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July 2, 2010

John Long — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 16:53:13 +0000

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Seems like a pretty good day here at St. John’s Infirmary. For one thing, I didn’t have to go to morgue and see my old lady laid out all cold like at St. James.

For another thing, I went to the doctors’ office today and came home with a wildly happy report. “Remarkable” and “Very Fortunate” were some of the words they used. Seems like the little walks I’m taking are better than anyone expected of a skinny old man like me.

All my tests are coming back clear including the chest x-rays and my scars are all healing nicely.

In fact, the surgeons released me and I won’t have to go back and see them. They refused to express an opinion on chemotherapy except to say it depends on what I work out with oncology and the amount of risk I’m prepared to take that the cancer will show up again somewhere else.

The “morgue” reference isn’t totally off the wall. My mighty hunter and self-appointed security guard raided a bird’s nest yesterday and it was my sad duty to interr a couple of featherless fledglings, to the howling displeasure of Sinatra. To say he’s “pissed” (not in the British sense of the slang word, but the American one) is a distinct understatement. My own sense of trying to coexist peacefully with our feathered friends has taken a blow, but I was out of the house too early today to catch the mockingbird. I hope the fledglings weren’t mockingbirds, because I would hate to think of feline sin.

So, I’m just trying to enjoy the purple Rose of Sharon (gosh, I hope for Woody Allen’s sake they’re not from Cairo since that was one of his worst films) presently blossoming in my back yard.

Hope everybody blows something up real good for the holiday and happy birthday Tuesday for me. I’m giving up on trying to do anything for the next four days since everyone I called this morning was already on their way to their four day holiday weekends, presumably at the lake.

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June 29, 2010

John Long — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 19:50:26 +0000

Pretty exciting morning here at St. John’s Infirmary.

I went outside to the back patio to enjoy my morning coffee in the cool of the day and was escorted by my personal feline security, Sinatra. Cunning predator that he is, he checked beneath all the nearby shrubs and bushes for any threatening squirrels, birds, crawling things or other evildoers. As cool breezes greeted the (7 a.m.) dawnings, he scampered and cavorted in the dewey grass, making sure I was safe from the swarm of gnats that hovers over the lawn. When he came to my ankles for his obligatory scratch between the ears, I knew it was safe to go in for a second cup.

Ordinarily, I’m serenaded by a particular male mockingbird in the mornings and again in the evening, but as I settled in with my second cup I noticed he was down the block today. Instead of his melodious morning concert, my yard was invaded by a raucous bluejay mafia making the territory their own. These four thugs of the sky didn’t need no stinkin’ badges, I’m tellin’ you. They clearly had no fear of me — one took the high lookout while the other three scoured the ground for anything that moved, each trading places from time to time. Later, these same four took notice of one of their second cousins twice removed, a crow much bigger than any of them, and they chased him from the entire neighborhood’s sky like World War II spitfires strafing a bomber. The bigger bird hadn’t a chance against these four blue ruffians.

I don’t drink as much coffee as I once did and I went inside for a true pleasure: I got to take a shower, wash my hair and shave myself all by my lonesome, just like a big boy. Even dried myself off with my own towel. Yep. Just like a grownup, I’m telling you. Big advance over just a couple of weeks ago, so I’m pretty proud of that landmark occasion.

Before it got too hot, I went for my daily walk. I’m up to 8 blocks now. Continuous blocks, mind you, not four 2-block walks or anything like that, a real walk for eight straight blocks without stopping. Gosh, there’s no where from here but up, right?

I closed out the early part of the day with a rousing read of an international best seller of a thriller called … er … something or another by someone I’ve never heard of.

Well, that’s the day’s dispatch. Don’t want to keep up this pace since I know some of my older readers must already be feeling the angina from the excitement.

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July 5, 2009 (updated @ 830 pm)

John Long — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 18:56:35 +0000

Quite a storm last night. The lightning was better than fireworks and the thunder much louder than any man-made report. No firework display I ever saw produced such strong winds, either. I suspect firemen all over the Metro sent up prayers of thanksgiving.

Sinatra and I watched from under my eaves but he bravely went inside to make sure all was well under the bed when the sky boomed and rattled the windows. The first wave of wind and hard rain caught him outside unprepared. It was, of course, all my fault he got so wet. Is there any wet food? Dry me off now so I can go look.
Sure glad he was around to help.
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Update:
This makes me feel more secure:

The Conservative MP Patrick Mercer, who chairs the counter-terrorism sub-committee, said the mistake had left the Sawers family “extremely vulnerable”. Referring to Miliband’s suggestion that the incident was not significant, Mercer said: “If that is the case why has the site being taken down?” He also pointed out that military chiefs had warned that the Taliban get 80% of their intelligence from Twitter and Facebook.

Anyone who gets eighty percent of their intelligece from Twitter and/or Facebook is a foe I think can be outsmarted.

March 28, 2009 (updated)

John Long — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 21:24:02 +0000

WHAT OKC’S SNOW LOOKED LIKE TO ME

apres l'deluge

l'deluge

BLOGBLAH’S BEEN AWOL?

shut up, he explained

I suppose that it hasn’t come up on your Google News feed that I’ve been absent without explanation for a few days; at least I haven’t seen any of the headlines you might expect when an important person like me disappears for several days. I wish I could explain myself, but I can’t. Even with my meds, there are times when I have an irresistable NEED to isolate. It’s not that I feel in despair, as I sometimes have with depression, and, in fact, I’m not sad at all. I just could not face the world of gray skies and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune the past few days. Maybe it’s something I’ve caught from MCARP, as The Gary implies in today’s email. There’s just been nothing I wanted to say or hear, no place I wanted to go or could afford, and the chance that I would scream at someone for nothing more than existing in the same world as me was sky high. This is one of those times I hate people, civilization, capitalism, democracy, truth, justice and the American way. If you haven’t seen me, count yourself lucky.

THE WOMEN, A BLOGROLL

In the blog links, you’ll see I’ve added a couple, and both are blogs by women I’ve run across at random. Megan Barry started following me on Twitter because I “tweeted” that I’d turned misanthropic. Any woman that young living near Seattle who is already misanthropic is good enough for me. Also randomly, I noticed a comment by a woman named Maggie May on my daughter’s blog and went to see who she is; well, it turns out she’s “Flux Capacitor” and she’s a married mom and writer and lots more. Blog love to both, although I hate them along with everyone else. You go to their sites and decide for yourself, even though I hate you, too. Since there has to be three (Right, Skip?), I also want to recommend you go see someone’s site who has long been on my blogroll, deShan. She recently sold out a show in Australia she called “100 days, 100 drawings.” Gee, don’t you miss her fairy wings? Well, don’t you miss her walking her pussy around Paseo? Well, I don’t like you, either.

Chairman of the Bored

TODAY’S THOUGHT

I think I speak for all cats when I say that what we most want to know about humans is: Do they have tail envy?

Sinatra

January 19, 2009 (updated)

John Long — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 16:51:35 +0000

Eating ham & beans to build strength for bashing Bush

THE BUSH BASH INAUGURAL BALLZ

Well, dear readers, I’ve reached some conclusions about my Inaugural Ballz party, having been too exhausted to do much else but contemplate my bellybutton since then.
One conclusion I reached quickly: the beans and ham must have been pretty good because six quarts of the stuff and a dozen cornbread muffins plus a 9″ pan of “cake” cornbread was consumed in a relatively short time. I generally like stews and especially beans and ham on the second day even better than freshly cooked, but there were quite simply no leftovers from this effort.

BECAUSE I SAID SO

The Bush Bashing itself had a kind of “magical” effect on the participants, it seems. Everyone noted how satisfying and refreshing it felt to unload on the Worst. President. Ever. As much as I dislike violence for any reason at any time, firing off a 20-shot clip of BBs from a CO2 pistol seemed to bring a sense of closure to the past 8 years. Later, I learned I had actually invited a registered Republican who declined to participate, saying she wouldn’t do such a thing to Obama’s image if the shoe was on the other foot. The rest of us looked at her as if she were Martian (and belching methane?). I suppose that comes from dating above my social stratum and station in life. I thought we might burn the life-sized image of “The Decider”, but the closest we came was the efforts of two of the participants to use cigarets to burn out the eyes of the object of their political and partisan opprobium.
UPDATE: Apparently, we weren’t the only ones who threw shoes at a mock Bush nor were we the only ones with anti-Bush emotions yet to be fully vented, because Newsweek found others at Dupont Circle in D.C.
Those so inclined to attend parties but not participate in more action-oriented folly repaired to the television room to watch the 1962 masterpiece Manchurian Candidate with Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and the chilling performance of Angela Lansbury.
The card game in a third room became a tutorial for novices rather than the hard-nosed fight between seasoned veterans that I expected. Special thanks to Oz for leading the seminar.
Of course, there was also the animated discussions that go on in the kitchen — I’m not sure why kitchens become the focus of animated talking at almost every party I go to, but they do.
As for me, the moving of chairs, tables, etc., plus the rigors of shopping, cleaning and cooking have left my lower back in pain. I also don’t know about anyone else, but I was still so stoked and jittery after the party that I started the cleanup immediately so I wouldn’t have to face chaos first thing the next morning and didn’t get to bed until the wee early hours of the morning. This explains in part why you’ve waited until now for my report.

SINATRA SPEAKS

A cool cat with blue eyes. Call him Sinatra

Muffy, he’s lost his mind. First, I have no idea why he would have such a fixation with “Ballz”. I’ve done quite nicely without mine for sometime now and his only seem to make him more crazy more often. There wasn’t a room in the house to hide where there weren’t people with dog smells on them. What really mixed me up, though, was some guy in the flickering noisemaker room who smelled like at least an entire pride of lioncats. There were wonderful smells and plenty of people in the food room and no one, NO ONE!, fed me even once. I can only guess they were all out of their minds. Now that it’s all over, I’m in a real dilemma: when I stake out the water hole in the back yard, the birds stay in the trees; when I climb the trees, they go to the water hole. I’m trying a new strategy, Muffy. I’m sitting on the fence.

January 15, 2009

John Long — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 06:45:33 +0000

A cool cat with blue eyes. Call him Sinatra

So, last night he leaves me all alone so he can go to his hey-hey meeting and tonight he brings people over with all kinds of dog and cat smells all over them traipsing through my feeding room and into my wool throne room where they all sat around with the flickering square noisemaker. I’m either bored or overstimulated with not much in between. Since I have to barf anyway, I’m going to throw up right in front of the watering hole he refreshes every time he gets out of bed. I intend to remain steadfast in L’Resistance until he returns the better weather and the baby birds. Vive la chat!

January 7, 2009

John Long — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 06:02:25 +0000

DEATH DRINKS DUBLIO BREVE

Evil Empire Starbucks

As sometimes happens, I drop by the Evil Empire Starbucks to grab a cuppa to take back to work after lunch. Like any place that serves coffee on the north side of Oklahoma City I’m likely to see a few people there that I know, but not always. Sometimes I have to go next door to Saturn Grill before I see a face familiar. Evil Empire Starbucks is not like Sauced or the Red Cup in a lot of ways, but in some ways it is. Retired philosophers drink coffee wherever it is served, whether upscale or truck stop diner.

BECAUSE I SAID SO, THAT'S WHY!!!

This day, on my way through the line, I found myself being served a grande hot chocolate (goodness! was it not a cold day?) by a lovely barista with whom I have often passed the time of day. Some of you may also know her. However, do you know her big secret? I do. She’s married to a hobbit that works for Ed in the bowels of Sauced.

Hobbit's wife

On my way out, I paid obesience to the coffee codgers. The retired guys who know something just because they’ve lived through something. However, this was not something I wanted to hear particularly. We’re all going to die. Sooner or later, we all are gone from this life. This homespun philosopher, who should know from his vantage point of advanced age, reminded me that every moment, asleep or awake, Mother Nature is trying to find a way to get rid of us after the age of 40.

coffee codger

You know what? I don’t care how true it is, I don’t want to hear that. Just because MCARP says he’s ready to call it quits to middle age and start saying he’s “old”, doesn’t mean I have to do it. I am Peter Fucking Pan, baby, and I WON’T GROW UP. Don’t care what you say. We also talked along about how much time seems to pass faster after age 40. I got a theory about that. We experience time mostly through the observation of entropy. Because entropy has the upper hand after we’re 40, we “feel” like time passes more quickly because we see more entropy in less time than previously.

So, in the spirit of never growing up and highlighting my youth, what I did next of course is go to work where Mrs. Taylor, a teacher in her real life, gave me that “you are late to class and do not have an admit slip, young man, what am I going to do with you?” look as I snuck by while she was on the phone. Whew! Thought I was going to have to go to the principal’s office and get something really nasty put on my permanent record. Where do they keep those permanent records, anyway? Who keeps them? Who looks at them?
TODAY’S THOUGHT

If your happiness depends on money
you will never be happy with your self.

Stephen Mitchell translation of Tao te Ching
Chapter 44

STORIES THAT INTERESTED ME

The helpful tax collector? IRS given power to cut better deals

The Milky Way’s Not Snack Sized Any More

A cool cat with blue eyes. Call him Sinatra

I guess I’m glad I fell asleep before I remembered to poo in his shoes, Muffy, because this dark he finally brought home the FANCY FEAST that I consider vital to my Way of Life. I made sure to put an extra layer of finest cat hairs all around the cuffs of his best black suit to show my appreciation and to make sure no other cats get near my guy. Hey! You Birds! Get off my lawn! Gotta run, Muffy. bye!

FOR NO GOOD REASON

January 6, 2009

John Long — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:49:16 +0000

THE EYES OF TEXAS …

great football game!

No matter what happens from here on out, it was good to be a Texas and/or Big 12 fan at the end of the Fiesta Bowl. It was by far the best bowl game of the season so far and one of the better games I’ve ever watched. Great football teams come from behind, they find a way to win, and Colt McCoy and Texas and Mack Brown passed the test against a quality Big 10 team.

BECAUSE I SAID SO, THAT'S WHY!!!

Of course, this now means that no matter what happens on Thursday, both Texas and Utah are going to claim to be national champions AND Texas will continue to believe that Oklahoma “stole” the Big 12 Title and the chance to play Florida and actually BE national champs rather than just claim it. If Oklahoma loses to Florida, the hue and cry will be heard ’round the world. Horns will weep in the street and lynch mobs will be formed. There will be an attempt by a small group of Texans to secede from the union. For being so proud of their so-big state, they can cry like babies over football. Of course, Sooners are never, ever, ever crybabies and that 15-15 tie didn’t phase me a bit. We’re just cool. We have “Sooner Magic”, which means that we find a way to come back. Except when we don’t. Please Please Please Coach Stoops win this one, OK? I’ll get excited about college basketball around the time of the Big 12 tournament and maybe not until the sweet 16 in March. Oh! Before I forget, there’s also USC that thinks they have a claim to the title of national champions. They won the Pac 10 and beat Penn State in the Rose Bowl and really looked dominating.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Sometime during my marriage, my wife must have bought “my-fault” insurance.

WHAT? NO POLITICS?

The truth is that after the November elections, I’d been following politics closely for my whole life and started being interested in the presidential election in the fall of 2007 and built up to the point that I was honest to goodness reading political stuff on the internet from 8 to 12 hours every single day. I know that the story about Bill Richardson bowing out is important, as is the appointment of Leon Panetta to head CIA, but I just can’t get too excited about it. It’s not that I think anybody much cares about my political pronouncements, but I’ll talk and write about it again and more and to the distraction of some, but I’m just not feeling it right now.

BLOGGING BUDDIES

MCARP

MCARP complained in a comment that my picture looked like it was out of GQ and that his looked like it was taken at St. Anthony’s ER. He must think this one is better because he says it’s the one he uses on MyFaceCrack. He admits, however, that the photo has received at least one unkind review. The guy is a Photoshop Ace, I can’t figure out why he just doesn’t make himself look like he wants to look. Maybe put his face on a golden Bhudda being embraced by the multi-armed Shiva in an Edwardian-style piece of the two in a punt on the Thames. “Forbidden Kiss”. Or maybe lengthen his for-real beard into chin piece and long mustache Chinese elder style. I wish I could do that Photoshop stuff. Maybe someday.

Flibbertigibbit

Over on Nina’s blog, she’s changed her avatar to the one here. I think it’s only fair if she’s going to be so difficult about it all and be on hiatus and mess with the minds clueless men, this absolutely should be her avatar so that we might get the hint. I will say that any man who sees that and goes for it is likely to be a very competitive fellow, the kind of guy who looks for a challenge. We’ll have to get her to recite: “What part of ‘NO!’ did you not understand?”. Go with it, Flibbi, I think it’ll work for you.

A cool cat with blue eyes. Call him Sinatra

I’m miffed, Muffy. He’s supposed to sit at the window and let me in and out as I please and instead he put on hard shoes and a tie and left me outside all day where I couldn’t check every 15 minutes to see if he’d put out wet food. When he got home, I told him and showed him the food bowl several times and he ignored me. Tonight, when he’s asleep, I’m going to poo in his shoes. Time for a nap! Bye!

January 3, 2009

John Long — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 16:50:30 +0000

BLOGGING BUDDIES

Mom-A-Tron home for Christmas

Sometimes the holidays are just too much fun and sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes, the holidays are so much fun they turn into not so much fun. Not so much fun as in puke. Mom-A-Tron ran into the not so much fun on the holidays, including poop, puke and shame (?). Her Hubster, ever loving, flips her off for the camera.

Still Dreaming Mike?

I suppose staying under the magic red fluffy blanket gives one the opportunity, but MCARP is still dreaming. I’m not too much on dreams, but I found this online dream interpretation site for him to try out. Maybe it’ll help him out with that whole stalking thing and also with the new Ben and Jerry’s flavor MCARP’s promoting: Chunky Bhuddist. I’m thinking that Chunky Monkey remains the more popular, but maybe that’s just me.

I keep reading one particular political blog more than all the others and it’s Talking Points Memo, led by Josh Marshall. I think he “gets” web journalism about as well as anyone these days and his reporting is top flight and left wing. Here’s something he does that I like: he digests the day’s political news into 100 seconds:

AND NOW, A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR

BECAUSE I SAID SO, THAT'S WHY!!!

One of my main tasks the past couple of days has been to work on technology because computers, the web and my phone are a major part of the structure of my plans for practicing law (and everything else) this coming year. As you’ve already seen, I’m adding bells and whistles and a new format to my blog, but I’m doing some other stuff as well. I updated a couple hundred phone and email contacts and got them to be identical on my laptop and phone. I’ll work on the desktop when I get back to my office.

There’s also the calendar and “to do” lists on all three devices (and their particular interface with the web in some cases). Ultimate in Stillwater convinced me to use several of the Google utilities. This isn’t my favorite thing to do, but I’m happy that I’ve shown some self discipline and just hauled off and got it done during this “down time” of the holidays.

Next up is some other tech stuff at work, like billing and taxes, but I don’t even want to think about that.

A cool cat with blue eyes. Call him Sinatra

Sinatra says: The truth is that he sits in his studio in front of his laptop so he can let me in and out of the window and all the rest is just blah blah blah.

Hey! Genius! How many times do I have to tell you FANCY FEAST and not that crap you tried over the weekend. I have to sleep with the Lame-o to keep him out of trouble and you idiots actually take the time to read what he writes?

No wonder cats rule the world.

AN INVITATION

Worst Ever

Last, but not least, there will be an Inaugural Ballz celebration at my house on Jan. 17, the Saturday before Obama is sworn into office. It’s BYOB since I don’t drink, but there will be food, poker playing and a finale you won’t want to miss — the burning in effigy of the current Worst. President. Ever. Before that, we’re going to throw shoes and shoot BBs at the life-sized image I’ve had ever since Oz scared the hell out of me one April Fool’s Day a couple years back. I may take a shot or two with the BB gun at Oz now that I think of it, but likely not. Think 7:30-ish and you can come and go as you please.

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