Weirdo turned pro.
The ads that come up on a web browser after logging off from Facebook are reliably off-target. And what, in my profile, is triggering these ads and for “Christian Singles”? While I’m sure these “single” women/models/sample profiles are all wonderful human beings within, seeing a mosaic like this feels like I’ve had too much frosting with a saccharine aftertaste AND a sugar headache. With an oily residue. I’m sure it’s not them, it’s me, but STILL.
I hate the grim calculations and budgeting that comes with an ailing pet – slim and expensive chances to maintain that pet’s health but that may also increase its distress to no benefit. I hate, once euthanasia is done, how it changes the rhythms and routines of the home, even if it means less clean-up. I hate knowing if I killed my own meat for food I’d still be sad at times like these, but more pragmatic.
Due to her bladder cancer, diminishing energy, and messy external symptoms – I euthanized our dog of 14 and a half years this afternoon. I got her a cheeseburger for lunch today (Burgerville), because, fuck it.
You are now a fuzzy hide over meat.
You used to be a wheezing farting bag
Of love and company and eating and shame
And delight.
Now inert. No, gone.
You are only in our memories.
We are no longer in yours.
A print misalignment in the The New York Times resulted in blurry faces in a series of glamor photos in the SundayStyles section. I snapped examples:
Funny, right? Mistakes happen. January Jones was another victim. Naomi Campbell, on the same page, managed to look even better. Presumably these beautiful people will continue on, undeterred by what happened to a West Coast printing of the NYT. Having canceled by subscription to The Oregonian (its new publisher is an Orange County, California neocon jerk) and choosing the Sunday New York Times has been much more entertaining. Though I miss Doonesbury and the weekly pondering of what life would be like if my only information about the outside world was reading Parade magazine each Sunday (on my bucket list of experiments once I’m wealthy).
The NYT motto: “All the News That’s Fit to Print” is vomitous. Not a boast the NYT has earned, and reminiscent of Sarah Palin’s 2008 answer to which newspapers and magazines she read to stay informed: “All of them.”
It was a funny answer, but I would have LOVED if this vision of Palin, a constantly-churning-information-Braniac-machine, had turned out to be true.
But every weekly opening of the The New York Times I am haunted by two ghosts. I hear Christopher Hitchens moan about the New York Times slogan, and Gore Vidal sneers and spits at the New York Times Sunday Book Review. It held a vendetta against him for decades, and even when it started reviewing his books again he thought it was sloppy and ramshackle. I’m glad to have those voices. They’re good reminders that because something feels information-packed and sophisticated, doesn’t mean it’s true.
Images crawl up
Then are broadcast
For us to see
Into your past
When you were young.
Poses struck while
A camera clicked.
Days passed outside
Past what was snapped
When you were young.
The snaps resurface
Years later with
“Remember?” “Place?”
Sentimental whiffs
When you were young.
Others of us
Bear witness though
Not witnesses
Then, piqued to view
When you were young.
Ripeness, smoothness
And smiles thrown hard.
Warding distress
Like priest or bard
When you were young.
How, who was she.
Outstretch fingers.
If the same age,
Did they linger
When you were young.
You are hiding
Molting beauty
Sun skin honeying.
You were not you
When you were young.
I now hear you,
“I remember”
Sighed to be kind.
Arid nod back to
When you were young.
Dimmer souls swarm
And cling on you.
I’d want to warm
But not love you
When you were young.
I get stuck on
Your life from then
To now and when
You became you from
When you were young.
Did it turn when
Your edge cut through.
Someone heard when
You spoke your truth
When you were young.
The friends in stasis
Are the same but
Slower. Their paths
Clear, even back to
When you were young.
Fact and will changes
Every molecule
Of you. Estranging
Yourself more from
When you were young.
Elaborate prom proposals (“promposals”, natch) are a thing. I never asked in a fancy fashion. For my junior prom 27 years ago (mortality! eeek!) the prom obligation with my then-estranged girlfriend lurked for six weeks while we were separate (with great drama) until we were reunited prom night and then rolling again as a couple for almost another year after that. So, rather than a romantic promposal, it was a month or more of stomping around, or wailing, or languidly, anguishedly lamenting/complaining/wishing “Well, I guess we’re not NOT-going-to the prom. So I think we’re still going?” Flopping about, crying, pleading for sympathy from any friends willing to listen.
To the outside world? I was a damned nuisance. Inside? Nature bade me steer my body’s ship to its siren call, pointing the prow to its rocky, turbulent, amoral shore to breed (with protection) and feel at all costs, even to exhaustion and oblivion. And, by golly, my seventeen years of life would not have been in vain to die tossed and broken onto that jagged beach. [final cough] I lived. [expires]
Ridiculous now? Substantially. Are the memories still dear, the perverse, feral, mad, beautiful things that they are? Yes.
U.S. poet Robert Pinsky read a promposal on ‘The Colbert Report’ this week. Not a great poem, but charming:
Promvitation!
by Robert Pinsky
As when, far off, in the middle of the ocean,
A breast-shaped curve of wave begins to whiten
And gathers and gathers until it reaches land
Huge as a mountain, and breaks.
And what was deep comes churning up from the bottom
In mighty swirls of sunken sand and living things
And water.
So in the springtime, every race of people
And all the creatures on earth all rush to charge
Into the fire that burns them. Love moves them all.
And that same wave, and that same fire, move me to dare ask:
“Will you be my date for the prom?”
Created with The Keep Calm-O-Matic. I don’t believe in any supernatural creatures, but I like the notion of a person putting this up in their workspace or posting it on their Facebook Wall and finding serenity.
A couple of years ago, in a silly mood, I created some fake job entries for my real-life Facebook profile. Who ever snoops around the work entries of a Facebook profile? Weirdos, probably. And weirdos are my constituency. Give ’em a little sumpin’ sumpin’. And confuse the FBI and CIA when (not if) they’re in pursuit.
So I created an entry describing my stint as Gollum from Lord of the Rings, written up like my more-legit entries on Facebook. The company has since made several more format changes, pushing the work entries even further into the background. More space for posts of human spawn, pets, food, good weather, photos of pets or kids with cancer or mentions of Jesus with a bullying demand you “Like” them or else, and peccadilloes (not nearly ENOUGH peccadilloes, people — grossly disappointing — pick up your game!)
Workplace: Gollum
Position: Sméagol
Time period: (I currently work here)
Start date: March 1970Took a well-deserved and precious birthday present and, exhausted by the jealousy of others, hid inside caves to work in isolation, fish, and cherish my Precious. Upon the thievery of my Precious by the hobbit Baggins, whom I will hate forever, spent time under the management of Sauron, a Maia and the Lord of the Rings of Power who works from his headquarters in Mordor. My duties shifted from working in the main office at Barad-dûr to the field. Later interviewed and networked with Gandalf the Grey and Strider, a Ranger of the North. From that, spent some time in Mirkwood. Later I chose to take in some sightseeing in Moria and Lórien, and even did some river rafting. Eventually found myself back in Mordor (funny how life goes) and recovered my Precious from yet another another wicked, false Baggins (ya, I KNOW, crazy!) and found happiness for consecutive seconds before falling into a volcano.
I also have blended into my Facebook profile a stint as a self-employed gigolo and an extended gig as Batman. To view THOSE, you’ll have to be my real-life online Facebook friend. Most of my friends will advise you that may be too high a price!
I have spent at least 30 seconds contemplating a Sméagol Gollum profile for LinkedIn. Possibly this summer, when the world is in t.v. reruns, these idle hands will become Sauron’s playthings and do just that.
Until then, know that you ALL are my Precious, and we loves you FOREVER!
Six months with Nike+, accruing points on an almost daily basis. Building a history, and a sense of accomplishment. What do the points mean? Still no idea. But still I get a frisson of having done something with my time, something that carries over from one day to the next.
Whether reaching my goal of 3,000 Nike+ Fuel Points a day, or if they were instead 17 Horfenblurts, it would still lead to a strut. 17 Horfenblurts to add to the 15 the day before, and if I’m really active I may escalate to 20 Horfenblurts tomorrow. If feeling charged up, maybe 150 Horfenblurts this week! That how I DO IT, son!
Even posting the screenshot above of my highest overall day, that had a 20K run in the middle of it, gives a little thrill. What is it in our nature that does that?
A martial artist, Yanagi Ryuken in Japan, demonstrates his “no-touch knockout” technique, and takes down a dozen or so men with easy-breezy style. Swish-sway BLAMMO! Swifsh-swish KAPOW! You get it in the first minute:
Very reminiscent of the centuries of clownery from magicians and faith healers such as Benny Hinn, who, I grant, does have truly miraculous hair:
Here Yanagi faces an opponent who does not believe in this technique. Yanagi gets hit in the face.
The Yanagi videos are mentioned in an interview with Sam Harris in The Atlantic titled “What Martial Arts Have to Do with Atheism”. I like Sam Harris, but can see how some people don’t. His approach on many matters is clear and deliberate. He does go slightly into woo-woo territory when talking about meditation, like striving for some magic/metaphysical crediblity after spending so much time dispelling superstitious realms of thought. Meditation probably has neurological benefits, yet he winds that woo-woo stuff in. I wince.
But back to Yanagi. Does he expect his opponent in the second video to fall under his sway? He seems stunned by the contact. Maybe he knows when he’s in pantomime combat with pretend telekinetic powers mode. Or maybe he doesn’t. I don’t care to research the back story. This is amusing as-is. As Lady Bracknell says in The Importance of Being Earnest: “Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit. Touch it, and the bloom is gone.”
Oh, sure, this cat starts nursing a baby squirrel with the rest of her new litter and we’re all supposed to go “Awww! Adorbs!”
But when I nurse a baby squirrel in public I get “Get off the bus!” or “Hey, leave the altar!” or “You need to exit the park, sir.” That’s speciesist and sexist. Supposedly the squirrel has learned from the cats how to purr. Cute? Sure. Useful? No. If the squirrel gets into the wild it is doomed.
Meanwhile, I teach my whelping squirrels useful things like how to waterski. That’s both a recrational skill and a darned job that brings money back home from R.V. shows, gun shows, and auto shows.
And I choose to raise my squirrels in the Jedi faith. If you have a problem with that, you’re also a bigot. Here are my squirrel kids Mr. Cheeks, Squeekers, and Darth Acorn worshipping in the park.
Many people dig this and are cool with it. If you think this is weird, I’m not going to hate you back. I just take a deep breath, let your bad energy out of my system, and say: “May the Force be with you.”