The Contrarian List of Do-s and Don't-s

Do:

• mess with Texas;
• have a cow, man;
• talk to strangers;
• quit your day job.
  

Don't;

• bedoobedoo;
• your homework;
• wop;
• right by me.
  

Snakes and Ladders

Ironic third verse of Chuck Berry's Roll Over Beethoven

I got the rockin' pneumonia,
I need a shot of rhythm and blues.
I caught the rollin' arthiritis
Sittin' down at a rhythm review.
Roll Over Beethoven they're rockin' in two by two.

The irony of course is that when Berry was finally diagnosed with stage 3 country-and-western cancer it was already too late; the progressive-jazz chemotherapy gave him at most an extra month. Some say it was the shame that really did him in.

Gotta go; starting to feel a severe bossa-nova migraine coming on.

Second day of Lent.

Remarkable, the flagging of resolution being even noticeable, let alone so pronounced.

I really must start writing them down

... short conversations with perfect strangers, I've been having more of since the cancer took ms away. Few have been as wonderful as this one with a thin serious woman in her late forties or so.


ME: {noticing Perfect Stranger noticing me spinning around a load bearing pillar by the 7th floor elevator while hanging onto it as if for dear life} Have you ever had to grab onto something to prevent yourself from just floating away?
PS {very seriously}: Yes.
ME: I hate that!
PS {a little sadly}: I know.

b

Angels advised me to meditate two people lying in the snow gazing up at the stars, their beating wings grazing one another's once, momentarily.

Chaperons

The notion of the oblivious chaperon occurs to me. It seems an ideal arrangement, the duties of that functionary being carried by the expedient of her presence only and not by the scandalous knowledge, real or imagined, of the sins of her charge.

Fantastic

Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the accidental destruction of the space shuttle Challenger a minute or so into its flight. I remember that day. It was fantastic.

Walking in the Snow

Had a half hour to kill after a swim and delivering some posters to HCP where I just missed Mass. So I walked in the snow, so quiet, muffled traffic sounds all about like a small sad Christmas party two doors down just winding to a close. Thoughts filled with LAFS and things she said.

Doh! What is becoming of this--some kind of Dear Diary affair?!!

No, but I don't want you to forget the walk so warm, and the deepening crystalline snow flakes sharp enough to know to be gentle, and a strange hyphen in a wonderful name.

Fantastic

My favorite use of the word fantastic, meaning of the stuff of fantasy, the word fantasy meaning hallucination is Charlie Brown's in the Charlie Brown Christmas special. Used without irony, it is more akin to horrific than to wonderful or grand. I try always to use the word in that negative fashion, when I use it.

Sometime, though, it's impossible.

Fantastic!

{sigh!} fantastic.

Comes to mind.

I saw someone outside kissing your mother
in the snow;
He's been gone for such a time, and she's still young,
you know.
Her colour was blush and I asked if she was cold.

She said no.
/

Taxi!

I like how the word taxi refers actually not to the automobile itself but the meter inside--the taximeter, which calculates and displays the fare based on some arcane calculation of distance and time and rates--and barometric pressure, I suspect. The car is a taxicab, cab recalling the hansom cabs of Sherlock Holmes' London--which, I presume, did not have meters--and having its etymology rooted in the cabriolet style of horse-drawn vehicle.

So, when I've had a few too many, I will call on my host to summon me a taximeter-equipped cabriolet. That is to say I haven't, but I will.

*

Third-hand Smoke Poses Risk, Say Physicians

"Third-hand" smoke — which lingers in cars, on furniture and on smokers themselves after a cigarette is extinguished — leaves toxic chemicals that crawling children can ingest, say pediatricians.

Expect more warnings as scientists in two separate studies are currently exploring the effects of reading emails sent by smokers and sharing linen with anyone who has ever visited Virginia.
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Big news in Canada

The Dire Straights song Money for Nothing has been banned from play on Canadian private radio by its own private watchdog. The use of the word "faggot" several times in the second verse had offended a single listener in Newfoundland. Personally, I think as an homage to Kanye West they should allow it to be played with the word "nigger" edited in. They can recycle the ones still lying on the floor from the Huckleberry Finn audio books.

Bad Poetry

This is a bad poem I wrote a while ago when I thought there was not a chance I would outlive ms.

Hereafter

Hush, old woman;

You gave me your body,

Your lashes when curly;

Your cheek when smooth,

Hush, old woman,

It is no longer early.

Hush, Hush, old woman;

You gave me your troth,

When I lied, when I lay

In the depth of my sin;

Hush, old woman,

On wake’s wedding day.

Hush now, woman;

You gave me my babies,

Tendered in pain;

Bawling, squalling, noisome brats;

Hush, but woman,

All anon gone again.

Hush old woman;

You gave me your youth,

Wasted wakefulness,

Breath, time; My wickedness;

Hush, old woman,

It is done, long-tooth.

Hush, old woman;

You gave me your tear,

Fear, and pure ivor’ prayer;

I lay in a ghost of your pain;

Hush! Hush woman,

Not now long, He deign.

Hush, Hush! Hush, old woman;

You give me a black dress,

White face to the sky;

Fain whisper your incense

To Purgatory;

It is over; And may be for ill,

But accomplished: lowly test;

Now hush, old woman,

And go to your rest.

Good for some LAFS

I believe in love at first sight. I believe it's something real. When we are young and foolish we believe it to be the same as love, and when we are young and cynical we dismiss it as lust, but when we reach a certain age we understand it's neither. It has more in common with love because it entails an orientation to love and with it a desire, however rash or reckless, to carry out that love. It has nothing in common with lust except that they accompany one another often enough to make the confusion forgivable among the pitiably jaded.