NOVEMBER
Sunday, November 1st–
I think everyone knows someone with an old, worn-out, poorly cared-for car that has something wrong with it (examples: the passenger door won’t open from the outside, and the driver has to reach over and open it from the inside; the car has to warm up for ten or fifteen minutes before it can go anywhere; the windows won’t roll down, but instead have to be pushed down by hand).
These are all half-assed, embarrassing, fucked-up, and temporary solutions to problems that would otherwise be fixed were the owner not so poor, lazy, or apathetic. And this is how I view Daylight Savings Time. We no longer live in an agrarian society, so we shouldn’t have to keep a farmer’s hours. Electric lights have been proven to actually work–they’ve had almost a century-and-a-half of testing–so we are not condemned to darkness just because the Sun God has parked his chariot for the night.
So why can’t we just pick a fucking time and stick with it instead of switching our clocks around twice a year? In the Age of Computers we ought to have a more precise and scientific approach to this ridiculously antiquated matter.
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Only one more day until my birthday (November 2nd), and here’s my Amazon Wish List link if you want to shower me with prezzies….
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I think there was a dream where I went with a large school group to lofty, old, two-story building that housed a flea market. I wandered around and looked at the stalls of the different vendors, naturally gravitating towards the ones with books. I feel, however, that I’m leaving something out.
I dreamt that I worked at an old school. Was I a teacher? The L-shaped building had, I think, two-stories and a basement, and I mostly stayed in one wing.
I think there was something about me getting bullied by some jocks, talking to front office staffers (mostly ancient women), then hiding and sneaking around in areas that were closed to students, including the dark, greasy mechanical rooms, one of which had a steel ladder that led down to the basement boiler room.
For some reason I had to report to the second floor of the other wing. In the hallway outside of the room I needed to go to was a curved depression in the floor, covered in tile and surrounded by a tiled curbing. There was also a little fountain hanging from the wall behind this, and there was a tiled surround on the wall. I think this feature has recently been rediscovered and restored, but the fountain wasn’t turned on nd the pool was empty. The entire tile composition depicted kitschy images of the sort that delighted children back in the 1940s and 1950s, such as children dressed up as cowboys and Indians, or possibly circus or farm animals.
From all this we can conclude I’d been summoned to report to the elementary school part of the building.
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Monday, November 2nd–
Belle and I got up at 1:25am, and I farted around, waiting for Petsmart to open.
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I’ve only been awake about 3 hours now and I’m already eager for this fucking day to be over.
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A friend of mine killed herself last night. She’d been struggling with depression and mental illness for years and had tried everything with no success. Please offer your prayers or good thoughts in memory of Jennifer D. She was a tough woman.
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I got lots of birthday messages, had a fun talk with D— over the phone, then called my mother.
I went to Petsmart for dog food and treats, then bought a stamp and mailed off my check for electricity at the UPS Store.
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Tuesday, November 3rd–
What an absolutely shitty, miserable, and pointless birthday that was. But then again, my birthdays have been pretty shitty for a long time now.
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I posted–Man Defecates Himself To Avoid Being Arrested
…”This was not the first time that Officers had dealt with someone purposely defecated on themselves to avoid being arrested….”
ME–I guess that’s one way to make sure you get a private cell.
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ME– JJD –(June 2, 1971–November 1/2, 2015)
The impersonal cruelty of chance determined that your life would be marked by pain, struggle, and suffering, yet you fought like hell, again and again and again, to earn a small measure of peace. And while your friends and loved ones are sorry that we were unable to do enough to save you, we take comfort–albeit cold comfort–in the knowledge that your pain has at last come to an end.
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I am so obsessive, meticulous, call it what you will, that right before I visited the LA City Hall to go up to the Observation Deck, I photocopied the original floor plans from a 1920s architecture magazine so I would be able to make myself comfortable while walking around the building, and take the quickest and most direct routes.
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Someone posted–International Court Judge Says Dick Cheney Will Eventually Be Tried as a War Criminal —
ME–Even if he’s like one of those old Nazis–95 years old, confined to a wheelchair, barely able to hear or speak–I want him tried and imprisoned. I want to see that smirk wiped off his face and replaced by a look of absolute fear and terror.
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Someone posted–I used to think the years would go by in order, that you get older one year at a time. But it’s not like that. It happens overnight.–Haruki Murakami
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2015 was a shitty year, but not as shitty as 2014 and 2013 were. And I’m certain that 2016 will be awful as well.
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If I didn’t have a dog I’d probably try to sleep 24 hours a day, or as close to that as I could get.
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Wednesday, November 4th–
Belle and I retired around 1pm.
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Thursday, November 5th–
I woke up around 3:31am and we got up around 4am.
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I was asleep from about 1pm CST on Wednesday to about 3:30am CST today (Thursday). Did I miss anything?
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I think I spent much of the evening editing and fixing my journal entries back to September.
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Someone posted–The only real battle in life is between hanging on and letting go.–Shannon L. Alder
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ME, writing the staff of Andrew Jackson’s “Hermitage”–
To Whom It May Concern:
Is there an inventory of the books in General Jackson’s library that I might be able to examine? I’m not doing any formal scholarly research, but I’m fascinated to learn what books important people of the past had in their libraries.
Also, has anyone written more than a few pages on the subject of Jackson’s wards? There never seems to be more than a passing mention of them in any Jackson biographies I’ve seen.
Thanks.
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Someone posted–You are allowed to outgrow people.
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If the film “Balto” had starred a Basset Hound it would’ve been about seven hours long.
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Belle and I retired probably around 10:30pm or so–possibly as late as 10:50.
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Friday, November 6th–
We got up around 8am, which was much too early for me, did the usual, then napped from about 1:30pm to around 8pm.
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My Case Manager wants to get together next week to work on another goddamn evaluation, and that pisses me off. She’ll probably come up here, which means she’ll more than like hang around for close to an hour.
I just want to be left the fuck alone.
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I posted–Anthony Bourdain dishes on why Tex-Mex is only a good idea when you’re drunk
ME–This is a somewhat misleading headline, since Bourdain seems to mostly be talking about fast-food/chain Tex-Mex. Either he hasn’t had decent Tex-Mex, or he has no idea of what he’s talking about. But then again, to Texans, Tex-Mex is like mother’s milk.
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I’ve never understood why so many people like to go to certain restaurants “because everybody goes there,” but which serve food that is inedible at worst or bland and flavorless at best.
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I’m thinking of putting up an ad on Craigslist: “Wanted: Housekeeper/Vegan Cook and Valet/Chauffeur, for the household of a disabled former writer and editor. The job starts immediately. The successful candidates must provide their own uniforms, and will not be paid, but at least they will get to bask in the rays of their new employer’s genius.”
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Saturday, November 7th–
I shouldn’t have had vegetarian chili for both breakfast and dinner. I just experienced flatulence that sounded like the “Kill Bill”/”Ironsides” siren.
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I spent much of the night copying and pasting the stuff I copied and pasted yesterday, but which had been erased.
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I got tied up in a long Instant Messaging conversation with a guy who says he knew me in college, though I really don’t remember him. He says he’s been looking for me for years. He’s a big right-winger, so when he brought up politics, I steered the conversation elsewhere.
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We went to bed around 5:20am or so. We woke up several hours later, walked, ate, and quickly went back to bed.
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Sunday, November 8th–
I think we got up around 3:30 or 4am.
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So the weather’s finally chilly, the way I like it. I’d like to spend the entire day curled up in bed with my warm Basset Hound, but I’m running low on food. Still, I really don’t feel like running errands today. On the other hand, the only way I’ll not notice the scarcity of munchies is if I stay asleep….See why I need a housekeeper or something?
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Someone posted–Things I’ve actually heard college students say
“Look how pretty my notes are!! Too bad I’ll never study them”
“I might look fine in class but I’m dying inside”
“I’ve never seen frozen and at this point i’m afraid to”
“when the professor shows up I’m just gonna get up, make eye contact, and leave”
”shut the fuck up and eat your shitty frosted flakes”
”Is it acceptable to throw myself out the window after we take this exam”
“I need more gay people in my life I’m suffocating in straights”
”I think I’m just gonna sleep outside and let the snow bury me until I die”
“why the fuck would i pay 5 dollars for a grilled cheese? oh wait they’re delivering them? ok buy 3”
“i feel like a child but i look like an adult and i think it throws a lot of people off”
“yo look at this dog! i want this dog. this dog is straight g”
“I got super drunk and told everyone I was a lesbian”
“I’VE ONLY DONE ANAL TWICE OKAY”
“instead of studying art we should MAKE ART WITH OUR BODIES”
Someone posted–feel free to add anything you’ve heard
Someone posted–“small is too small and medium are super long, I need a smedium.“
“I lunge when I’m excited”
“just because I smoke doesn’t mean I’ll give you lung cancer.“
“I am drunk and approaching this whole thing like science.”
Someone posted–“You know what, I’m just gonna dress up as a condom.”
Someone posted–“Do eyebrows grow back?”
Someone posted-–*running through the dorm’s hallway* “I GOT THE BIG O!!! I GOT THE BIG O!!!”
“How long can you collect sperm?”
“Is it too late to buy crocs?”
Someone posted–
“Do they check bags before you go into the exam? Because my water bottle is still full of vodka from last night.”
“I bumped into Daniel (our head lecturer) in a club on Saturday. His girlfriend had to carry him home.”
“I genuinely used to think lecturers lived in the school…”
“This bread’s a week out of date but there’s no mould on it – should I risk it?”
“I’m not a slut right, but there are some openings at the local strip club and I’m seriously thinking about applying. Can I borrow your push-up bra?”
“Shakespeare can suck my dick.”
Someone posted–“And if this year doesn’t work out, well, there’s always prostitution…”
Someone posted–‘…but I figured, if you have an orgy with christians, god should be cool with it right?’
‘I didn’t mean to sleep with her but when someone buys you three pieces of cake you don’t have much choice.’
‘Who’s bouncing on who now bitch!’ (to a space hopper)
Someone posted–‘Buddha died of diarrhoea. I know because I was there.’
I posted–
Older woman on the first day of my first college English class:
“Unfortunately, we buried Aunt Mildred last summer.”
Younger woman: “Oh, did she die?”
[I really wanted the older woman to say, “No, we just got tired of the old nag and buried her alive!”]
I posted–Ignorant college girl holding forth to a TV room full of students: “I’m a big believer in re-incarnation. In fact I was an Egyptian princess in one of my earlier lives.”
Me: “Well, I’ve always noticed that people who believe in re-incarnation invariably think they were someone famous and powerful, like Julius Caesar or Joan of Arc. I’ve never yet met someone who believes he was someone humble and anonymous, like a dish-washer at the Jerusalem McDonald’s during the time of Christ….So let me ask you this–you believe you’ve had all these past lives–how do you know who you were? Do you hear a voice or see it in a dream or what?”
ICG: “Well, have you ever experienced ménage à trois?”
Me: “What the hell does that have to do with anything?!”
ICG: “Well, that’s when you have the strange feeling you’ve experienced something before.”
[The entire room bursts out in laughter.]
John S.: “That’s not ménage à trois! That’s déjà vu!”
ICG: “Well, what’s ménage à trois?”
Me [after finally recovering my voice after laughing so much]: “That’s sex with three people.”
[ICG turned red-faced.]
John S. [Shouting with glee so he can get his line in.]: “And then of course there’s vu jà dé, which is the strange feeling that none of this has ever happened before!”
I posted–The same ignorant college girl, on move-in day in the dorms before the start of the Fall semester, after spending about an hour in my dorm’s lobby talking to a guy who had a very serious case of cleft palate: “Gee, you know, you really talk funny. Are you from England or somewhere?”
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Someone posted–
i love that charles dickens got paid by the word. like i cant even be mad when he’s boring and long-winded bc i would do xactly the same??? i wouldnt use contractions or colours at all. want to say the word red? too bad. we r now only using “the colour of freshly-spilled blood on snow; the hue of the horizon when the sun sets over the deserts of sub-saharan Africa” BOOM guess who can afford 2 eat now: me and my boi dickens
Someone posted–
What I love about Alexandre Dumas, in contrast, is he got paid by the line. So it’s not really wordy, it more like 80% dialogue which makes it sound pretty modern but also ends up like–
“Where are we going now?”
“We are going to the city.”
“Which city?”
“Paris.”
“We are going to Paris?”
“Yes.”
# can you imagine the kind of extended torture we would have been subject to if victor hugo had been paid by the pun
ME–Back before any of you were born I wrote term papers for college students. (I figured that if Winston Churchill and Truman Capote did it when they were in school I was in good company. And don’t lecture to me about my work being unethical; ethics goes out the window if you’re stuck for a way to pay for groceries or electricity.)
But yes, I padded the shit out of those papers.
And I still gave my customers far better work than most of them deserved. I even wrote one asshole’s entrance essay to law school.
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Someone posted–My cow thinks he’s dog…We left the door open for 5 minutes
Someone posted–OMG! 😂😩
ME–When my first Basset Hound, Fred, started getting old, he took up mooing like a cow.
I discovered this in the wee hours one night after he’d climbed out of bed and curled up underneath a desk. I was sleeping heavily, but was jolted awake by what sounded like a cow mooing in the bedroom. It turns out Fred was clever enough to put his snout up against the bed’s box springs, so when he started mooing, the sound was amplified.
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Monday, November 9th–
Let’s replace Presidential debates with sword duels. I’d proudly vote for someone who knew how to handle a sword.
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Someone posted–Tag! You’re it!
When you get this write 3 things your followers probably don’t know about you and then send it to 10 followers.
ME–I won’t tag anybody because I’m too lazy and the people I most want to hear from won’t respond more than likely.
1) If I’m in a bookstore or other business where they play classical music in the background, I always quietly whistle, hum, and sing along.
2) I have roughly 10,000 books in my library, but most are boxed-up, and I’ve not had all the books I’ve owned out on shelves since 1973.
3) I’ve had over thirty-eight jobs in my life, including museum guide, security guard, newspaper columnist, librarian, substitute teacher, bus boy, waiter, side-order cook, fast-food cook, restaurant critic, telemarketer, house painter, political campaigner, political opposition researcher, book appraiser, rare book scout, editor, and writer.
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Someone posted–How to Open a New Book.
To me, this post might be just as important as the bible.
Someone posted–One of my classes. My elderly teacher taught us this because he really cared about books.
Someone posted–Why does no one teach us these things anymore?
Someone posted–I get so uppity when someone breaks the binding on my books.
Someone posted–I’m just a terrible person and the first thing I do with big books is break the binding.
Someone posted–This needs to be reblogged. Just in case this manages to reach someone who might in the future borrow a book of mine, and who might otherwise bring my wrath down upon them by mistreating said book.
ME–When I was in elementary school we actually saw a short educational film on this topic. I’ve been trying for about 45 years to get a copy of the book they used to demonstrate proper book opening.
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Sometimes I feel like an over-protective mother when my followers reappear after long absences: “Where the hell have you been?! Who do you think you are coming in this late?! Keep it up, Mister/Little Missy, and you’ll get picked up by the Truant Officer, and then I don’t know *what* you’ll do!”
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Someone posted–Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.–George S. Patton
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I wish I had the same enthusiasm for life that my dog has.
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Tuesday, November 10th–
We retired around 11:15am.
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I dreamt I was back at the old Sam Houston Elementary in Conroe, Texas, where I attended Fourth Grade from 1973 to 1974. I’ve never gotten over my love for that old school building. In this dream, just as in waking like, the building was no longer an elementary school.
I was sitting in a second-floor classroom there for a detailed, comprehensive, guided study session for a college English course I was taking. The session was presided over by a young female professor. I forget what book she was droning on about, but it was an English or American book about which Roland Barthes had written extensively, so we were picking apart the main text and the Barthes as well.
All of the students were physically and mentally exhausted. I had taken brief naps in my seat. The exam for which we were preparing was all-important, and determined our final grade for the semester, and we had been told that we couldn’t pass the exam unless we went through this study session. The problem is the study session was scheduled to last eighteen hours. I thought that inhuman, inhumane, and unrealistic, and I finally stood up and walked out, to the shocked looks of the professor and students. I knew this meant I’d fail the course, but I just didn’t care. Nothing was worth sitting through eighteen hours of bullshit.
[In real life, I think I slept just about eighteen hours this time.]
I explored the school, wondered what was in the old Library now, saw the old Art Room at the end of the hall, with huge rolls of colored paper hanging from the wall to the right of the door. I looked for the stairs that led down to the basement Cafeteria, marveled at how one of the staircases on the ground floor started out as two flights curled around masterfully-carved white marble newel posts, then joined to form one flight.
Another staircase had about three steps up, a broad landing, a ramp in place of a flight of stairs, another landing, and then another flight of stairs to the second floor.
When I ascended the staircase with the marble newel posts I noticed that the new occupants had left unmolested the glass trophy cases that were set in the stairwell walls, thereby preserving plaques, trophies, and faded photos and newspaper clippings from eighty years before. This moved me to tears.
But before I left, I wanted to see my old Fourth Grade classroom, where I’d gotten into so much trouble, but also had learned so much. I also wanted to visit the restroom, where fights sometimes occured, but my motivation for that visit was more practical than nostalgic.
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I dreamt that my maternal grandmother, possibly my mother, and I were traveling to India. I was in the back seat of some elevated vehicle like a Land Rover, my grandmother was in the middle of the front seat, my mother (or whoever it was) was riding shotgun, and a little woman was our driver and guide. (I assumed Indian vehicles had left-handed steering wheels, but now that I think of that, it’s probably not true.)
There were also two dogs, but I forget whether they were in the front or back seats.
The guide started doing some Hindu ritual, and even stood up while driving and danced around in a complete circle a few times, but she still managed to keep the vehicle from wrecking. I was surprised to see my very Christian mother and grandmother doing another part of these rituals, which seemed to involve putting beanbags in the mouth of a semi-circular zippered pillow or coin purse, and then removing them again. I think I tried it a few times as well. (And yes, the symbolism is all too obvious to me.)
We finally arrived in some rundown city or town in India. The road came to an abrupt end in front of some buildings, and side streets branched off this tiny plaza.
It was very bright, dusty, and dirty. People were everywhere. I think I commented, “Well, at least we’re not still in Texas!”
The guide got out of the car and went either down a street or into a building. The dogs got loose and ran down a street. My grandmother went after them, ran down a street to the left, then came back and ran down the same street to the right. I told my mother we needed to find all of them (though I was most concerned about the dogs).
And the next thing I knew I was out in the Indian countryside somewhere with M___ C. walking trough the gate of a fenced property which looked like a Texas ranch. We stepped out onto a deserted country road and hadn’t a clue where we were.
Presently some cars and trucks drove up and pulled over. Just about everyone we saw seemed to be Americans or Western Europeans who spoke English. A tall, heavy-set man who was as brown as an Indian and may indeed have been one, who wore nothing but a long-sleeved white shirt, ran around waving his arms and howling. There was a slim English girl who wore pants and an open blouse, and she drifted around brainlessly. I forget who else we saw.
Someone–possibly an Indian–warned us not to catch a ride in a certain van, because the van belonged to a dirty hotel in a miserable town, and we wouldn’t want to get stuck there.
M___ confidently said he thought if we could get a car we could drive back to the U.S. before nightfall, but I looked at my watch and with some surprise told him it was already 6pm. I said my main concern was getting back to that first town and finding my dogs (if the Indians hadn’t eaten them), my grandmother, my mother, and the driver (in that order).
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Wednesday, November 11th–
We got up at 6:16am, walked, and ate. We napped for a few hours in mid- to late-morning, then I went to Petsmart for dog food and a treat, and Dollar Tree for grocery and non-grocery items. I went home and took a much-needed shower, and made reservations for my birthday dinner at Mother’s Cafe.
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I just got up and had to figure out how many hours I was asleep (18) and what day it is.
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I slept 18 hours and now I need a nap.
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We’re almost halfway through November and Austin is still as hot and humid as downtown Manilla. Did I mention before how much I hate Texas?
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I posted–“Show us your Manhole” campaign against Austin Water
http://www.fox7austin.com/news/local-news/39558370-story
ME–Don Zimmerman, the guy behind this campaign is a clueless, grand-standing bag of hot air who is currently disgracing one of the seats in the Austin City Council. Not surprisingly, he is also a leading Tea Party nut case.
Tea Party members just don’t seem to have a grasp of contemporary slang or double entendres. If you remember, Tea Partiers originally called themselves “Tea Baggers,” and it took them quite awhile to learn what else that term can mean.
I hope thousands of people send pictures of Goatse to this idiot’s office.
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I had a lengthy panic attack while worrying about Friday–the radical change in schedule, the boring and lengthy meeting with my Case Manager, and the stressful birthday dinner that night.
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A friend sent me [a post] while I was having a panic attack and also trying to work on something else on my computer. The fact he was bombarding me with links to look up (actually only two or three), when I’ve repeatedly told him not to send me links, actually made my panic attack much, much worse. It took me at lest an hour to calm down.
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Thursday, November 12th–
We retired about 2am and got up around 11:30am.
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I’ve been awake just for an hour and am already pissed off and irritable.
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Someone posted–My son, believe me that the day you go yourself to the house of God, the day you knock at its door, it will open wide, and the angels will draw aside to let you pass.–En Route–J. K. Huysmans
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Someone posted–If it’s still in your mind, it’s worth taking the risk.
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I have been utterly miserable, stressed out, tense, anxious, and filled with dread for several days, but especially today, because tomorrow I have an 11am meeting with my Case Manager that I don’t want to go to, and at 7:30pm, I have my own belated birthday dinner…. I’m sick to my stomach with anxiety.
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We retired about 10:30pm.
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Friday, November 13th–
We got up about 8:30am.
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Someone posted–Walking around a bookstore with no money:
Me: *stroking the books* I’ll come back for you.
ME–And when I go to the public library and see a book I checked out from there and read, I stroke its spine and think, “I remember you fondly. Do you remember me?”
Yes, I tend to anthropomorphise things.
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So very sleepy. I hope I can grab a nap between my appointments for today.
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Someone posted–Uh oh, you just died and now your family is planning what your tombstone will say. They decide to use your last outgoing text message… What’s your tombstone say?
ME–I’ve never text messaged, and I’m leaving behind explicit instructions about my funeral and other arrangements. If I don’t have my ashes illegally scatted in places important to me I’m thinking about using as an epitaph the last line of a Sinatra song: “Excuse me while I disappear.”
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Someone posted–my least favorite activity is paying my electric bill.
ME–Mine would include leaving the house, interacting with any people in person, going to the clinic, going to the grocery store, dealing with my bills, dealing with phone calls, having to set an alarm, going to the grocery store….
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Someone posted–If you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you’ll spend your life completely wasting your time. You’ll be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing thing you don’t like doing, which is stupid.–Alan Wilson Watts
ME–So rather than get money to survive and to acquire the things I really want, I should kill myself instead?
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My Case Manager came by at 11am and we went to Schlotzsky’s for a meeting. I bought a little box of apple juice so we wouldn’t look bad just sitting there. As I feared, my Case Manager kept me there an entire hour.
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Someone posted–It is an extremely common mistake. People think the writers imagination is always at work, that he’s constantly inventing an endless supply of incidents and episodes, that he simply dreams up his stories out of thin air. In point of fact, the opposite is true. Once the public knows you’re a writer, they bring the characters and events to you, and as long as you maintain your ability to look and to carefully listen, these stories will continue to seek you out over your lifetime.–The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Dir. Wes Anderson
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Belle and I napped from about 2:00 to 5:00pm.
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Someone posted–“Tacos Gay”
ME–Okay, I’ll go ahead and ask since you want me to so badly: How do you make tacos gay?
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We’re half-way through November, which means only one thing: I start complaining about the War Against Krampus. It’s insidious and an affront to all that truly matters in our society–namely scaring children shitless so they behave themselves.
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I’m reading up about what’s happening in Paris. I know what I think should be done, but I’m not mentioning it here.
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A group of friends took me to Mother’s Cafe for my belated birthday dinner. The evening was quite pleasant. I received some much-appreciated gift cards and a handmade saucer.
On the way home I got some eggs at HEB.
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Someone posted–Ste Geneviève, patronne de Paris et de la France, priez pour nous!
St. Genevieve, patroness of Paris and of France, pray for us!
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Someone posted–Sainte Jeanne d’Arc, patronne de la France, priez pour nous!
Saint Joan of Arc, patroness of France, pray for us!
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Someone posted–Our Lady of France, pray for thy children!
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Someone posted–Pray for Paris.
Praying for Paris, Beirut, Baghdad, and everywhere where this shocking violence and terrorism is occurring.
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My friend who lives in the 11er arrondissement in Paris, close to where one of the attacks took place, finally got home safely, thank God. Four out of eleven FB friends from Paris have checked in as being safe.
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Someone posted–Damaged people are dangerous. They know how to make hell feel like home.–Unknown
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Someone posted–Saint Louis Priez pour la France et la Nouvelle-France. Puissent les chefs d’état vous prendre comme modèle!
Saint Louis please pray for France and New France. May the World Leaders look up at you as a role model!
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Someone posted–Paris taxis turn off meters as they help get people home.
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Someone posted–FUN FACT: PEOPLE WITH DEPRESSION SOMETIMES DO NOT HAVE A “REASON” FOR A DEPRESSIVE EPISODE, SOMETIMES THEY OCCUR WITHOUT ANY TRIGGERS AND EVEN WHEN EVERY PART OF THAT PERSON’S LIFE IS GOING WELL. YOU. DO. NOT. NEED. A. “REASON.” TO. FEEL. DEPRESSED. STOP MAKING PEOPLE FEEL BAD FOR FEELING DEPRESSED THANKS
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Paris was still standing when the Third Reich lay in ashes. It will still be standing when all that is left of ISIS are a few paragraphs in dusty, forgotten history books.
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Someone posted–The first mix-tape I ever made was probably in the early ’90s because it had Ace of Base and Ice Cube on it, and it was the kind of mix-tape that you go and tape off the radio. It was funny, too, because I remember you’d have to wait for the song you liked to come on. You’d have to press play and record at the same time, and most of the times when you’d get the mix-tape, it’s like static, or you’d get the radio DJ’s voice, or you’d cut, like, halfway through the first verse. It was also nice because you learn to love it that way, like, “Well, that’s the song. That’s the song I know, so that’s what I’m accepting as the truth.” I would find that even with CDs. I had a Jimi Hendrix record that had a scratch in the middle of Crosstown Traffic, and I was, like, “Wow, that’s really cool! It’s ‘You jump from the front of my— you jump from the front of my—you jump from the front of my car.’” I was, like, “I didn’t know he was into sampling.” So you learn it how you hear it. I like the idiosyncrasies.–St. Vincent
ME–Very true. There were a number of songs I had with scratches or other mistakes on them, and to this day, whenever I hear a perfect version of one of these songs, I perk up my ears and wait for the mistake, and am always surprised when it’s not there. I had a friend who was a DJ who made my mix-tapes for me, so the quality was better than that of most mix-tapes, but he still owned some records with flaws on them.
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We retired around 5:30am or so and got up about 2pm.
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I fear that the true danger is less the threat of terrorism from without than the threat of greedy, fifth-column oligarchs from within. They care nothing about the future–they want only what they can grab today. Their insatiable desire for power and money is destroying the planet ecologically. Their control of governments has lead to policies that create the conditions that give rise to terrorism. If you’re young, poor, have no prospects for the future, are hated by many of the people around you, then joining a terror cell or movement might seem to be an enticing adventure, whereby you can shuffle off your hopeless conditions and go out in a blaze of perceived glory. That said, I hold all terrorists fully responsible for their crimes, and I hope to see the Seine run red with their blood for their crimes against Paris.
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“Rid God’s sanctuary of the wicked; expel the robbers; bring in the pious…. Let no attachment to your native soil be an impediment; because, in different points of view, all the world is exile to the Christian and all the world his country. Thus exile is his country, and his country exile.”–Urban II
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Let those who once fought against brothers and relatives now rightfully fight against barbarians.–Pope Urban II
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Someone posted–a list of cities that should be evacuated because they were rumored to be the next targets of terrorism.
ME–I have two kitchen knives, a filet knife, and a baseball bat. At very least I can take one of those fuckers out before they kill me.
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Sunday, November 15th–
We woke much too early. I had a snack, and went back to bed, getting up after 4pm.
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Someone posted–If you have been brutally broken, but still have the courage to be gentle to others then you deserve a love deeper than the ocean itself.–Nikita Gill
ME–I’ve been brutally broken, but I think it’s turned me into a mean-spirited asshole.
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Someone posted–This Woman Played Dead At The Bataclan, Then Wrote About Finding The Good Amid Horror
ME–Whenever there’s a tragedy, especially where death is involved, be it the death of one person or thousands, I always carefully watch and see how each person connected to the event behaves. It’s one of the best ways I know to determine who is a jerk and who is a saint.
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The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.–Rabindranath Tagore
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Someone posted–SOME OF THE MOST POISONOUS PEOPLE COME DISGUISED AS FAMILY.
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I got some gift cards for my birthday the other day–the first real money I’ve had in two years–and now I’m making myself nuts trying to decide what to buy. I don’t have enough to buy all I want to buy or even most of what I want, but I can buy a few things. That’s what makes my decision so difficult.
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I haven’t painted since May? Seriously? Well, that explains a lot.
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Someone posted–“If I saw a person smile, that to me was payment in itself. If I could make them laugh when they were very sad, it was the greatest payment to me.”—The Man of 1000 voices, Mel Blanc
“He devoted a lot of time to ailing children in hospitals. I think he really had a great affect in doing so, even if it just made them feel better for just a minute, he did. We had to try to get him to leave first of all, he would spend all day doing it. There would be times I would say, ‘Mel, we gotta go, it’s getting dark, we have to get back on the road.’ When there were children in that situation you couldn’t get him to walk away.”–Assistant to Mel Blanc, Sophia Sprock
ME–I left a pebble on his headstone. I actually had to wander around near the grave to find a large enough pebble, but I wasn’t going to leave that cemetery without paying a tribute to Mel Blanc.
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Monday, November 16th–
We retired about 5: 30 am and got up around 5pm.
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I’m still mad at my parents for not naming me “Waxing Gibbous.”
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Tuesday, November 17th–
We retired about 3:45am and got up about 6pm.
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I’ve got 767 notes on a post I don’t even remember making.
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Someone posted–being alive is very………..Not Easy
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Someone posted–if there was a way to make your blog have a smell, so that everyone visiting your blog automatically smelled it, what would you make your blog smell like?
ME–Old books, dog farts, and rage.
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Despite the events of this week, I’d still rather live in Paris than anywhere in Texas.
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The objective of life is to break every chain that holds you down, to hand them back to false masters and say with all self that you have only one Master.–Yasmin Mogahed
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Wednesday, November 18th–
Why on earth would I want a book in paperback or in hardback with no dust jacket when I could get one in hardback with a dust jacket? Why do so few booksellers these days know their trade or the very specific terminology that pertains to book condition?
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We went to bed about 9am and got up between 11 and 11:30pm.
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Thursday, November 19th–
I woke up 90 to 120 minutes ago after an ugly, dark, violent, and disturbing dream, and I’ve been having ugly, dark, violent, and disturbing thoughts ever since I woke up. I hate that mental illness has left me out-of-control of my own mind. At times I don’t feel I’m in the driver’s seat, that I’m merely a horrified spectator.
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I think perhaps the US and the countries of Western Europe ought to hold back on going after ISIS and leave the dirty work to Mr. Putin. Then, when ISIS goes to seek revenge, they can attempt it on his turf rather than ours. I also think Putin would be more ruthless and merciless than a Western leader would be, and that may or may not be a good thing.
On the other hand, merely killing as many ISIS members as possible will not solve the problem of radical Islamic terrorism.
I think the West needs to get out of the Middle East.
I think the various sects and schools of Islam should be left alone to argue and fight amongst themselves and decide which sect gets to be “King of the Mountain.”
I think if Israel wants to continue to exist as a nation it needs to stop oppressing Palestinians and work out some sort of solution with them as to who gets to live where. And yes, having Israel right there in the midst of things gives the US a great hopping-off point from which to attack other Middle Eastern nations, but the US/Israel “special relationship” is beginning to cost us more than it’s worth.
I think the West should stop giving weapons to people in unstable, shit-hole countries who later turn around and use those weapons on us.
I think if we didn’t let oligarchs with ties to petroleum- and automotive-related businesses run our governments, then we could finally lessen our dependence on petroleum and develop or use already developed alternative sources of energy. If that happened, we wouldn’t have to continue cozying up to Saudi Arabia and the other nations that are financing terrorists and promoting the spread of radical Islam.
As it is, we have allowed petroleum to become the most important commodity in the world, and we have ruined the world and its people because of it. It’s time for us to get rid of the oligarchs–permanently.
Also, if European nations are going to allow Muslim immigrants to live in their countries, then something has to be done to give those immigrants access to better jobs and services, because if these immigrants come to a new country and find themselves ill-treated and unable to obtain those things needed for a decent life, then at least some of them are going to become radicalized and seek to destroy the Europeans who failed to help them.
The only other option is to deport all the immigrants back to their places of origin, but I’m sure that would also enrage and radicalize at least some of their numbers.
European nations should either honestly embrace racist, exclusionary, anti-immigrant policies and drop all their hypocritical crowing about “multi-culturalism,” or they should welcome immigrants and learn how to peacefully co-exist with them as their new neighbors and fellow citizens, granting them all the rights and dignities such a status entails.
So to summarize, while I do believe that ISIS needs to be destroyed, and that doing so will be a long, arduous process, I think we need to immediately begin the much more difficult task of dismantling the systems, policies, processes, and forces that give birth to radical terrorism in the first place. This second task will be impossible unless we 1) wake up and realize that we in the First World are the root cause of these problems, and 2) remove, with violence if necessary, the oligarchs who profit from all of the chaos that is consuming and destroying this planet and human society.
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We retired about 1pm.
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Friday, November 20th–
We got up about 4am.
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Someone posted–UT student spat on for being Muslim
ME–And again we see Texans acting like white trash.
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Someone posted–dog: lets out the most genuine & affected sigh possible
me: what’s happened? who or what has brought such suffering upon your world-weary, furry shoulders? can i do anything? can anything be done? will you ever be at peace? please rest
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I’m bored. I slept 14.5 hours, so napping isn’t an option. I’m tempted to go shopping with my gift cards, but I don’t feel like riding the stinky buses. I’m also not sure if I want to use my largest gift card (actually two of them) online or at a brick-and-mortar store.
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I’ve been making myself a nervous wreck today trying to decide what books to get with my gift cards. I never have any money, so I’ve been trying to get this absolutely perfect, and I gave myself a panic attack.
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Being a bachelor means that at home I usually drink from cups that were thrown at me by some guy on a float during a New Orleans Mardi Gras years before most of you were born.
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Am I even capable of having fun anymore? Everything I do feels like I’m tackling some serious business matter or I’m performing a solemn and sacred ritual. I’ve been unemployed for years, but I still give myself projects to complete. And it’s almost impossible for me to have fun when I have no money.
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Someone posted–When Paul Ryan was elected Speaker of the House last week, he promised not to duck the tough issues. That promise comes with a few notable exceptions.
ME–Please let the day come when I can play a few chukkers of polo with his severed head for a ball.
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Someone posted–“you’ll understand when you’re older”
i am older and i understand absolutely nothing
Someone posted–#i actually understand less
ME–I’m 52. By now I should understand all that shit my elders said I would understand when I grew up, but I’m here to tell you that 90% of that crap was pointless nonsense. I knew it was bullshit when I was ten and I know it’s bullshit now.
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I GIVE JUST A LITTLE BIT OF A FUCK. JUST ENOUGH TO KEEP ME OUT OF JAIL. OR THE MADHOUSE.
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Someone posted–To Forgive The Terrorists Is Up To God, But To Send Them To Him Is Up To Me.–Putin (in what my co-workers say could be the best and most insightful quote of the year)
ME–I am so turned on right now.
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An art which isn’t based on feeling isn’t an art at all—feeling is the principle, the beginning and the end; craft, objective, technique — all these are in the middle.–Paul Cézanne
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If you cannot find a friend who is good, wise, and loving, walk alone, like a king who has renounced his kingdom, or an elephant roaming at will in the forest.–Buddha
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… in the last resort France gave freedom and civilization to the modern world. And if she falls, don’t let us delude ourselves, all our liberties and civilization will fall with her.–Giuseppe Verdi to Clarina Maffei, September 1870.
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We retired around 6:15pm.
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Saturday, November 21st–
We got up early (around 5am or a bit later) and did the usual routines.
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I got my backpack ready and went over to a bus stop on an access road a block away. I talked to a guy who was just coming back from the hospital where his wife was being treated for her most recent stroke.
I took the #383 Bus at 9:15am to Target, to use the $50 gift card J_______ gave me. I wasn’t able to find everything on my list, but I did buy some useful things–twelve pairs of socks, a knife (for my cedar knot project), six bottles of paint, and a can of deodorant. I had a long bus wait in the cold…. I then took the #383 Bus to the North Lamar Transit Center, and took a slow #1 Bus south to Half-Price Books. I think this was my first visit in two years.
I’d planned to stay there two hours, and wound up staying only ninety minutes. I’d gone to see if there was anything on my shopping list available there for less than I would pay online, but the pickings were slim. I saw some items that were on my list, but which were low-priority items, some things I wanted but were in unacceptable conditions, and some things I wanted that I could afford but which would wipe out my money supply or be too bulky to carry home (sets of the “Encyclopaedia Britannica,” one for $100 and another for $150, and a 61-volume set of the works of Erle Stanley Gardner, offered at $100 “as is.”
As is my habit at this store, I had a good number of books in my cart, then found a place to sit and weed most of them out for various reasons. I wound buying only three books and a calendar ($15.67).
I had a fairly short wait for the #1 Bus back to the Transit Center, and a long wait for the #383 Bus. By this point my clothes and body were really stinking from being around dirty people on the bus and going back and forth between cold and overly warm environments. I was also very hungry and gassy at this point….
I got to my neighborhood, picked up some meds and groceries, and had a difficult walk back home, trying to deal with a heavy backpack, bags on either shoulder, and warm-up pants that kept sliding off my hips.
Around 4pm, when I got home, Belle was sitting by the front window, waiting for me, but was facing the living room. She seemed to be asleep. Her eyes were semi-closed, and she was shaking. I got scared that she had eaten something bad for her and was fatally ill, but she woke up and I concluded that the shaking was the result of her sitting too close to the cold windows.
We took our walk, I took a much-needed shower, and then had a dinner of French bread, locally-made olive oil (which had a wonderful hint of pepper, and several cups of Sunny D.
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[Part of an Instant Messaging conversation with a friend.]
JRD–i was thinking yesterday about that detective novels where the guy describes sandwiches in great detail….
ME–sandwiches?
JRD–sandwiches?
ME–maigret is a big foodie
JRD–I think it is Lawrence Sanders The First Deadly Sin series.
ME–one of my mom’s favorites.
i think he did a series about a spoiled rich young dude who moves back in with his parents and solves mysteries in palm beach, FL.
JRD–didnt nero wolfe get into something like that too?
ME–well he was a foodie
he was very specific about how he wanted certain dishes prepared. i have a cookbook with recipes from all his books. i have none of the wolfe mysteries, however.
JRD–“Once he burned up a cookbook because it said to remove the hide from a ham end before putting it in the pot with lima beans. Which he loves most, food or words, is a toss-up.”
ME–also, spenser, the robert b. parker detective, is a big foodie.
i assume poirot is finicky about food, but ive not read any of those books either.
JRD–indeed….
ME–i almost bid on an old set of comptons encyclopedia because it was the same vintage that robert e howard had.
JRD–nice
ME–the britannicas i saw at hpb were $100 and $150
you can get some encyclopedias for fairly cheap, but the shipping charges are mofos.
ive seen some that look amazing that are from 1900-1940.
JRD–its odd…i dont really have a desire for encyclopedias like i did for the dictionaries.
ME–i still want a webster’s 2nd. they had one at the library bookstore, but wanted too much for it.
im afraid to go back there and find all the reference books i was looking for at the faulk a few mos. ago. bastards.
JRD–i didnt follow that.
ME–i went to the faulk a few months ago to look stuff up and all the reference books i wanted were gone and they said they are paring down for the big move. im certain i told you that because you said getting rid of reference is a mistake.
JRD–now i follow
ME–i tried to look the books online, but one has a paywall.
JRD–which one?
ME–the dictionary of national biography. it’s british. you can find some articles online, but not all. they give you a little taste.
JRD–it worked for me with just my APL card #.
ME–hmm
JRD–give me an example to look up….
JRD–nothing for me to look up in national biography?
I wanted to test it out….
ME–frederick james furnivall, frederick locker-lampson, and james halliwell-phillipps
JRD–“Furnivall, Frederick James (1825–1910), textual scholar and editor, was born on 4 February 1825 in Egham, Surrey, the eldest of the nine children of George Frederick Furnivall (1781–1865) and Sophia Hughes Barwell (1794–1879).”
about 4 pages on him.
ME–bully
JRD–Lampson, Frederick Locker- [known as Frederick Locker] (1821–1895), poet, was born on 29 May 1821 at the Royal Naval Hospital, Greenwich, Kent, where his father, Edward Hawke Locker (1777–1849), held the office of civil commissioner, an appointment gained in part through Frederick’s grandfather William Locker, a naval captain and lieutenant-governor of the hospital from 1793.
only 1 page on him.
ME–that’s odd
JRD–Phillipps, James Orchard Halliwell- (1820–1889), antiquary and literary scholar, was born on 21 June 1820 at 94 Sloane Street, Chelsea, the sixth of the seven children of Thomas Halliwell (1777–1849), a prosperous linen draper from Chorley, Lancashire, and his wife, Charlotte Ann (1789–1849), daughter of Esau Marsh of London. He took the additional surname Phillipps in 1872, following the death of his father-in-law, Sir Thomas Phillipps.
bout 3 pages.
ME–sounds about right
JRD–interesting…
“Personal events now intruded upon Halliwell’s routine: on 6 February 1872 Sir Thomas Phillipps finally died, stipulating in his will that ‘neither James Orchard Halliwell … nor his wife shall ever be allowed to enter into Thirlestaine House,’ where the legendary Middle Hill library remained. By the will of her grandfather, however, Henrietta inherited the Middle Hill house and estate, and she and James obeyed the testamentary conditions at once, adopting the additional surname Phillipps—an ironic tag, after a lifetime at bitter variance.”
ME–phillipps was the guy who wanted to collect ever book ever printed. his son-in-law was a shakespearean scholar and a sometime book thief….
ME–so i was in hpb standing next to the collectible children’s books, with a fat stack of papers of book lists clipped together, checking to see what i did or didnt have, when this woman came up to me and asked for my help finding a certain book.
JRD–kewl
ME–i said, ‘well, actually i dont work here, but that guy (pointing to a passing guy in hpb t-shirt) does.
ME–we all laughed and the guy went to look it up–it seems they have their inventory online now–and i told the woman not to worry, that i get that all the time, and that i actually did work for the company years ago….
JRD–did you watch new new Bowie Major Tom video yet?
9 minutes long.
incomprehensible.
ME–ive seen gifs
JRD–but …since I dont get it….I will assume he is a genius and in 20 years I might catch up.
ME–well, when i watch it i’ll tell you about it.
JRD–warning it has a lot of christ-like imagery in it.
ME–so does my writing
JRD–i dutifully watched the whole thing in honor of Bowie.
or respect…yeah respect
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Dinner: about 14 inches of a $1.98 supermarket baguette, a good deal of excellent locally-made olive oil, which a friend gave me awhile back and which has just a hint of pepper to it, and several cups of Sunny D.
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Someone posted–wet dream: being financially secure with a career i enjoy
Someone posted–Tagged: God if I could just edit video all day and make enough money to support me and a dog, That would be my dream, Or to run a dog shelter, Fucking capitalism undervalueing my skill set.
ME–My dream is to find a benefactor for my middle and later years, so I don’t have to worry about bills, and have enough left over for books, DVDs, and occasional travel. And also have someone cook, clean, and drive for me. Then I could get on with the serious business of being an unpaid, unappreciated Internet entertainer and pompous pedant.
The dog I already have. But I would love to have enough money to regularly throw a good chunk of it at animal charities. If I ever get around to finishing my will I intend to have all of my stuff sold (basically my library), with the proceeds going to animal charities.
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Someone posted–
*sees dog* nice
*sees dog wearing a bandana around its neck* nice
ME–Someone sent me a doggie bandana awhile back, but I’ve not tried it out on my dog yet.
But I know people who dress their female Bassets in old-fashioned Laura Ingalls Wilder bonnets and dresses.
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I always get annoyed when I see conservative friends post formulaic messages on patriotic holidays thanking “the men and women of our armed services, past and present, for all the freedoms we hold so dear.” If these people actually gave a shit about freedom and their country in general, they’d get off their asses and destroy the systems and the people who are robbing us of our freedoms and generally fucking up the country. Love of country is a pointless activity when it’s preserved in amber.
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I was at Half-Price Books today and I got really annoyed with this one father. He had a son that was maybe three or four, and he kept ordering the kid around: “Put that back….No, you didn’t put that back the right way. Go put that back the right way….Now go pick out a gift for [your sister]….No, that’s something you’d like. Get something for [your sister].”
But what really pissed me off was the little boy really wanted one book and this asshole of a dad said, “But that book’s for babies. You’re not a baby are you? You don’t wanna be a baby, do you? So put it back.”
I just wanted to slap the dog shit out of that guy and say, “Let the kid get what he wants. If you don’t think it’s appropriate for his age, who gives a shit? He’ll be grown soon and have to face the unrelenting hell of adult life. Let him have a little happiness while he still has the chance!”
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Sunday, November 22nd–
One of the apartments in the next building over already has a fully decorated Christmas tree in the living room. I’m coming to believe that the Christmas season in the US now starts at sunrise on November 1st, or November 3rd if you’re a Latino (due to the Day of the Dead).
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Though I was exhausted I wound up staying up until about 3am.
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I think I had a dream involving my mother and grandmother. They had saved the old farmhouse that used to be on our property in Bellville, and had enlarged and modernized it. I came to visit and was amazed by the changes, though the upstairs rooms still had creaky floors and there was an overall feeling that the place was going to collapse at any second. I think the house had at least three or four upstairs bedrooms.
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We got up around noon, walked, ate, then went back to bed around 2pm. We got up again around 8pm or so.
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My Basset Hound likes to play “Keep Away” with my slippers when I wake up. Usually she just sits on one so I have to grope around to try to find it. Tonight she upped the ante by leaving a large, cold, and coiled poop inside one of my slippers. Fortunately I had turned on a flashlight, so I didn’t step in it.
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Dear Donald Trump: I’m sure you could get Ted Nugent and Hank Williams, Jr. to record a kick-ass version of “The Horst Wessel Song” for you to use during your campaign if you only ask them nicely.
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Someone posted–When you get this, reply with 5 things that make you happy. Then send this to the first 10 people in your activity.
ME–
1) Books
2) Animals–especially dogs
3) To crush my enemies.
4) To see them driven before me.
5) To hear the lamentations of their women.
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Everyone wants to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.–Oprah Winfrey
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Someone posted–mentally crafting incredibly angry speeches that i will never say to all the people i hate is my favorite hobby.
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Monday, November 23rd–
It’s a shame Leni Riefenstahl isn’t around to film the Trump campaign. She’d know exactly how to cover it.
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Tuesday, November 24th–
We retired around 11am and got up around 7pm.
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I woke up in the middle of the night last night, stumbled into the kitchen to get a snack, and started quietly singing Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour,” only it came out as “My Sharia Law.” My brain is a strange place to visit.
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Sorry E-bay sellers, but I’m not paying $9.00 for an ex-library book of dubious condition and with no dust jacket. I’m not that much of a rube. I’ve probably bought more books in my life than you’ve had hot meals.
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Someone posted–‘They’re our babies:’ Dozens of dogs and cats killed in animal shelter fire
ME–This bothers me a lot more than any human tragedy ever could.
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Wednesday, November 25th–
We retired around 7:30am and got back up at 4:30pm.
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Someone posted–Joseph Goebbels being told the photographer Albert Eisenstaedt is Jew, 1933 via reddit
ME–I give people that look a lot, especially if they use “impact” as a transitive verb or speak with up-talking or vocal fry.
Really, there’s hundreds of reasons I give people that look.
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Someone posted–“Paracosm”
(noun) Psychology. Paracosm is an extremely rare word defining the imaginary world constructed in one’s mind, specifically by children. It is an infinite fantasy, anything can exist from animals to aliens and entities foreign to outsiders. Anything is possible in this fantasy milieu, one has their own language, experience, geography and history. Parcosm is usually developed as a result of high creativity, problem-solving, and others theorize: high intelligence.
ME–This was my life up to about age 13. Now it mostly just exists in my dreams when I’m not having nightmares.
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Someone posted–So, Apparently Giles From “Buffy” Runs Some Kind Of Animal Rescue Charity
ME–From ass-kicking librarian to animal saviour–that’s a career trajectory I could deal with.
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Someone posted–Praying for those who work 9 to 5’s. Praying for those who work night shift. Praying for those who work doubles. Praying for those who are working part-time but are in need of full-time hours. Praying for those who just lost a job. Praying for those who are ready to quit.
Someone posted–I hope you all are happy and your internal condition is adequate.
ME–
Praying for restaurant and supermarket personnel who have to work on Thanksgiving.
Praying for anyone who has to work retail on Black Friday and the Christmas season.
Praying for those who don’t get to have a proper Thanksgiving,
Christmas, New Year’s, or other holiday because they have to get up early the next day for work.
Praying for everyone who has to open.
Praying for everyone who has to close.
Praying for anyone who has been threatened with termination because the amount of money in the register drawer didn’t match the amount on the register tape.
Praying for anyone who has been threatened with termination for arriving to work two minutes late.
Praying for anyone who can’t afford to properly fix the car they depend on to get to and from work because they are paid too little.
Praying for anyone who is given only twenty minutes each shift for lunch, and gets indigestion from having to eat that fast.
Praying for those who eat lunch with the break room door closed because they don’t want customers of co-workers to see them crying.
Praying for everyone in the food services industry who is given a free meal before, during, or after their shift, which has smaller portions and lower quality than what the customers get in the front of the house.
Praying for anyone who has to deal with an obnoxious boss, rude, entitled customers, and shrieking children.
Praying for anyone whose job requires them to be constantly on their feet and risk foot, leg, and back problems.
Praying for everyone who is expected to do extra work off the clock, such as taking the business’s cash and checks to the bank after closing.
Praying for those whose burdens are increased with “work holidays,” which involve extra hours on top of their regular shifts.
Praying for anyone who is so exhausted from work they have trouble getting to sleep, and don’t get enough sleep to deal with the next day of work.
Praying for anyone whose place of business gets robbed, and especially for those whose bosses think it was an inside job.
Praying for anyone without insurance or who gets turned down for disability.
Praying for anyone who gets bullied by a boss, a co-worker, or a customer.
Praying for everyone whose family and friends suggest that if they’re not earning enough that they should take a second or third job.
Praying for everyone who has applied or interviewed for a job they didn’t really want.
Praying for those whose bosses suspect them of substance abuse for missing so many days of work, when in fact they just hate going to work and it’s taking a toll on their physical and mental health.
Praying for those who die a little every day they go to work or who would rather be dead than take another crappy job.
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Did we retire again around 6:30pm?
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Thursday, November 26th–
We got up about 7am. I was very uncomfortable and irritable because I’d been hot for much of the time I was asleep.
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I was trying to follow some sites, only to learn I was following too many. So now I’m unfollowing quite a few. If a site hasn’t had a post in three months or more, out it goes, through the door or out the window.
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It’s early Thanksgiving afternoon in Austin.
Two weeks ago I was sweating like a pig.
One week ago I was freezing.
Today I have the balcony windows open so my dog can go in and out as she wishes.
Across the parking lot a neighbor is rehearsing her piano with a window open.
This she seems to do every waking hour.
I don’t mind it.
I think she’s playing Chopin.
I am wired after drinking coffee for the first time in over a year.
The coffee was a gift from a friend who was kind enough to leave the package at my front door and not wake me up.
I am thankful today that I didn’t have to take a long, stressful trip by car, bus, train, or plane to go stuff myself with a meal that is about five times the amount of food that I eat in a single day, while painfully attempting small talk and enduring the blare of a football game from a nearby TV.
I am thankful that today I have twelve brand new pairs of socks—none with holes in them, a roof over my head, a full pantry, all my utilities still connected, enough medications to keep me knocked out for hours on end, and a big floppy dog and a library that love me.
I am thankful that I can’t remember the last time I cried or pondered suicide.
I am thankful I won’t be working a service industry job over the holidays.
I am thankful that the gorgeous, delicate pastel marks of Frank Reaugh are still sharp in my brain a months or so after last looking at them in person.
I am thankful I’ve retained my curiosity and have many subjects I still wish to investigate.
I am thankful I have six bottles of paint waiting for me to do violence on paper with them.
I am thankful for the contented Basset Hound snoring like a tugboat at my feet.
Things could be much worse.
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Time is heavy sometimes; imagine how heavy eternity must be.–E. M. Cioran, The Book of Delusions
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Someone posted–i don’t feel like i’m old enough to be my age
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“We all suffer for each other, and gain by each other’s sufferings; for man never stands alone here, though he will stand by himself one day hereafter; but here he is a social being, and goes forward to his long home as one of a large company.” — Blessed John Henry Newman
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Someone posted–Every socialist is a disguised dictator.–Ludwig von Mises
Unlike Engelbert Dolfuss, the austrofascist premier which Mises served as an economic advisor to, who was openly a dictator.
ME–Actually, anyone who reads my blog with any kind of regularity would know I’m pretty open about my dictatorial inclinations. I’m not really interested in hearing the other side’s opinions.
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I hate holidays so much.
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I’m sitting here getting angrier and angrier because I hate when other people are happy.
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Learn to be alone and to like it. There is nothing more freeing and empowering than learning to like your own company.–Mandy Hale
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Someone posted–I’ve found that a lot of non-pill treatments work for my depression. In the spring and summer months I can obstruct my anxiety and depression with exercise, weed, going out with friends, and ample time spent in the sun. The endorphins are good.
But during the winter, these options diminish or disappear. Netflix and Seamless are poor replacements for sunshine and jogging. And they make me lethargic and unhealthy: booster shots for depression. While I fight my internal will, I’m trying to commit to better methods of management.–Winter Is a Black Hole: How I Deal With Seasonal Depression
ME–
A friend who is physical and active by nature keeps getting upset with me for not getting out and doing exercise. But I don’t like going outside in any weather, at least here in Texas.
I feel dirty when I’m outside. I get angry when I perspire. It’s painful to walk, run, lift weights, cycle, or even stand up. I don’t know how to swim and don’t want to be seen in public in a state of undress or swim in the same water used by my filthy neighbors.
If I have to choose between being miserable all the time and breaking a sweat, I’ll choose misery.
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We die as we lived. Whatever was most important in life, will consume us at death. Whatever attachments we had will become evident then.–Yasmin Mogahed
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The last Thanksgiving my father was alive he dominated the conversation, holding forth about how a friend of his was murdered by his wife and the cops wrote it off as suicide for her sake because the guy was abusive. My dad said, “Usually, when men kill themselves, they point the gun at their temple or they stick the barrel in their mouth. Women either point the gun at their heart, or try to use pills, or other methods. But Tommie was gut-shot, which is a slow, painful way to die. And he was found in the doorway between his den and his garage, which is a strange place to kill yourself. The cops knew how Tommie treated Lou, because they were always getting called out to their house after they had a fight. I think the cops knew Lou didn’t deserve to go to prison.”
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We retired around 10:45pm.
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Friday, November 27th–
We got up about 8:45am.
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Someone posted–“Forever isn’t for everyone.”
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There are two ways of telling your story. One is to tell it compulsively and urgently, keep returning to it because you see your present suffering as the result of your past experiences. But there is another way. You can tell your story from the place where it no longer dominates you. You can speak about it with a certain distance and see it as the way to your present freedom.–Henri Nouwen
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Nap time!
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We went back to bed about 11:30am and got up again around 3:30pm. I’d been awakened by the heavy rain storm.
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Someone posted–“I’m dead, dear, not stupid.”
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I don’t want to have to be the one who mourns everything when everyone else has clearly forgotten. It’s mortifying. It’s mortifying to be the one who remembers.–Ryan O’Connell
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Someone posted–If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.–Juan Ramon Jimenez
ME–Funny you should say that. When I was in 4th grade, my school district had its own handwriting specialist. She drew up a handwriting model we were all to follow, and whenever we wrote anything on ruled paper we had to put a piece of cardboard under it that was covered with right-slanting lines.
Ever since then I have made a point of writing as different from that lady’s standard as I can. She’s why I write a dollar sign with two vertical strokes through the middle instead of one.
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ME–There’s nothing wrong with you that owning a Snuggie wouldn’t fix.
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To my great surprise, three of the books I’d ordered arrived today:
Sacheverell Sitwell–The Gothick North.
Dirk Bogarde–A Postillion Struck By Lightning.
Dirk Bogarde–Backcloth.
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Saturday, November 28th–
A little after 2pm I went out into the cold, paid my rent, then went to HEB, paid my AT&T bill, and bought some groceries. On the way down there and back it was very difficult for me to breathe, and I felt as if my lungs and chest were about to explode. It took more than three hours for me to feel normal, or perhaps I didn’t really feel normal until after I’d gone to bed.
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I just came back from walking two miles to the supermarket and back in the cold. The entire time I was outside I thought my chest was going to explode due to my difficulty in breathing.
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Someone posted–One time I used my retail voice on a coworker and she was like, “Don’t use your customer voice on me, I know you’re dead inside like the rest of us, it’s just frightening and weird”
Someone posted–The other day I asked for a table for two in my customer voice and the waitress squinted at me and I cleared my throat and said “Sorry, still in service mode” and she dropped hers and we swapped stories about our day and my boyfriend was like “You two just became two entirely different people in like .5 seconds…”
Someone posted–I can be bitching up a blue streak about a customer-from-hell while the store is empty, and when the phone rings swap over to my retail voice practically in mid-sentence. I even have managers and salespeople from other stores in the chain fooled into thinking I’m infinitely friendly and helpful, and my manager’s husband thinks I’m one of the most professional people in the store. One assistant manager’s daughter dubbed me Perky-Pants because she mostly dealt with me over the phone, and was shocked to the core when I dropped an F-bomb at her graduation picnic.
Someone posted–The acting required in the service industry is beyond the pale. My cousin freaked out when she came to see me at work because I was all smiling and nice while helping someone who was asking inane questions and who basically forced me to walk them to the product and put it in their fucking hand but I was nice as pie until I turned around to walk away and my demeanor changed back to normal and I muttered “what a fucking moron” under my breath as I got back to my cousin. She just looked at me shocked and said “no wonder you’re so exhausted when you get home.”
Someone posted–this is actually referred to as emotional labor in criminology, and is considered one of the hardest forms of labor.
Someone posted–This is 100% a thing in call centers too. Josh told me he’s basically invented a phone character at work.
Someone posted–Welcome to my life.
Someone posted–I accidentally slipped into “normal me” at work the other day when I was talking about some issues with another manager, and one of the customer just overheard had the audacity to leave a bad review for me and said I should be fired for being “unprofessional and unfit” for my job. No joke.
ME–The sales floor in retail is definitely a stage, while the office, stock room, break room, etc. are offstage.
Anytime I had to open, or my shift started, or I came back from lunch, I had to resume my stage persona:
“It’s showtime, folks!”
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I’m descended from a long line of guys named “Alexander Hamilton:” Alexander Hamilton, William Alexander Hamilton, James Alexander Hamilton, and John Alexander Hamilton, but I’m not related to the famous Alexander Hamilton.
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It’s been almost three hours since I was out in the cold and my chest is still hurting and I’m still not breathing properly.
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Well-informed booksellers can change lives.
I was worked in a used bookstore just before the Internet became popular, and an elderly man came into the store and asked if I could help him find a book. He had been ill for a long time as a child in the 1920s, but he regarded that period fondly because during his illness his mother read to him a novel about a mountain man that had appeared as a serial in “Scribner’s Magazine.”
He assumed the story had eventually become a book, and that the book had gone out of print. He had been looking for the book for something like seventy years.
I found the book for him in a few hours.
I can only imagine how good that made the man feel.
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Always act like you’re wearing an invisible crown.—Author Unknown
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TIME AND SILENCE ARE THE MOST LUXURIOUS THINGS TODAY.–TOM FORD
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Sunday, November 29th–
We went to bed around 12:45am.
We got up about 2pm, walked and ate, then went back to bed around 3:45pm.
We got back up again around 8pm (?), and I puttered around, doing laundry and such.
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Monday, November 30th–
We retired about 6am.
We got up about 5pm. During our walk, some Mexican laborers who were wrapping up work for the day gave us the fish-eye, and one looked like he wanted to take a swing at me.
Belle and I went inside and ate. Belle had some of my vegetarian chili, and since we were out of dog food I gave her the last of her birthday food–chicken fajita strips and chopped carrots with margarine. I went over to Petsmart and got two bags of dog food. When I got back home I sat on the kitchen floor for awhile and worked on my cedar knot project.
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Looks like this will be one of my bad mood days.
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Someone posted--You can tell a lot about a person by how they treat the people who serve them at restaurants.
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Who will you be tonight in your dreamfall into the dark, on the other side of the wall?–Jorge Luis Borges, from Dream, translation by Alastair Reid
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Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you’re 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written; or you didn’t go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It’s going to break your heart. Don’t let this happen.–Anne Lamott
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The Great Indoorsman 