Someone at the State of Oregon enjoys reading my blog. I’m flattered. Someone sitting at a computer with an IP address registered to the State, enjoys reading my blog quite a bit. Searching, too, for alphabet letters. R’s and A’s, for instance.
Ironic, isn’t it? That my tax money is paying for my State of Oregon fan to read my blog. Nevermind the other things of mine she helped herself to. Yes, ironic.
To the concerned party who sent me letters about lawsuits, the post you weren’t fond of has been removed. Trails left by internet cache, though, are beyond my control.
Merry Christmas.
We told each other we wouldn’t speak of it, but that seems silly to me. For ONE, it’s all I have to speak of, it’s almost impossible to think of anything else. It’s why I hound you so with ants, because there’s the unspoken thing, and little else. It’s like I’m Monica Lewinsky right after Starr, and you and I are limited to talking about tea. It would be hard, don’t you think? After the dress and cigars and creepy interviews with old men, to just talk about tea?
Also, TWO, I’m not stoic like A. is. I can’t not speak of things, or not talk of them, or amble through my days as if nothing’s going on – it makes me loony. I am fascinated with A.’s ability to do it, I envy him, too. I’ve tried for years to mimic it, but find myself after hours or days of being stoic, a raving nut. A. is in that way a camel. He can postpone emotion, like camels do water, for weeks. I’m not a camel or a stoic, though I admire them both.
Lastly, THREE: This — what we do here, you and I – is technically writing and reading, not speaking.
I can’t afford to buy art because there’s a recession / depression / financial collapse and because the Dow Jones has skidded and the credit markets remain under strain.
So now the artists will suffer, and I will, too, because I have to make my own art.
I saw this, in ArtNews (which I strongly urge you not to read unless you’re an elitist or prepared to be one.)
It’s Franz Kline, he did a series of these. It’s a phone book page with black ink, he called it “Untitled.”
So I can make that, right? Easy. And we’ve had our phone book sitting out on the porch for like six months. They come and drop them off and we just leave ours there, on the porch. It’s our little statement to the phonebook makers and users of the world, we don’t even take off the plastic.
My plan, then, was to go get the phone book off the porch, rip out the DiFalco page, put some ink on it and hang it up. The glitch is that the phone book’s gone. Gone! Nothing on the porch now, just some leaves. I guess I’ll have to make my own art with leaves.
Before that, though, I’m calling Bill Ayers to have lunch. I want my character attacked, I’m tired of no one attacking my character. I’m also going to not wear my lapel flag and burn soccer balls. I’m going to hell.
I need your advice.
I left the iced tea out again, only this time outside. Drinking it is no longer in question, it’s now what to do with the bees. We have a yellow thing that hangs from a hook and we bought it at Lowe’s to trap the bees. I know that’s mean, in our defense we only put it up Saturday. There were little girls at our house and they cry when they see bees. No, crying won’t kill them; still. We killed the bees, let it go. Well, actually, that’s the problem, we didn’t. Stay with me. The bee-killing trap doesn’t interest them. It’s the iced tea, it turns out, that’s their downfall, the tea. (I make a killer – ha ha – iced tea!)
So here’s where you come in. I have a pitcher of tea, now, no longer iced, and there are bee bodies floating inside it. How do I dispose of the bees?
I would normally dump the tea down the sink – not on the garbage disposal side, but the other. In this case, if I dumped the tea down the sink, the strainer would catch the bees and it would look creepy. I don’t want to see it. I could choose the garbage disposal side, but it seems disrespectful. It’s likely at least one of their families wants a viewing. The last thing, then, I can think of is to dump the tea outside. I don’t know if it’s organic tea. There’s fake mint and herbs and some green in it, is it safe for the ground? And then I have the bee body issue still, that leaves me a pile of them. Will Scruffy try to eat them and hurt his tongue?
As you can see I’m struggling. Many of you have probably encountered this sort of thing before. If you have thoughts, please type them in. Then, of course, hit “Send.”
[For your trouble, here are some "Old Creepy Ads." Check out the pig cutting himself into sausage.]
Um, okay so this … is not me. And it’s not my sister-in-law (“Theresa DiFalco”) either. What’s with all the Teresa DiFalcos? I am not her. I’m me. And, also, I was never “furious.”
Remember those two things, they haunt me. Even though she is probably perfectly nice, and someone maybe ought to have been furious, still, neither thing captures me at all.
Well, whatever, I’m tired. I made peach salsa from the peaches my mother picked off her tree. I served the peach salsa tonight with scallops. The scallops were so-so. I’m on a salsa kick, I made some regular tomato salsa yesterday. A big giant bowl of it. I have tomatoes, that’s why, I have about a million. And also, I like salsa. So in those particular conditions, what the heck would you do. Huh?
I’m terribly bored and I’m trying to write and I’m not managing either thing well, you can see that I’m sure. I should take Scruffy for a walk, will you come with me?
Speaking of Scruffy. A friend of mine should be Scruffy’s doctor, but he isn’t. I didn’t know him when I got Scruffy, and well, Scruffy’s delicate, very sensitive to change. But besides that, this potential Scruffy doctor — let’s call him ”Vet” for simplicity – did the most amazing thing Saturday night. He went to dinner with me and A. That’s not the amazing part, though. Nor are the cigars and martinis and wine and pasta and swervy back roads. No. The amazing part is that we kept Very Tall Vet up until late in the morning, after 2. And on his way home, long after A. and I were both soundly passed out, he stopped at his office to treat a diabetic dog.
Seriously.
I don’t know. I think he’s a hero, an unsung one. Next time he comes over I will sing. That’s all I’m saying. Well that and my job totally sucks this week. I’m in the lurch. Loo-de-doo.
(Yes, it’s the name of a character. What are you going to do about it, tough guy.)
I’m going to upgrade today. I’m one click away. I’m going to do it and something awful will happen, please forgive me when it does.
Update: Well, I did it and you’ll see I have many more “A”s … in the coming weeks, months and years I will delete them. Ugh.
Honestly, this ridiculous Obama charade. I sympathize dearly, now, with my father. He – a lifelong, true-blue (red) Reagan Republican – is annoyed with his choice of McCain. I will be annoyed if my choice is Obama. He’s not the guy. He’s the Homecoming King. We may well be stuck, though, which makes a shoddy election for some of us. Others can swell his arenas. Well, George Bush had swells, too.
I may choose to not *gasp* vote. Or out of spite vote against the party! I feel bullied.
Grumpy in Oregon.
My friend Marcie sent me this and I got so mad in the first paragraph, I couldn’t finish. Not mad at Robin Morgan, who wrote it, but at the frustrating matter of what she’s saying.
Anyway, I finally read it all the way through and you should too.
[I’m still mad at these two bozos.)
Robert Jr., Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, and Kerry Kennedy wrote a much better op-ed than their cousin; one with substance. One that doesn’t invoke vague and meaningless language from 40 years ago.
[And this is the last I have to say about anything. I mean it.]
