A quote from John Russell, WWII vet and American Actor.  Actors know that sort of thing, paying attention to ‘how they feel’ much of the time.  And indeed, how often I create my own anxiety to amuse myself.  We crave randomness, or the unknown, in varying amounts.  I don’t really need a lot, … [Read more...]

The newly minted New Yorker sneered, "Georgia?  Don't y'all eat dirt down there?"  "Y'all" sounded kind of like "yowl"; apparently up there the subtle differences in diphthongs and intonations escape their ethnocentric sense of hearing.  "Well, actually dirt can have some nutrients and … [Read more...]

This ancient technology is everywhere.  A drive through, a parking lot, apartment entrance, sounds like someone is in a giant, empty can trying to get out. The echo-y "mwa mmnat frenzten?" voice that comes back at us is completely unintelligible but we continue to provide customer voice contact through these lousy speakers in a box.  F'cryin' out loud, even an iPhone … [Read more...]

We spend most of our lives after age 25 fighting entropy.  Entropy, for those of you who probably never even considered taking Thermodynamics in college, is that thing that keeps increasing forever and ultimately ends up with everything in total randomness.  For people, that means ultimately "not being alive anymore". So we spend a huge amount of our daily energy fighting the … [Read more...]

“There he is!”, my father shouted.  He stepped on it to halt its amazingly swift wiggling through the grass and grabbed it behind its head and brought it up to his face.  Daddy was looking carefully at the snake’s eyes and examining the markings.   Tongue flicking around in the air like crazy to get the scent of this totally irritating creature that was causing such a problem.  … [Read more...]

The responses were something like "I use two drops of a tincture of Bulgarian Horse Thistle applied to the crook of my elbow" or "Fugwort Juice and a Nettie Pot". The initial problem expressed by my friend on FB was "I've got this terrible allergy and my eyes itch so bad I can't even go … [Read more...]

I'd been trying to call my wife every night while she was in Italy to see how things were going.  I know she was at a hotel called something like the Baglion or Falioni (great memory) so I'd wait until I was sure she'd be back from working which might be late sometimes. Apparently I had the wrong phone number, but I couldn’t tell because the guy answering the phone every night … [Read more...]

At first I though it was strawberry jam on the towel in the morning after my shower.  What the....  Where did THAT come from?  Of course I had to fool with it some; yup, it was a little tiny hunk of jam.  Wait, no, did it come from me, because allergies (and sinus, and dry nose, and whatever) are working full-on as everything is blooming?  Whoa, there was a little blood.  This … [Read more...]

Those are two windsurfer sails; I've got three more and they taught me about hoarding. I'm going to bore you with technical details: 4.7, 5.2, 5.4, 6.3, and 7.2 square meters, with manufacturer names I love to say out loud to myself. You change sails every few knots or so and frantically rerig for the new wind. From the old days, and I don't think I'll ever use them again; if I … [Read more...]

It's interesting; having an injury, I mean. You know how you forget the bad parts and downplay the ain't it horrible parts? That's so we usually don't get depressed about normal life stuff and end up thinking we live on a horrible planet. Mean old reality sneaked around the back way and nailed me though. Last season I was a pretty good triathlon age-grouper in the old-man … [Read more...]