New Age: You have two cows. They, they want to swim; like the dolphins they want to swim and go for a stroll in the Museum of Fine Arts.
New country : You have two cows. They dance around to a sampled steel-guitar twang and flash their navels seductively, then leave Nashville so they can get on VH1.
New wave : You have two cows that make repeated jerky, robotic movements while mooing in a detached monotone.
Oi!: You have two cows that wear boots, and you let them loose to trample your boss and bust down the doors at the local police station.
Opera: You have two cows in a china closet, they break glass with their moos while the audience break wind and snooze.
Orthodox Chant: You have two cows ordained as chanters. At Pascha, they sing in 19 different languages.
Pop : A big label has two cows. They moo vapidly about mooing, the vast wealth that comes from mooing, or their relationship with an anonymous third cow. They cannot moo on the radio without payola.
Prog Rock: Your self, which may or may not be real, is in possession of two bovine creatures. But what is the "self" anyway? How can one know if one is oneself, or just part of some sort of great, larger moo cow? Is there a God? Are these creatures, in fact, here? How can one have possession of something? What is your right, your privilege to own two creatures? (15 minute instrumental)I have ventured far across time and space, here for all eternityBut for those two cows I owned one day, a slave to myself and meBut anyway I don't really know...(Leprechaun solo)
Psychedelia : You have two cows. One is purple with pink gumdrop hooves and she jumps over the paisley moon. The other journeys to the centre of the moo-niverse and sees herself journeying the other way. Oom. Peace.
Rap: You have two cows wearing different colors. They belong to different gangs. They shoot each other.
Rave: You have two cows, wearing color lights. They look confused and are consuming pills. Eventually they die of over-hydration.
Riot Grrrl: You have two cows from Seattle. They hate bulls and refuse to be milked because milking is a symbol of the exploitation of cows everywhere.
Romanticism: You have two cows, and they're more emotional than the previous generation.
Screamoo: You have two cows. One of them plays the guitar and the other "sings". The first knows one chord and plays it over and over. The other moos at the top of its lungs and hopes that her mooing was so horrible that nobody could tell how awful the lyrics were.

Ska: You have two black-and-white checkerboard cows. They get tipped and trampled to death in a moshpit.

Surrealism: You have two cows, but are they really cows?

Traditional country : You have two cows. One cheated on her bull and left him crying in his straw. The other is your honky-tonk queen.

Weird Al Yankovic: You have two cows. They play polka versions of popular mooing. Hamsters are somehow involved.

EYES

YOU HAVE TWO COWS

Jan posted about political comparisons using two cows, it seems to me a good way to explain many things.

“I have nothing to declare but my two cows.”
~ Oscar Wilde

“I have what???”
~ Captain Oblivious

YOU HAVE TWO COWS is the philisophical truth of the entire world.:

Moo*(sin(CowA)+cos(CowB))=2xCows

This mathematical proof can also be written with the second moometric identity:
log/moo(CowA)+log/moo(CowB)=log/2Cow(Moo)
Where Moo is the universal moometric constant.

A long-standing tradition of mathematics has been the discovery of new truths pertaining to two-cow ownership. Currently, 45,893 two-cow truths are known Nostradamas demonstrated in 1555 that the total number of two-cow truths is infinite.

A related but much more difficult problem is the identification of philosophical truths involving the ownership of three cows. An infinite number of these is also expected to exist, although this is unproven. To date, very few three-cow truths are known to exist, all of which have yet to be proven. In coming years this problem is expected to become much more important, as Microsoft has announced that the next version of Windows will require users to have three cows, or, alternatively, two overmilked ones. Linux however only needs a pint of milk, but you need to deliver the milk through the command prompt with the use of four pipes, an awk and a sed.

The following are TWO COW examples to explain

World of Warcraft
Bigbeef: WTS [Two Cows], 20g. /w me
Arkarian: lol, n00b, [Two Cows] is quest item, so soulbound, rofl.
Arkarian: lol, some guy tried to sell [Two Cows]
Somedutchguy: hahaha, what a n00b.
Bigbeef: WTS [Two Cows], 20g. /w me.

World of Warcraft (2)
[1. The Barrens] [Random]: Chuck Norris's two cows cure cancer, too bad he never milks them.
[1. The Barrens] [Sefirof]: Chuck Norris jokes are ghey.
[1. The Barrens] [Siefer]: Bruce Lee > Chuck Norris
[1. The Barrens] [Fujin]: NOTICE: Chuck Norris jokes are SO old, Thomas Jefferson heard one from Benjamin Franklin while he was writing the declaration of Independence and said "OMG Ben those are SO old!"
[1. The Barrens] [Random]: Chuck Norris does not approve of that horrible Anti-Chuck Norris joke!
[1. The Barrens] [Ryejin]: OMG That joke has ruined all anti-chuck norris jokes now and forefer!
[1. The Barrens] [Renotheturk]: FACT: Chuck Norris got his ass whooped by Jackie Chan!
[1. The Barrens] [Sefirof]: FACT: Jackie Chan is Gay.
[1. The Barrens] [Siefer]: Bruce Lee > Jackie Chan > Chuck Norris
[1. The Barrens] [Ffantasysux]: WARNING: ALL OF THOSE WHO HAVE BUTCHERED THE NAMES OF OUR FAVOURITE FINAL FANTASY CHARACTERS HAVE BEEN REPORTED AND WILL BE GANKED FOR DEFILING SACRED CONTENT WITH STUPID RENAMING CRAP!
[1. The Barrens] [Lyndis]: Final Fantasy Fanbois just got PWNT!
[1. The Barrens] [Nazras]: O RLY?
[1. The Barrens] [Lyndis]: YA RLY!
[1. The Barrens] [Nazras]: NO WAI!
[1. The Barrens] [Ilovecheese]: REPORTED!
[1. The Barrens] [Siefer]: REPORTED!
[1. The Barrens] [Ryejin]: REPORTED!
[1. The Barrens] [Raigin]: REPORTED!
[1. The Barrens] [Renotheturk]: It's okay lern2play.
[1. The Barrens] [Tyemyshoe]: Holy crap, all this started just from a simple "You have Two Cows" Joke?
[1. The Barrens] [Gnomepunter]: That's why you leave /1 whenever you enter.
[4. LocalDefense] [Sefirof]: They left General Chat! Quick! Spam up Local Defense!!
[1. The Barrens] [Winnerall]: Damn my cows are soo n00bish!

World of Warcraft (3)
You have two Tauren. They are both Level 70. For the Horde!!!

World of Warcraft (4)
You had two cows, but the last patch nerfed them so badly you now use a goat.

World of Warcraft (5)
You have two cows. You can't use them yet because they have to go to surgery for seven hours because their spots are too round. Once it is done, you name your cows TeatMagic and Milk247. When you finally go milk them, they have a heart attack. After they get better, you find out they have to do another surgery for ten hours because their spots have become too square. Once it is done, you go milk them again, but another farmer tells you that your cows' names are taken and he doesn't let you milk them again. And you continue paying $15 a month to the place where the cows where born.

World of Warcraft (6)
You have two cows. You accidentally right-click one of them. You now only have one cow

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
You have two cows and a barn that can hold 40. But now you have to cut 15 cows because now you can only fit 25 into your barn.

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (2)
You had two cows, but now all the Noobs get them so it don't matter what you had before.

Tag I'm it

Jan @ Vinegar and Honey has tagged me for a Meme that if I understand correctly is about my blog evolution. That is how I read it and that is how I am going to interpret this Meme. And I am going to cheat. I posted this info earlier about growing concerns for blog orphans and confessed to leaving my share of blog babies abandoned in the blogoshere. Consequently I included my blogging history and how this page came to be.

The rules are to explain the evolution of your blog and then Tag five unsuspecting bloggers and link them back to Jan @ Vinegar and Honey and Michael @ Gossip Galaxy

So listen up, the following bloggers beware;
em of Mellow Chaos
Shafa of American Twenty Something
brat of barista brat
Sizzle of SIZZLE SAYS
Becky of Searching for Oz
You have been TAGGED thanks to Jan @ Vinegar and Honey and of course myself.

The great mofo delurk annex

I asked if some of us procrastinating bloggers could annex her delurker campaign .
Schmutzie sez
"I don't see why not! Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun with it, so go ahead."
The new date is set for Ocrober 15th so interested parties grab a button.

My Ship has come in again

Well more like a rowboat...







Or more specifically a bookcase

One more piece for the Nauti Cal bedroom motif. Still have to do something about those curtains.

Slow Read

I finally finished reading my recent book selection yesterday. The book, DYING OF THE LIGHT was written by G.R.R.Martin; the author of the THRONES series. THRONES impressed me with the sheer level and vast scale of epic undertaking he attempted to shove into a trilogy. Like many authors he failed miserably and the trilogy exploded into seemingly never ending volumes of soap opera level proportions, but I was intrigued and already hooked to see how he resolved certain aspects of the story. He didn’t satisfy the questions rattling around in my mind. Instead he took the addiction path, killing off or finalizing one aspect of the multi tasking storylines and wove new trails of unsettled intrigue into the mix leading to yet another 1300 page volume in the making. I finished one of those volumes in about a week, but the novel I just put down, written by a younger author took me three weeks to complete and it was but a 365-page story.

It wasn’t complex or difficult to follow, as the fifteen page glossary in the back may have suggested, there were definitely fresh science fiction ideas for the time period, the rogue planet that wondered aimlessly through the galaxies until captured by a complex red giant system surrounded by six yellow dwarf stars. The rogue planet was settled by representatives of every civilized human planet for what was to be referred to as a Galactic Festival. For the duration of the rogue planets capture the multi cultural planets gathered to display their arrogance in what they termed a representation of art and culture. A neutral experiment in cooperative extravagance; the story takes place on this rogue after it has broken away from Fat Satan’s (the red giant) hold and was drifting away from the light of the suns and their life supporting heat. Now I found that part interesting but it only took me through the prologue, unfortunately the rest of the book read like a cheap harlequin romance. A love triangle (or quadrangle?) between a girl, her ex boyfriend, her current husband whom she later learned that marriage in her husbands culture was actually more of a slave/concubine relationship where she was property, wife and available sex toy to her husbands guild family and close friend. And then there is the final off world character that plays manipulator in the background finally admitting his hopeless love for the girl and is outed as being responsible for the entire syrupy story of conflict as he set everyone at odds with one another. Lies deceit and treachery, how Shakespearian, and yet a real snoozer for me.

A glutton for punishment I undertook another of his earlier novels, and it isn’t half bad. FEVRE DREAMS is a riverboat adventure on the Mississippi in the mid 1800’s. The twist being the Captain of the ship is a vampire (oops, don’t tell anyone, the book hasn’t actually revealed that yet, but I see it coming) I read half the book in one setting. It definitely shows a rapid growth in the author’s skill.

I may never set foot in Wal-Mart again.

Just a “brief” rant.

There is a sign in the window in front of the store addressing handicapped patrons with instructions to inform an employee if you have specific needs. I traditionally ignore this sign as I walk by. I don’t anticipate special treatment and as a rule do not require it.

Today I nearly collapsed in the middle of the store, and I am embarrassed to no end. I came in on a simple mission, return a package of broken light bulbs and left a broken man. Earlier I stopped at the furniture store and bought a boat for my bedroom; oh yah, I bought a boat! Actually a rowboat shaped bookcase. It should go well with my new bedroom motif.

Anyways, back to my tale, I went to the furniture store, visited the bank, did my grocery shopping, stopped at Staples in search of a DSL modem and just browsed a bit, then moved on down the road to Wal-Mart to return the unfortunate broken bulbs that were bagged with some canned goods. I stood in line quite a long time as customers returned, complained, picked up and otherwise occupied the only customer service girl behind the counter. After about twenty minutes the line picked up when another girl came to the rescue.

When I finally reached the counter, impressed with the speed and apparent efficiency of the new girl, she was knocking the complaints out 3 to 1 verses the other customer service rep; I got the speedy efficient girl.

She scanned my item without listening to my well-rehearsed and clever explanation (why else do we return stuff but to have our story heard?) and she handed me two dollars and some change. Well you can imagine how put off the speedy girl was when I said I really just wanted to exchange the item. She stopped deadpan and looked me straight in the eyes and said “I refunded your money, you can go get another one and now you won’t have to return here with it.”

“But you refunded the wrong item.” I humbly replied, this set off her annoyance beacon and she glared a hole through me sharp as a laser beam.

“I go by the last four digits of the scanning code, that is the product number you returned right there.” She retaliated. I then realized she must be a high level member of a secret society: the clan codex of superior scanners, and as a master of the craft, was not used to being questioned about her arcane wisdom and skill.

“I am sorry to contradict your scanning prowess, but I bought two twin packs of smaller bulbs as you can see on this receipt, they were each $2.00 and some change. The three pack of larger bulbs cost me $8.77 as it is marked here on the receipt as you can see.” I memorized that smooth line while standing in the customer complaint line without even knowing I would be the one to throw a monkey wrench into the only working cog of customer servicing at the time.

“That is not the item you returned sir.” She insisted. Looking at the words here on paper her response may appear cordial, but I assure you I was standing in front of her and it was far from polite conversation.

“Ok, whatever, can you just get someone to bring me a replacement for the broken bulbs in that pack, and we won’t have to squabble over the price.” Yes I used the squabble word, a word I normally reserve for holiday shopping.

“Sir you can just go get another pack and take it to any check out counter.” That sounded pretty final to me so I set off at my charging turtle pace intent on getting a replacement and making Snooty-Gurlz ring it up. I was grateful in one sense that as I passed many point of purchase items that reached out to my inner shopper, I was able to resist all urges to buy stuff I really don’t need.

I did stop once or twice in a moment of weakness, but managed to go relatively direct to the stacks of light bulb pallets and retrieve a package of bulbs. On the way back I was determined to metaphorically shove the pack into the customer service girls smug face and laugh at her failure, but my legs were trembling, and I noticed my left foot was swelling right out of my sandal. It just then occurred to me that I felt weak and quite headachy; more than I would normally expect from a little altercation with a seventeen-year-old Barbie doll.

I was dragging my left foot along and all my weight was on my good leg and cane. My right leg was trembling something fierce. By the time I reached sight of the first available checkout I deadheaded straight for the counter, shuffling and leaning against anything that might support me. Stubbornness has its percs, it propelled me the last few feet like a drunken sailor to the cashier. I dropped the light bulbs on the conveyor belt, and then dropped the two dollar-bills, and lastly the loose change that came with it as I leaned gasping at the edge of the counter.

“That is only two dollars the cashier said.”

“I know, it is what the customer service girl gave me for those bulbs.” I explained and dropped the marked receipt on the conveyer and dropped my head putting all my weight on the counter. All I could think at this point is I needed to get off my feet and wanted to be at home.

“Those bulbs cost $8.77 sir.”

“I know” was as clever a response as I could manage at the time and I gave up. I just wanted to go home and I stormed off in my snail-paced fashion as the cashier followed me asking if I wanted my two dollars back. I kept telling her no, I wanted my light bulbs, no, I wanted to go home, no, I just wanted to sit down. All the while I am picking up assistant managers trailing behind me like sticky toilet paper stuck on the bottom of my shoe.

“Please! Just let me find a seat for a minute!” I shouted and somewhere in the confusion someone brought me a chair.

By now I was surrounded by concerned and curious faces; employees, managers (how many managers does it take to run a shift at Wal-Mart?) and a few customers trying to extract a case of soda from behind me. Some one offered to call 911 and I insisted I was ok horrified by the possibility of further embarrassment. As I regained a small amount of composure and none of my dignity, I explained as best I could why I was there and what I wanted. I mentioned the sign out front offering assistance to handicapped people and I requested some of that special treatment then and there. I handed everything I had to the Alpha manager, ratted out the customer service girl and remained sitting, trying to work the pain out of my foot as I rested my good leg.

When did I get to be so weak? I can’t even stroll from one end of a warehouse and back? I am so embarrassed. I lost my temper, I lost my dignity, and I lost control of my life for a very short time and it scared the hell out of me.

I do not know how exactly they resolved the entire light bulb scanner fiasco, but I left with my light bulbs and did not have to pay anything more for them than the cash the service girl handed me and all of my dignity.

I might mention that from the glare of the service girls still at her staion tells me that this isn't over between her and me, I am certain I made an enemy for life. I am envisioning myself at some later date or time in my life when I am at my favorite drive through and I reach up to the window to pick up my food, and there will be Snooty-Gurlz glaring at me...

Fa La La

Not much to say today. It’s hump day for some, just another day for others. I sat up until 4a.m. rewriting Tremblin’ Hands and arranging the score in Reason using a bright piano and some low and spiky old time grand for background. I added a combination of acoustic lead and electric heavy strum rhythm guitars, an upright finger bass, some driving drums and for the instrumental break a little telo-tube guitar and some (I guess some would call it old fashion now days) moog action. I played around with some bari sax and flute combos, but I lost the fifties edge somewhere in the beat and electronics so could not get them to blend well. I ended up with a fifties style song with a seventies drive and a nineties beat. An awkward bastard child of a pop duet and I may bring it out at Open Mike Friday if anyone is bold enough to try it with me.

So after I run a few pick up errands this morning that I overlooked yesterday, I am likely going to spend the rest of the day making karaoke sing-along disks. Tremblin’ Hands of course and before I do that I have two humorous song parodies on ARE YOU LONESOME TONITE and THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS for Karaoke Ron’s wife, Sue K or Suki as I call her for convenience sake.

BFFL; coincidence? maybe not...

Michael Smith was my best friend in high school; we ditched school to go surfing together, worked at the same place, dated two girls who were best friends and neighbors for three months before discovering that particular coincidence.

Mike and I entered the service together on the buddy program. And discovered that not only did we share the first name, but both our middle names were Lynn. After boot cap we went our own ways. Mike shipped out to S.E. Asia and I was sent to further training. Mike returned just as I shipped out and we lost touch for about a year when one afternoon, my Filipino date took me to a theatre in Manila and as we sat waiting for the show to start, a young man and his date excused themselves as they made their way to the center of the aisle and who should it be, but my buddy Mike. I had transferred ships, and remained overseas and Mike had shipped out for a second tour and neither of us had heard a word from the other in more than a year.

After the military, Mike’s marriage broke up and he came to stay with me for a while until he met and married his new love and moved to Oregon. We lost touch over the years, and I had relocated to Needles California and opened the Desert Bronze Bakery, Luigi’s and Mike’s Deli and Catering. Needless to say those days were very busy and hectic for me. I had spent a Sunday outing with the Viet Nam Vets reminiscing and swapping war stories and the thought of Mike pressed hard on my memories as I wondered how he was and what he was doing. I felt guilty loosing touch with him, but the road of life has a way of branching and splitting into many paths over the years.

That very next day, I had just opened for business and was going over my bakery deliveries with the driver when a young man came into the store wanting to use the restroom. After a time and he had not come out, and older gentleman came in asking if we had seen his son, who was desperately looking for a restroom. That old man was my high school buddy Mike with his son on their way to Phoenix where Chad was starting college.

Mike is still living in Oregon and we still keep touch and swap war stories online or over the phone. But when I divorced his ex wife and moved to Northern California, I had lost my contact information. But I wasn’t in Norcal a week and I ran across Mike in a Starbucks in Sacramento 200 miles south of where I now live. He stopped for a coffee break coming down for a work related seminar, and I stopped in for coffee and to use my laptop while I was visiting my boat on the near by Sacramento River. Neither of us had ever been in that shop before.

He has never been to my home and I have not been to his since our roommate days, but we have bumped into one another more often than some of my relatives.

When should we be deliberately colorblind?

When the world lives in abstracts of black and white, I have always claimed to see shades of gray.
I am not a man of absolutes. That is not to say that I don’t have preconceived notions or that I don’t believe in absolutes, but I question the status quo constantly.

I cannot help myself. Someone once said, “The more you know the more you know you don’t know.” And I have had a jump on wisdom since I was a child. I have always been acutely aware of what I do not know and frustrated my tutors to no end with endless questions and suppositions.

“The sky is blue.” It would seem a simple enough lesson to learn. But for me it was just the beginning of unanswered questions like “why blue?” “What makes it blue?” “Who decided to name it blue?” “Where does blue come from?” “If it is blue, why does it look gray sometimes?” No one ever wanted to see my hand go up in class.

Eventually I gained a reputation as the classroom smart ass and that has followed me in life. I am comfortable with that now and admit to using it to my advantage numerous times throughout my many years. It can be an effective shield as well as a double-edged sword.

But ultimately I am still that classroom ass questioning everyone and everything and it is a legitimate condition. My mind really works that way. It is like a peripheral condition that will not allow me to look at an object straight on, I see hints of protruding sides and shadows from unknown angles and my minds eye want to absorb all the information to analyze and catalogue.

Nothing is just black and white anymore, it never was for me. Now I see in Technicolor. The broad spectrum of black and white and all its shades of gray have expanded into an entire rainbow of coloring.

Good is white, evil is black symbolically speaking. Black absorbs all color and white reflects all color so then shouldn’t shades of gray include all shades of color as well? My new wisdom now envisions the world through tetrachromatic filters and once again I realize how little I actually know about what I thought I knew.

So is good still good if it has tinctures of green or pink or blue? Or how evil is evil if it shows hints of gray around the edges? How do people walk around seeing only black and white?