Web Log,  November 17th through November 27th, 2004

Saturday, November 27, 2004

Now I'm certain.
How much clearer can it be?
You locked me up and now you're gonna set me free.
I should be happy 'cuz, after all, I know the truth.
I should be happy...
but I'm blue.

Each year, there are fewer and fewer dates that I don't associate with some event. Twenty-six years ago today (in the San Francisco Bay Area at least) there was only one event.

Sometimes I think I need a life...but then I read about these dudes trying to work out something that happened way-way-way before any of their great-grandparents were born! I struggle for an adjective! How 'bout eerie!

Friday, November 26th

Now I'm certain.
Now there isn't any doubt.
You filled me up and now you're gonna pour me out!
Imagination gets the better part of me...
so I've been living 
a fantasy.

OK. How can an individual (or business) smart (or well-run) enough to have $28,000 also be so stupid as to part with it for a half-eaten, ten year old grilled cheese sandwich? I don't believe it! And I also don't believe that anyone will pay hundreds of thousand of dollars for a used baseball, no matter whose bat it touched!

Finished reassembling the truck's rear brakes. Still have to bleed the system. I'm too old and weak to be doing this myself anymore...but still too cheap to pay anyone else to do it for me.

Thanksgiving Day

I'm gonna start posting some songs by other people that I do. Last night I posted a version of "It's Magic" (a terrifying beautiful song by Sammy Cahn.). If I do say so myself, it sounds very pretty (after the first few seconds of shaky mix). ;-=) 

Heard this morning from my beautiful first wife. She's nobody's clone. She just got herself a new kitty    'cuz, like me, she's a sucker for furry mammals. 

My P4 computer arrived yesterday from Columbus, Ohio but I haven't even unpacked it yet, what with the truck still apart. I'll spend some of these next few days linking it up to the Mbox.
This day dawned with the delicious possibility of rain but, surprise, I did NOT win the Lottery last night! I bet I've heard and recited every piece of wry humor about the Lottery...like "Your chances of winning are not improved by playing" and "It's a tax on stupidity!" But I play anyway! I mean, I try to limit my ticket purchases (to under $500 per draw), but I view the Lottery as a tool to stimulate my imagination (as well as to lighten my wallet). So what if you have to play for 5000 years before the odds are only a thousand-to-one against you? It's like that Jim Carrey bit with Lauren Holly (whom he's hot for) in Dumb and Dumber: "a million to one, did you say? So...there's a chance?"

Just in case you've run outa things to worry about...the disputed election in the Ukraine oughta put you back on track! :-) Doncha ever wonder what people useta worry about before we all lived in this Global Village?

JFK was buried forty one years ago today. 

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Listening to National Pentagon Radio while negotiating traffic jams after dropping off Maggie at school...

As viscerally opposed to Bush and his gang of Godlies as I admit that I am (and always have been ever since I realized that this Yale graduate can't hear the difference between "nuclear" and "nucular"...language matters to me and, often, details of word pronunciation and/or usage reveal much about a person's mindset), I would still like to believe this about me: that, IF these so-called "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) actually HAD been found in Iraq after our invasion, I would summon the grace to concede that my intuition was wrong and that the Godlies were right! I know...the "people have spoken" and we have re-elected someone of not-even-average intelligence with an unblemished record of failures in virtually every arena in which he has performed. But to me, anyone who NOW believes that the invasion of Iraq was a good idea is likely to also believe that it was a good idea that we launched the Challenger on that crisp morning in January some nineteen years ago.

And oh yeah...Lee Oswald was murdered 41 years ago today on national TV. [Joke at the time: Q: What happened when the elephant walked into the Dallas Police Station? A: Nothing. Nobody noticed!] Like so many of my generation, I almost needed to believe that JFK's death was the product of a conspiracy. But, after reading Gerald Posner's tight-write in "Case Closed", I yielded.

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

No matter what happens (or doesn't happen) every day, myriad "news departments" must have a product. And the size of that product must be nearly the same every day. There are pages, programs and time-slots to fill. Just as a restaurant might have too many waiters some Tuesday night but too few some Wednesday morning...there are too many reporters on some days and too few on others. Staffing reflects expectations. On a slow news day, a story of (otherwise) only parochial interest might be covered to saturation. Conversely, on a day filled with momentous events some stories, otherwise of "significance", might not be reported at all.
Aldous Huxley happened to die on the day that JFK was shot. On Monday, November 1, 2004, the US Supreme Court rejected what will likely be the final appeal by Dr. Jack Kevorkian.

On the subject of things not of general interest: this morning I'm continuing my project of renewing the rear brakes on my '88 F-150.
Got both drums machined ("turned" is the term) yesterday and I just removed the passenger side rear wheel cylinder. I've never seen one so gunked up! It's like the truck's rear wheels had been parked in muddy water. [Brake fluid is quite hygroscopic, you know.] I bought this truck four years ago from a large man who often visited wilderness areas.
Color me crazy, but I love working on cars! I mean...maybe not always, but when things go well (and they don't, always) I derive serenity (and greasy paws) from the work.

Monday, November 22, 2004

My alibi: Forty one years ago...I guess it was a little after 2:00 PM ( I could maybe make a better guess) when the first of two announcements came over the PA system of Christian Brothers Academy.

I was the school's only (avowed) atheist...a senior. I had been "out" (in the language of the 90's) for almost three years. Some kids figured I must have some balls! I never looked at it that way...at the time. Perhaps if I had, I would have dissembled, for "the better part of valour is discretion." Simply because "the greatest saints were once the greatest sinners", the two or three (out of thirty) faculty members who did not think I was a varsity miscreant, believed that I MUST have a "calling"...a "vocation". That is, someday I would be a priest!  

And almost 41 years ago, I completed and submitted my application to Princeton University. Of course, I didn't get in (even with the perfunctory yet requisite recommendation from a State congressman). I asked Brother Edward, my math teacher, to please write the character reference portion of  the application. I mean...I guess I kinda thought he liked me! I mean, I was such a bootlicking brown-noser and I did pretty well in his class. Some weeks after the rejection letter arrived in the Spring, I got to see what turns of phrase the Blessed Brother had enlisted on my behalf: "John stands out for his willingness to question what others passively accept. Unfortunately, his doubts are not always based on sound reasoning. As far as I know, he is a young man of good character."                                    :'-(

The second announcement (some twenty minutes later) confirmed the worst of our fears. It wasn't easy for anyone to find something to say. 

Sunday, November 21, 2004

Posted a new recording of Ana  last night. Am listening to it as it type. I like it. (But then...I would.) :-)

Got sucked into reading a NYT article about credit card companies' predatory practices. Not an upbeat way to kick off this very sweet, but chilly morning.
 
So why is it, you ask, does time seem to go faster and faster as we age? Because for each increment, we have steadily more with which to compare it. For example, when you're five years old, a year is 20% of your life. But when you're fifty years old, that same year is but 2%. And so, by this crude math, when you're fifty a year is as long to you as was a week...when you were five. 

Saturday, November 20, 2004

Halle is 14 and Meghan is 18. It's only 45 degrees outside at 7:30 AM. It's only 58 inside. (Back in New Jersey, we'd say it was warm...for November.)

 Arlene has taken up a new position on a different sleeping bag. In June, the vet told me and Maggie that she has a cancerous tumor in her abdomen. He opined that only a surgical procedure might afford some hope for her "long-term survival". But she's already twelve and, frankly, I've seen this movie before. (I've been through a few cats). At the time, we expected her to not live more than a few weeks. But she was eating and I've never euthanized an animal that has continued to eat. Bizarre, even, that while the tumor has not shrunk, the cat is not deteriorating. In fact, a case could be made that she's become more lively since June. I let her go out during the day now and she always returns to be locked in again at night.

Friday, November 19, 2004

On a good morning, like this one, I get to run to the local Safeway and then walk back. It's 3/4 of a mile each way. Perfect for my pre-coffee post-tea wake-up routine.

[I know it's not nice, but] I can't help but feel that there's something constitutionally handicapped about the people working the floor at Safeway. It would take more sucking-it-in than I could muster to be constrained to say, "And how are YOU today?". ["Oh just terrific!" is my invariant response.]  "Club Card?" ["Ah Jesus!"] "Like any help out?" ["No, I'll probably make it, but if you hear a scream..."] "Thank you, Mr. Shine!" It is this last piece of  obbligato which I once made an effort to stop. I actually wrote a letter (not simply an email) some years back to Safeway management, pointing out that it was rude to learn someone's name only as a means of  ingratiation. Of course, in a freeze-dried reply, I was thanked for my comments to which "careful consideration" would be given. For a while, there was one kid on the floor who made it his mission to remember as many customer names as possible so that even if that customer were to be happened upon in the Personal Hygiene aisle, the name might still be cheerily invoked. [Or should that be "evoked"?] That kid, gone now from that store, is already in management. On one occasion, I even asked a checker to PLEASE not say my name out loud....joking that I was in a witness protection program. To this, she nodded understandingly and said "Thank you, Mr. Shine!" ...in a whisper.

November 18, 2004

Before last night, it had been years since I had searched the Internet for information on the miserable events of 2/6/51 in Woodbridge, New Jersey. On the Internet, even a month can be a long time. There are now many (I won't estimate the number of) pages dealing with the disaster.

Here's one: http://www.woodbridgefdnj.org/History/Wreck/THNT/thnt2.htm

Here's another: http://woodbridgetownshipnj.tripod.com/woodbridgetraincrash  This one, IMO, is in a terrible format (for anyone who expects to read anything) but includes very many photos (albeit most of them not sharp).

Lunch today with Skip. Although we disagree on virtually every issue of  "substance" and our backgrounds could hardly be more dissimilar, I like it that he's alive...and not simply in the biological sense. What'd that gay Christian Brother (which one wasn't gay?) used to quote that Jesus said?

I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth.” Revelation 3:16

Where Skip and I worked for SO many years, people are not supposed to be warm-blooded; and hardly anyone who stays there for long is. But there is nothing particularly evil about that place. Impersonality is endemic to large organizations. [I offer this observation neither as a blinding insight nor because it is anything that someone has not remarked on before.]  

Jean-Paul Sartre made the case some fifty years ago when, during an obscene and extended bout with amphetamines, he formulated the existentialist creed: that life is not necessarily worth living. One has a choice to live or die. No one can be logically persuaded to go on living. But when and after one makes the decision TO go on living, then one must NOT perpetually revisit that to-be-or-not-to-be question! Our imagination is what allows us to do more than merely survive. We must find something that matters, first and above all, to us! The world is not just as we find it. We are IN the world and OF the world and we can shape it...but not, perhaps, for anyone else. Whether two individuals like or dislike each other is not a matter of reason. It is closer to an electromagnetic phenomenon. We have little to no control over with whom it is that we fall in love. Sometimes, though rarely, we fall in love with someone who loves us back. 

That same Brother was especially fond of quoting St. Augustine (ya know, the guy who said, "Lord, give me chastity...but not yet!"). One I remember well from ole St. A: "It was only after a great deal of work that I was finally able to eat without pleasure." ;-)

 November 17, 2004

My father died on February 6, 1951 in the Woodbridge, New Jersey train wreck...on the same day that my second wife was conceived.

 He was only 35.     

Tonight I bought an Mbox with the "factory bundle". It's not like I know what that means. Guitar Center made me the proverbial offer I can't refuse. This thing cost about $600 but I won't have to pay five cents until 2006. I also bought what will likely be my last Alesis ADAT tape. It's #8. I expect that it will take me many months, at least, to get comfortable with computer-based recording. No moving parts. Nothing to "break". I ordered a P4 computer from www.retrobox.com. Pro Tools needs an XP capable machine. I got an email today saying it's on the way.

Best not to pay attention to the news anymore. Facts don't matter. Nothing makes sense. Need to record with my acoustic piano...the Sears Grand. After thirty-four years...at last I can play!

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