you wanta know what i think the single biggest roadblock to blogging is?


depression.

*maybe* i'll update later.

update, 9:38 pm :
so, "just shake it."
right? isn't that what you were thinking?

(i owe my friend terri big time for this one. as you may or may not know, there's no audio on my pc, but this video is hilarious even without sound...)
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who you calling a pussy?

listen to me you #%&*#@* northerners, when it gets down to 50 degrees with 90% humidity and 15 mph winds, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon...i call that c-c-cccold. and it's supposed to get down to 40 tonight??!!

shit.

i think i'd better rearrange my room to accommodate a space heater. sheesh! my feet don't even work in this kind of weather. i've already got all 4 of my shirts on...and i'll bitch if i want to.

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

uh oh. i feel a rebus coming on... 
(i still haven't figured out how to space the images the way i want. so, get over it.)

 ...

 

  


or no. wait a minute. maybe i just want to BE a kitty...

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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!

spiderweb 2.0

mom was funny today. again. and we went for a walk...

then i sat down and tried to do stuff on the computer. i failed. i'm frustrated.

can you say, "understatement"?

i hate being an incompetent geezer when it comes to that sort of thing.

i think i need a punching bag.

according to this maybe i'm supposed to feel better because i'm at least aware of my inabilities...well, fuck that shit.





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thanks for the computer troubleshooting sugesstions annie, joanne, rick (are you the rick who comments on the xword blogs?) and ld, but i'm afraid my computer is toast.

i still hope to someday be able to retrieve at least some of the over 6000 pictures and some of the several dozen word docs of stories and snippets of stories i've written.

probably a third of the photos are irreplacable, having been taken by myself, family or friends. a few dozen more were tediously removed from old (real old) family frames or culled from messy boxes full of old family photos and then scanned. the rest were all just pics i've collected off of the interwebs over the last few years. i'm kicking myself now for not at least using the picassa feature that allows you to post photos to a website. DOH!

the word docs were the few i felt were too good to trash the last time i purged my various attempts at writing fiction. no great loss, but it still hurts.

ah well...maybe the dreaded BSOD is tryin' to tell me to get out in the real world for a change. ya think?

(that image is one i got off the web. i have no idea what the specific whatevers were in the one i actually received.)

more rambles after the jump...

speaking of real people as opposed to cyberpeople, i might have to break down and call an old girlfriend. no, it's not what you're thinkin'. get your mind outta the gutter. she plays in the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and back when we were together i had free tickets to all of their concerts. i just read that tonight the DSO is adding a guitar and vocals to present "The Music of Led Zeppelin: A Rock Music Symphony."
having missed the historic one-night reunion last month (i betcha you did, too), i'm kinda tempted to make that phonecall.

check out this review to find out more:

"Unfortunately, this preview isn't about a last-minute booking of the mighty Led Zeppelin mere weeks after its triumphant reunion gig in London. Still, if that event had you licking your lips for more from one of history's most important rock bands, this gig is for you. "The Music of Led Zeppelin: A Rock Symphony" isn't strictly a rock show, though; it's 18 of Zep's classics performed Trans-Siberian Orchestra-style with a 50-piece ensemble ( drawn from our own Dallas Symphony); a sultry female lead violin player (Allegra, a Trans-Siberian Orchestra veteran); and pedigreed stand-ins on guitar and vocals (Randy Jackson of underrated 1980s rock trio Zebra, which got its start in New Orleans in the late 1970s playing Zep and Rush covers). Would Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones approve of arranger-conductor Brent Havens' treatment of, say, "Immigrant Song," during which the French horns mirror Mr. Jackson's alto wailing as the violins follow along in a higher octave? Perhaps. No, it won't be like the historic Dec. 10 performance at O2 Arena, much less one of Led Zeppelin's legendary 1970s concerts. But it'll still be powerful."

why not just go buy a ticket, you ask? hahahaha. same reason i'm not gonna *just go out and buy* a new computer, silly.
in the meantime i'll see how long and i can get away with using this public computer at mom's residence. i'll blog a mom post later, but right now i'm feeling a little paranoid about being on it for so long. i'd like to try to catch up on some of y'alls' blogs, too...ok, the security guy just came in as i was typing those words. he didn't say anything, but gave me a funny look. maybe it's ok. we'll see.

oh & one last comment:
WELCOME BACK jon stewart and stephen colbert! i thought they were both hilarious last night. Read more!

keepin' it real.

i try to keep this blog fairly light hearted, but some days are better than others.

some days just flat out make me feel like an alien in my own skin.

you ever feel like that?

i went to a couple of job interviews today. i think it's safe to say they didn't go so well.
TMI? tough. sometimes angst happens. besides, it's my freakin' blog.

went to see mom afterwards. we sat and visited for a while. she soon dozed off sitting up in her chair. i read for a while. she snored and woke up occasionally. the truth is, i was grateful for the down time.

an hour or so later i began to wonder... "huh. is she sleeping well at night? is this an incipient sign of the dreaded next stage of this awful disease we call alzheimer's?"
i literally shuddered.

recently i've noticed, without being fully aware before today, she sleeps more during the day. how well will i deal with the latter stages so sure to come? it's coming full steam and head on, isn't it.

i'm not prepared, but i'm not afraid of you.
what will be, will be.
i'm not angry, but i admit i hate you, AD.
sometimes i joke that you are a jealous monster. jealous that you have no mind of your own and take it out on others by stripping them of their own minds.
still, i know you're nothing more or less than an irrevocable chemical process and not a *you* capable of listening or caring, but please, i wish you'd leave-my-mother-alone!

shit. i can barely deal with my own measly problems.



once upon a time i pretended i was gonna ask amy sedaris to marry me. hahahahaha. i once had a vintage 1961 rolls royce and traded it in on a 1922 tractor.

i'm a master at one thing. screwing up.

heck, i've fucked up a 20 year marriage, built and single-handedly self destructed more than one enviable avocation, written and nixed over 35,000 words in a feeble attempt to write a novel. i've been known to mess up, and sometimes give up, way too easily. way too many times. and that scares the holy bejeebers out of me. i'm afraid of me. i'm pretty sure Mumblecrust would laugh out loud to hear me whine, but i know he'd understand these disjointed ramblings and even understand my fear.

i also figure he'd give me a much deserved swift kick in the butt for it.



Rivers flow backwards, valleys are high...mountains are level, truth is a lie...


Where is that fine line before it all breaks?... Read more!

WARNING: whiny post ahead

so, the last post was all about how great life is. about getting mom outside to enjoy the beautiful weather. reminiscing about the pecan detectives. the great visit with relatives, etc...and there was even more that i didn't express adequately.

my high was soon dampened. no. it was fffflattened. it was flat-out SQUISHED.

the caretakers reading this will no doubt find this post all too familiar and the rest of you should probably not read any further, either. why don't y'all just stay here and enjoy that hilarious picture a friend sent me of *nut gathering with a walker.*

...that was saturday. sunday was another beautiful day weather-wise and i'd made arrangements for mom to get to church and have some human interaction without me, so i played hooky. then comes monday. monday was cold and rainy. as we looked out her window, i said something like, "well, it was fun being outside the other day when it was so nice out, wasn't it?"

she cocked her head and asked if she'd been out. i reminded her in some detail and she pretended to remember. i showed her the pecans in the bowl and she asked where they came from. we cracked some, but my heart wasn't in it.

Tuesday:
a cold windy day. we spent the majority of our visit doing the newspaper routine. she'd read a headline or a paragraph and ask me to explain the most obvious parts.

- 4 YEAR COLLEGE COSTS RISING -
"do you have kids in college yet? or are you past that," she asked.
i told her again about sean and jo...
"sean's graduated? what does he do?"
"i told her again about the academic website he's creating, etc. she asked me what a website was again. i told her again. she remembered sitting in front of the computer downstairs.

- KING TUT COMING TO DALLAS -
"who is king tut?"
i told her.
she said, " well, he's coming to dallas."
HAHAHAHAHA (believe me, that was ffffunny.)

- MUSLIMS ACQUITTED BY JURY -
she read quite a bit of that one. she was so confused. we talked about islam not being a sect as she had guessed when i asked her, but more like judaism and christianity. and about what a trial is. do you know what a terrorist is, i asked? "no."

"Good," i said. "i'm glad."

she looks at the paper again...

- Tuesday, October 23, 2007 -
"today is tuesday?"
"yes ma'am. it's 3:43 P.M."


so here's the deal, folks. i'll try not to get too excited about the good days and will try harder to enjoy the moments. the moment is really all she has the slightest grasp of. Read more!

animal, vegetable, mineral

if you happened to have seen the last post and are wondering if you imagined it...no, i deleted it on the grounds of its being too fucking whiny. if you commented on it, i apologize that your comments went away as well.

(and thank you for the heartfelt tugs back to this thing called life.)


life. what in the cornbread hell is life?


flora and fauna. yes, i think we all agree on that.

but what about rocks? (this photo is of a rock slab *growing*)

and what about a human bean who can no longer remember things for more than a split second? where does life begin? where and when does it end? is a plucked, shelled and cooked bean no longer alive even though it is still capable of providing life-giving sustenance? what about the ones left to rot on the vine? are they dead or alive? if a tree falls in the forest...

i have no fucking idea.

of course, the philosophers have already asked and answered these questions. funny thing is, they often disagree. men of god (and women, too) and novelists and tinkers and tailors -rich men, poor men, fools and witties- have put these questions to the test ad nauseam.

they all seem to have answers.
but i don't.

does that make me an agnostic on life? i will write more later. when i figure how to say it...i doubt it will be what you expect or want to hear, though.
i can love a rock. i've been known to. but no rock has ever loved me back. that's a fact, jack. at this point, mom is capable of loving me, but only when i'm there. she's on the verge of not knowing i exist unless i am there. the people she rarely sees are already mere pixels and vague characters in stories i tell. Read more!

tomorrow's gonna be a better day.

this computer is/ a helluva lot/ smarter than i am/
much wiser, too.
i'd writ' a long post/ of the last few days/ then i it screwed up/
so now it's gone.
trust that's just. and well/ and good riddance. if/ only to myself/
i've made my peace.

(there's nothin' much after the jump. so don't bother clicking the *read more* link.)

that was *days* in the biblical sense. it might really mean *years.* i sure have screwed up a lot.
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not just another SiLLY blog post

from a british web site: Iraq Body Count
and here's the count, according to them, for just ONE WEEK in 2007.
i double dog dickin' dare ya to read that one.

the following disturbing numbers are confirmed:
as of today, june 20th, in the year of our lord, MMVII...

• u.s military deaths (iraq).........3,531
• u.s. military wounded (iraq)...25,950
• iraqi civilian deaths (min)......65,828
• *excess* iraqi deaths.........655,000

HUH!? sheeut. gimme a break. that last one’s just gotta be a bogus number.
Doesn’t it?
(even if you didn’t click on or read any of the links above, i beg you to read this one. and ponder it.)

AHA! See there? it IS bogus. Those numbers are 8 freakin’ months old!
and furthermore, what's this bull-shit about iracky physicals and a bunch of goddam lib'ral, anti-merikin epiduralists? i've just about had it with all them camel humpers and i've sure as hell had it up to here with them bloomin' collige edjeecated jewboys.

"This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country. The survey was done by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health."

i repeat. 500 PER DAY. civilians. 500 human beans every. fucking. day.



sorry if that brings you down, but i believe we are all responsible.
And while you’re mulling the meaning of that last statement…do you know about this?


makes ya proud, don't it.

remember all that *reconstruction* we were gonna do after shock and awe?

is that what you thought all those *contractors* were bein' paid billions of $$ for? a private army?
well you're not to feel alone. our way of rebuilding the infrastructure we've destroyed is apparently to build a $592 million, 104 acre (!) american embassy in baghdad.
after shock, indeed.
we all done been duped, suckas.

p.s. i didn't mean to stick that video in twice, but i'm not real computer savvy, ya know? hey, what the fuck. go ahead and watch it again. (and if the video doesn't work, please go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqM4tKPDlR8)

-----------#@*&------------

chill, rick. what in the cornbread hell brought that rant on?

well, for one thing, i haven’t had my crossword fix for the day and for 2, i made the mistake of havin' the tv on earlier and i saw this guy--------->

(he was pontificating about his moral reason for vetoing the stem cell research bill.
and i swear to god, the asswipe actually said something to this effect:
"...taking human life to save human life is immoral..."
ahahahahahaha!!!
it just doesn't get more ironic than that, does it?)

…and for 3, sometimes, well, sometimes i have bad dreams about the 655K...it just gives me the friggin' willies.



i’ll try to get back to bein’ silly, soon. i promise. really.
Peace y‘all,
rick

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howdy folks

well, since i nixed the mosaicist blog, the mumblecrust saga and the myspace page, i've lost quite a few more decibels of hearing, my sister found out she has cancer and i can't do a goddam thing about it.
since then hundreds of more americans and iraqis have died and been maimed, my brother in law finally went into rehab and some slutty singer either just got out or went back in - i'm not really sure...but i'm personally doin a-ok. thanks for asking.


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