this was my very 1st computer. a KayPro. it was a hand-me-down. it was basically a word processor. plus, it could access the intornets. (what little there was in 1983.)

but...
it had PONG!

my new computer works great as a word processor. and it does allow me to access the meganets. (for 3-4 minutes a day.)

but...
it doesn't have PONG. :(

hahahahaha. i hope you remember pong. and i hope you enjoy the irony of this new version:



p.s.
lots of fun mom-news, but for now, i'm goin' with the gratuitous post with my 3 minutes.

p.p.s.
- did mccain totally trump obama's speech with his vp announcement today?
- will even hillary vote for her?
- sheesh.
- crap.

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fuuuuck!

never buy a used computer.
buy a used car. shop at goodwill all you want. heck, buy used rubbers for all i care.




but never buy a used computer. Read more!

random stuff. with lists! & a WOTD.

why are these my two favorite answers in today's syndicated nyt x-word puzzle?

17A - hero/giant created by rabelais = gargantua.
39A - menacing = sinister.

a. because they're lots cooler than synchronized swimming?
b. because i'm a total dork?
c. some other reasons i'll try to explain after the jump?
d. all of the above?


d., of course, is the correct answer. but you already knew that, didn't you?



ok, lets deal with *gargantua* 1st.

a. because it's so much fun to say. try it.
gar-GAN-tua. hahahahaha.

b. because this is a cool picture of him:


c. and because this is even awesomer. (yep, i read the whooole thing. i told you i was a dork...)


but why in the cornbread hell would i like *sinister* so much??

a. because i got it with just the n. (from the parmesaN crossing.)

b. just because.

c. and really because...(this is where i think it gets a little bit whacky)
the actual word of the day from wordsmith.org is *ambisinister.* coincidence? (duh. of course it is you gullible, ambisinister oafs.)


maybe that's too small to read, but here's the salient text:

ambisinister

MEANING:
adjective: Clumsy with both hands. (Literally, with two left hands.)

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin ambi- (both) + sinister (on the left side).

wha? "sinister" comes from "the left side" ????
oh those crazy latins...

all you left handed people out there oughta start aclamorin' asap. that sounds like prejudicism (sic) to me.

---------------------

bonus random stuff in case you can't read the screenshot above):

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

---------------------

hey. if you didn't learn anything new today, don't blame me.


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mom and rick's excellent adventure

this is mostly for my sister since i'm so bad about calling with updates.


is that really a kangaroo she's touching? oh yeah. but first lemme tell you about the eye exam trip...

we rode in this big ole bus, just the 2 of us. dwayne, the driver, is this remarkably gentle and kind man. mom entered and exited on this lift at the rear of the bus and we sat in the back.

i asked him if he ever worked at the fair and mom giggled like a schoolgirl when i explained i felt like he was helping her on and off of an amusement park ride. he laughed, too.

each time we exited she got up and headed toward the front. very alzheimer's-ish. since she couldn't see her walker she forgot she had one. and she couldn't see the lift so she assumed she should go to the doors she could see. such extreme memory loss like that still amazes me.



she had a great time people watching and street watching while we waited in the dr.'s office. she laughed out loud, and talked a little too loudly, about this father and son who she said looked exactly alike.

she asked a lot of questions about where we were and had she ever been there before. yes to the shopping center. (it was one of her old haunts.) yes to the streets she had traveled dozens of times a week for years and years and years. no to the dr.'s office.

when the dr. asked if she'd ever been there, she said yes. after looking for her records for at least 10 minutes they finally came out and asked me when she'd been there...

the results of the exam were so close to what they read off of her glasses we decided not to get new ones. that's pretty surprising considering it's been 4-5? years since she got this prescription. i learned she'd had cataract surgery (mom's got implants! hahahahaha.) and that she can't see very well out of her left eye because of cataract growth. the dr. agreed that surgery at this time wasn't such a good idea. we talked about how content she seems and quality of life, etc. pretty interesting doctor if you ask me.

then we went next door and they fixed the loose lens and cleaned her glasses. no charge. mom said she could see better and laughed when the technician told her they were covered in hair spray.

while waiting for the bus we went into stein mart. the last time she was there my daughter took her. mom came out of the dressing room without her shirt on and my daughter was mortified. i didn't remind mom of that incident.

waiting outside was so nice. the weather was perfect. in the 70s with a breeze. mom was delighted to be out. it was a good trip.

her triumphant return...(please click and enlarge)


when we got back someone told me they were bringing a kangaroo in about an hour. i wasn't quite sure whether to believe this or not, but i stayed anyway. i'm glad i did.

it's an 8 month old female red kangaroo. about 10 lbs. cute as can be and soft as a llama. and that tail! solid muscle. it will eventually grow to be about 5'2" and 100 lbs. (the kangaroo, not the tail.)


the lady asked if mom wanted to hold it. noooooo. no way.

lots of the old folks did, though. they loved it.



if you put a blanket over her she somersaults into it like she's in her mother's pouch.


if she's not ready for a nap, she pokes her head out. she sat like this, very contentedly for 10-15 minutes. very sweet little critter.







eye exam: $45.45
glasses repair and kangaroo visit: free
total experience: priceless

party on, dudes...
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ah cain't sleep, dang it.

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cyclops

i didn't go visit mom saturday because a friend came to visit. so sunday we went to visit her together...

when we entered the room, she said, "well, hello stranger."
i was surprised, and not just a little bit flattered, that she'd noticed/remembered my brief absence.

after we'd been there several minutes my friend asked mom if she'd lost one of the lenses in her glasses. (real observant, rick.) we eventually found it under the bed and popped it back in, but it turned out mom had been wearing one lens for almost 2 days.

"so mom, can you see ok with one eye?"
"oh, i guess so."

no complaints. all smiles.
i have the sweetest mom. (other than *yours*, of course.)

today i set up an appointment at eyemasters for an eye exam and a new prescription. it was originally set for 3:00, but then i found out the facility couldn't pick us up for the return trip after 4:00.
wouldn't that have been a mess? walking 3-4 miles with mom would have been a real adventure.
a laughable one.

believe me - this little outing in the rain will be adventure enough for us both.




and in totally unrelated news...
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wow.

2 posts ago i made some disparaging remarks about the olympics. i'm not taking them back, but...

i just watched the entire 2 hour:26 minute:44 second (winning time) of the womens' marathon. i love that they showed the entire race live. i love that a romanian won. it was very dramatic. and beautiful.

aside:
ceausescu, you may have been one of the all-time assholes, but your people are awesome. (the ones who made it through all the nightmares.)

people = good. gummits...not so much.

the 3000 meter steeplechase is awesome, too.
like i said, i loves me some track and field. Read more!

ding dong

for the first time in my adult life, 39 years, i have a doorbell.
it's no big deal really, just kinda weird.

but i guess any chance i ever had of winning a nobel prize is over. ((groan))

that reminds of a funny joke:

viagra?! why in the world would i need that stuff? it'd be like giving a homeless person a doorbell.
(well *i* think it's funny.) Read more!

damn weirdos...

this is a a screen shot of a hit on this blog.

with the olympics going on i thought it was interesting that it came from beijing so i clicked on the referring url. as you will see after the cut, maybe this particular visitor just can't get enough of those 13-14 year old gymnasts...

by the way, am i the only person in the world who hasn't seen any of the '08 olympics?

it's not any kinda premeditated protest. i just don't care. well, that and being a little disgusted with all the $$, politics and rah rah nationalism that seem to be the real point. when the track and field events start i'll probably tune in. cuz i loves me some track and field.




so this is what someone in beijing "googled" last night...



pretty funny that this cornyblog came up as the 3rd choice for having querried "girlhood sex pictures," huh?

the entry it referred the surfer to is a very tame story about my 85 year old mother. how disappointing!


most of the hits here come from googled images of belly dancers or recockulous tattoos or this one dumb picture i once posted of buffy the vampire slayer in a see-through blouse.

while those 3 posts reel in several dozen unsuspecting surfers a day, i occasionally get hits from really bizarre googled text. here's my favorite from switzerland. it's so weird i wrote it down:

"he's 76, she's only 19! and she really enjoyed it too...the old geezer still has it, i gotta say."

even more bizarre? i got that exact same referral 2 more times. wtf?



i kept a list of the funnier/nuttier ones, but that list seems to have disappeared. a few i remember or found scribbled on margins of notebooks follow:

"men living as women" gave someone the belly dancer post.
"plunger porn" was googled by several people worldwide. and that's just sick.
"porndog" seems to be a popular querry.
"cornbread the dude" cracked me up.
"porndog happy meal" has popped up more than once.
"sweet rooster helmet price $ site" (i think this one came from annie's blog?)
and the dumb, but innocuous, "flip my cornbread" came from TAMU.

TAMU is texas a&m university. for those of you not from here, most of your polish or hillbilly jokes work just as well in texas if you substitute "aggie."


bye bye for now and happy girlhood sex pictures to you all.
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so many questions, so little time

i just logged on to my yahoo email account for the first time in well over 6 months. i can't hardly believe how popular i am. there were something like 9069 unread messages. WOW!!


oh wait.

the only ones i cared to look at were the daily feeds i get there from my favorite comic strip, get fuzzy (see above); and AWAD, a favorite word-of-the-day feed. the other 99% of them were all spam.

neverrr miind...



speaking of unwanted spam, did you know that since 1937, when the processed "luncheon" meat was first introduced, over 6 billion tins of the mystery meat has been produced?

would somebody please tell me... who in god's name eats the stuff?

can there be any doubt why spam (the unsolicited email variety) is so named?

in texas, and likely in most places these days, the crummy food of choice at fairs is the ubiquitous cornydog. but in minnesota? yep. you guessed it...it's fried spam on a stick or something. jeeze.

do minnesotans have no shame?



so if austin texas is the music capital of the world (i said, IF), then is austin minnesota the potted mystery meat capital?

[annie, robyn...you know i'm just joshin' with you. right?]


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a couple of older pictures and 1 new one...

this one i just took. i hung one of the neck braces i wore for 4 months. i think it looks like a large-mouth bass trophy. ahahahahaha. i'll have to make a plaque for it.



(a couple of pics 2-4 months old after the jump...)

from sometime in april. that's brother luke, mom, son sean, and me in mom's apartment. haven't seen luke since, unfortunately. sean and i now have short hair. mom still wears the same outfit, her "uniform", every - single - day...and of course, the horse collar is history.

but it's still us. (click on the pic to see just how handsome we all are. hahahaha.)



this is from the father's day party at VT. this belly dancer wasn't nearly as hot as the one from a couple of years ago, but henry didn't seem to mind...i've written about henry before. he's incredibly feeble and slow normally, but turn on the music and...the man can flat out dance.

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the view from my window(s) - III

it's kinda like living in a tree house. but with windows. it's pretty small, but doesn't seem so because there are 24 double-sash windows. and virtually no blank wall space. very little furniture, too. i like it.

i did notice one drawback last weekend when my kids brought gifts.

my daughter brought one of her paintings. it wasn't easy to find a place to hang it. (josephine, i moved it to the "hall" closet door. so now i see it every time i exit the bedroom. so much better to see it. thanks.)

my son gave me a zapotec weaving he brought back from his latest adventure. the natural dyes and fixatives are all made from native plants and insects from the weaver's garden. the reds, of which there are many, are made of ground cochineal beetles. (he has pictures of the entire process at tides.sfasu.edu, or will soon.*)

it is currently hanging in the kitchen, but i'm afraid it's gonna start to smell like bacon, so am thinking of moving it to...the bedroom ceiling?

but wait. this post wasn't meant to be about my awesome and talented kids, was it? no.
it's s'posed to be about more of the views from my windows...


if the wind is even slightly blowing i can see it in the treetops. at eye level. and if it's below 96 degrees, i can feel it. (otherwise the air conditioner is on and the windows are closed, ok?.) at ground level it may be miserably still and hot. there is a not so sublime difference. tree house-living fucking rocks.

if i were a better photographer, or quicker maybe, i'd show you pictures of the young red tail hawk who recently visited. or the brown squirrel with the albino-white tail. or maybe i wouldn't have resorted to using the internet image of the ladder-backed woodpecker at the beginning of this post.

as it is, i'll just share these pics - these views from these bedroom windows:


i watched this guy hop around and 'round the trunk and peck, peck, peck for a long while before attempting a photo.



can't see it? oh it's there. left branch, 1/2 way down. (click on this or any of the window view I-III pics to see a huge version.)

i think it's a ladder-backed woodpecker. listed as "fairly uncommon" to "rare" in these parts. and i see it pretty often now that the red heads are gone. (the red headed woodpecker is "listed" as uncommon to rare, but i see them here and in austin. who are the peckerwoods who classify these beautiful critters? (hey, look it up. peckerwood is in the dictionary...)

can you see it now?








and then there are the trees. mostly pecan. but here on this property are quite a few china berries. (or at least a cousin of. they're not lavender, but otherwise they are just like a china berry...invasive, fast growing and damn good lookin'.)

in late spring they make these yellow blooms:



in mid summer the blooms turn to puffy balls. (are they male or female??)

same vantage point. same branch...


later on in the fall i think they turn into hard balls. i'll try to remember to report back on that...

-------------------------------

other birds - and even a bat:

the mourning doves and cow birds are plentiful. not to mention delightful. here's a dove warily looking at me from her perch not 3 feet away.




the feeder is a very cool goodwill plate with holes around the perimeter that i hung with twine. any bird that can get the food is an accomplished acrobat. or a stunt double. when they hit the plate most birds freak out from the twisting and spinning. (bad design flaw on my part.) but the ones that can handle the thrill are my buddies.

like mr and mrs dove:





and mr cowbird. he's so cool:





wait. i promised you bat, didn't i?

as seen from my window...........check out the hood of this tow truck.



i call it the bat-tow-bile.
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the view from my window - II

from a bedroom window one early morning...



yep. 2 cops. 2 thugs. pretty exciting, but a little bit 2 close for my liking.




one of them kept smarting off to the cops. brilliant...







the people whose house had been burgled came and the guy on the ground kept trying to get a look at them. the cop put a foot on his neck right after this picture was taken...




this wasn't the first time this sort of thing has happened in the short while i've been here. there was another guy hiding in the side yard one afternoon and there were dozens of cops swarming all over. and a hellicopter circling overhead. i went out and told the cops where he was. i sure hope he wasn't just a kid without papers. that's what i thought afterwards.



-------------------------------------------------

this is the 2nd day in a row it's been under 100 degrees! suh-weet.



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the view from my window - I

from a kitchen window...


what is that?

but you'd better make 'em quickies. you've only got 2 blocks.

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life? well, it's crazy as cornbread hell...

but it sure is nice to have the intornets back again. yes, i'll be reading *your* posts from the last month or 2. and real soon.

the following video was gleaned from a website which will remain anonymous. (for now, anyway...)



life IS...a crazy motherfucker. thank god for the occasional kids' visit, a chance to get mom out of her room and into the real world, and the even more rare extended-family get-together. it's been a great weekend. not the least of which includes renewed computer access.

if the wind blows right, i'll be posting regularly again.

and if it doesn't? you're on your own.

p.s. that extended family get-together was not only the instigation for the unparalleled kids visit and quality mom-outing, but was also in honor of a favorite cousin's recent wedding. congratulations to bruce, aka ted casablanca, and jon!

if i'm not dead or in jail, i'll talk with y'all tomorrow.

p.s.s. did you ever see the movie, Stone Reader? ok...probably not. but trust me. you should. if you like to read...

dow mossman's book, "the stones of summer", which was the centerpiece of the epic documentary, Stone Reader, is at 1/2 price books right now for a freakin' dollar.

seriously. a measley DOLLAR! check it out. buy one for a friend.

at nearly 600 pages of sheer goodness, and for 100 pennies, that's a much better bargain than the lottery ticket you may have just bought...

lr
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