Month: April 2021

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Conflicted Allegiance

26 April 2021

I probably cannot begin to fathom just how lame my cat thinks I am.  Tichelle brought a garter snake into the house today.   A beautiful specimen it was, maybe about eighteen inches or so.  I noticed her hunkered in an odd place, so I walked in on the tableau.  She and the snake were faced off; I presume she had captured it outside and brought it in to show it off.  They scattered when I blundered in and it hid out under the refrigerator while Tiche kept watch.

I wasn’t about to drag a snake out from under a refrigerator, so I was partially resigned to having to haul it out later to recover a stinking corpse, but nevertheless went about my business and left the cat and reptile to go about theirs.  I am fond of both species, generally, so I wouldn’t wish ill on either.

210426 – Feline Antics
Dear Missus Axis:  My first impulse, again, was to call you about it. Tichelle brought a garter snake into the house. It is presently hiding out under the refrigerator. I wanted to call you and share the laughs and trauma, and maybe the day’s events, but again, I am stalled by the thought that I’ll say something stupid or honest again and then we’d have to spend some quality time nursing injuries.
And now, about an hour or so later: I want to call you back and tell you I rescued the snake. It and Tiche were facing off in the kitchen when I walked back in. The cat went one way and the snake the other, but I threw my vest over one and chased the other outside. Went back and managed to coax it (was a garter snake, but sizable enough for a painful bite, and I didn’t want to risk overreacting and injuring it further) onto a sheet of cardboard and got it about halfway to the door when it crawled off, but I still managed to herd it to the front (the cat had gone out back.) I praised and apologized to Tichelle already, but I still feel very good about rescuing a fellow vertebrate from possible severe trauma, and tried to inflict as little as possible myself in the doing thereof.  Meanwhile, Tichelle continues to glare at me and insists that I feed her outside.

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Adventures in Bad Lyrics, vol. I

8 August 2015 – “Do you you feel like I do” that in “this ever changing world in which we live in” that Peter Frampton and Paul McCartney may well be the worst lyricists in the history of getting paid for it? Mick Jones comes close.

“Viva Agora,” says I, and “Hear hear!” and “Tell it, brother!” Maybe I’m a little too sensitive to bad lyrics, as they can interfere with my appreciation of otherwise enjoyable tunes. This is why I am most grateful currently to Choice Inns and their advertisers’ recent co-option of the formerly execrable “Shall I Snivel or Shall I Moan?”. A plaintive lament that not only misses the obvious point, and therefore asks the wrong question, but asks it over and over and over. (C’mon Mick, think this one through. If you left there would be trouble. If you stayed it would be double. ARITHMETIC HAS SOLVED YOUR PROBLEM!) I would (and still do) cringe whenever it comes out of public audio. Now, however, when I hear that “Class reunion’s coming fast” while indulging in mindless video, I actually attend and enjoy. So again I say, “Viva Agora!” (and “Please John, help Paul with his lyrics.”)

2 February 2018 — Long time side hustle — delivering groceries and sundries to shut ins and the infirm. Had a bit of a scare last year. Loyal clients, Lena and Percival (Do NOT call him “Percy”) Whitney, reported that Whit had lip cancer, allegedly from his years of “dippin’ chew.” He’s outta the woods now, minus that tumor, parts of his lip and jaw, and four teeth. But otherwise cancer free. Now my quandary: Whit’s renewed his customary order, two logs a week, long cut, straight (“tobacco flavored!”), but Lena’s giving me grief over “enabling him.”
Look, he’s expecting delivery on his front deck tomorrow morning,
so you tell me:
Al-though… His wife… Wants him to quit,
Should I leave Whit chew? …
update 190716:  “That’s why I got chew on my my eend!”

5 February 2018
I’ve been struggling to make this song sound right.
But every thing I scrawl is tiresome, weak, and trite.
Perhaps it’s time to quit, and maybe say “Good night.”
Then I’ll revisit this in the morning light.
How many lines do you think I should end with “you?”
Do you think that ten is a bit too few?
Should I check my thesaurus and find a clue?
Or scrap this mess and start anew?
What’s a lad to do, when nothing rhymes with “you?”
It’s a task I rue, ‘cause nothin’ rhymes with “you.”

3 March 2018 — Los Angeles is clearly both a discotecque and a country club.
Furthermore, four out of five happy shiny people are holding other happy shiny people. One of them is holding a happy shiny person holding hands, and that one is holding nothing but hands.
And now that we’ve got that straight, is it the “hippy hippy shake”
or the “hippy shake shake?”

“Adventures in Bad Lyrics” is sponsored by The Confederate Mint (purveyors of metallic securities in gold, silver, copper, and lead).  For sample sheets of Metallic Certificates (total face value One Tenth Silver Dollar) send One Silver Dime plus a self-addressed stamped envelope; or Four United States Legal Tender Federal Reserve “Dollars” in scrip, check, or money order, to Greigh Area Associates, c/o Gene Greigh //  401 Rio Concho Drive, #105;  San Angelo, Texas;  76903

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“But I Was Just Trying to Help!”

29 April 2018

Maybe.
I’m not so sure.
You certainly weren’t actually helping.

People who want to help generally help, and one of the first things they do is make sure they’re not doing the opposite of helping. And one of the last things they’ll ever do is whine about just trying to help.

People who want to appear helpful won’t do anything until someone is watching. I tend to think most of them are creepy weasels, but I get them. Getting ahead requires getting seen and you want your efforts to count for something. If they think the boss is watching and they’re helping me out then that’s good enough for me.

The most loathsome of all types are those who wish to feel helpful. They don’t care about you or the boss, they’re just mostly sad schmoes who crave validation. If you’ve ever had a child “help” you in the kitchen you get it immediately. At least with the child, you have the advantage of imparting valuable skills, so the hassle is worth it. Alleged grown-ups who blunder in and mess up your rhythm (at the least of it) and feel all good about what swell people they are are using you to masturbate.

If I don’t want to go several blocks out of my way, the last turn to get to work is a left across two lanes of traffic. It’s a busy neighborhood with about a half a dozen vendors clustered close to the Interstate, but there’s a turn lane in the middle of the street, so I’m content to wait.

Sometimes some motorist will stop in one of the oncoming lanes and gesture for me to pass in front of him. He’s often less than a block from the red light so it probably costs him nothing, and if I can see that it’s safe, I’ll cut in and smile and wave and be done with it.

However, and too often, I will not be able to see that it’s safe. There are a couple of parking lots bleeding into that right lane on busy nights, and if he’s in his left lane I can’t see through him, so I don’t always know whether it’s safe. If I’m T-boned turning in front of traffic, I’m the one charged with failure to yield. Let alone maybe dead. Meanwhile, in this alleged super-hero’s lane, traffic is stacking up behind him and all they can see now is that green light at the intersection. So he’s not just using me to feel good about himself. Now he’s hijacked the time of all the hapless drivers behind him. Finally, he gets fed up and proceeds to exercise his right of way, but makes a point of screaming at me as he drives by because clearly I am the parasite commandeering everybody’s time.

update 230201, contra The Alleged Super-Hero and his Angry Fans, correspondent Mykpogdyf Mminx responds:  “I can see this so vividly in my mind’s eye as you describe it. And you are spot-on. In some people’s needy, soul-sucking fervor to appear virtuous, other people can get hurt. Plus, it’s straight-up cringe-worthy watching them preen and puff-up preemptively to doing ‘their good deed‘.”
 # (cross-hatched tag) whattagoodboyami

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Secular Hymns

17 April 2021

Proper “secular hymns” are few and far between, so sometimes I have to accept small compromises in some of the lyric or music quality.  But if it otherwise meets my criteria, I am eager to embrace it. 

When it comes to “spirituality” I guess you could say that I’m a Dawkinsian.  As an atheist materialist, I am neither depressed by, nor resentful of, my mortality.  I don’t approve of it, either, but I get it; it’s the way entropy works on Earth.  If it weren’t so, I wouldn’t exist in the first place.  Still, like Richard Dawkins, I’m not depressed because I have to die, I’m delighted that I get to die, because that means that I have LIVED.  I was one of the lucky few who manifested a consciousness from this organic soup, and I get to experience a tiny fraction of the wonders of the universe.  Even if our parents are intent on procreating, assuming they ever meet, the odds against us are still billions to one.

For me, a proper secular hymn captures that aspect of our existence.  As we are poised between existence and oblivion, between civilization and savagery, between mud and mind, between matter and spirit – may we experience joyous gratitude for it all.  And while Johnny Cash, as a professed Christian himself, may not fully endorse my interpretation of his work, I have no hesitation in recommending it.

Herewith, selections from the “official”
Secular Hymnal of Matthew 6:6 Ministries,
as selected and fully endorsed by Rector Lawrence,

Flesh and Blood, by Johnny Cash (1970)

Beside a singing mountain stream, where the willow grew,
Where the silver leaf of maple sparkled in the morning dew.
I braided twigs of willow, made a string of buckeye beads.
But flesh and blood needs flesh and blood, and you’re the one I need.

I leaned against a bark of birch and I breathed the honey dew.
I saw north bound flock of geese against a sky of baby blue.
Beside the lily pads I carved a whistle from a reed,
Mother Nature’s quite a lady, but you’re the one I need.

A cardinal sang just for me, and I thanked him for the song,
And the sun went slowly down the west and I had to move along.
These were some of the things on which my mind and spirit feed,
But flesh and blood needs flesh and blood, and you’re the one I need.

So, when the day was ended, I was still not satisfied,
For I knew everything I touched, would wither and would die.
And love is all that will remain and grow from all these seeds,
Mother Nature’s quite a lady, but you’re the one I need.
Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood, and you’re the one I need.

Material Girl, by Peter Brown & Robert Rans (1984)

Some boys kiss me, some boys hug me, I think they’re okay.
If they don’t give me proper credit I just walk away.
They can beg and they can plead but they can’t see the light, that’s right!
Because the boy with the cold hard cash is always Mr Right.
‘Cause we are living in a material world and I am a material girl.

Some boys romance, some boys slow dance, that’s all right with me,
If they can’t raise my interest, then I have to let them be.
Some boys try and some boys lie, but I don’t let them play, no way!
Only boys that save their pennies make my rainy day.
‘Cause we are living in a material world, and I am a material girl.

Boys may come and boys may go and that’s all right you see.
Experience has made me rich and now they’re after me.
‘Cause everybody’s living in a material world and I am a material girl.

Something Tame and Something Wild,
by Mary Chapin Carpenter (2016)

There’s a shoebox full of letters, bound up neatly with some twine.
Each one was like a diamond, now the jewel is lost to time.
My reward is in the knowing that I held it in my hands for a little while.
What else is there but the treasures in your heart,
Something tame and something wild.

For every time that I’d been foolish when I wished that I’d been wise.
The power of regret still gets me right between the eyes.
Sometimes I want to weep with nothing but the tears of a little child.
What else is there but the lessons of your heart,
Something tame and something wild.

There’s a map I’ve memorized of everywhere I’ve ever been,
And the faces of everyone I’ve loved and left to try again,
I couldn’t make out what they were saying,
So instead, I listened hard to what’s inside.
What else is there but the voice inside your heart,
Something tame and something wild?

Some nights I’m woken up by something stirring in my chest,
It’s a feeling I’ve no name for, it’s hard to catch my breath.
I’m staring down the great big lonesome,
As I’m listening for the dwindling of time.
What else is there but the echoes in your heart,
Something tame and something wild.

So the things that matter to me now are different from the past,
I care less about arriving than just being in the path
Of some life carved out of nothing,
The way it feels when the universe has smiled.
What else is there but the beating of your heart,
Something tame and something wild.

There’s a shoebox full of letters, there’s the map I won’t forget,
The voices and the lessons and the signals that connect us
Manifestly to the spirit way deep down where it goes unseen by the eye.
What else is there but the love inside your heart,
To a life, like a fireworks to a spark, over and above you in its arc,
Something tame and something wild.

disclaimers:  These authors quoted above are not being compensated (beyond publicity) for my inclusion of their works here.   (If you like it, buy their stuff!)

more?
The Long Way Home, by Mary Chapin Carpenter
The Greatest Love, by Jane Olivor
Sing!, by Joe Raposo
Oh Very Young, by Cat Stevens (aka Yusef Israel)

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Commie Trek®

12 April 2021 — Star Trek® is a wonderful fantasy whose benign communism only works internally because replicator tech has eliminated most scarcity. As a consequence, there’s no need for mass murder to balance the books. It’s make believe, and many Trekkies know this, and we try to be patient with our leftie friends. But it’s hard. Sometimes it’s really really hard.

210712 — Speaking a bit more than nonsense, and, “as a huuuuuge Star Trek fan.….” a cordial correspondent agrees with my assessment. “But even in Star Trek, we humans are still subject to our natures. With a replicator and a holodeck, what makes you want to go out and be a productive member of society? Replicate some burgers and go plug in Lonely Space Vixens XVIII® .“

230907 — correspondent Towlej Jumuk points out that “even with the replicators Star Trek® had quite a bit of capitalism. Kirk® trading for Dilithium Crystals®, poker game in the next generation.” Jum includes this comment from Captain Janeway® to Commander Tuvok®: “No matter how vast the differences may be between cultures, people always have something that somebody else wants. And trade is born.” I am grateful to both Jum and Janeway’s writers for the reminders. Hopeless leftists that they are, they can’t help themselves. Trek® writers try to depict realistic human emotions, and human action ALWAYS spawns rational market activity. Bless their squishy commie hearts, even as they express the inherent contradictions of their cherished belief systems, doublethink protects them from seeing it.

211009 — in other Trekterpretations®… Spiders are clearly the Klingons® of our present Terrestrial Federation — staunch allies, dangerous foes, and creepy as all get out. Of course I am grateful and respectful, when I find one in the house I usually manage to safely transport it out so that it can resume defending the frontier. I guess that makes Dragonflies the Vulcans ®— also a little weird, but overall benign and exotically beautiful.

shown: Admiral Ball as a young communications ensign,
rockin’ that mini!

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That’ll Learn Me!

3 April 2021

CONGRATULATIONS!

Your submission (of 11 January) “Love is in the Air” has been selected by a panel of 3 Judges as the CTN Short Story 2021 runner-up contest winner. Your award includes:
1. $100 Amazon Digital Gift Card (emailed upon receipt of attached permission/information)
2. Interview/Story published on the CTN website (upon receipt of responses to question/permission found attached
3. Free Book Consultation (must be scheduled) In order to receive your award package, you must respond and return the attached information to justwrite@ctnbooks.com by MARCH 24th 2021.
If we do not receive the return document by this date,
your award will be forfeited. If you have any questions,
please contact us at the aforementioned address.
Again Congratulations! CTN Administrator

Let this be a lesson to me. E-mail is not ENTIRELY bad news and trauma, unless I’m too a-scared to look. Then I miss stuff. Like otherwise good news or deadlines. My response to them:
“I am delighted to learn this ON THE THIRD of APRIL. So… tough break for me, at least in re the hundred bucks! Please feel free to publish it anyway. If a story is any good then it shouldn’t matter whether the author is still alive or gets paid. It’s supposed to be about the story, right? So… where may I see it in print, and how do I purchase copies?

Who would have thought that e-mail could actually be used for something useful or profitable? Well, demonstrably, it still can’t! Anyway… the “winner” in question:

Love is in the Air
MMXI
(Ever wish you could live in a musical comedy? 
No you didn’t.  You know better.)

God I hate spring.  Every year it seems to get worse. 

          I was standing in the middle of the fountain in the middle of the square in the middle of town in the middle of April when I came to.  I was standing with my feet spread wide and I was holding this strange woman.  Startled by my own dawning awareness, I dropped her, and she splashed loudly at my feet.

          She had no beef with me.  I was no more responsible for her dunking than she was.  There’s no telling how wet we might have gotten during the spontaneous production.  I should be the least of her complaints.

          She came up sputtering and looking a little lost.

          The Restoration Crew, resplendent in their powder blue uniforms and shining nickel plated helmets, rushed into the square as I helped her to her feet.  I tried to apologize for dropping her, but she predictably brushed me off – bad enough to find oneself in an intimate embrace with a stranger, no need to prolong the awkwardness.

          A young officer stopped by the edge of the fountain as we made our way out.  “Any injuries here?” he asked.

          I looked at my impromptu dance partner and she shook her head.

          “Nah.  I guess we’re good here, Officer, thanks.”  After he bustled off to tend to other possibly distressed dancers in our ephemeral troupe, I turned back to my erstwhile companion and attempted to apologize again.  I’m new to the city so I guess I’m a little less jaded about all this.

          “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she said, shaking her head slowly, trying still to dislodge the cobwebs in her mind.  “There’s no telling what might happen during one of these numbers.  I guess we’re lucky we’re just wet.  We could’ve danced our way into traffic.”

          “Brrr…”  I shivered from both the cold wind across my drenched trousers and the thought of spontaneous choreography taking us into the oncoming lorries.  Their heavy magnetic shielding may protect drovers from getting caught up in song, but it also necessarily obstructs operators’ views.  All those blind spots don’t help much when some hapless civilian blunders into the road.  “Ouch.  Grease spot is the word,” I agreed.  “That is one nasty way to paint someone’s wagon.”  She smiled and nodded as she wrung out her skirt.

          It’s a good thing, I guess, that there are more suicides in December than in April.  Also that depression is generally less infectious than infatuation.

          Infatuation is wonderful but it’s also the worst.  Things are only new when they’re new, after all, and when infatuation fades it leaves either true enduring love or near mortal embarrassment.  In the meantime, however, it has such empathic potency as to draw disinterested strangers into its orbit.  Collateral damage, some call it.  A bleeding nuisance, says I.  Compulsive choreography kills more innocents than drunk driving, these days.  Cities are getting too big.  If it weren’t for economies of scale, ease of communication, and other wholesome market phenomena, no one (excepting hopeless romantics) would put up with this crap – in spite of the intense reverie one feels during compulsory terpsichore.

          I checked my directional guide and started following the indicator to my case.  Naturally, it had its own little broadcast beacon.  Standard equipment these days.  After happy bums are finished tripping the light fantastic, they could easily abscond with strangers’ goods if we didn’t take such sensible precautions.

          A high pitched peep peep peeping alerted me to the near presence of my satchel so I switched off the beacon and started batting the bushes out of my way to reveal my reports and lunch still safely nested under the hedge.

          Not sure how late I was, I hopped the crosstown trolley, jumped off at the corner of Lerner and Loew, and raced into Hammerstein Centre in time to witness a proposal of marriage.

          Half an hour later I was again looking for my case as I tried to shake the fog out of my head.

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* * Moms DEMAND Action * *

1 April 2021 — DEMAND!
Because to ask politely means that the patriarchy wins,
Or is this just the natural consequence of having married
Uber-woak Soyboys?

130717 — The Babble of the Sexes
Men are almost impossible to understand.
When a man says that he’s looking for a wealthy hot babe with a hefty rack and an unquenchable thirst for fresh semen what he ACTUALLY means is that he’s looking for a wealthy hot babe with a hefty rack and an unquenchable thirst for fresh semen. I understand your confusion. 
Women make more sense.
When a woman says she’s looking for a soulmate who will respect her womanhood, honor her individuality, and help her to actualize her best self, what she clearly means is that she’s looking for a jerk in a leather jacket to treat her like garbage.
See?  MUCH simpler!

190929 — People are funnier than they realize.
It’s a pity they’re not as funny as they think.
191116 — “You know what I mean?” Okeh, so maybe you did speak in a Valley Girl accent. Still…   If I’m supposed to infer that your declarative statement is a question, why don’t you infer that my not contradicting it is an answer?
200103 — Most people are horrible.  Some people are worse.
But that’s just the majority.
200104 — Iran shoots intruder in neighbor’s house.
Intruder’s family vows revenge.
200105 —   Wondering about That Old Guy at the QuikkStopp™
“Why are you always in such a fucking good mood?”
Because I live in a beautiful world filled with music, cats, literature,
poetry, pretty girls, and hard drugs.
“Are you for real?”
I may not be what you expected, but I exist.
200106 — “If it doesn’t come naturally, leave it.” – Al Stewart
He’s not entirely correct, but still…
Nothing fixes a frown so firmly on my face as the insistence that I smile.
Nothing slows me down as effectively as the insistence that I hurry.

200814 – Any time you ask me if it’s a quiet night, it automatically isn’t.
When you ask me how my “night’s going” you are making it worse. If the first word of your directive is “just” then I have already and automatically failed to comply.

210402 — If Lance has his genitals removed and declares his name is now Louise, I’m going to try to be polite and call him Louise.
By the same token, I generally call fake capitalists “Republicans,”
and fake humanitarians “Democrats.”

13 August 2021 – “Don’t Label Me, Bro”  — or –  “Gimme da Kine”

Most of the damage done by tools has been through their misuse.  Most people wouldn’t care to be stabbed with a screwdriver or clobbered by a brick, but survivors would not likely blame the tools themselves.

The damage done with words (tools which denote or describe people, places, things, concepts, actions, or attributes) are accomplished through deceit or conflation.  Deceit is usually clear, and often defensive, but conflation is sneakier.  It is used to distort meanings and positions to link common characteristics with individual misbehaviors – it is an attempt to cover a broad concept with a narrow blanket, as if to say, “Oh, you’re not a ‘Republican?’  Then you must love Hillary.”

In a reflex that closely resembles “I am NOT my Daddy,” people frequently object to labels, as if they were to exclusively define them irrespective of however else they might differ from the pack.  But labels are useful insofar as they help us grasp important differences.  Most of us have a pretty good idea of what “give me a hand” means, but no one understands “that” or “da kine” outside of a context.  If my mate can’t see me pointing at the spanner, I should probably use the suitable label.

“Oh!  You’re with BLM?  You must hate white people.”
“You’re a border hawk?  Why do you hate Mexicans?”
“You’re a lib-uh-terian?  Don’t you like roads?”