Are We There Yet?

vapid virus vane
which way will witless wonder
poisonous panic

Pirate Buffet

nibbling on sponge cake
watching the sun bake tourists
margaritaville






(Facebook quizzes are so far off the mark it's ridiculous, if I'm any song of his, it's the I-95 song. Do you know that one?)

EXTRA EXTRA EXTRA:
Jack Johnson with Dave Mathews cover Jimmy Buffet
- It's as good as a snickerdoodle cookie.

September Ends, Please Don't Wake Me Up

Last month has been one to remember: Storms, evacuations, family, relatives, doctor appointments, travel, curtains shutting, stress, loneliness, failing economy.

Good Bad Happy Sad
Moments of Significance
Sun shines above clouds


It's life. It gets in the way of your plans. Life. Why can't we stick to the plan?

What's Next?

It's time for some Homeostasis and a Trail Run.

"Sing me to sleep,
Sing me to sleep,
I'm tired and I
I want to go to bed......"

- Asleep - The Smiths

Feeling "Infinite"?

Rain Happy

Under the weather
Physically, Mentally, Literally
Exhausted without cause
Cleansing rain, much impurity

The Black Dog is scratching on my back door.

Quietly, Into the Light

Apathy has taken control of my blog time.

The voices are still there, shouting as loud as ever.

I have found a way to block out the yelling in my head.


The voices stop when I look directly into the light.

Your Bondage

You cannot be spiritual and egocentric at the same time.

You cannot say you have an eternal soul, if you are selfishly focused on your life, your beliefs, and your understanding of the material world.

You cannot say you know God, if you think that humans are some kind of unique deity-chosen animal to be the "caretaker" of this place. Humans are no more special than a handful of soil, or the worms that work it so life can prosper. Without either, life, as humans define it, would not exist.

Humans were late-comers to this planet, and will most likely be gone before this planet's demise. It is the natural order of things, to change, rid the bad parts, develop more useful and healthy life. Human life is only a mere speck of ordered material, inhabited for a very brief time on this piece of leftover debris.

Then there are the mysteries no human will ever know. The how, where, why, and what answers which are beyond what our limited insight and intelligence can show us. What is beyond the known universe, and beyond what we will never know? On that, we must rely on faith.

The lasting affect of long dead prophets, philosophers, and a supposed messiah, is not who they were nor how they lived, but how their past lives and teachings still influence our daily lives.

Enjoy all aspects of life. It is short, scary, and meaningless. The only thing that will outlast your brief moment of deluded consciousness, and bring some kind of meaning to your existence, is the affect you have on other meaningless lives.

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Blame

I was very busy today, so this is all I got for my daily post.

I have been around many teenagers this long weekend, and I noticed that I have more in common with them than people my own age. (I'm more comfortable around them than the oldsters.) Scary! When will I grow up?

Music Appreciation: Teenagers - My Chemical Romance

My Chemical Romance Lyrics
Teenagers Lyrics

LimerNick

There once was a blogger named niCk
His head voices said he was slick
Promised to blog every day
Then the voices went away
Now he only hears the clock tick

Daily Music Post: Questions 67 and 68 - Chicago

More Recurring Dreams

Some nights, I have vivid dreams.

Sometimes I know I'm dreaming and can control the dream. It's called lucid dreaming. I usually end up flying in those dreams. I was able to do it more when I was younger, but I still have those dreams from time to time now. When I have them, I'm always in a elated mood. Is the mood the cause of the dream, or a symptom of it?

I think my dreams are more vivid and recallable after I have a stressful or eventful day. Yesterday was not stressful, but I didn't get much sleep the night before. I find it hard to sleep the night before a race, the excitement, or anxiousness, has me tossing and turning the night away.

Last night, I had some more recurring situations that haunt me.

The first situation has me in a stairwell trying to go somewhere, but the destination cannot be reached because of locked doors, the stairwell going to the wrong place, or the stairs morphing into something that traps me or cannot be maneuvered.

The second situation is being abandoned by family and friends in various places.

In last night dreams these two situations converged. I was going to the mall with a past girlfriend, and she walks so fast that I lose her and can't catch up to her because of the crowd (I hate crowds). I go into stores looking for her, but can't find her anywhere. In one store I go up to the second floor, look around, then head to the escalator to go back down. When I get to the escalator, it is crowded with people and going up, so I go to the other side, but the escalator is blocked like it is undergoing maintenance. There is another lady there, and she says "How are we supposed to get downstairs". I point to a wall with an exit sign and say "we have to take the stairs". We open the door to the "fire escape" designed stairwell. The stairway is very narrow and we have to lay down to get down the stairs. When we get to the bottom, the door is locked, so we try to head back upstairs, but the stairs are falling apart as I try to go up. I end up climbing up the broken pieces, but I get stuck and come back down. There is a phone on the wall that has an emergency button on it. We use it, and soon a rescuer shows up. He is badly handicapped with a false leg, and many scars, but he climbs down to where we are. He goes to the window (the window wasn't there before), opens it and helps us out. Meanwhile, more people have arrived and are now playing card games in the place we were trapped.

In a second dream, I was with Angry Ballerina, and had been driving around, real fast. Somehow we end up in front of the church, standing around with a bunch of other people, and they are passing around a joint. One of my work supervisors come out of the church, and says "Hey, you can't smoke here", and then she smells the aroma of the burning grass and says "POT! Your smoking pot in front of a church!" Then runs inside. I turn around to see people exiting the church, like services were ending. As I turn back around I see the group I was with scatter for their cars. Angry Ballerina is with some other guy in a truck and getting ready to speed away, she points to the back of the truck and says "Jump in", but she is going fast and I cannot make it to the truck. She speeds away leaving me behind, I can hear her laughing. It begins to rain.

I hear she put a dent in that truck.

Music Post: Me and Bobby Mcgee - Janis Joplin

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Recurring Dreams

I have recurring dreams.

It's not the same dream, but the situations in the dreams that are recurring.

Many of my dreams take place in High School. I'm guessing because we develop and expand much of brain capacity during these years, many of our dreams use these memories. I have many dreams from this time in life, not only is school the subject, but family, and relationships of this time.

The two situations that are recurring are: I cannot find my classroom, and I've forgotten my locker combination and can't get to my books or homework.

I believe dreams are just the result of how the brain works to store, recover, and use long term memories, and doesn't reveal some kind of mental state of the dreamer. However, the more traumatic the memory, the more vivid the dream. I still have dreams about my abusive step-mother, and having those dreams still make me rage against the way she treated me. I rarely have dreams about my birth mother, who I lived with until I was eleven.

There is another oddity about my dreams. I have been divorced for over seven years, but in my dreams, I'm almost always still with my ex-wife, and my kids are still teens.

I don't even know where to start to interpret what these are supposed to mean, if anything.

Music Post: Dreams - Van Halen

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Happiness?

If they attacked us because they hated us, will war make them love us?

This essay was written by Barbara Kingsolver in the days after Sept 11, 2001:
A Pure, High Note of Anguish

I cannot believe we are still trying to avenge this act, with no end in sight, without someone trying to initiate some kind of dialogue of consolation or forgiveness.

Is it possible make them agree with our way of life, by destroying theirs?

Is there still a chance to bring any of those souls back to life?

Music Post: Give Peace a Chance - John Lennon

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Eat Your Meat........

How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat!

My whole life has been a fight against parents and "friends" trying to force me to eat meat. Yes, I eat meat, but in very small amounts, only a couple of days a week. Even then, it is usually poultry or fish, I cannot stomach the taste of red meat, and the smell of red meat cooking, especially grilling or barbecue, make me nauseous. On Thanksgiving, I have some traditional turkey with my dinner, turkey is one of my favorite meats.

I have tried to go vegetarian, but it is hard for someone has active as I am to get all their nutrition from vegetables, alone. I become severely anemic when I don't eat meat. It is a genetic defect, I blame my mother, who also struggled with anemia.

The place I work announced yesterday that they are replacing the traditional Thanksgiving Luncheon in favor of barbecue. Here in Alabama, as in much of the south, that means pork. I asked, and that is the only thing they will be serving, along with other barbecue sides, like PORK and beans, macaroni and cheese, and other high-fat unhealthy foods. PORK. It even sounds vulgar.

I grew up with a Jewish mother, so pork has always had a bad reputation with me. Then, after I went to go live with a evil Catholic step-mother, I practically had very fatty pork products shoved down my throat, daily. It's no wonder I was sick (asthmatic) all the time.

I have not eaten any pork in more than seven years. I don't plan on changing that, because I'm much healthier now than seven years ago.

So, I respond to the message about our luncheon .......

/* SARCASM on */

BBQ for a Thanksgiving Luncheon. Sounds crazy, no?

But here, in our little village of corporate slaves, you might say every one of us is a humble servant just wanting some turkey on Thanksgiving and trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple life without getting in trouble. It isn't easy. You may ask 'Why do we always eat turkey if there is BBQ?' Well, We eat turkey because its better than BBQ on Thanksgiving.

We need to keep our balance. How do we do that? That I can tell you in one word: TRADITION!

/* SARCASM off */

Not to mention it's much more healthy than BBQ, which in the south is usually PORK --There are good reasons why many cultures avoid pork.

For every additional 1.7 ounces of red meat consumed per day, the risk for cancer rises by 15%.

The recommendation concerning the consumption of processed meats is even more stringent. Processed meats, such as bacon, ham, sausage, and lunch meat, should be avoided entirely; There isn't a level at which the consumption of these products can be reliably considered completely safe. For every 1.7 ounces of processed meat consumed per day, the risk for colorectal cancer rises by 21%.

Read More......

There are good reasons why many cultures avoid pork. It cannot become clean enough to eat.

I will be skipping the luncheon this year - They can go PORK themselves.

I moved the Music Player to the side bar.

Song of the Day - "Patience" - Guns & Roses

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The Day Before

September 10, 2001

I remember discussing the news with someone in the office where I worked, people were saying they were afraid to go to the beach. The big news distraction was all the shark attacks that summer, with a couple of fatalities at the local gulf coast beaches. I was trying to convince them that the beach was safer than driving to work, or driving to the beach, where 25 people were dying from car accidents every weekend in the same areas as the shark attacks at the Alabama and Florida gulf beaches. The shark attacks would not deter me from going into the water, either.

I remember making this point: "Do you cower in fear every time a thunderstorm passes?" Maybe you should, hundreds of people are struck by lightning every year, in their houses, where they think they are safe. If it's going to happen, you can't stop it, so I go outside during the storms and watch the light show, I love it, and I do not fear it, because I know it is outside my control. Same goes with getting attacked by something from the sea when you're at the beach. The shark attacks are news because the media was hyping it up. It was a slow news year, and the media needed something to get people hyped up, they love to spread fear.

That time was stressful for me because we had just been through a downsizing where I worked, five co-workers had been let go in the past week (just in my department, about 50 total were let go total on the project), the economy was struggling, the Internet financial bubble had burst (my investments were hit hard). I remember thinking the newly elected President was going to be a loser and bad news (it turned out even worse than I thought). I got bad vibes every time I saw Bush speak, thinking how phony he is when making a speech, like a greedy used car salesman.

One year earlier, I had been through a divorce, one that I initiated. I was having deep, deep regrets about the divorce, major depression and mood swings because of it. I was thinking that I ruined my life, there wasn't much reason to live, if only I could salvage the relationship I was having after the divorce, maybe this dark mood would go away. The harder I tried to make something happen, the worse and more complicated it became. I was on Prozac for one month, but that made the relationship worse, because I didn't care, and still wanted hurt myself (but take out others with me). I stopped the Prozac because all I wanted to do was work, I didn't want to have any social activities. When I was at work, I kept fantasizing about doing some great violent blood soaked rampage at work, or in some other public place, like during a crowded church service.

The thoughts went away after I stopped the Prozac.

The day I stopped, was six years ago tomorrow, my problems became so small.

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La La La La La La La

I'm being lazy and I can't get motivated about anything, but running.

The news is a boring, canned, bland bunch of propaganda.

Politics is turned into a public relations campaign for high-ranking government officials.

American culture is unstimulating, ugly mix of gread and conceit.

The landscape of shopping and restaurants is like a bad nightmare. The entertainment industry doesn't entertain. The food industry tries to make everything taste good to everyone, but it makes everything just taste the same, no flavor. These things won’t be fixed, it just keeps getting more and more dull and insipid.

We keep demanding more and more, we take more and more, we destroy the planet and are insulted when asked to be less intrusive. We keep taking without giving back or helping. We are so self-centered we can’t see past the end of our huge rotund pot bellies and over-bloated self-image. Even the religious-based groups are too proud of their own image to accept or participate in being the tolerant and nonjudgmental groups on which their image is based.

And I am a positive thinking optimist.

Thank Darwin, at least I got beer!

“Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!”

A Tag to End All Tags

A while back, supergirlest from "my thinking spot" tagged me with an eight random facts tag. I'm supposed post eight random facts about myself, but I already use this blog for that, so I have had a block on what to include in this post.

Angry Ballerina and Mary posted their "tag" posts this past week, which reminded me that I had this tag to fulfill.


These facts have probably already appeared in the blog at some time or another.

1. I drive a gray 2001 Honda Accord. It is the best car I have ever owned. I bought it new and I've become emotionally attached to it, this car has been with been with me through some rough times in my life. I'm going to cry when I have to part with it.

2. I'm not a Liberal. Many people think because of my views that I'm Liberal or Democrat. Not even close. Personally, I have always leaned to the conservative side, but I have many viewpoints and opinions that most people would consider liberal. I'm a middle-of-the-roader who likes to consider both sides of an issues before possibly taking a side.

Don't confuse conservatism with the nationalists that are now in executive power. In my opinion, they are NOT conservatives, they are NOT patriots, they are traitors. (High-Five! I snuck a political statement into my introspection.)

I believe the best way to live is someone in middle ground of these two influences. I like tradition and routine, but I believe that progress is as necessary to life as evolution. I like to have my personal liberties, but believe that some sort of government authority is required to limit the power, influence, and greed of those who take advantage of others.

I consider myself Progressive Libertarian. I do not choose this way of thinking, it chooses me.

3. I rarely go out to eat. I have a busy lifestyle, spend much time at work, and pursuing my non-work activities (running, races, hiking, blogging), but I will not surrender to the temptation of quick, easy, unhealthy, assembly-line meals. Read Fast-Food Nation, and Dr. Weil (many books) and see the movie Supersize Me and you will understand why I feel like I do. When I do go out and eat, I've found a few superb local restaurants that suit my picky seasoned tastes.

4. My social life:

In the 80's it was getting drunk on the weekend, playing pool, darts, and pinochle, sometimes all at the same time.

In the 90's I was a soccer mom, both kids played soccer and I was involved in their soccer teams. I loved that.

In the 00's my life has been an emotional roller coaster ride. In the last two years, I've quit dating (dating, over 40, is depressing) and I now base my whole social life on running events. My life is stabilizing again, I hate where I live, but I love my job.

5. I'm a morning person. After a good night's sleep, I feel great and ready to start my day and get things done. I'm at my best then. If I have any tasks I need to do, I start them first thing in the morning and get them done. By the afternoon, when most people are just starting their tasks or starting to work, I'm beat, and need to start unwinding and relaxing. Do not give me something to do late in the day, it will not get done, or if I try to complete the task, I will likely mess it up (not on purpose).

When I can, I siesta. Then I don't get those late-day doldrums I hate and make me miserable and depressed.

6. I love playing Scrabble (while drinking Guinness). My vocabulary isn't that great; please don't rush me when it's my turn; I probably won't win; but I still like playing. I haven't been able to play very much since I've been single, I miss it.

7. Same as supergirlest's #7. The sun drains my energy. I have the best running results when it's cloudy or raining.

"I'm only happy when it rains" - Garbage

8. My favorite color has always been green. Even when I was a child, I loved all different shades and tints of green.

I will not tag anyone. If you want, go ahead and post random facts about yourself, we love reading them.

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Stick a needle..........

The air blows in from Georgia. My eyes tear, sting, and itch. It is hard to breathe. I lay in bed wheezing, sleep will not visit me.

The air from Georgia makes it hard to see clearly. It reaches into my body and scratches its way back out, leaving sharp scars that never heal.

I long for more.
Pain in me.

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"Why Georgia, Why" - Van Gogh Knew

(The smoke drifting in from the fires in the Okefenokee and Florida is also very irritating)

Active Voice

Words.

Actions.

These are just words, they are not actions.

Fuck is just a (word?obscenity?exclamation?).

Love is a word. Love is an action.

Some use words to express love. Some show their love by tearing off a piece of their soul to be trampled on and abused.

I can no longer ACT ACT ACT ACT ACT on my feelings, so I fill the empty spaces with WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS .

Go ahead, "Take another little piece........"

Love.

Comment Whore

I'm back, but I'm really busy trying to play catch-up, while all my other co-workers party, someone has to clean up this mess (not really, my importance is only a delusion).

It's lurker call. If you come here and read my incredibly incredible ramblings, please leave me a comment and say "Hi", "Fuck Off", "I want you", or something witty and clever.

I want comments. This is your chance to stand up and be heard, at least by me and the other lurkers that read my comments. It makes a narcisstic arse like myself feel loved. P-P-P-P-Please make me feel the love. Don't be gentle!

Conundrum

Don't get greedy, pick just one:

Would you rather be asked a question or read my blog?

Sometimes choices are made for us. If I had my way, I'd run everyday, even if it hurt. But pain is telling me to rest for a while. I have a tendon on the back of my leg that gets severely inflamed every time I run. Running actually makes the pain go away for a short time, but then it returns, even worse after I've rested. So, it is not my choice, I must rest if I want to keep running. It is not an easy choice. I went home yesterday and had to force myself not to run. A voice in my head kept saying "Just one more run, then start resting", but I ignored it. The running and the races, my whole life (at least the part of it I enjoy), will be put on hold for a couple of weeks.

I will be leaving tomorrow to spend a week in Virginia, so this is a good time to put a hold on the running. My son, who will turn 25 next month, is getting married on Saturday.

I also will have to put a hold on the blogging for a little while. I demand that y'all behave while I'm away. Party and laugh all you want, this would be a good time to ridicule the guy with "voices in his head". I know, I know; you already do that.

Be back as soon as I can.

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Blast Fame E

I'm still only surfing, I've been a little too busy to come up with anything "heavy" for me to controvert.

I found this wonderful music video over at Katie Schwartz's place: Keep Your Jesus Off My Penis

In case you want to sing along: Lyrics

The picture is a link to Eric Schwartz's website, where you can find all his music and lyrics.

I wish I had more of those hypo-Christian and Neo-Conservative readers. I think they'd like this.


AND....

Care of Badtux:

Your Ideal Pet is a Big Dog

You're both energetic, affectionate, and a bit goofy. And neither of you seem to mind very slobbery kisses!

What's Your Ideal Pet?

Well, duh, no surprises here!