Here we go again
Is it just me or has anyone else been suffering a case of deja vu? In late 2002 and early 2003, I remember there was a slow but steady increase in the Bush administration mentioning the dreaded word: Iraq. Now, it seems, as though they have begun this process anew, substituting one lonely letter to create a new word of despair: Iran. The talk about attacking Iran certainly seems to be more and more a part of the steady jingoistic idealism emanating from the White House lately. Don't believe me, check out this article in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh, entitled The Coming Wars. New Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, has stated that a military attack on Iran "is simply not on the agenda at this point." Is anyone else frightened by that simple phrase "at this point?"

Great, it is working. So for a short time the ability topost was lost. Gotta do some quick clean-up of the posts.

The feedback from the last post was grim. I read it back and have to agree. So much boring self-pity and loathing. Not like I lost a limb or anything. . .

Reading the newspaper today makes me feel like washing my hands. So many creeps and cretins--like this kid: http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/news/archive/local_19688881.shtml

Alot for his parents to be proud of. Can't blame that one on video games.

Blasted new year. No, not emphasis on the "occasion" that is celebrated but just the fact that it is new. 2004 left so much undone or overdone. Kinda like I always make eggs. Either runny or rubbery but never really just right. And if eggs are protein (and other good stuff the consistency of snot and such) and akin to meat (come with me on this) which I typically like medium rare to rare then it should be just fine for them to be runny. My typical response to the "How would you like that done?" question is, "Warm blood on the plate. . ." So, again, if the year past was like an episode of making eggs then it figures that there would still be the sense of it turning out "not quite right."

Let me recap the highlights:

1) Nothing
2) ummm, still nothing
3) Green Day with daughter
4) . . .
5) several damn good rounds of golf
6) living in a shithole
7) recurring bouts of self-loathing, doubt, and misery
8) saw steve arnold for 24 hours

See what I mean?

This year has been a sort of slow disaster. Let me recap the lowlights:

1) January-media spotlight
2) subpoenas
3) witness
4) employees from hell
5) all good ideas down in flames
6) let the mad yo-yoing of marriage begin in the spring
7) being the stuff of public rumor
8) plague of locusts
9) sale of house, division of family
10) extra 15 to 20 lbs.

See what I mean? This list could actually go to one-hundred but that would get rather maudlin.
Not that I am unhappy. Just feel like the year was lived with only an 1/8 of a tank running my engine and I was climbing hills the whole way with no gas station in sight.

At least I have a few freinds who give a minor shit about what is happening in my world. Probably safest to speculate that the fuutre will hold about just the same amount of interaction bewteen these folks--my friends--and I. Not really alot of synergy there. Really just wonder why. . . the orbits of our particular moons seem to connect only once every 75 years or whatever atronomical (versus astrlogical) claptrap can be found therein.

This is not a self-pity bullshit rant. It is a bland reflection. Bland like the idea that nutrasweet can cause cancer or that smoking is bad for you. Played out.

Tattoo convention ths weekend. Check it out: www.tattoosbyrick.com

6, 7, 8, 9 January 2005ONEIDA BINGO & CASINO PRESENTSReturn of Ricks 11th International Tattoo conventionGreen Bay, Wisconsin USAOneida Bingo & Casino/Radisson Hotel & Conference Center ComplexRadisson Hotel 800-333-3333 or 920-494-7300Across from Austin Straubel AirportSkin Illustrations IncTattoos By Rick 920-499-7425834 S Military Ave; Green Bay, WI 54304 www.tattoosbyrick.com

Maybe see brad, mike,hoss,diane. Very good.

Just happened to drop by this post opportunity and thought I would. Counting down a few minutes before an interview with a prospective employee. We shall see. . .

And I quote, "If an alarm rings, who calls the fire department?" --Door County Advocate November 27th-28 2004. Apparently the building code in Sturgeon Bay requires that all commercial properties have a "hard wired" alarm system installed but it is not required to be connected to any outside service or have any connection to municipal systems. This seems to me to be an example of a good thought in a vaccum of dumb. It is the classic. "if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make any noise. . .?" So, if a store burns in the countryside, and nobody is around to see it ( or if nobody is alerted via the required fire alarm system that is not linked to anything else) does it actually make any smoke?

Had these thoughts last night:

Flabbergasted
horse-faced, ochre-toothed
smiles--grinning--
rush to join the circus parade
flat-footed and thunderstruck
pint-sized dreams like
worlds layered upon gum
stuck to their shoes


Upon reflection, I wonder if this is the psychosymatic lefftovers of the presidential election. Creepy.

Now read this:

In May, the Columbus (Ohio) City Council approved a building permit for the Faith Christian Center ("On Fire for God") to construct a 52,000-square-foot commercial complex centered on an indoor skateboard park, and including a restaurant, arcade and pro shop, named Godz Xtreme Power Park. [Columbus Dispatch, 5-11-04]

Jesus. No, really. Jeeeeezussss.

Ok, now go here:

http://www.tshirthell.com/store/product.php?productid=08

Just passing the time.
W

So, to begin: http://www.godhatesshrimp.com This is the wackiest thing I have seen in a while.

I wonder about all of these holidays. Whatever this Thankgiving thing is seems like a sham to me. Spending this time "giving thanks" for whatever is much less of a romantic holiday notion than some of the good ones that have to do with mourning the death of people or persons long since deceased. I'll throw the Christian's Easter into this acceptable pot of holidays since it has the whole creepy "back from the dead" angle going for it.

How is a holiday a sham. . . concocted ways to avoid work (for those fortunate enough not to work in the service industry), consume (fuel, food, media) to excess, and argue with the family that you may or may not have. Sure, I sound like a cynic. I have been consistent in that for most of my adult life.

Cynical optimism: Check this out. . . it came from this page--http://www.bobshouse.net/opinion/manual.html


Cynical Optimism: A Manual For Life
This will be highly offensive to people who think that people are basically good. If you are one of those people, don't read this, or alternately, skip down to the part about how to deal with your loved ones. If you do not heed this warning and you get offended, you deserve what you get. Again, don't email me about being offended, because I don't care, and I'll just make fun of you in my Stupid People Hall of Shame. Thank you, drive through.
At first, this was going to be a treatise about how one should go about eliminating anxiety, insecurity, jealousy, and misunderstandings with one's loved ones. But, the philosophy I came up with conflicted with my philosophy of holding the human race in general contempt. So, I will attempt to combine the two into a Grand Unified Theory of Cynical Optimism, or How To Improve Your Personal Life Without Really Trying All That Hard.
The first thing you have to do is divide all of the people in the world (or universe, if you like) into three groups:
Loved ones - family and close friends who you love and therefore care about.
Acquaintances - people you know, who might affect your life, so you might have to care about them.
Everybody else - people you don't know, and therefore don't really affect you or your life directly, or for the most part indirectly.
Once you divide them up, you can apply some simple group-specific rules in order to deal with situations which might normally cause you to be uncertain about things. We'll start with the third group because they're the easiest to deal with. In any situation, you can assume that anyone in the third group is at least one of the following:
An idiot
Out to get you
Crazy
Incomptetent
Untrustworthy
Trying to kill you
Covetous of your stuff By making this assumption, you probably won't be far off the mark, because by applying Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap), only about 10% of the people in the world can tie their own shoes anyway. With this knowledge, you can more effectively protect you and yours from harm's way. [Note: I suppose it might be valid to assume that people you don't know are just folks like yourself. I don't really think so though. Well, unless you fall into one of the above categories.]
This brings us to that pesky middle group of people. You know, the ones you'd rather throw into the third group, but you can't because you work with them, or have to buy toilet paper from them, or you have to get them to change your oil. You don't want to piss them off by treating them like crap, but you're still suspicious of their intentions, because although they appear to be law abiding gainfully employed citizens, Sturgeon's Law is still wandering around there in the back of your mind. Well, I have no really good answer to this, because this wasn't the problem I originally set out to solve. It's also not as funny as group three. So, I'm just going to skip it.
On to group one, loved ones. This one's hard, because you want to treat them like everybody else, because they're the ones most likely to piss you off (only because you're around them so much more than anyone else). But, you can't, because you have to live with them, especially the family ones. And while it's always fairly easy to figure out the right thing to do in any situation, it's not always so easy to do the right thing in any situation, which means that it's easier to just assume they're trying to piss you off on purpose, because this makes it easier to rationalize all the nasty things you want to think about them.
However, this is where my theory comes in (and where I get more than half-serious). Something so many people forget about the people they love is that the people they love also love them. So, how charitable is it to assume that someone you love is trying to make you angry, sad, embarrassed, or what have you on purpose and with malice in their heart? Well, it's not. I've come up with a tentative rule for avoiding these kinds of misunderstandings and bad feelings and even jealousy and anxiety and insecurity about loved ones. You have to make assumptions about things all the time with respect to what's going on with loved ones, especially when you're out of contact with them and something is puzzling you about their behavior or such. The rule is about these assumptions, which are typically the root of all evil.
Rule: Never assume anything negative about a loved one.
That's right. If you're going to have a working assumption about someone you love and you have no data, never ever attribute something bad to them in your assumption. First, you are almost always wrong, and second, it just makes whatever the situation is worse. If you're going to assume something, assume something good, because these are people you love we're talking about here.
Okay, I think I need some examples here to make myself clear. Suppose my good friend Joe was supposed to call me at 5:30 to talk about a fishing trip we're going to take, and here it is 8:00 and he hasn't called yet. Do I assume that he just blew me off and doesn't want to go fishing with me any more? Or do I assume that he got slammed on some work by his boss and has just been so busy trying to save his butt that he just honestly forgot that he was supposed to call me? Both suck, but one attributes malice to Joe. Joe's my good friend, remember? Joe wouldn't do something like that because he's my friend. So, I'd be stupid to attribute malice to Joe.
Another example, then. Jill's mom is talking to her, and says something about Jill's weight. Jill is very sensitive about her weight, and so it's kind of a sore spot, and it hurts her feelings. Now, what should Jill do, if Jill were to apply my rule? Well, Jill should get over it, because this is her mom, and her mom loves her, and wouldn't intentionally say something to hurt her feelings. To do anything else would be to assume that Jill's mom wants to hurt her feelings.
My point here (and I could have written a sentence instead of this long and boring document and gotten my point across, probably) is that so many times we jump the gun and go with the working assumption that our friends and family are trying to hurt us in some way, and we just make the situation worse. So, there you go. :)

Funny. Right on the mark.

Butter-crunch in the nutbin. Finally some peace with the squirrel nut-puncher gone--off to a land of her own make-believe among the other hoodo-guru's of the once-was and now will-never- again- be.

Wonder how many of these types start out crazy--right from birth--and just have their cloak of protection unfurled by over-indulgent parents and the easiest of roads rolled out before them. How is it that I seem to stumble into these idiots at so many turns of the road? Here's a theory: there are so many more of them than I thought that it is more statistically realistic to bump into them than not. Ever had a really good crash of your car? Seems like the recovery from that experience would be so much less mentally maladorous than trying to clean of the shit-storm left by one of these babbling imbecile in the office

Homeopathic makes me think that it doesn't work and is really just intended for people who believe in spiritual imagery as a healing process. I am not an easily convinced corn-flake of the commercial society the media creates. (Sure, I am a target market in so many ways. . .Just like you) Being susceptible to the pangs of need and want like the rest of our slobbering kind, I went down this homeopathic highway to conquer the mystery cold. (Maybe it is just the lingering death of my soul that is clogging my sinus and causing these neck pains) My conclusion is--since there is no drug-interaction precaution--"Do not take anything other than lemongrass and fruitjiuce, kind crap"--that there is no substitute for OTC drugs to really convince you that a cold's ass can be kicked.

Moronic mumblings.
W

No this was not lonliness, but just the thoughts in my head--last post. Maybe the same thoughts in my dughters head--a sort of pleasant melancholy. Do not read me as "alone" or as "morose." It is simply put on as a preist wears a collar. Faith by the fistful. Lost in the land. But I am so far from melancholy, morose or lost. Usually cynically upbeat while waiting for the next disappointment to rear it's head. Often the suprise of learning is a sort of disappointment--like, I shoul dhave seen it coming or I should have known this all before. And meanwhile, on the other side of the coin is my enthusuiasm for the new--finding the "aha" or the "Oh shit" and smiling while it runs away with me.

My sadness is tempered by my satisfaction in the curve of what is being learned. My excitement within the challenge of all that is a "first" or a fiendish condundrum. While i do not likecrossword puzzles, and flinch when confronted with patience and listening, my caution comes from making sure I do not miss those first when they are in front of me. How easy to simply storm past them and never face the challenge. Would only be a way to keep my world very small--life lived too fast can get incresingly narrow for fear of loosing sight of the path before us.

Crunching this out makes feel like this is already understood--and observable. Oughtta get back to bullriding. Looking for those streets of Pamplona as the weather gets colder.

Good.