I always wondered about MCARP’s taste in music and when we go to Kha Zana at Mayfair Shopping Center, he often knows the music they play. I think I have a better understanding now that I’ve watched the following video:

Y’all ‘member when, not too long ago, that MCARP was all about how he wasn’t going on political sites anymore because he’d engaged in feeding conservative trolls on some board er ‘nother? Well, that’s often part of my life and I don’t learn the lesson he’s learned. So, this short vid tells you a lot about how I feel about reading “comments” about anything.

The Gypsy Kings performing the Eagle’s hit, “Hotel California”. Theme of one of my all time favorite movies, The Big Lebowski.

A perfect find for this blog entry. So evocative.

To me, that’s art. Finding the perfect video to go with the perfect visuals to go with the perfect blog entry. YES!

So, last night was ART NIGHT.

First Friday on the Paseo. The Red Dot show at IAO. Drinks at Isis afterwards with friends and many many familiar faces.

Yesterday was perfect Fall weather for me: a warm and sunny afternoon followed by a cool, wear-your-jacket evening.

A friend of mine happened to see a little Miata for sale at a good price yesterday and gave me a call to clue me in. I went. The great price was a product of the little Miata having been wrecked. Once we opened the trunk, it could not be closed shut again despite the efforts of me, the car salesman, the sales manager, another salesman and even one of the mechanics from the body shop. I got started laughing at the procedure and kept laughing when they were still at it after I’d gone on a test drive of another car. They got me back, though. While I was test driving, they assessed my own Midlife Chrysler. They put an $8,000 price on it. All fine and well unless you consider that I owe $15,000 on it. I was pretty sure we weren’t going to do business.

After a long absence, I saw Button the Cat last night and she looked great in pigtails, a short leather jacket and skin tight jeans. Button the Cat is like a lot of housecats I know. She can be very friendly and wonderful and loving, but she likes to spend a lot of time under the couch and behind the sofa so you never know where she is or what the hell it is she’s doing. Geo. Oz, Debster, Timothy and La-nephew fixed her problems with communication: we waterboarded her until we found out what we wanted to know about her lovelife and residence and blind puppy and current occupation. I’m not sure how the question “How have you been?” ever became a state secret, but some people treat it that way.

I made a minimum bid on a Sue Moss Sullivan piece at the Red Dot show, but since I’ve had no call I’m guessing I wasn’t the last bidder, only the first. (update: I bought the piece; I just didn’t wait long enough for the call.) The Red Dot show, btw, was really terrific. The average quality of the show was a quantum leap higher than many years in the past (when it was the Not So Silent Night auction). Every single person I spoke to gave credit for the show’s overall excellence to the Oz, who curated. I still think he’s a genius and I still don’t often use that word to describe many people. I very much liked several of the three dimensional pieces; works by Larry P and Randy Marks and the Bewleys, for example. However, Diane Coady surprised me with what I thought was one of the best pieces in the show: a small, dyed silk neckpiece collar with champagne bubbles at the throat. Gorgeous, wearable art. Magnificent! I liked a Burt Seaborn piece that was next to the back room bar, but a $700 minimum bid choked me; even though well worth the price, it was out of my range. Lynne Barnett-Sparks’ bubble girl was nice as were the two pieces by Paul Medina (who confided he was saving back his better work for a show he’s having next month). I’m going down a dangerous path here and will turn back. There were too many pieces by too many artists for me to comment on them all.

At JRB last night, Joy Reed had a kind of garage sale of art to show. There were a bunch of artists and a melange of work in every room and the show included what didn’t sell from previous shows. I guess it’s the Christmas thing, trying to put out small works that one might choose as a nice gift for that upcoming holiday. I remain prejudiced against landscapes and the gauzy impressionism technique doesn’t save them for me; they still seem static, uninteresting, empty for my tastes. The Michi Susan room was great, but I can’t afford her, either.

Tall Cotton Stringband played at Sauced and Son del Barrio played at Galileo’s. Isis had a cheek to jowl crowd sucking on hookahs and a surfeit of women blocked the doors. I was home before midnight.

Oh, I almost forgot. How does this make any connection to Hotel California? Easy. “You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.” I was out of sync with the crowd I run with for most of the night. I was checking out or checking in before anyone else was ready. I was restless as could be (I told Timothy I felt like a long-tailed cat in a room of rocking chairs, a tired, but apt, metaphor). He told me it was because Mercury was in retrograde. OK. I don’t care what the excuse might be. Meanwhile, my non-love life has been treating me like it was dinner at Kha Zana India food buffet. I ate a long time ago, but I keep tasting it in the back of my mouth. Emails from loves long gone, imaginary conversations with women who aren’t there and won’t ever hear me talking like that again, I keep trying to check out but it seems I can never leave my own past. I kept running into women I once loved, still love for that matter, and it’s bittersweet to be sure. Might-have-beens, couldas, shouldas, oughtas. An unexamined life is a life not worth living? I got news for you, Plato. An examined life ain’t any better, chewing over old bones. I told a more recent lady friend that I felt like gasoline saying goodbye to matches. I think I have too many relationships like that: hot hot hot and then all used up. I think it’s fair to say that I suffer from a syndrome I see everywhere: I don’t know what I want, but I sure as hell know what I don’t want. And, I don’t want anything or anyone or any relationship. I can’t be pleased. Why do I try? More to the point, why do I make someone else try to do what I’ve been unable to do in six decades? It’s there other times, but First Friday is a large case in point. This is the world’s largest small town. If I go to art shows on the first Friday of the month, there’s a very large chance that my checkered past will smite me in the face sooner or later during the night. Last night, I was Ed Norton in Fight Club: punching myself in the face and blaming Tyler Durden.

And, all I wanted was to be The Dude.

In fact, here’s a video summary of my entire love life from age 15 to age 55:

blogblah!!!

It may not sound like it, but in a way this blog entry is very much like the “Ya no” entry below.

I have this sense of change.

Lots of the time, I have an alcoholic’s sense of impending doom, of the coming catastrophe in my personal life. I’m not good enough to succeed, so of course, I will soon be bankrupt and friendless and homeless and oh my I can’t take anymore I have to have a drink.

Yeah, yeah.

This sense of change is not the same.

I don’t yet know and won’t and can’t know for a long time whether catastrophe awaits. Likely it will, but there’s nothing to indicate that at the moment.

I feel that I am changing in some fundamental way.

I feel, without evidence, that important personal experience awaits me very soon.

I mean, I see little signs here and there. Habits changing and axioms challenged.

I’ve done a lot of things differently this year, but a great deal of this year has also been spent remaking the same old mistakes and bad judgments. I just sense that some little changes are about to reach critical mass and make a synergistic leap in some direction that I can’t just yet quite foresee.

I’ve been a year without a girlfriend, nor much in the way of dating and the single life, really. I don’t think a new romance is the change of which I speak, although it may be a part of the shift I sense coming. It’s certainly one of the changes in my life this year about which I speak. This is the first time ever that I’ve ended a romance in a still friendly way and then not jumped right into another. For the first time, I’ve seriously tried to think through my part of my past romances. Unfortunately, not a lot just jumps out at me, but a “eureka moment” in the area of my attitude about romances might be something that would fit this category of suspicion of changes to come.

Just lately, I’ve really tried hard to move my path more sobriety oriented by attending more AA meetings, volunteering and such. One change I know that I’m invested in making with respect to my sobriety is to actively seek serenity. It’s been a very long time since I did a good job of making a daily habit of “centering up”. My Tao leanings are hard earned. They do me no good if I forget them and don’t practice them daily. For me, one of the centers of my AA experience is to learn from them the hard lessons of prioritizing and analyzing daily life as we experience it, and to regard it with equanimity. Almost nothing must be a big deal unless we make it so. Such thoughts infuse my life and are blessings when I use those tools. This calm acceptance of the world as it is helps keep me sober. If I am successful at making serenity a part of my day on a disciplined and daily basis, this would certainly be a big change of the psychic kind I anticipate.

The big change could be financial. I always think I’m on the verge of bankruptcy and disrepute. Maybe I’ll finally go under. Maybe something really big will drop into my lap. Who knows? I know this: my finances must go one of those two directions soon because I simply am incapable of continuing to tread water. I will soon decide, I suppose, by my behavior whether I shall be the hero or the villain of my own story just as Dicken’s character declared. (I wrote “victim” instead of “villain” the first time through. Freudian slip anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?)

There’s also something not right about my surroundings at home. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s the furniture, it’s the decor, it’s the floor plan, it’s the space, it’s the neighborhood, it’s je ne sais quoi. There’s something not right, yet I look at every room overall and in detail and I can’t tell what it might be. Of course, I’d like new furniture, new electronics, new decor. But, it’s something else I can’t quite tack down. I’ve been talking about selling my house and buying something smaller and maybe that’s a big change I can feel coming even more than making a decision in that direction.

My sister, MindOverMary, is coming to town Nov. 13-18 and I’m sure we will talk about it since we talk about everything. I expect I’ll make my Thanksgiving holiday plans about the same time. I haven’t talked to Mom or my kids yet and their preferences will be a strong influence. Mary’s invited me to follow her back to S.C. and I’m hankerin’ to go. I love where she lives, it’s beautiful and the food and shopping are great. Mary makes me laugh and I want to see her sons and daughter/son-in-law.

And, by the way MCARP and your irrational longings and Flibbertigibbit! and your sleeping/SLEEPINGs — well, you know. Both of you. Stop it.

I’m qualified to tell lawyer jokes. I hear them every single f’n day and mostly it’s the same ones over and over and over. Here’s one no one tells because no one can remember it, but it’s still f’n funny.

A lawyer married a woman who had previously divorced ten husbands.

On their wedding night, she told her new husband, “Please be gentle, I’m still a virgin.”

“What?” said the puzzled groom.

“How can that be if you’ve been married ten times?”

“Well, Husband #1 was a sales representative: he kept telling me how great it was going to be.

Husband #2 was in software services: he was never really sure how it was supposed to function, but he said he’d look into it and get back to me.

Husband #3 was from field services: he said everything checked out diagnostically but he just couldn’t get the system up.

Husband #4 was in telemarketing: even though he knew he had the order, he didn’t know when he would be able to deliver.

Husband #5 was an engineer: he understood the basic process but wanted three years to research, implement, and design a new state-of-the-art method.

Husband #6 was from finance and administration: he thought he knew how, but he wasn’t sure whether it was his job or not.

Husband #7 was in marketing: although he had a nice product, he was never sure how to position it.

Husband #8 was a psychologist: all he ever did was talk about it.

Husband #9 was a gynecologist: all he did was look at it.

Husband #10 was a stamp collector: all he ever did was… God! I miss him! But now that I’ve married you, I’m really excited!”

“Good,” said the new husband, “but, why?”

“You’re a lawyer. This time I know I’m gonna get screwed!”

And a doctor joke for balance

First-year students at Med School were receiving their first anatomy class with a real dead human body. They all gathered around the surgery table with the body covered with a white sheet.

The professor started the class by telling them, “In medicine, it is necessary to have 2 important qualities as a doctor. The first is that you not be disgusted by anything involving the human body.” For an example, the Professor pulled back the sheet, stuck his finger in the butt of the corpse, withdrew it and stuck his finger in his mouth. “Go ahead and do the same thing,”! he told his students. The students freaked out, hesitated for several minutes, but eventually took turns sticking a finger in the butt of the dead body and sucking on it. When everyone had finished, the Professor looked at them and told them, “The second most important quality is observation. I stuck in my middle finger and sucked on my index finger. Now learn to pay attention.”

thanks to Flibbertigibbit’s note to MCARP, I found this and thought it funny.

I wasn’t able to embed the video, but Dick Cheney was so concerned about Southern California’s fires that he nodded off to sleep during a Bush-led cabinet meeting. Also funny.

I haven’t felt much like writing in a very long time and I’m not just talking about the blog. I mean I’m not writing my cat story and I’m not even putting much in my journals and diaries.

In fact, I’m not doing much of anything these days.

It’s not like I’m depressed and isolating.

I’m just fucking off.

Sorry about the unnecessary language, but it’s expressive of my actual activity.

I’m just kind of screwing around.

No rhyme or reason.

It’s just what’s going on with me right now.

I just saw a Penn & Teller about AA and addiction and it’s thought provoking, but disturbing thereby to my serenity. I’ve been going to more than usual AA meetings of late and even “took a meeting” down south of here at a pre-release center. My program is all mixed up right now and I even know why. I’ve reached a point where I can’t be special anymore and need to get a new sponsor that I’ll actually call and talk to and tell the truth and all that. Damn. I was hoping to avoid that. (Why? Well you might ask, because I don’t know the answer.)

A friend of mine notes that all ex drunks have two things about which they will whine incessantly: romance and finance. I hate being nailed like that. On the other hand, I’ve done pretty well about trying to keep both those things off my front burners for quite a long time. Just wish the finance thing would wait until after Christmas like most other years.

I think a big part of my finance whining has to do with the above bit about not doing much of anything of late, but just kind of screwing around instead.

One bad thing about just screwing around is that you’d think it’d be cheap, but it isn’t. You find yourself buying $10 worth of coffee at $1.50 at a time plus some tips. You eat lunch or dinner out. Another $10-20. You see something like a shirt or a pair of socks or a tie or … I don’t know, an iPod … and the next thing you know, you’ve made the considered decision that you have to have … wait for it … a $400 Blackberry phone! That’s the ticket! (Huh? Well you might ask, because I don’t know the answer.)

Not to mention that you’re screwing around on $3/gal gas.

It’s expensive to bum around.

And you don’t make much money that way.

United for Peace & Justice (www.unitedforpeace.com) has organized
peace actions in eleven major population hubs on Saturday, October 27.

OKLAHOMA CITY PEACE ACTIONS
Peace Rally: Saturday 10/27 (read below)
Peace Music Concert: Sunday 10/28 (read below)
(POSTER HIGHLIGHTING BOTH EVENT: ATTACHMENT)
Peace Festival: Saturday November 10 (read below)

Check ‘em out on the Peace House website:
Peace House www.peacehouseok.org

END THE WAR RALLY: Saturday, October 27
11 am – 12:30 pm
at our regular weekly HONK FOR PEACE location:
Northwest Expressway at Meridian Ave.
(parking lot and City land on north side, east corner)
DETAILS:
Music by the Electric Primadonnas.
Drumming with Jahruba – Bring Drums — Signs — Lawn chairs
Brief speakers … Including two Oklahoma “Gold Star” Dads
PETITIONS to end the war
POST CARDS to end the war.

Peace Music Concert Sunday,10/28
5 pm – 6:30 pm
Church of the Open Arms, 3131 N. Pennsylvania Ave. OKC
You are invited to attend “An Artful Call For Peace” which is the
final Fourth Sunday Peace Program of 2007. Tracy Feldman will be
performing. He is an awesome singer/song writer. Attached is a flier
with all the information about the concert and about Tracy. I hope
you’ll come and invite others.
Opening music will be provided by “Mixed Company”, the group I
play for at Church of the Open Arms. They’ll be performing a piece
called, “Lay Down Your Arms”.
Please print the attached flier and put it up somewhere! Sunday,
October 28 Church of the Open Arms 3131 N. Pennsylvania Oklahoma
City, OK 5-6:30 p.m. I hope I’ll see you there.
-Conna Wilkinson, Peace Education Institute, Oklahoma City

DON’T FORGET OKLA.CITY’s ANNUAL (21st)
PEACE FESTIVAL
Saturday, November 10 – – 10 am – 4 pm
Civic Center Music Hall “Hall off Mirrors” – – Downtown
Admission Free – Free street parking at Meters
60 tables and booths highlighting work by groups working
for social justice, human service, human rights, environmental
sustainability, nonviolence, and peace.
HOLIDAY GIFT OPPORTUNITIES:
On display are fair trade goods, Nicaraguan coffee, handmade
jewelry, Mexican pottery, African carvings, Guatemalan fabrics
and clothing, local artists, photography, books, calendars,
T-shirts, bumper stickers, buttons, and — most important —
social solidarity with Oklahoma’s peace & justice community!
Carpool to reduce driving.
See ya there.
Nathanel Batchelder, Director, The Peace House
www.peacehouseok.org