Reasoning that if it’s good enough for 7-Eleven, it’s good enough for me, I’ve revamped the poll in the right hand corner to meet the mood of the next few weeks.
If nothing else, I should likely determine that my readership leans a bit left.
In August, I posted the results of the poll as to whether should move to California.
To refresh, I ended the poll at 100 votes and 83 percent of the dee-rob.com reading public voted that I should leave. (I like to perversely ponder that there are 83 people who want me the fuck out of their town and/or state and/or general vicinity.)
Today, the M. Poll has hit 100 voters. The results are:
M. goes East/M. stays West
100 votes
Should the amazing M. come on back to be feted at his return?
5 %
5 votes
Should M. keep his Cali mellow and stay in the Golden West?
95 %
95 votes
In opposition (or maybe that’s aposition, but who the fuck cares), I like to non-perversely ponder that M. knows 95 people who either recognize where he belongs or want him to stay in their physical proximity.
Since we both tend to worry that decisions are right and good and mutually beneficial, maybe this survey provides a little background data on how things should work out. Clearly, there is a mandate for him to stay in California. As for me, it’s less of a mandate that I should move, but it’s hardly the kind of poll numbers that would require a rigging of the numbers.
The title line should end “in-out, in-out, just came to read the meter.”
Guess the movie reference and win absolutely nothing.
I got no time to write, though, the baby is returning in just four hours. Picking him up at the airport, and we’re going to go peep some leaves up in Vermont (from where apparently leaves come).
I ain’t never done a romantic-ish, autumn in VT kind of dealio. Sure, I’ve been to Vermont (I’ll never forgive my oldest brother for going to school up in the northern country). The jaunts to look at leaves and eat cider donuts and shit in the autum chill were fucking godawful treks to my 13-year-old self.
My memories include puking up some French onion soup at some wonderous New England fallfest, my aunt pissing off some Canadian French dude with her Parisian French in nearby Montreal, sleeping in bunk beds with my mother (scarring), my must have been 15/16-year-old brother getting carsick repeatedly and annually (couldn’t have been the drinking in the woods the night before the trek) and missing the Stones on “Saturday Night Live,” because the dinky condo TV antenna was unable to reach beyond the mountain valley in which we were nestled. (Yup, kids, I lived before the days of cable and satellite dishes.)
As much as I loved dear old Pat, you did not really want to car trip with this woman. It was a ruthless ride without pity or stops to pee or snack. And, of course, the aforementioned carsick brother and I arguing, punctuated with Pat’s pleading for peace and silence and haranguing on why she ever had such children anyway.
It wasn’t so much leaf-peeping as leaf abuse.
I’m hoping for greener pastures with this trip with M. Sure, he tsks and sighs at me and my remarks as much as Pat ever did. But, he generally wants to pee or eat more than I do, so at least I will be more comfortable.
Who knows, maybe this will be my last New England autumn, a season I really do adore.
I had to buy a new digital camera, and I’m still working on the details on settings and all.
I liked how this pic from the Topsfield Fair educational program on falconry came out (it’s a kestrel, I think American):
This one was my tribute to their tribute to the eagle (someone stuck a flag behind it). I think it’s a Golden Eagle, though, not the American Bald Eagle:
I for one will sleep easier tonight knowing that GWB doesn’t intend to appoint any pro-slavery Supreme Court Justices.
I can’t at the moment decide how petty I am. I put boxes and bags outside my house (on the side of my property not on the street). The pile is well-labeled that it is for Big Brother/Big Sister. Unfortunately, Big Brother’s truck was full today, so they have to come back another time.
I understand BB/BS’s problem. It’s a bit frustrating for me, since I can’t trust the weather to leave so many things outside. But, what can you do? No big deal.
What I feel might be petty, however is my reaction to someone in my neighborhood. Throughout the day, a chick has been coming by and taking a few of the boxes and bags for herself. I’m giving the stuff to charity, so I can’t really mind someone removing the middleman, right?
(I know it’s a chick, because that is the small bit I understood from my old Portuguese neighbors who witnessed two of the takings. For one the old man got her to stop, and for the other, I think, his wife interceded to say it’s cool, since I’m getting rid of the stuff anyway. I don’t have the language necessary to explain why from my tax deduction point of view and the fact I have already made arrangements with BB/BS it’s not exactly the same. Whatever.)
But, I was just walking back from the laundromat, and the bag and box-taking chick had piled the three bags she took (now each half-full) on her curb for trash pickup. Apparently, based on the fact that the bags had been completely full and now were half, there were some items that met her taste or standards. The rest to her is trash. I guess the household stuff in boxes is her treasure, since that hasn’t hit the street (yet).
Fuck you, bitch, if you are going to steal from a charity, at least have the courtesy to give the shit you don’t want back to them.
Now, I’m trying to figure out what signage might convince her or others to do that without allowing them to strew my shit all over or whether I should just shrug and let it go.
I gotta get out of this place.
I must say that I was a tad disappointed at the VP debate. I really wanted Cheney to let it slip that he stays alive by feasting on the blood of minority babies.
Ah well. I wonder whether Dick chuckles at his own cynicism when he smugly says stuff like “I chose to go into public service” in a tone redolent with “Edwards you lawyer whore.” Public servant Dick scrimping and sacrificing, unlike some people…
How does a guy who ran a company that hires out mercenary construction workers to Iraq crank himself up to sound all moral high horsey? Probably calls his lesbian daughter, lets GW read him a bible verse, then downs a shot of bourbon and listens to his pacemaker click. I guess dyke-spawning, Jesus and cheating death would make you feel all tingly and invincible.
His face was so smug during the debate, I kind of expected him to start rolling his eyes and playing with his pen or doodling.
Just put eight or nine (it’s dark and they’re black, so who’s counting) large garbage bags of clothes, bedding and towels and nine boxes of various household items and miscellaneous treasure, including an entire box of toys, in the side alley of my house. If all goes well, Big Brother/Big Sister will pick everything up at 7 a.m. or so.
I get a tax deduction, they get some actually pretty good stuff.
I’m focused and really trying to jettison stuff even if it is in good shape or tugs at my it could be useful instinct. I did pull one thing out of the leaving pile, a craft kit to use an inkjet printer to put whatever you want on a silk scarf. I don’t know, I just have too many ideas for dumb things that would amuse me to wear around my neck.
Feeling good that some stuff is out the door and on it’s way out of my life. I feel even better that a phone call today offers a glimpse into a future path for making a living. I really think I can help set up and get rolling, contribute to and moderate a company’s weblog, and when the project hits the web, I’ll probably write something appropriate here.
The best thing of all with the conference call is that they all knew a bit about my story. There was no need for me to dodge the what happened with your last position bullet. The kharmic twist, which I think actually fits nicely with the non-psychotic, non-violent reality I live, is that I will probably also help them to create policies on ‘blogging for their company. I guess that’s kind of like former criminals who help businesses create security.
And, the mastermind behind this grand scheme of getting my writing, ‘blogging, technology groove on in a potentially paying gig? None other than the legendary M. Sometimes I think his postitive outlook has to be an act or something. But, you know, maybe a little optimism might not kill a girl every now and again. It does dull my tragic, unemployed, working-class heroine character, though.
Too bad I blocked the IP address of the certain group of people whose prying eyes I got tired of seeing on my webstats. I would enjoy their knowing that their stupidity didn’t kill me.
The other day, I started humming “Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me” and then listened to it a few times (both Warren and Linda Ronstadt).
As far as good writing goes, I want to be like the late, great Warren Zevon. He’s funnier and wittier than most comedy I sit through in a week. To my mind, there is just something simple, straightforward and enviable about the following:
She really worked me over good
She was a credit to her gender
She put me through some changes, Lord
Sort of like a Waring blender
The Waring blender reference gets me every time.
There are many things I could and/or should be doing in the physical world, but I’m sitting here living in that nor so vital organ I call my brain.
One thing on my mind is that the thing that sucks about writing and trying to write well and performing and trying to perform well is that words themselves are commonplace. Everyone who has been to school, stood up and recited a book report, believes he’s got what it takes by virtue of literacy and a rudimentary vocabulary. Everyone can read and write, but sure as fucking hell some of them cannot communicate.
Gun to the head, make or break, don’t equivocate speech required and they need not apply.
(Whoa, shit, note to self, do not listen to rap acts on TV while writing here. I just meaninglessly strung shit together in that last sentence, because I liked the way it sounded in my head. Fucking A, I’m getting all Jesse Jackson up in here.)
I’m feeling cranky after a conversation with a soaking, get the guy a towel, wet behind the ears open miker. Good that he was listening, I guess, since I’m not sure I wouldn’t walk away from me. (Actually, I’m pretty fucking certain, I would walk away from me.) But, one thing that was making me crazy in the convo is that many words have none subjective meanings, and I tend to pick my words with those meanings in mind. My panties get knotted when someone reiterates what I say in order to tell me that the difference I am stating is just semantic, when in fact the reiteration provided is inaccurate and the words I used truly different in meaning.
Maybe I should just walk around with a glossary for young people. It would include “killing on stage,” which is something they have never done. It would also include charts to parse the differences in words that are not in fact synonymous, like “smart,” “clever,” “intelligient” and “intellectual” -or- “honest,” “true,” “genuine” and “real” -or- “funny” and the gag-ridden, overwritten, awkward bullshit that a great deal of newbies speak. (Extending this thought to my non-comic life, I guess I would also have a list to explain the non-literal use of words like kill, stab, die, and a thousand other violent or sexual metaphors or hyberbolic phrases.)
Jesus, I wish I know exactly which day in my life was the day I really began to be contemptuously bored by youth. Wish I had a broom to shake at young open mikers to scare and shoo them off the stage. I should buy a housecoat.
Waste of energy on my part, really, allowing the panty knottage. I wish I could repair the broken synapse that makes me believe I can explain myself if I try hard enough, even while all objective evidence screams otherwise.
The more meaningful brain activity I was doing tonight was reading some company ‘blogs and the related article that a few folks have been talking about with me.
The article and the Sun base also had me reading up on fun stuff like open source, mixed source, technology implementation and whatnot. (If I weren’t so lazy, there would be some back-tracking links in that last chunk of that sentence.)
I know first hand about some stuff involving work and weblogs, and I’ve spent months now reading more about people like me, as well as the corporate point of view. Long-term (and/or short-term) it would be nice to make some lemonade out of life’s bullshit (to grind a mixed metaphor), coupled with my writing and ‘puter skills. The first toe in that water will be by phone tomorrow. Probably jinxed it by writing here.
I’m such a dorky, weblogging tool.