Category Archives: today’s thought

February 24, 2009 (updated)

THE TWITTER FEED WAS LUNATIC!

An Obama Speech Live Blog by Andrew Sullivan

LiveBlog of speech by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo

“Progressives” LiveBlog Obama’s speech at Daily Kos

ABC.com LiveBlogs the speech with Twitter Twist

I didn’t bother to watch — I don’t have TV at home now, and I didn’t want to go out — but that doesn’t matter as much as the blogosphere and CW reax in tomorrow’s papers, for which I am not going to wait up. If I have anything of substance to say, I’ll do it after digesting some likely bloated pontificating by pundits of all stripes.

DID TUESDAY MAKE ME LOOK FAT?

Historically Carnival has been a last hurrah before the Christian season of Lent40 days of fasting and penitence beginning on Ash Wednesday. But its roots reach at least as far back as ancient Rome’s Saturnalia, a hedonistic winter celebration of Saturn, god of the harvest.

National Geographic

A Saturnalian Moment in Brazil

A Saturnalian Moment in Brazil

I haven’t heard from my son, who lives in New Orleans, about his experiences, but I’ll give him a couple days rest before I make him talk to me on the phone. I did notice a tweet from him about missing the Vieux Crew ball, but I’m not all that sure I want to know what goes on at the Vieux Crew ball. Compared to my children, I’m not nearly as mature. In fact, compared to most people, I may not be that mature, but that’s another matter.
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February 19, 2009 (updated)

Vintage RayBans

Vintage RayBans


AH CHOO! SNIFFLE SNIFF
Today’s LongRydeHome is an evocative note about Spring planting and working in the ground. I admire the sentiment, but can’t join in. I’m having an allergy day from hell. My eyes feel like they are bleeding and not just oozing water. My ears feel not just stopped up, but filled with concrete. My throat is almost closed and is raw from coughing up phlegm and the occasional post nasal drip. I am miserable. I haven’t had a good respiratory breath through my nose since I woke up at 7 this morning, and I’ve filled up half a wastebasket with tissues. It’s midday and I’ve not left the house, although I’ll soon make a foray out to buy more cigarets. You want to know what it’s like to be an addict? That’s what it’s like. No matter how miserable you are and no matter how irrational and self destructive, you do what you have to do to get your next fix.

TODAY’S THOUGHT

Proverbs 17:9

One who forgives an affront
fosters friendship,
But one who dwells on disputes
will alienate a friend.

It is easier to know wisdom than to act wisely, I find. Please forgive me if I toddle and stumble while I’m trying to learn how to walk the walk.

Blogblah

February 16, 2009

UPDATE:

TV Network Founder Beheads Wife?

And you think your divorce was bitter? This guy founded a Muslim television network to bridge cultural gaps for Muslims in the United States. He called police to tell them where the body was: at the office. I find this kind of Sharia culture attitude towards women offensive from my cultural perspective. In fact, I find it mind-boggling. So much for steak and blowjob day for you, mister.

Gotta lite?

Gotta lite?


SMOKE ‘EM IF YA GOT ‘EM
My packs of Winston cigarets FORMERLY said “no additives”. It doesn’t say that any more. Neither do other cigarets, like American Spirits. The government made them put chemicals in my smokes. Yeah, that’s right. The government made them put chemicals in my cigarets. So the cigarets will go out. If you don’t keep puffing on them until the end, they just go out and you have this half a cigaret roach stub sitting in the ashtray. It’s so the old duffers like me don’t go to sleep with a cigaret in our hand and burn up the house. Meanwhile, zillions of us who will never burn down any house or bed have been forced to consume additional potential carcinogens and pathogens on top of the already risky product we consume. The Nanny State gone wild! Almost enough to make me a libertarian. Oh, and the tax on each pack increased just in time for the Great Depression. What the hell are we supposed to do for our noir films about this era if everyone stops puffing? Can you even imagine a Beat Generation without cigarets, even if a lot of them actually were clove? If they want millions of us to give up our ciggies, they better legalize pot first. Just sayin’.
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February 15, 2009 (updated)

Looking on

Looking on


VALENTINE’S DAY
I had a lovely Valentine’s day weekend. I ran the gamut of emotions: content, happy, joyful, ecstatic, blissfully asleep. I ignored the troubles of the world and focused on the moment. I cooked a couple of meals, steak and salad Saturday night. I received in abundance validation and emotional fulfillment. Did some interesting things like antique shopping, thrift stores, book stores, coffee. Stress free and full of laughter and intimacies.
By comparison, my blogging buddy Flibbertigibbit vents a bit about Valentine’s and relationships and flirting and that whole boy-girl thing.
MindOverMary posts with passionate kindness and urgent wisdom in a lovely essay that made me admire my sister even more than ever.
Mom-A-Tron, aka RebL, gives us a lesson in green valentines that, I must admit, express a far more true and everlasting valentine than the pink and red crap we seem to favor.
LongRydeHome had a weekend full of trauma (a trip to the ER) and drama (a personal feud gone all bloggy) and despite the fact that MCARP shows up in a great many of her episodes, he has nothing whatsoever to report at 3:40 a.m. Wednesday through Saturday.
Sweet mystery of life.
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February 6, 2009 (UPDATED)

Wind Song 402-08

Wind Song 402-08


Joy Reed Belt’s gallery will be showing the work of Michi Susan Friday evening at the Art at the Elms First Friday gallery opening on the Paseo. The thumbnail photo here is of a 40″X30″ mixed media piece, “Wind Song 402-08″, that was in the online invitation to the event. With the weather expected to be very mild for February, I hope to see you all there. I don’t know what else is going on Friday night, but if I stumble upon who is playing at VZDs, Red Cup, Galileo’s or some other place I’m likely to go, I’ll update. I’m too lazy to search their sites right now. If someone else already knows, leave a comment with a link, will ya? Continue reading →

February 5, 2009

BECAUSE I SAID SO

BECAUSE I SAID SO


Do you remember the line from Desiderata: “Avoid loud and aggressive people”? King Solomon in his Proverbs and the Tao and others all warn against people who are quick to anger.
I have to admit that sometimes I’m that guy.
I have a temper. I frequently must apologize for things I say when I’m mad. Even worse, as some of the women who’ve dated me will testify, are the things I write in letters and emails when I’m pissed off and mad.
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February 4, 2009

Blogblah

Blogblah


I’ve been thinking today about something my father used to say: “I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.”
Funny, isn’t it, how a man I thought so stupid when I was a hotshot teenager could grow so wise over time — even after his death.
Some of you know the story in my life demonstrating this saying. I was sitting in probate court one day, feeling very sorry for myself. Oh! Quel Catastrophe! Life just was not worth living, I thought as the court docket was being called. Then, the judge was stumped by the name of one of the cases. H-O-U-G-H, is it pronounced “How” or “Hoag”? A woman’s voice chirped from the back of the room: “Huff, your honor, like rough and tough!” Continue reading →

January 30, 2009

A lonely blogger types his fingers to the bone

A lonely blogger types his fingers to the bone


I’m still thawing out and look forward to Friday’s expected high temperature around 60. I don’t have a lot to talk about except that I hope you noticed that I learned to “jump” my posts so that the page loads faster and you can scroll down to previous posts more quickly. You are clicking the “read the rest of the entry” thingy at the end of the posts, aren’t you? In other exciting blog news, I’ll be updating and revising my blogroll at the right — the sites that I link to. I’ve let them get seriously out of date. Before I do that, however, I want to hear from my readers whether they ever use the blogroll at all. Do you ever use my page to jump to another site by hitting one of the links on the right? I suspect many of you do not, for whatever reason. What can I do to be helpful and useful? Do you want links to Google, Yahoo, MSNBC, memeorandum, reddit, Digg, FARK or some other news aggregator? Should my personal blogroll of MCARP, Flibbi, Mary or my daughter be first and foremost? Does anybody care? Am I shouting in the wind to no one?
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January 27, 2009 (updated)

My yucca plants covered with ice and snow

My yucca plants covered with ice and snow

THERE’S SNOW BUSINESS IN OKC

Since the courthouse is closed today due to the weather “emergency”, I thought I’d take time from being bored at the house and maybe do a little blogging since I’ve not really written anything since the Inauguration on the 20th, a week ago. Before he tells you all about it, I’ve got to admit to a tiny bit of cruelty: I laughed and laughed and could not make myself come to the rescue of Sinatra late yesterday afternoon when he found himself in the middle of an icy driveway and couldn’t get any traction. Have you ever seen a cat lose its footing? I don’t think that happens often, or at least I don’t see it often, and watching my “snow cat” floundering just struck me funny. So funny, as it happens, I couldn’t keep my own footing well enough to go rescue him. When I finally got to him to pick him up and carry him back inside, he was PISSED. Fortunately for me, it was nothing a good petting and a little canned food wouldn’t assuage.

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