Tag Archives: today’s thought

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 I’ve let them get seriously out of date.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?
Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

January 16, 2009

I READ THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY

The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema

A psychotherapist analyzes Hitchcock and David Lynch.

Dead Cats in a Bag

More proof that Salvadore Dali was a photorealist, NOT a surrealist.

Bushies Burrow into Bureaucracy

Bush incompetence gets Civil Service protections

TODAY’S THOUGHT

Stop trying to control.
Let go of fixed plans and concepts,
And the world will govern itself.

Stephen Mitchell translation of Tao te Ching
No. 57

GRANDCHILD CUTENESS ALERT

GK sews on a Daisy patch wearing rose colored glasses
image-1380

GK sews on a Daisy patch wearing rose colored glasses


My daughter has a whole series of pictures of my grand-daughter, GK, in her post today over on Mom-A-Tron
The two of them take on a project that involves sewing patches on Daisy uniform shirts and putting an orange (?) stitch into the hat she’s wearing. Why she’s wearing rose colored glasses is a mystery, but I find them quite becoming. Fetching, even. If I’ve done this correctly, you can click on the picture of GK and some kind of internet computer magic stuff will happen. Or not. Continue reading →

January 11-12, 2009

BETTY BOWERS SINGS “STRAIGHT TO HELL”

TODAY’S THOUGHT

I READ THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY

Russian crown jewels buried in Gobi Desert?

DEATH DELIVERS A GUT PUNCH

BECAUSE I SAID SO

BECAUSE I SAID SO


I just about keeled over this weekend when my friend Lynne X told me that a mutual friend had died. The obituary:
Jack Hiatt is dead at 59
Jack was Student Council president and I was senior class president at Classen High School in 1967. We were pretty close, as I had been to his older brother, David, who was a senior and my debate partner my sophomore year. Jack dated a woman I just adored, Diana Dane, our senior year. He and I went to the drive in movie with our first bottle of Wild Turkey and you all know I had a love affair with that bottle for the next 30 years. He came to at least one of our class reunions and he was much the same except that he had something of a hearing loss in one of his ears. Even that was many years ago. I’m really really in denial. I just can’t believe it. Jack was flat out one of the smartest people I ever met in my entire life and left Classen to go to MIT, where he graduated in aerospace engineering. I’ve had other classmates die, but this one really goes to the heart of my youthful memories. Jack, rest in peace and God’s blessings on your soul. This is the second time in a short time that I’ve blogged about deaths that personally affected me. Getting older is not for sissies.

SINATRA SPEAKS

A cool cat with blue eyes. Call him Sinatra

A cool cat with blue eyes. Call him Sinatra


Thanks for the note and the wet food, Muffy, always appreciated. He’s being wierd today. He says it’s all right to pounce the little brown birds washing and drinking in my yard but not the little blue birds. Doesn’t he know I’m color blind? I don’t get the big deal about death. I’m alive. Death is not now, it’s when it is. Birds die and cats live and rule the world. That’s the natural order of things. Birds die according to which ones fly away and which ones let me get close, not according to their color or what he prefers.
No wonder cats rule the world.

FOR NO GOOD REASON

Lenny Welch sings his 1963 classic “Since I Fell for You”

January 10, 2009

MOM-A-TRON BEETS HER FATHER

Mom-A-Tron

Mom-A-Tron


Just when I think I’m getting the hang of this 21st Century technology, somebody comes along and really gives me some perspective about how much there is. Today, Mom-A-Tron has a power point presentation she made herself — about beets of all things — and put to music and presents on her blog as a video. Damn. Pretty impressive, I must say. I personally loathe beets in all forms and fashions, but she seems to have acquired a fondness for them that escapes me.

EVERYBODY TALKS ABOUT THE WEATHER, BUT NOBODY DOES ANYTHING ABOUT IT

BECAUSE I SAID SO!

BECAUSE I SAID SO!


What a fine example of Oklahoma weather! It was top-down, sunny and in the mid-70s this afternoon and not long after dark, the wind was out of the North and it was freezing. I guess I should be grateful for any January day in which I can have the top down, and I am, believe me I am. Nevertheless this back and forth under a full moon is messing with my mammal midbrain and warm bloodedness.
Had a plenty good time at Paseo this afternoon with a good fraction of the usual suspects and we had India food from the buffet at 50th and May and I have the predictable aftereffects of curry to prove it.
We missed MCARP when we had the name of the artist playing on the Musak right on the tip of our tongue, but couldn’t quite place him/her and we just KNEW he’d have the cut on his iPod/iPhone playlists. Oh, well.
By the way, the line: “Everybody talks about the weather … .” That’s by Oklahoma’s own Will Rogers, who had a lot to say about our weather. I suppose it’s always been like this.

SINATRA SPEAKS

A cool cat with blue eyes. Call him Sinatra

A cool cat with blue eyes. Call him Sinatra


Muffy, you are such a naughty girl. Such language! I know what you mean because this full moon is making me a little quirky, too. Today, I got my head stuck in one of the heating vents and if I had been like that when he got home! That wasn’t the only thing. I was up in my tree, minding my own business, when this bluejay I’ve been chasing for two years lands on the same limb I’m on about 2 feet away! I couldn’t believe it! He said: “Boo!” and flashed away and by the time I was springing at him, my back feet fell off the branch and I was hanging on for dear life. Muffy! That was SO embarrassing. So, I acted like I meant to do that and just continued to climb back down the tree. Memsahib and her Thugee would never let me forget it if they had been there. So, tomorrow, I’ve decided to practice murderous pounces from perches on the living room furniture. I’ve already put all three of my mouses there. I hear wet food! Bye!

I READ THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY!

Belgians Know How to Take Sick Days

Confess to Barkeep, then Priest, Finally at AA

Women Really CAN smell desperation!

TODAY’S THOUGHT

Those who know don’t talk
Those who talk don’t know

Stephen Mitchell translation of Tao te Ching
No. 56

January 8, 2009

A BIRD IN THE HAND IS WORTH TWO … TO FIVE IN THE PEN

My desk, chair and computer at my office

My desk, chair and computer at my office


I don’t talk much in the blog about my business for a variety of reasons, but that’s today’s topic kinda sorta. While you are making fun of how clean I keep my desk (yes, I’m one of those OCD types) and are wondering about how I ended up with a baby blue wingback chair, you are missing the point of this whole post.
the tape on the window

the tape on the window


If you can get past the desk and chair and look way over in the corner of the office, you’ll see that there’s some tape on the window. A close up of the tape is on the right. WTF?, you may well ask. Why does John have tape all crossing and messy on the window of his nice, clean, professional office. Well, gentle readers, that is a very good question and the post today is the quite reasonable answer: I have tape on my window because intentional killing of a protected songbird is 2 to five years in a penitentiary. WTF?, you may again ask. The answer requires a look outside my window:
bird feeder

bird feeder


Here on the left you see that some kind person has placed a bird feeder in the coniferous (cedar, I think) tree that shades my window from the south. How nice. It’s winter and the birds … oh, it’s just too horrible to think what might happen to birds in winter if people didn’t put out bird feeders. How did those poor creatures survive for 165 million years without meddling do-gooders like the bird feeder person? The birds are so lovely, who could imagine that they might leave several tons of guano underneath the bird feeder right outside my office window? What a lovely sight!
BECAUSE I SAID SO!

BECAUSE I SAID SO!


The problem with all that is that it is a cardinal pair that have taken up residence in the tree. Why is that a problem? Because the windows are mirrors and the big, red, male cardinal sees another big, red, male cardinal in the mirror and attacks it to drive it away from his home and spouse. But the bird in the mirror just won’t go away. So, male cardinal attacks. And attacks. And attacks. And attacks. The little commie shit is pecking on my window all day. It drives me crazy. BUT, the cardinal is a protected species. You can’t just walk outside your window and throttle the little bastard. You can’t shoot him down. (For one thing, there’s Villa Teresa school across the street and a stream of 9mm bullets is likely to do a slight amount of “collateral” damage, friendly fire though it may be.)
And you guys thought lawyers had it easy.
A cool cat with blue eyes. Call him Sinatra

A cool cat with blue eyes. Call him Sinatra


I’m miffed again, Muffy. He came home with this long diatribe about a cardinal he wants whacked and he’s looking at me the whole time and I’m looking at him like “yeah, yeah, and … ” and he just doesn’t get it! I mean, there’s the solution to his big darn problem right there in front of him licking its paws, showing him the grandiosity of its belly, politely yawning a mouthful of sharp teeth, and he is without one single damn clue.
No wonder cats rule the world.

STORIES THAT INTERESTED ME

Your fat ass is good for your health

Five Ways the Earth Could Come to an End

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Don’t act as you were going to live ten thousand years; Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
Book IV, No. 17

January 7, 2009

DEATH DRINKS DUBLIO BREVE

Evil Empire Starbucks

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!!!

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

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

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.
7jan09-012
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

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

THE EYES OF TEXAS …

great football game!

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!!!

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


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

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

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!