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June 30, 2007
Cold, Cruel Internet
The internet went down yesterday.
Probably not the whole thing, just my slice of pie.
Let me tell you how that redefines my world.
When the internet dies, it is worse than a broken marriage.
Tell me I'll feel better knowing it was confined not to one solitary neighborhood. According to the astute 16 year-old I finally got through to, "we're out from Huntsville to Galveston," spoken with cheerleader-like pride.
How is that possible?
I know all about computers crashing. A wonder mine ever reboots, which is why I never turn it off.
Never turn your computer off.
I'm willing to discuss psychological implications.
No email. No blog. No ebay. No yahoo.
I felt alone, abandoned, scared, thrown on my own resources. Have you ever caved in, knees to carpet, staring at a little blinking modem light that sometimes goes completely dark, like some medical monitoring machine in ICU?
Then you realize how silly it all is, take the dog outside, come back and don't worry about it.
What planet are you living on?
Words erupted from my choking throat in a series of one syllable exclamations.
Recriminations of past sins came into play. God comeuppance. Quantum theory meets Einstein. Whatever. Just come back. Come back. Come back.
Tried to call the sixteen year-old again to ask her to please put a thirty-two year-old on the telephone, but all sarcasm was blunted by a steady beep, beep, beep, which made me go to bed feeling lucky in the first place to have gotten through earlier.
All is well now.
June 28, 2007
Laurie Partridge Does DirecTV
Susan Dey wild on electronic keyboard.
Summer days.
David Cassidy always had the lyrics, notes on pitch, which he can still do by the way, but the whole orchestra would have gone south without Miss thin girl, 1972.
Let's talk about something important.
DirecTV is launching two satellites soon from Kazakhstan, and if they don't blow up, your world is going to change.
Why is every day Friday for me?
June 24, 2007
Have a Florescent Day
Bedroom lamp casts a blue, steely glow across Emerson snoozing on a new pillow. How that majestic throne got down to the corner where he sleeps, no idea. Not just a second-hand, "dog" pillow. One of the new pillows from Target.
Lightning struck again in the form of a promise almost too laughable to repeat. DirecTV claims to be sending a technician to my house today to upgrade receiver and satellite dish.
Sunday.
While waiting, wonder how far I might make it into this.
Can Larry still spin a yarn?
McMurtry showed up one day on Book TV. People are rarely what you expect. I know I've been told my voice is "not what you thought it might be." And avatar images hardly tell the whole story.
We rely on incomplete information to fill in the blanks. Take, for example, resume fodder.
June 22, 2007
How I Spent My Summer Vacation
I know I've mentioned this game before, but you can get it now for $29.95.
Stave off ordering two pizzas, and Zoe is yours.
Okay, buy it AND order the pizzas. It is your Saturday, your money, your wasted life.
Primrose path towards utter destitution. The tale begins.
One dark and stormy night, way back in high school, imagine a much younger version of Creechman stealing time away from cheerleaders to pursue glowing green letters on "cathode ray tubes," a little number called "Adventure," line printer hookup to mainframe at the University of Texas.
It wasn't just me, but I was the leader.
It was my heyday before Taco Bell. We would bring Austin to its knees.
The principal would later actually employ the term "miscreant," which I don't really blame him because we got the school in trouble, running up a tidy sum through "inadvertent game play." Actually, we were almost expelled for the slight problem of unauthorized $20,000 charges. Maybe it wasn't quite that much, but I remember it that way. The amount grows every time I tell the story.
Our clan of timid, lost souls plugged away, night after night, in a small room on the 2nd floor of Anderson High School, sharing space with fringe "year-book people."
Some of them were also "thespian people" listening to "Rocky Horror Picture Show" soundtrack over and over again. We had to learn how to live together.
I wonder if they are still there?
Anyway, close your eyes and hear the clatter of printers spitting out reams of paper. We would actually ARGUE over the wisdom of picking up this or that magic potion, whether or not to turn left three times to get out of twisty passages, dropping lamps for gems, misplacing THE MAP.
Bedlam. Chaos. Uproar.
This is what made our parents sit up aghast in the middle of the night.
GEEKDOM at its finest, and we were proud of it.
Now it's all gone. Twisted, scattered memories.
Creative Languor
Hot.
Right here in Houston City, "Horse Latitudes."
You remember that term. Think 16th century sailing ships, alert for gold and glory from the new world, stalled dead in the Atlantic for lack of wind, lime-chewing Herman Melville fans withering under brutal radiation for lack of motivation to twist a limp sail rope round his neck for mercy.
I sense a general "blah" in the blog community.
Malaise might stem from the disappointing cycle of online semi- relationships, always ending in utter destruction, as if mice and broadband could possibly compare with one of those incredibly tasty Schlotsky's lunch pizzas.
Get cute, get serious, offend, laugh it off, copy a YouTube, steal a photograph, Crystal Gayle down River Road, actress contests, tennis stars. Variable avatar images and moods.
So I beg of you, post desperately any fragment of desire. Hold nothing back.
Your best attempt doesn't change the fact no eggs reside in your refrigerator.
Thursday wisdom comes first to those who seek truth in ruing a clever admixture of coffee beans, haplessly combined into sensual delight, recipe never to be successfully recreated.
Let's talk about success.
I have made, through a land-line phone no less, THREE appointments for July: dentist, optometrist, vet specialist. This means I will be able to grind polished teeth in clear focus at images of canine heart ultra-sounds.
"Ultra-sound." I distrust any term containing "ultra."
June 17, 2007
songcopy
Genesis: A Modern Interpretation
Once upon a time, God created Monday.
And the Monday was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the Monday.
And the spirit of God moved upon the coffee pot.
And God said, "let there be blogs: and there was a blog."
And God saw the blog, that it was good: and God divided the Paris Hiltons from Lee Remicks.
And the evening and the morning were the first work day.
June 16, 2007
Days of Wine and Roses
Two blogs in one day.
Had to do it for Lee Remick.
About time I got around to her.
She's the kind of woman every man really wants deep down.
Remember this little number with Jack Lemmon?
I can't give all the actresses I admire justice on this blog, but to your perpetual dismay, I try.
This computer is about to fail. Every reboot an exercise in panic and warning screens full of exclamation points. I think I've backed everything up, but I hate making the transition to a new one.
Vacancy
Whenever I see one of these roadside hotels, I'm thinking, "don't flash a black light across the bedspread."
"Psycho" comes to mind. Or "Identity," that movie with John Cusack and Amanda Peet. Or possibly a Bob Crane murder, or "Columbo" episode.
Tired travelers come and go. Styrofoam cups with bad coffee in the lobby. Route 66 diner right around the corner. Desperate waitresses named Alice who won't kick me out of bed for eating crackers.
These establishments don't come with blow dryers by the sink.
Why bring this up? Harboring no plans to drive out west. Just saw the article in "USA Today" and seized the opportunity to smoosh Paris Hilton down one notch on the stack.
What I like about hotels like that are the soundproof walls and the fact most are built over sacred Indian burial grounds.
June 15, 2007
We Always Had Paris
Somehow I missed out on this deal.
You wouldn't kick her out of the cabin in the woods on a rainy summer evening, living room equipped with Fox News on a stool above bear rug.
Complete with pink permission slip and handcuffs, Stephen King runs screaming into the night.
Paris, you are the Eiffel Tower of publicity, stainless steel values reflecting America's self-doubt brick by brick, girder by girder, truss by truss, in spandex suspension of remorse.
Paris, ignore critics like that annoying guard protecting you from the general inmate population and broomsticks.
Cling unto cantilevers of humility, cable-stayed good intentions once dreamed of for five seconds, now frayed and twisting in the wind.
Paris, harsh gullies beneath your bridge host winding rivers of Lethe.
Let not Greek references of memory lost disturb your padded cell. Mythology repeats itself generation after generation. Consider moving to France.
Paris, your left bank curves round the Pont Neuf of my incredulity, night after night, fostering scorn from Leno with every pouting breath.
Get your life together and agree to read for that "Walton's" remake script, part of Erin penciled in by some hasty Hollywood huckster.
I remember clearly the look of dismay on the face of reporter from "Entertainment Tonight."
But enough about France.
If your six year-old daughter is bored already with summer vacation, force feed her "The Wizard of Ox" fifty times, then throw her into this mix where we discover Simon truly has a heart after all.
June 14, 2007
Connie on Britain's Got Talent
Not a big YouTube guy, but this one got me.
Not to get lazy, like "some" blogs, plopping up links to links of clever links about links, in place of actually saying something. Might lead to an infinite loop.
Just a good day to keep it Dorothy sweet.
Friday can't come too soon.
June 13, 2007
Eye in the Sky May Blink Out
So it's hot now, whistling by the battery aisle at Walmart, starting to think about hurricane season. Then a report that a vital, Gulf-observing weather satellite might go out anytime, replacement due just around the corner in 2016.
Well that's just dandy.
Today marks 24 years since getting my first "real job" after college. Hardly dawned on me at the time I would have to keep doing it forever. Fun social experiment certainly, but really.
Since then, proud to say I have shifted cubicles several times, and we all know it won't be forever.
Actually, working with the space program has been a kick. In the face of enormous national problems, we still get a sliver of money to continue the ultimate quest in one form or another. The job itself, however, comes down not to numbers or software configuration management, but rather to people working together to produce something.
Found little time for meteorological satellite technology, however. I really don't know clouds at all.
June 9, 2007
No Cell Phone Either?
Since Paris' failed bid for early freedom is obviously the most important news in the universe, I can no longer hold back.
Thirty more days (including that 1/4 reduction for good behavior). A procession of friends, family, and ghost writers offering themselves up. I wonder what kind of Phoenix they will try to turn her into. Are there enough stars in the sky to count the flashbulbs when she emerges from her cocoon of protective custody? We want to see you redeemed Paris.
I guess our attraction to rich heiresses in this country mirrors the English preoccupation with the royal family. I find myself not interested in HER, but why everyone else is. It is not even the secret desire to wish seeing great ones fall, because she is not great.
Or do we nurture indignant scorn and watch for comeuppance at the same time our pre-teens chitter "isn't she way cool?" and plea for copycat dress money? Or maybe we say to ourselves, "God if I could only be so lucky with such wealth, would I do so much better."
I'll leave it to social psychologists. But even admitting national hypnotism with growing parades of Paris Hiltons, Lindsay Lohans, Nicole Riches, Anna Nicoles, the fairest observer should find themselves appalled that Fox News had live coverage yesterday, helicopter hovering over house, text scrolling furiously across screen, anchors speculating wildly, "we have indication Paris may soon be escorted from door to car."
So useless to complain. Let's just walk around mesmerized, seek meaning where it finds us.
I hear the French Open finals are this weekend. Can sport teach us anything? Or is it also useless amusement? At least there, on the court, a process with rules is carried out fairly for both sides. No tricks, no appeals, no amnesty. Who wins earns victory. That does not seem to be happening in real life very often.
June 3, 2007
Global Warming - 3 Times Faster Than Worst Predictions
Have you ever seen such mass hysteria?
If it makes you feel better to swallow the biggest swindle of all time, by all means enjoy your meal. Lord knows we don't have enough real threats.
No need to send me pictures of Alaskan hamlets in mud, or the evacuation of low-lying islands off the coast of Zanzibar. Obviously it is our fault, nothing to do with four thousand, million years of terrestrial evolution.
What amazes me about the national suicide of the Americas (yes you too Canada) is not the hubris itself, but how gullible and willing everyone is to rip apart, in the small space of time since Jan Brady, butterfly wings of individual freedom that took five thousand years of human trial and error to achieve.
Our enemies need not resort to JFK airport plots. Just sit back and watch us implode.
I'm not ridiculing those of you genuinely concerned about warming temperatures. I'm simply concerned about the abdication of logic, the willingness to toss all your freedoms into a garbage can, the march of lemmings after gilded inventions and remedies so clearly crafted to dupe.
Maybe I'm narrow-minded, insisting upon independent reasoning. But no time to stand longer at the podium as a tomato target. More important things to do.
I'm going to drive my car now. You heard me correctly. This selfish carcass of narcissism is planning to fill up the tank with $3.12/gallon gasoline, because environmentalists won't let us build any more refineries or open Alaskan oilfields on 0.001% of its land, all the while wringing hands over the greed of corporate America.
The sin I'm about to commit with my Acura is to deliberately spew noxious chemical compounds all around Clear Lake. Perhaps one day, when your hero Al Gore has control over industry and every other facet of our lives not already puppet-stringed to appointed federal judges rewriting law, then maybe we'll all rest more secure, knowing government is cooing over our baby cradles with loving altruism.
Did you know the breath you exhale is legally subject to federal regulation?
I have an idea. Let's ignore the rule of law completely, nationalize 30 million illegal aliens, give them social security, medicare, medicade. Then no one will need tractors anymore. We can accelerate our economic collapse, because why save it for our children?
Let noble Pedro, Maria, and the 35 members of extended family, where family values don't stop at the Rio Grande, let them work the fields by hand. No more silly carbon dioxide to feed trees in Brazil. We'll just sing Kumbaya and wait for China to expel one or two billion people into our national parks, post office lines, and Taco Bells, where everyone would run for the border if we had one.
The good thing about unrecoverable experiments in social manipulation is being taxed for it at the same time made to feel guilty.
Beam me up Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here.
June 2, 2007
Mystery and Veronicas
I've absorbed six out of ten stories from the July edition of "Ellery Queen."
Favorite so far: "A Darkening of Flies."
Film noir on screen is great, also nice to hold paperback in your hand too, before falling asleep.
A better method of dream planting than radio.
Oh, I just framed my 11 x 14 inch classic photo of Veronica Lake.
What should I do with the other 57 photos from ebay, because they keep arriving every day, and I'm not answering the calls from Paypal?
Big NASA presentation coming up Thursday. Been preparing for six weeks. This is why my blogging has been one of two things:
* indecipherably long
* absent
Enjoy your Saturday.