Between work and my family...

...I may just tear out every strand of my hair.

All vacations have been canceled because we're behind. Couldn't get work for months and now we have more than we can handle. I've been working like a mad woman, but it didn't take long to get there. And then there's my family.

Mom, queen of the exaggeration, vomited up blood. I thought it was more like a stake through the heart kind of flood of blood, but it turns out it was probably more like an irritation in her throat because she'd been vomiting for days after spending time with my sister Typhoid Carol and catching whatever yarg she managed to sneeze, cough, and breathe into the air around my parents. I told my parents to stay away from her. They wouldn't listen. Anyway, they put my mother in the hospital, so she must have been convincing. A few days later, after many, many tests and being served meals in bed, they kicked her out knowing no more about what was wrong with her than they knew when she was admitted. I can tell them what is wrong with her, she's a medical phenomenon.

She has had colon cancer twice and had 18 inches of small bowel removed because of adhesions and strictures. I think she also had rectal cancer, too. She has one kidney left and it is filled with tumors. Her liver has tumors, too, and they're called hemangiomas. Think of blood blisters that keep growing and growing until they pop and fill her belly -- but the doctors can't figure out why she needs to be transfused with 2-4 units of blood every 3-4 weeks. Dad also has to give her B12 shots in between the fill-ups. (I always said she was a vampire but no one believes me) She had a hysterectomy when she was 35, turning her into a more concentrated version of the eternal witch on wheels that made growing up so much fun with her crying jags, banshee screams and the usual inability to live with someone who has suddenly tilted off her rocker and can't get up. She has had several mini strokes (no one knows for sure how many) but she still manages to remember her credit card numbers (all 50 of them) and scan outspend Imelda Marcos, Elizabeth Taylor, and Martha Stewart on their best days. Given the chance, my mother could easily bankrupt Queen Elizabeth in about 20 minutes. But the best news was yet to come.

Dad announced on Wednesday, the day before the hospital released Mom, that his prostate cancer is back. They biopsy him on my birthday but they can't do surgery (figure that one out -- I thought a biopsy was surgery because I type operative reports for biopsies all the time) because of his mechanical heart valve, which is the same reason they can't do chemo. Radiation is out because he had radiation the last time and he still has to wear Depends because the radiation damaged the healthy cells along with the cancerous cells (but evidently not all of them because they woke up again) and the muscle and tissue of his rectal sphincter so that he can no longer control his bowels. He said the doctor told him that prostate cancer comes back in 7-10 years; it has been a little less than 7 years since he was first treated. If they do nothing he might have 4 years -- I wonder if their estimate is as accurate as their estimate of the recurrence of the cancer -- before the cancer metastasizes to the brain and he dies. Dad said four more years would make him 82 and that's good enough for him. It's not good enough for me -- even if he keeps to our agreement and takes Mom with him when he goes. (The agreement is that he takes her or he's not allowed to die because I will get stuck with her -- more on that later) I really believed my parents were immortal. After all, Mom is still here no matter what the Universe throws at her. She's like a cockroach or a moth. When the bomb is dropped and all humans are dead, she will still be here screaming and chasing the cockroaches and keeping the moths out of her wool suits.

Every bit of bad news travels with two partners. Mom went into the hospital and Dad's prostate cancer has returned, but I just knew there was another shoe waiting to fall on my head.

I was right.

It fell.

I was informed that I have to pack up here and move back to Ohio to take care of my parents. Obviously, they are unfit to take care of themselves if they can't stay away from Typhoid Carol or keep from burning parts of their new house down with too much incense. After all, I'm not married, I don't own a house, I can take my job with me because I work from home, I don't have any family here, and no one here would care if I left. I am the obvious choice.

I thought they were joking, so I emailed back and told them that since Typhoid Carol is retiring this year she could take care of Mom and Dad. Beanie lives five minutes away and, from what Dad told me the night before, she and her family get Mom and Dad's house when they're gone, so she would be protecting her inheritance so Dad can't burn down the whole house and leave them with a meager 6.5 acres, a two-car garage, big barn, and brand new chicken house. And if Ants's new job turns out to be temporary, he can help with Mom and Dad during the day. Not to mention, my brother also lives 45 minutes away and he could help out. Besides which they don't have DSL and can't get it because they're so far out in the boonies and I need that for work. Dial-up ain't gonna get it. Not to mention that my mother and I can only tolerate each other when there is lots of distance between us. Why else do you think I live nearly 2000 miles away? Our relationship improves with distance. To be really great, I would have to move to Mars -- or better yet, Pluto.

Another shoe landed on my head, spike first. I was being selfish and hateful because I wouldn't give up everything (not that I had much in their estimation to give up) to take care of my parents. The discussion got uglier and uglier and I realized they weren't joking. This was for real. They expected me to give up my life to take care of our parents and then find somewhere else to live when Beanie and her family come to take possession of the house and land. I'll pack the car right away and be on the road by Saturday.

Not going to happen. I love my parents but there are three of them and one of me and they live a whole lot closer. Chances are I'd die before Mom does because I'd probably walk out onto the road and lie down until a car ran over me and then where would that leave them? They'd probably find a necromancer to revive me and keep me alive until she dies in about four million years.

But now it's time for me to get back to my portable job and make some more money. I have to save for that ticket to Mars where I might be able to get a shuttle to Pluto.

Facts of life

Some people say that men get better as they age. A little gray at the temples or even a full head of silver hair and they look better than they did in their 20s and 30s. Of course men do take longer to mature and are a lot like gin made in a bathtub -- lethal when you drink it too soon after it's made and had a chance to age and mellow. Not so for women. We mature quickly but when it comes to aging we get a bad rap -- until now.

This is for all you girls 40 years and over.... and for those who are turning 40, and for those who are scared of moving into their 50's...AND 60's and 70's.... and for guys who are scared of girls over 40!


Andy Rooney says: As I grow in age, I value women who are over 40 most of all.

Here are just a few reasons why: A woman over 40 will never wake you in the middle of the night to ask, "What are you thinking?"

She doesn't care what you think. If a woman over 40 doesn't want to watch the game, she doesn't sit around whining about it.

She does something she wants to do. And, it's usually something more interesting.

A woman over 40 knows herself well enough to be assured in who she is, what she is, what she wants and from whom.

Few women past the age of 40 give a hoot what you might think about her or what she's doing.

Women over 40 are dignified.

They seldom have a screaming match with you at the opera or in the middle of an expensive restaurant.

Of course, if you deserve it, they won't hesitate to shoot you, if they think they can get away with it.

Older women are generous with praise, often undeserved. They know what it's like to be unappreciated.

A woman over 40 has the self-assurance to introduce you to her women friends.

A younger woman with a man will often ignore even her best friend because she doesn't trust the guy with other women.

Women over 40 couldn't care less if you're attracted to her friends because she knows her friends won't betray her.

Women get psychic as they age. You never have to confess your sins to a woman over 40. They always know.

A woman over 40 looks good wearing bright red lipstick. This is not true of younger women.

Once you get past a wrinkle or two, a woman over 40 is far sexier than her younger counterpart.

Older women are forthright and honest. They'll tell you right off if you are a jerk if you are acting like one!

You don't ever have to wonder where you stand with her.

Yes, we praise women over 40 for a multitude of reasons. Unfortunately, it's not reciprocal.

For every stunning, smart, well-coiffed hot woman of 40+, there is a bald, paunchy relic in yellow pants making a fool of himself with some 22-year-old waitress.

Ladies, I apologize. For all those men who say, "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free", here's an update for you.

Nowadays 80% of women are against marriage, why? Because women realize it's not worth buying an entire Pig, just to get a little sausage.

Amen to that!!

That is all. Disperse and spread the word.

God is dead

Last night I watched The Island with Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson who live in a perfect world far from the outside world that is now contaminated. The entire population hopes for one thing -- to be picked to go to THE ISLAND, that last contamination-free zone on earth.

The world is one where the act of going to the bathroom monitors the levels of vitamins, nutrients, sodium, etc. in your body and your food choices are limited by what your instant urinalysis reads: like lay off the bacon, buddy, you got too much salt in your urine.

There is a psychiatrist/Father figure who helps you with your emotional problems and cameras everywhere to log your moods, talk, and body postures so that you can go to the psychiatrist to be adjusted and to talk about your problems. The population is not all younger than 30 and carries a good mix of people of all ages -- adult ages that is. There are no children, although there are a few pregnant women scattered here and there throughout the population, which is a surprise since the black clad guards monitor proximity between the sexes -- they keep them from touching, standing too closely together, or looking at each other too long. Everyone has a job, but it is nothing more than mindless assembly line drone work that doesn't stretch the imagination or the skills too much. Calm and stress free surroundings and jobs, three balanced, healthy meals a day with an eye towards good health, clean clothes and shoes, and people who care about your welfare constantly watching you. So what's not to like?

Everything.

The environment is a special hatching ground for clones, walking, talking, feeling, thinking spare body parts for the rich and famous. Okay, so the feeling and thinking parts are blunted by the psychiatrist's programs and agenda, but some of the clones do begin to think and feel, touching off a hunt for the reason why and then a hunt for two escaped "products" determined to see the world and find their sponsors, leaving a trail of fire, death, and destruction in their wake as the hunters become the hunted.

One of the most interesting premises is that the United States would under write and sanction such an operation without having anyone on the premises to make sure the rules are followed or that the facility never undergoes periodic inspections by the government, but that is what keeps them operating under the radar in an underground military bunker in Nevada. Of course it doesn't help that the president also has a clone who has waited for 7 years to go the THE ISLAND and is still the unluckiest person there. The rules and morality are turned upside down in the clones' world but they are unaware there are rules or morality, just what they have been told and what they have been trained to do -- mindless work that keeps the rest of the percolating clone population alive.

Suspense builds slowly as you begin to realize along with Lincoln 6 Echo that something is missing from this idyllic world. He questions authority and has dreams that alert the sensors that something is definitely wrong. It is the beginning of the end for Lincoln 6 Echo's time in Eden and the beginning of his rapid descent from grace. Curiosity will not be tolerated -- or excused.

Despite the numerous and spectacular crashes, explosions, and death defying stunts, the movie still holds together and the characters could be living in a decommissioned military bunker beneath the hot sands of Nevada as I write this. Scientists and psychiatrists have always believed that they are GOD as they search for the Holy Grail of immortality and absolute control. The rest of us are merely lab rats in an endless maze drawn forward by the cheese of wealth, power, freedom, success, and/or fame. Along the way we check out the cul-de-sacs of career, family, fidelity, and infidelity, but basically we are moving toward a time when all our hopes, wishes, dreams, and desires will be fulfilled, providing scientists and psychiatrists with fodder for their experiments.

Who knows? Maybe Adam and Eve weren't expelled from Eden. Maybe they escaped out of curiosity and/or from boredom. And then there's the whole not having sex part of it. Lincoln and Jordan, after being in the world a few hours, discover kissing. One of the best lines in the movie is when they kiss for the first time, decide they like it, and Lincoln wants Jordan to "do that thing with your tongue again," to which she replies, "Open your mouth."

However, human nature being what it is, we soon chafe at the sameness of the corridors of the maze and seek to climb over the wall. Every time we end up killing GOD and trampling on his scientific data with a perverse and final glee, setting the rest of the rats free in the process. After all, we rats have to stick together.

All in all, The Island is a good movie that makes interesting points and makes you wonder just how far away 2019 really is.

So THAT's what's wrong

If there are men in your life you've noticed that something with them is just plain wrong. You've matured, but they don't seem to have done the same. This is a disease and it has nothing to do with their Y chromosome. The Evil One sent me the info. I think he's trying to tell me he has MHS


The American Male Hobby Syndrome (MHS)

(aka Boyz and Their Toyz)

by Robert Bean (a victim)

I have a theory regarding what I believe to be a common, but as yet not formally recognized social phenomenon. In the spirit of the times, this phenomenon needs to be identified and studied, so that its victims can recognize their affliction and take counteractive measures. Although I do not yet have anything more than limited empirical evidence, that evidence is compelling. I am convinced that a non-trivial subset of the American male population is prime breeding ground for what I will call the American Male Hobby Syndrome (MHS). You, or someone you love, is bound to be infected.

MHS progresses through 5 easily identified and relatively well defined stages during the course of the typical attack. But before it can attack, the syndrome needs fertile breeding ground. The necessary ingredients are:

1) A (chronologically) adult male. I am sure that a Y chromosome is not an absolute requirement, but as I look around me, I cannot deny the fact that most women of my acquaintance are relatively immune to this affliction. I don't know why this might be so, but in the large, it clearly is. Perhaps the answer lies in the perennial adolescence that many women think many men are stuck in.

2) Spare time. Busy men don't have time for such foolishness. MHS flourishes best in the idleness that is the devil's workshop. Men busy with school or families or jobs (or all three) have real lives. It's the man who is settled in a relatively comfortable job and family situation whose roving eye begins to wander.

3) Discretionary income. For reasons we will see in a minute, MHS strongly selects for those with a few bucks to waste, and always leaves the victim with fewer bucks still.

4) An addictive personality. Those that have an addictive personality know it, and are prime raw material.

5) A magnanimous Significant Other. When in full force, MHS will try the patience of Job; only saintly loved ones will permit the cycle to run its course.

Stage 1 is short and sweet - Initial Exposure and Infatuation. Somehow, somewhere, perhaps at the behest of a friend, you try whatever it is, and find out that it's quite entertaining. You think "hey, this could be cool...". So you try to find a way to do it a few more times, usually with some urgency (MHS is not a slow growing, simmering thing. It attacks quickly, hitting you between the eyes), and the activity continues to intrigue. You can see the potential; the activity excites and fascinates, but most of all is FUN. But you are frustrated by your inability to perform the basics of the activity, and the frustration leads to Step 2 - the decision to Learn How.

Stage 2, the Learning How phase, is marked by a deliberate attempt to learn the fundamentals of the task at hand. It usually involves instruction: it may be informal (hanging out with someone who knows how and who will teach you), but it can often involve formal instruction (Park and Recreation evening classes, or lessons at the local shop, or seminars, or open houses, or how-to books, or whatever). Stage 2 is often marked by seeking out a local club, attending a few meetings, perhaps even joining. You outfit yourself with a basic set of gear, usually at the low to middle end of the cost spectrum, following the recommendations of a salesman at the local shop who patiently (and condescendingly) tells you what you need and why. Since you don't know any better, you buy what he sells you (not top-of-the-line, but not bottom either), and put your new gear to the test. If you are lucky, the enjoyment will not fade, and with persistence, a minimal competence will come your way. You get to a point where you can recognize somebody who is really good at this, and you are frustrated because although you can mostly do it, you still don't do it all that well. Look out, because if you are still with it at this point, you are a prime candidate for the worst phase of all - the dreaded Stage 3 - the High Tech phase. And don't kid yourself - every hobby, no matter how simple it might otherwise appear, can be and is turned into an incredibly complicated high-tech endeavor by merchants and participants alike.

Stage 3, the High Tech phase, is the killer phase - it is the longest, the most expensive, and the most intense. Stage 3 is the total immersion stage where you become obsessed with the details of the hobby, convinced that the answer to your ever-frustrating under performance lies in the fact that you don't have the right equipment. All your spare time is spent studying, thinking about, talking about, and doing hobby-related activities. When you are not doing this, you are at the store exploring the latest gadgets, schmoozing with other Stage 3 victims. All your money goes into the latest gear ("If only I had gizmo X"), convinced that with that 7th pair of skis, or that 6th pistol, or that graphite set of golf clubs, you could shave .5 seconds off your slalom time, score that elusive bull seye, or lower your handicap by 2 strokes.

There are several telltale signs of Stage 3. The victim subscribes to several periodicals devoted to the hobby (and reads every word of every article in every issue, and all the advertisements to boot - how else are you supposed to follow the latest and greatest equipment developments?), and has several books devoted to the most arcane aspects of the endeavor. His talk is laced with technical jargon that only another Stage 3 aficionado can understand. His loved ones have long since been bored to tears and wishes he would get a real life. Our victim has multiple different sets of gear, each specialized for a specific micro-optimization ("one racket for rainy days, one for cold days, one for doubles matches, one for clay, one for grass" etc.). If the hobby is practiced away from home, the gear bag weighs as much as our intrepid hobbyist - he is never without everything he might possibly need. If a club was joined in Stage 2, it is often abandoned in Stage 3 - the other members just aren't intense enough (there is a reason for this which we will learn later, but our intrepid Stage 3 hobbyist does not know it yet). All other symptoms not withstanding, however, there are two absolutely undeniable, incontrovertible signs of Stage 3. The first is numbers - the Stage 3 hobbyist is always tallying things - success rates, scores, number of times he did "x". Our Stage 3'r measures success by the numbers, always striving to better them (because he still believes it matters). The second sign is the worst - the shopkeeper of the local shop that specializes in this hobby knows you by your first name. He does this not so much because he likes you but because he sees more of you than he sees of his own family.

Stage 3 is so long, so intense, and so expensive that most people burn out during this Stage. If burnout occurs, our hero drops the hobby rather quickly and moves on to other things. This happens so often that there are even stores here in town that specialize in reselling the used hobby equipment discarded by burned out Stage 3ites.

If by some miracle you survive Stage 3, you might actually pass on to Stage 4. Stage 4 is the Mastery Stage. Despite all the junk you acquired in Stage 3 (which is actually more impediment than help), diligence, practice, and perseverance makes you actually somewhat capable at your chosen avocation. You begin to shed the trappings of Stage 3. You let your periodical subscriptions expire (although you might keep one for nostalgic reasons, but you only skim it, rarely read it). Of your umpteen equipment outfits, you find that you have a favorite one or two that you use all the time. You have learned what times and places give the most enjoyment, and you arrange to indulge your hobby only when and where the doin' is good, rather than every time and place you can. The most important sign of Stage 4 is that the numbers stop. You stop counting and keeping score, because you no longer have to prove to yourself or anyone else that you can do this thing (whatever it is).

An important aspect of Stage 4 is that if it is going to happen, it will happen in spite of Stage 3, not because of Stage 3. It is a gradual thing that sneaks up on you. There is certainly nothing in Stage 3 that contributes to reaching Stage 4, save the fact that Stage 3'rs spend so much time doing the hobby that they can't help learning something despite themselves.

Stage 5 is the Doing It For The Sheer Joy of It stage. Transition to Stage 5 is marked by two events. The first is the time you spend a day doing the hobby activity, and afterward honestly can't remember how well you did (you didn't count and you didn't keep score). I don't mean "pretend" not to. I mean really can't remember because it didn't matter and you didn't pay that much attention. The second marking event is the day where conditions are perfect for a hobby session, but you decide you'll do something else instead because you'd rather do that something else today, and there will be other good days when you can do the hobby.

If you are ever lucky enough to reach Stage 5, you might actually have found a lifelong pleasure. Something you can do competently every now and then for the sheer joy of it, having fun in context. If your family is still with you by then, they might even encourage the occasional indulgence because of the obvious joy you get from it, and because you no longer bore them to tears with the details. At this stage, if you are social, you might gravitate back to the club you left in Stage 3. But now you understand why most of the club members were not intense enough for your Stage 3 tastes - they are mostly Stage 4 and 5'ers, and participate in the non-competitive manner symptomatic of the later stages. The club is as much about being social as it is about the hobby, and at this point that is just fine with you too.

So now you know.

A little plug

My latest review is up for those who are interested in reading such things. Sometimes the review is better than the book.

That is all. Disperse.

Jumping on the Harry Potter bandwagon

It looks like the religious right have decided to take Harry Potter for their own and have cast Voldemort as the prodigal son? Evidently, Rowling was writing about more than magic and kids. Wonder if she knows yet?

As if that isn't unusual enough, there have been Jesus sightings -- or is that just Maitreya?

Don't Hollywoodize it

A year or so ago I read Nevile Shute's On The Beach written in 1957 at the height of impending nuclear holocaust after the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima with an atomic bomb. The world is being slowly destroyed by radioactive fallout that is inching slowly toward Australia, humanity's last stand. One lone American submarine, captained by Commander Dwight Towers, has made port there and will wait out the remainder of humanity's time under the command of the Royal Australian Navy. The book is an intelligent treatise on the way we handle life in the face of utter destruction and the characters are finely drawn and complex.

Then, in 2000, Hollywood came out with their version of the story and turned it into a movie with Armand Assante, Rachel Ward, and Bryan Brown and turned it upside down. I saw it yesterday.

I didn't mind the story being updated with computers and updated cars, technology, etc., but I do mind that they turned the story upside down and completely missed the point -- as usual.

The relationship between Commander Dwight Towers and Moira Davidson was all wrong. Yes, Moira was still on a self destructive man and alcohol binge counting down the hours until she either asphyxiated on her own vomit or killed by some stranger she bedded until she met Dwight, but Dwight was not the same. He had been turned into a sap. In Shute's book, Dwight was an honorable man who kept his wife and two children alive in his mind, even though he knows they are most certainly dead in a ground zero blast. He knows humanity is doomed but he is going to go down with it into the arms of his family and nothing is going to change that. In Hollywood's version, he sees his family around him, envisions them as they were and as he prefers to believe they still are -- waiting for him to come home -- but it is short lived when he meets Moira and falls into her voracious arms. He is changed by her and not the other way around.

In Shute's vision, Moira is pulled back from the brink of self destructive madness by Dwight's honor and his unshakable belief in his family and his marriage. She stops drinking and realizes that he is an honorable man, the last honorable man on Earth, and that changes her. She helps him gather gifts to take home to his children when his job in Australia is done and even has one made for his daughter. She is in love with him, but she doesn't suborn his honor or his fidelity to his wife. At the end, when Dwight takes his sub and crew away from Australia to sink her at the bottom of the sea with the gifts he is taking to his wife and his children, Moira looks on from the cliffs above the channel where the sub sails past to be close to him when she takes her pill and dies. Hollywood had other ideas.

Dwight goes mad when he realizes his family is really gone, blames himself for not being there when they die, and goes back to Moira when he returns to Australia after one last mission for the Admiralty. He's already succumbed to Moira's wiles and bedded her at her farm after she seduces him with Glen Miller and dancing, but he's going back to the woman he loves. Hollywood gives a slight nod to Dwight's fidelity and honor and makes him a patsy for Moira's self destruction, giving in to her on nearly every point. This Dwight is a man led by his hormones and not by honor, except when he stays with his Executive Officer and best friend while he dies from radiation sickness in the naval hospital. In the end, he forsakes his boat and his crew and his allegiance to America and comes back to Moira in dress whites to die with her, thus gutting the Shute's vision and the honor and decency of the characters just to show a little sex and romance.

Even Jules's death is not as it should have been. Jules died in a car crash during a race and didn't just go to the track, rev up the Ferrari, take it around the track at blinding speeds and then drive it at top speed through a billboard and to a fiery death. Jules didn't commit suicide, but he courted death with every race and death won. That's a huge difference.

While checking out the information to write this review of the 2000 version of On The Beach I discovered there had been another version of the movie made in 1959 with Gregory Peck as Dwight Towers and Ava Gardner as Moira Davidson. I haven't seen it but I have ordered it from Netflix and I will see it, but I'll bet that they have it wrong, too, and they have gutted Shute's core relationship and theme for sex and romance. The one thing Hollywood has yet to understand is that life doesn't always end happily ever after and that there is more to life than neatly tying up the loose ends with sex and romance. Life is messy and it is difficult at times, and sometimes it ends with honor and not with happily ever after -- even if only for as long as it takes to swallow poison to die before the radiation gets you.

Oh, and by the way, I would have chosen an actor to play Dwight Towers with a bit more steel in his spine who doesn't keep his lips pursed all the time who is a bit younger than Armand Assante. And whoever told Rachel Ward that she looked good should have given her a pizza and a sack full of double bacon cheeseburgers from Wendy's first.

That is all. Disperse.

You gotta raise them right

My parents need a keeper and it isn't going to be me because I feel like they need to be on leashes.

A week ago Friday Beanie called me to tell me my father had set his den on fire. She was very sanguine about the news and softly chuckling as she told how Dad nearly set the house on fire with incense. I asked if they were all right and she assured me they were and the proceeded to tell me more. It seems my father has been roaming around New Holland in his boxer shorts. Okay, so they have a button fly and he wears a T-shirt and sneakers without socks, but they are still his boxer shorts. Impish memories of people with Alzheimer's getting loose from their keepers and running riotously naked in the streets and boulevards around home taunt me.

Beanie continued. She called Dada to help her with one of the horses that was caught on the fence. Dad and Mom now live five minutes away from Beanie's house and Dad made it in record time. When he got out of the truck his hair was sticking up in every direction, obviously he just got out of bed and hadn't taken the time to comb his hair, his hair that is a beautiful glimmering silver among the blond that has always been carefully and neatly combed into a wave at the front and smoothed neatly, no hair out of place. Okay, he was worried about the horse, a feeling he and Beanie share -- a deep love of animals. When he got closer and spoke to Beanie it was evident from the flash of his one remaining tooth in the middle of his bottom gun line he didn't even put in his teeth. He didn't put in his hearing aids either and my normally neatly dressed father was disheveled. Beanie said he was trying to traumatize her. I know what she means. Dad traumatized me a few years ago without thinking twice about it.

I was visiting for the holidays and up working late on my computer when he came out of the bathroom. Well, Dad didn't come out of the bathroom. It was someone who vaguely resembled my dad but he was really old with puckered lips and one single tooth in the middle of his bottom gum line. It was a huge shock to see the man who hasn't changed in looks (outside of the silvering of his beautiful blond hair) in all the years I have known him to walk in one door his usual self and out the other door an old man. I managed to bury the memory until that call about nearly burning down the house.

I called my parents to find out what happened. Mom said Dad just doesn't understand more is not better, but as she griped about Dad's over use of incense I kept wondering how a curtain could have caught fire from the tiny little glowing ember at the tip of a stick of incense. Either the curtain was flimsy (it wasn't) or the tip was on fire (it wasn't). I flashed back to forest fires started from a spark that burns down hundreds of acres of trees and untold numbers of wildlife when most people can't manage to light a campfire without the big box of big matches and a six pack of Bic lighters.

The curtain caught fire and flashed up to the ceiling, sending roiling smoke and soot throughout their newly decorated and painted house. Dad grabbed the first thing within reach to battle the flames -- Mom's favorite coat -- while she ran to fill a bucket of water. I can just see the two of them, thin and frail, puckered lips without dentures, Dad's hair in spikes and Mom's in curlers, beating at the window while it cracks from the heat and the air fills with oily soot and smoke. "We'll have to repaint the whole room and the ceiling," Mom told me with that little note in her voice that means she gets to warm up the credit cards and spend more money, her favorite past-time.

My parents spent the entire weekend cleaning every surface and steam cleaning the carpet, drapes and upholstery now painted black with soot and smoke, their faces flushed and silvered hair unrecognizable beneath smudged fire black, Mom haranguing Dad about using too much incense and Dad surreptitiously turning his hearing aids off and shooting verbal barbs at Mom.

When my parents moved to the countryside near Columbus, their old farm house was surrounded by soy bean fields. Columbus sprawled closer and Dad put up a wooden palisade fence to maintain a little privacy and protect his plants, trees, bushes, and roses from the now busy two-lane country road fronting their house. Dad had an above ground pool behind the garage and at night he would slip naked from the house and swim in the darkness beneath the bright sparkle of stars and the changing face of the moon. No one saw him. It was a hedonistic pleasure that, with the spread of the urban strip mall disease, he had to give up. That's part of the reason they moved farther out into the country away from town to where soybean and corn field surround their six acres of land and the neighbors aren't close enough to see much of anything unless they pass down the two-lane country road or get out their telescopes and binoculars. So, it's not that surprising that Dad mows the lawn and goes to the end of the drive to pick up the mail in his boxer shorts, but going to the hardware store in town with my brother-in-law is really pushing it. Are my parents losing it?

Mom can't remember anything any more and repeats what she tells me time and time again while I listen and remind politely that I remember what she said the day or week before. Forgetting something you've told someone -- or several someones -- isn't a sign of anything other than the creep of time that has filled the brain with so much information it's a little difficult to remember where you filed something and when you shared out the file. Parents with more than one child tend to call every child's name before they get the right one. Frustration, anger, and/or pique + multiple children = confusion. It's a normal and known equation.

Age deteriorates mental and physical functions as the body begins to run down, especially since the warranty runs out at 30 and everything past that is gravy time. (no one tells you about that or lets you know about the quantum writing, but it's accepted that life doesn't go on forever, so not a big deal) But it's difficult to watch those strong pillars of my life shrink with age until I stand taller than them and have to be careful when I hug them because their bones and bodies are frail and thin, but when they start burning down houses and appearing in public in their skivvies, it's time to start worrying who's going to draw the short straw and have to let them move in to enforce the rules they ruled our world with when we were teenagers.

Now, if I can figure out how to stop time and freeze them in a more competent state. Any ideas?

Serendipity

One of the things I've learned by being a book reviewer is that sometimes you have to look past the flaws and faults -- like bad grammar, horrendous proofing, lousy editing, and illiteracy -- to see the story. Sometimes the story is rich with humor and pathos and life and sometimes it's just a cover for the even worse problem of having a nonsensical plot, cardboard characters, and/or no story.

Like the books I read and review, sometimes I have to put aside my knowledge and experience and literary prejudices to see and appreciate the story being told. I still the editorial voice that harangues and the hand that reaches for the blue pencil and put my expectations and way of doing things on a shelf and let the all too human voice telling the story shine through, letting their story and their words speak and keeping my own voice silent, as I have always done whether I wrote an article or a profile because it isn't important what I have to say about a story or a person but what that story says about itself or the person says about himself. I have opinions and they belong in an op-ed piece, but they do not belong where I am not the focus. My job is to absorb the information and let the story and person take center stage. And when I do, I learn something, too.

The same is true of life.

Life seems to be a delicate blossom blooming in fragile hothouse conditions but more often than not it is a hardy weed growing wild in the most improbable of places without sunlight, rain, or protection from the worst the elements have to throw at it. Life clings tenaciously to wind scoured rocks, thrusts boldly up between stony cracks, spreads luxuriantly through the currents around superheated volcanic flares and tornadoes, and generally thrives when all hope has fled.

It doesn't matter what you do to it, life finds a way to make itself apparent. And so, too, with friends.

A friend is going through some rough times with family and work but she always has the time to listen to that one off note in my voice when I say nothing is wrong and that I'm fine because her heart hears what I'm keeping back. She doesn't need for me to cry or scream or rage at the vagaries of human nature to know that I'm hurting, just as I can hear the tense note of pain or disappointment in her voice when things aren't quite right with her. It seems funny that we have known each other for such a short time and have forged such strong bonds that neither time nor distance or a few days' silence can dent or nick. Through her I have learned patience and endurance and a love and gentle spirit that even the worst times cannot dim too much. Prick her and she bleeds, but she heals and she keeps on going despite the pain and the hurt. She does a job that few people could handle with such honest patience and regard and I admire her.

But my list of friends, although somewhat small in the scheme of things, includes many such people. One friend faces each morning before the butt crack of dawn and works 10-hour days at a job that she does better than anyone else and despite the fact that her personal life is a romantic and lonely shambles at times. She inspires others with her calm good will and drive to succeed. Another friend faces a daily sink of depression and disregard and still gives himself unselfishly and generously, expecting nothing in return.

Many of my friends work impossible hours or live from one day to the next without knowing whether or not they will end up alone or have enough money to buy their children what they want as well as what they need. And some friends, one in particular, despite moments of pique and anger, calm down and carry on despite disappointment and disagreement, and have been the bright stars on my horizon, forgiving me for my faults, flaws, and moments of pique.

There have been other people, those who called me friend, who never understood that being a good friend is as simple as accepting people for who and what they are and not needing them to change, not expecting them to refit themselves into another mold. They do not understand that time and distance never change real friendship and that appearances are deceiving.

These people, some I have known for what seems like forever and some I have only known for a short while, have brightened and enriched my life. Even the people who pass like nomads through my life, have taught me something. I haven't always wanted to pay attention at the time, but I did and do learn from them.

I'm learning still.

Quick finds

It's Monday again, one of those days that keeps cropping up every single, solitary week and in typical Monday fashion the news is weird, to say the least.

Monday was preceded by an interesting Saturday where I went to Woodland Park, had breakfast with my fellow VEs at the Hungry Bear (good home cooked food) and endured the usual jokes, info, and friendly camaraderie I've come to know from the MARC VEs. We had two people get their licenses and one is a brand new Extra who said he works nights and spent his evening studying code (he passed with 118 correct characters in a row -- perfect copy) and the theory for his Extra license. He has taken four months to go from Technician to Extra. I was there for all his exams.

I also took some time to read some of Paul's dad's memoirs, a book he took 1.5 years to write and put together. He wants to write another book and his wife has threatened to murder him if he does. The book is technically and grammatically flawed but it is a very engaging and fascinating read. Paul's dad has a very subtle and sneak-up-on-you kind of humor that is full of homespun views and thoughts. Paul's making a copy of his dad's book on CD-ROM for me and sending it this week. I can't wait to see the rest of the story.

What does a church sell to raise money? Angel Soft of course.

What is the hottest wedding date for 2006? Can't you guess?

That is all. Disperse.

More PC

In an effort to be more politically correct in the new year and to apologize for getting this to everyone late, I offer...

Drum roll, please!!!!"

THIS

TWELVE POLITICALLY CORRECT DAYS OF CHRISTMAS

On the 12th day of the Eurocentrically imposed midwinter festival, my
Significant Other in a consenting adult, monogamous relationship gave to me:


TWELVE males reclaiming their inner warrior through ritual drumming,

ELEVEN pipers piping (plus the 18-member pit orchestra made up of members in
good standing of the Musicians Equity Union as called for in their union
contract even though they will not be asked to play a note),

TEN melanin deprived testosterone-poisoned scions of the patriarchal ruling
class system leaping,

NINE persons engaged in rhythmic self-expression,

EIGHT economically disadvantaged female persons stealing milk-products from
enslaved Bovine-Americans,

SEVEN endangered swans swimming on federally protected wet-lands,

SIX enslaved Fowl-Americans producing stolen non-human animal products,

FIVE golden symbols of culturally sanctioned enforced domestic incarceration,

FOUR hours of recorded whale songs,

THREE deconstructionist poets,

TWO Sierra Club calendars printed on recycled processed tree carcasses and...

A Spotted Owl activist chained to an old-growth pear tree.

That is all. Disperse.

Holiday Greetings

There is no snow on the ground outside, but it lingers in shady patches here and there. The air is cool with a faint warmth that beckons me outside to walk the silent streets past barking dogs and brightly lit windows where families celebrate and unwrap their gifts.

Laughter floats eerily up from the landlady's apartment where her family gathers for the ritual of opening gifts and enjoying their stuffed goose with all the trimmings. I wonder if there will be a flaming plum pudding carried reverently from the kitchen to the table in Old World splendor.

Upstairs in my silent rooms I sniffle and blow my nose, snuggled into the covers with books and pens and paper to while away the hours and remember holidays past. Gifts and food and family that dwindled and grew and dwindled again flit through my mind, but it is the pranks I remember most, the ones I cherish, like the first Xmas prank I played on my brother's wife, Bobbie, and which I remember here in verse.

Nothing If You Please


It was Christmas time again
and the lots had been drawn.
I took the one left over,
the joy of giving so strong.

"What would you like?"
I asked with a smile.
"Nothing if you please,"
she replied. "Nothing at all."

I couldn't believe
what she said with that frown.
"Nothing. Just nothing,"
she said and at down.

She wouldn't help me,
wouldn't give me a clue,
so I went shopping,
nothing else I could do.

I looked and I purchased
what gifts I could seize,
while in my head echoed,
Nothing if you please.

An idea kept nagging,
tugging at my sleeve.
Everyone should have
exactly what they need.

Carefully I wrapped the last
and biggest box,
decorating it with bows,
holly, bells, and curled ribbon locks.

Everyone but she knew
what was inside,
a gift like no other,
a very big surprise.

The room was silent
as she unwrapped the biggest one
where inside nested another,
everyone snickered, "What fun."

Equally beautiful
in bold red and green,
the next box opened
to one with blue metallic sheen.

Each beautifully wrapped box
carried one inside
until finally, at length
one last box did abide.

With shaking fingers she opened
the tiny gold thing.
She pulled out the cotton,
tossed aside the string.

Shifting and shaking,
the cotton lining aside,
"It's empty," she said.
"There's nothing inside."

She turned it over
and the card aloud she reads,
"I gave what you asked for,
nothing if you please."

The story is here and I will have it printed up and sent to my sister-in-law as a keepsake to remind her, and the rest of the family, to be careful what you ask for. You just might get it.

Happy Holidays and may all your dreams and wishes come true.

Merry Yule

It's the longest night of the year, the darkest of days before we begin the swing back toward the sun, and it has been a fairly quiet evening. I can't sleep. I'm disciplining myself not to go back to the living room, turn on the TV, and put in the next two episodes of Dr. Who with Christopher Eccleston and save them for tomorrow. I'm rationing them right now.

I had planned a full Yule celebration, but circumstances kept it from happening as I envisioned it. Still, Nelo loved the dragonfly themed gifts I got her, the landlady can't wait to hang the new wind chimes I got her, and Michael's gift is still in my living room, a forlorn and silent reminder that he decided to be alone tonight. The landlady left huge gift bags stuffed with homemade goodies and European chocolate in front of our doors and Pastor is carrying a brand new stuffed doggy in a Santa hat around with him, tucking it between his big hairy paws and resting his head on it when he lies down. Pastor made sure I was properly introduced to his new toy and got plenty of hugs and scratches before he laid down with his new pal.

The waning moon is a faint half circle of light in an otherwise deep black night where an orange light glows on the corner and muted holiday lights glimmer through the thick cloak of silent night. My head buzzes with conversations with friends over the phone and neighbors. The landlady showed me a couple gifts from one of her friends and we talked about how to rehang a beautiful sketch of a horse framed in cherry wood and wide charcoal mats, the sweet tinkle of the wind chimes still hanging in the air. The hallway smells of lavender, tangerine, and eucalyptus from Nelo's hot bath, lingering in the cool air and sneaking tiny fingers of scent beneath the door. I still hear Mark's voice on the phone wishing he could come back to Colorado before the end of the year and spend the time watching the new year dawn, his voice wistful with longing for snow frosted slopes and clear, cold air. Instead, he will go to Richmond, Virginia to spend the holidays with his sisters.

There is only the faint wagging tip of a year left and already the plans for a new year are filling my to do list. I have to remember to get a new engagement calender to write everything down. For now, I'm looking forward to next week's fare of writing, editing, and cocooning with episodes of Dr. Who while I ignore the clock and the computer and forget all about work until next year.

Out of darkness

Is it wrong to take a friend's trust and twist it into a weapon to beat them down or force them deeper into obscurity, their dreams dead before they have a chance to breathe their first lusty cry? Is it wrong to torture and torment someone to hasten them along the dark road of death into the next lifetime? Or are these simply examples of the Universe, the All, wanting to know how it feels to rend reality and fashion it into a darker shape?

Would we know night without the day, shadow without light, truth without dishonest, black without white, etc.? Do we need opposites in order to see the positive aspect of anything -- or do we choose the labels of good and bad based on our own selfish needs, wants, and desires? One could say that darkness is a friend and companion to someone with porphyria, that light and shadow have no meaning for the blind, that truth is a matter of perspective and slant, and that black and white are the absence and presence of all colors, except that white light is the presence of all colors and the color white the absence of pigment of any kind. Turn a jewel a certain way and all the flaws are visible, but turn it in another direction and it seems flawless. Which is truth and which the lie? Which the good and which the bad?

Hitler was seen by many as the saviour of the German people, the man who brought Germany from the brink of ruin and bankrutpcy after reparations required by the martial courts after losing in World War I. And there are those who see Hitler as a monster who exterminated millions of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and genetic and political undesirables. Turn the jewel in the light and you will see flaws or perfection, even though it is the same jewel.

It is the story of the frog and the scorpion, each a prisoner of its nature and neither able to free himself from its genetic coding. Do you fault the frog for using his amphibian capabilities in saving a fellow creature or the scorpion for reflexively stinging the frog in the midst of the flood and causing both their deaths? Fault one and you fault the other. Their futures, their paths, their lives are inextricably bound by circumstance and nature.

We seek perfection in all things, but we would be better served to see perfection in even the meanest and ugliest of creations, for one man's perfection is another man's foul creation. To all things under heaven there is a purpose and a use. Energy and power are neutral. It is we who place labels and judgment, forcing all creation into a preordered and preconceived mold to suit our tastes, our vision, our perspective, and no one is completely right or wrong. Life is life. Power is power. Energy is energy. And all are grist for the Universe's mill, a bit of grit killing an oyster who spins a coating of beauty to hide the nip of death. One without the other ceases to exist.

Good news or bad news first?

This has been a day of ups and downs and really ups and really low downs. Thank goodness it is nearly midnight and another day can begin its roller coaster ride.

After working into the wee hours of the morning, nose dripping and sinuses swelling, I managed an hour of sleep at a time between visits to the bathroom. When I finally managed to make a fist and hang onto a coherent thought I checked to find my paycheck had finally arrived -- late (by two weeks and one day) and way too light on the dollar side of the decimal point. At least the rent could be paid and that was of paramount importance. The electric bill will just have to wait another couple of weeks. It will be close, but it won't be late. I was more worried about the rent and that is now taken care of. One less thing to keep me awake at all hours pounding the keyboard only to be shorted beaucoup bucks. But life goes on -- sort of.

The the news got better. I discovered one of my poems entered into a contest won first prize. It's my first official, bona fide first prize for poetry.

And the winner is...

Masks on the Wall


You don't see me;
you never have.
You saw the masks I wore
now hanging on my walls.

Masks on the wall,
a collection of different faces
for different places,
the colors of emotions
for different occasions.

Masks on the wall,
a new face
worn for a time
then cast aside when you
wanted a new and different me.

Masks on the wall,
relics of my chameleon days
when I twisted and turned
myself inside out
to be what and who was wanted.

Smiles for family,
tears for lovers,
frowns in all the right places,
and always just the right faces.

Masks on the wall
are who I have been.
They signify the me you expected,
the me you created,
the only me you wanted to know.

Masks on the wall,
gathering dust.
I don't need the protection,
the deception,
the hiding place.

You still don't see,
you never have,
and now I know you never will.
It doesn't matter
for at last I wear
the real me.





That didn't hurt too much and many of you might have read it before. I'm still proud of it.

I had to give up a gift I gave myself for Yule, a hand-tooled leather bound journal, in order to get my laid away gifts out of hock, but it was worth it and they are waiting to be wrapped (wonder how much wrapping paper I can get for a small handful of change) and given to friends and neighbors tomorrow night during our little Yule celebration. That felt really good and almost obliterated the awful beginning to my day. And then came the email.

For a couple decades, I was a close friend and frequent correspondent with a lovely, talented and prolific writer who gave me encouragement. One time, after reading one of my manuscripts, she called her agent and told him to expect a copy of the manuscript that she felt he should look at an represent. He read it and sent me a lovely note: great writing, fast pace, excellent flow, but not the kind of work he represented. I accepted his verdict without question, as I never expected my friend to coerce or otherwise push anyone to accept work that wasn't up to snuff. I found out tonight during a long conversation that the agent didn't turn down my work because he didn't represent my kind of writing but because he was coerced by someone else, someone who made it their business to make sure I did supersede them in publishing a novel. That person has been revealed to be a negative influence that kept many promising and talented writers from being published, writers who were friends with the wonderful woman who saw in them promise and talent and ability and did her best to see that the road was smoothed a little for them.

Our mutual friend and I talked for a couple hours tonight and the friend told me that just before the writer died she had read a short story manuscript I sent her and was full of praise. Unfortunately, she was going blind and died shortly thereafter, unable to deal with the loss of her sight, and I didn't know how much she valued my writing.

I am amazed that someone who should know better and who was given a wonderful lifestyle in a highly creative atmosphere could be so eaten up by envy and hatred that she would delay or outright destroy another writer's chance to be read and known. What amazes me the most is that the envious woman is someone I called friend and sister because we shared the same birthday, someone I thought I knew. But she is someone none of us knew and that is just beginning to be brought to light. However, her bill has just become due and Rose Wolf, who has relied so heavily on her Ph.D., is about to find out what it feels like to spend a good part of her life behind bars where her education will do her little if any good. Her treatment of Andre Norton and Rose's betrayal of Andre's trust and loyalty is about to come to light.

Out of even the worst circumstances can come good.

Tonight a close friend shared her grief over the passing of a beloved pet and reminded me that friendship endures even when death's cold hand reaches into our lives. A neighbor reminded me that even though I had little, she had less, so I shared what I had. An old friend facing a court battle to right a litany of wrongs asked me to share in gathering up the loose ends of a powerful legacy to help right those wrongs. And a sister reminded me that even when it seems as though love and happiness are running through your fingers like the finest sand there is still hope.

No matter the news, good or bad, it remains news that can enrich or inform your life depending on how you deal with it. I have to keep that in mind when the nights are darkest and the journey toward dawn seems endless. Time does indeed have a way of healing all wounds, but more often it will wound all heels.

That is all. Disperse.

Phases of the moon

moon phases

The most dangerous idea of all...

I woke up with swollen sinuses and a strong desire to cocoon with books and movies. Good choice.

I love historical costume dramas, especially when they are based on actual events. One of my choices today was The Affair of the Necklace, otherwise known in Parisian papers as l'Affaire du Collier in the wake of the American Revolutionary War and the days that led to the end of the French monarchy for a time, ending with the beheading of Marie Antoinette and King Louis. Hilary Swank and Simon Baker paint an all too realistic portrait of the times and sensibilities that led to deception and intrigue. The villains were well played by Johnathan Pryce as Cardinal Rohan and Christopher Walken as Count Cagliostro. Definitely a movie to see.

My other choice was Dangerous Beauty about the age of Courtesans in that most decadent of cities, Venice, a movie that fit my mood and my writing today of all days, as did the previous movie.

The high cost of honest love.

I am amazed. At no time in history have we measured the cost of attaining our heart's desire in such mean and miserly terms. We know only what burns deepest in our hearts and souls. Like a raging fire, desire eats away at our resolve and fear until at last we risk all for its attainment.

But is a cool head and careful planning any less dangerous or less risky? Love is an intricate dance with an uncertain and unsteady beat on a thin wire above a pit of hungry snapping crocodiles. One misstep even at the attainment of our prize sends us plunging to a painful and prolonged death.

Marriage is a contract, an exchange of goods and services to profit -- hopefully -- both parties. In the time of chivalry's brightest flowering finally did love enter the yearning heart and spirit of the contract to make marriage and alliance a more painful business of endless torture. Were we any better off without love or by courting love in secret while we paraded our seemingly felicitous contracts in public, a shining example of hypocrisy and appearances for appearance's sake?

When marriage took on the trappings of religious cant and solemnity, making love a perquisite of the connubial state, romance the holy grail, untouched and untasted by all but the scorned and punished sinner who faced the darkest circle of hell for daring to love boldly and without regret.

There is honesty in love that is tarnished by the dishonesty of appearances for appearance's sake, hidden in a religious habit sanctified by man's dream God and bound in steel bonds by legality and social demands.

There can be marriage with love but all too quickly does love wear lust's mask to clarify and burn away the taint of sin in order to possess desire, the wolf wearing the sheep's curly wool in order to wander close to the heart of the herd, taking the old, the young, and the weak unawares, feasting with bloody relish, coming again and again to the innocent massacre under cover of darkness and in blackest shadow.

So is the courtesan and the rankest of whores more honest in falling willingly to so-called sin and openly bearing away the well and hard earned spoils of her trade, working harder and smarter than any bandit brandishing the sanctified ring of contractual vows. Why not love openly, putting the devil to shame and call a religious spade a spade?

Love need not be socially approved nor need it wear sheep's wool to cover its lustful desires. Desire and love are their own payment.

From the beginning of narrow-minded and societally accepted time has love borne the stigmata of envy's wrath, choosing to bear it openly in defiance of custom's blind folly. Maybe Lucifer had it right -- better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven, a cur at the feet of a jealous god of small and mean stature created by Man out of his fear and unslaked desire as he postpones his life in hopes of a promised brighter and happier future that may never materialize, but upon which all bank.

Unable to reach openly for what burns deepest, Man paints all in ebony enamel while furtively chipping away to find the brightness beneath that calls to his heart of hearts, tearing at his hair and rending his garments in the light while creeping silently from shadow to shadow dividing his body, mind and soul for the sake of lies and jealousy and the fear of standing alone for truth and, yes, even for love.

Will we never learn to put love and contractual obligations in their proper places? Will we never learn that joy and pleasure are their own reward and that when we bow to society's whims and religious cant we all lose what is most dear -- the freedom to love where and as we will?

Burning both ends and the middle

This week has been busy -- to say the least. Pay period ends and the doctors aren't dictating much so I'm back to working during the night in addition to my regularly scheduled shift during the day. No help for it if I want to make enough money for bills, food, rent, and presents. And there's no one but me to pick up the slack.

Monday night I met with the PPRAA (Pikes Peak Radio Amateur Association) hamfest committee and was officially designated the newsletter editor and the newest voting member of their board of directors. The officers are voted in for a two-year term and my term has no limits on it. They have had trouble finding and keeping newsletter editors. My first official act was to beg (read strong arm by email) a friend for an article with pix for my first official newsletter in January 2006 (can you believe another year is nearly burned out?). My second official act was to introduce myself to the membership and let them know who I am and what I plan to do. Within minutes of my message being posted on the PPRAA reflector I received and article and offers of articles and help, all citing their good wishes and praising my enthusiasm and introduction. It was even suggested that I would be a great resource for helping other members edit their articles for national publication for organizations like the ARRL (American Radio Relay League).

Did someone mention money?

In the past 30 days I have had to join three organizations: the ARRL (to get my official badge for VE sessions, more about that later), MARC (Mountain Amateur Radio Club), and now the PPRAA (they frown on editors and board members not being actual members). And I foresee more money given to the poor and greedy -- I mean needy -- member hungry ham radio clubs and organizations. Oh, well, what price glory -- or membership?

I missed the MARC Xmas party due to work and didn't get to see Michael before he left for two weeks in sunny California with his family. I will, however, tool up to Woodland Park sometimes in the interim to meet his housemate, who is a Wiccan witch, and her fella and the new puppy that has kept Michael awake every night since he bought her from some kids outside the Safeway in WP. Cute dog -- or so I hear -- but yappy and needy and whiny -- just like a real girlfriend. He hadn't gotten any sleep before he caught his plan yesterday, but hopefully he will get some on the plane and when he gets to his mother's house.

I did manage to celebrate the end of my grueling work schedule Thursday night with the boys. They brought over hot wings (with the intention of napalming the mucous membranes on the inside of my mouth -- and failed) and I provided two pizzas (one thin crust with the works and anchovies and the other mushroom and sausage pan pizza). I provided the first movie, Sky High with Kurt Russell, Kelly Preston, and a very cute guy playing Warren Peace (although I thought he was War & Peace). The show is cute and what you'd expect from Disney, but still an okay flick. Pretty schmaltzy in some areas and heavy on the good guy-bad guy deal with some low level special effects, but all in all an innocuous flick for a nothing-to-do-Saturday night movie. Then we watched the last three episodes of the first season of Queer as Folk. If you didn't see the series when it was on Showtime, check it out at your local library (if they're brave enough to carry it) or rent it from your favorite video store. And not just for the sex and hot guys, but for the ensemble cast, the drama, the whole shebang. Excellent show -- if a little heterosexually idealized for TV kind of drama, but still... Worth a look. I can't wait to see the second, third, and other seasons and I wonder why they took it off the air. It is definitely a winner.

They boys left early and I crawled into bed with Frank Herbert and the Bene Gesserit of Chapterhouse. I was supposed to go for a walk at 7 the next morning, but it was too cold for the landlady and I was still sleeping off my work binge. I went for a walk around noon to the library, to the post office, stopped for a moment at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory for a caramel apple freshly made an studded with English toffee, and a cold and bracing walk home. I needed the exercise and the fresh air after being cooped up inside with my butt welded to my chair in front of a computer with ear buds stuck in my ears.

Last night the boys and I planned to meet at Temple Shalom for a Chanukah concert and nosh. The directions were vague and I ended up way past Widefield and came back to finally discover the street sign I passed on the way out into the wilderness was too dark to read in the dark. They really need to do something about that. I got there late, but alive and cold and intact. When I took my seat at the back of the sanctuary I saw a fellow ham radio operator peering from between the partitions. He asked if Temple Shalom was my temple and I explained I was invited for the concert. I suppose the tux and onyx studs on his pleated shirt should have been a clue, but he was part of the entertainment for the evening. (I found out just a few minutes ago that he is also president of the group.) And the concert was stirring and absolutely wonderful.

I had never heard the Little London Winds play before but I won't miss them again. They do free concerts all over the area throughout the year for free and they are an all volunteer band who play because they love music. Shel said music keeps him off the streets. I thought it was ham radio, but he assured me that kept him off the streets, too.

After the concert I talked to Shel for a few moments and his wife walked up and we renewed our acquaintance from the campfest ham exams in August. She suggested I go to their summer concerts in Manitou Springs at Soda Springs Park. I can guarantee you I will be there. I can't wait to hear how they play Sousa and all the tunes that I have loved so much over the years, especially if last night's little concert is any indication of their virtuosity.

While I was talking with Shel and his wife, the boys slipped out into the darkness and I drove home to pick up some wrapping paper for a gift to give a friend who came over today to drop off the Dr. Who DVDs he made for me. They are all the episodes of the brand new BBC series with Christopher Eccleston as the latest incarnation of the Doctor. He said one of the actresses reminds him of me. I'll have to check it out. He liked what I gave him even though I had to make him promise not to buy ANYTHING for himself between October and Xmas because he always talks about getting what I've already bought him. I have to find a way to keep him out of my head when birthday and holidays come around. I don't know how he does it.

And that brings us up to a beautiful snowy day on an old friend's natal day. I wish her well and hope she gets what she wants for her 41st birthday.

The snow outside is like goose down falling softly onto everything, obscuring my mountain from view, and turning the world a softer shade of white. Inside, it is comfy and warm and quiet and clean (I got up early this morning and cleaned house, did dishes, stripped and made the bed, and hung up my laundry). I smell chicken and vegetables and pastry cooking in the oven and I feel just a little sad. It seems a shame not to have hot chocolate and cayenne bubbling on the stove and a tree surrounded by boxes of lights and ornaments ready to hang, but that will come with Monday evening. I also have to buy a table and chairs and probably an entertainment center to house my growing collection of DVDs (made by my friend) and the ones I bought and get my TV off the floor now that it's paid for. Time for me to move in since I've already become a happy denizen of these environs. The fun thing about all this is that everywhere I go, even just to the store, I run into someone I know or met recently. Makes living here feel like home at last and like its time to put down some deep and permanent roots.

Tuesday afternoon will help with the continued shoe-horning of me into this little outpost of civilization because I have a date to go see Narnia. I never read the books as a child and I certainly am not a fan of heavy handed sermonizing and Christian proselytizing, but I do so adore fantasy, so Lou and I will bump into each other outside the theater on Tuesday, start up a conversation, and take the sting out of our first blind date. I really hate the idea of dating, but I love the idea of spending time with new friends and old. So, we've decided to forego the whole date stigma and pretend we just met and decided to sit next to each other in the theater, maybe have lunch afterwards, and see if we can strike up a friendship that will keep us both busy now and again. There are worse ways to spend a Tuesday afternoon. I'm glad mine will be in a movie with a bucket of popcorn and a friendly pair of eyes next to me in the dark.

And it's two weeks from my New Year's date with Gus, and I'm really looking forward to that.

It has been a year full of tears, fears, and drama, but all in all it has been a year full of interesting times. I guess the curse does work -- and it works really well.

Things that make you go hmmmmmm

I have heard that if you go without sex for a year you become revirginized. I wonder if that's true or if it's just some urban legend to make you feel better about not having sex and being thought pathetic.

Best line in a movie, "I was a cad for making you fall in love with me and then leaving you to deal with it all alone." Can you guess the movie?

A woman falls in love with a married man who is not going to leave his sick wife or his daughter. The woman, Charlotte Vale played by Bette Davis, nearly marries a wealthy man from a top drawer Boston family but after meeting the married man again, who tells her that her love made it possible for him to work and create and be productive again after so many years of unhappiness and depression and hopelessness, she breaks her engagement, determined to be a spinster with a parrot and a canary. If you want the rest of the story, check out Now, Voyager. One of the great classics with Paul Henried as the married man who said the line above.

I checked Weather.com this morning. It's 28 degrees outside but supposedly feels like 22. What difference is it what it feels like if you're just plain cold? Cold is cold.

I have a page on All Poetry that I haven't visited in months, many months. However, I did go back there because of an email from the site reminding me there was poetry there I should consider adding to. I went back. After checking up on old messages and looking at some of what I wrote (I never considered myself a poet), I found myself writing more poetry on the spur of the moment and the only goad was a poetry contest on the site.

Do poets write for themselves or are they prompted by external events and the desire to be read? Is it all about the art or is it about being seen? Is this just another case of Schrodinger's cat or the tree that falls in the woods when no one is around? Quantum physics or quantum ego?

My dating pool, the one I believed to be shrinking rapidly from a mud puddle to a wet spot on the road of life, is expanding. I feel almost like a diner at a seemingly endless smorgasbord. Does the act of being available create said phenomenon or is it that there are that many people out there looking for love in all the wrong places? Or are people finally becoming fed up with chasing the almighty dollar and deciding that having lots of things doesn't mean happiness, that looking into the eyes of someone who cares is worth more? Or am I just a romantic sap?

The apple at the top of the tree hangs from a slender branch that wouldn't hold the weight of a hummingbird. It dangles out of read so rosy red or brilliant green that looking at it makes your mouth water. There are more beautifully red or green apples within reach, but the one at the end of that dangerously slender branch looks so much better. Is it really that much better or do you want it because it's out of reach?

I'll shut up now. I have work to do, groceries to buy, breakfast to find, and garbage to take out. Have a great day.

A dose of laughter

While cruising through my F-list I found this.

Makes me wonder how many people walking down the street, thinking private thoughts, suddenly laugh out loud to themselves? Have you ever looked? Are you one of the culprits?

So, how about this? From now until the end of the year when you're out shopping, driving, walking, or whatever, look around you at the people passing by and listen for that musical sound of someone's unbridled, uninhibited laughter. You might even find yourself walking down the street or through a mall and laugh out loud because you remember some of those smiles and that joy. Report back.

That is all. Disperse.