duck, or better yet, run

i brought my car in for repair today. it is past the warranty. so this is an out-of-pocket expense. i hope when they call me tomorrow to tell me how much the repair is going to cost, they will say "sorry, mr. jimmy, but an asteroid hit your car while it was in our parking lot waiting to be diagnosed." and i will say, "did anyone get hurt?" and then i hope they say, "nobody was hurt, but your car is completely covered by both the asteroid and our asteroid strike insurance. Please tell us what kind of brand new free car you would like." I tell myself that no good can come from wishing, but i can't stop. So then I would ask, "can I have the asteroid, too?" and they would say, "sure, it is about the size of a car, made out of 50% jimdandium and 50% gold, it is not dangerously radioactive, and although we could use it, we want you, mr. jimmy, to have it, and a new car, because of the inconvenience we here at honest rod's service center may have caused you." "Gee, thanks." i would say. and i would mean it. right now, i'm searching the night sky for streaks of light. i'll let you know how it turns out.

success and happiness

success comes from wanting.
happiness comes from not wanting.
i have three suits.

one reason life seems to pass by so quickly, day II

last night i went to bed with plans for today. this morning I woke up with plans for today. tonight I am going to bed with the same unaccomplished plans for tomorrow. again. really.

one reason life seems to pass by so quickly

last night i went to bed with plans for today. this morning I woke up with plans for today. tonight I am going to bed with the same unaccomplished plans for tomorrow.

time casts no shadows, unless, of course, it does

Hidden under the cap of this wooden device is the key to time. It is a metronome. It is time. Like a clock, except less presumptuous. Simpler is usually truer. I saw this metronome in my wife's parent's home before we were married. Now we are married and it is in our home. I remember, years ago, sitting at their piano looking up at that metronome thinking, "I wonder if I could steal that?" And now, with hindsight, I am pretty sure they were looking at me wondering, "Is he going to try to steal our metronome?" Who's laughing now?

henri cartier-peep

Peeps, at the decisive moment of their realization that they are about to make the ultimate sacrifice.

expectorating

sometimes a family gets sick. i have a cold, mrs. jimmy has a cold. the little jimmys have colds. it doesn't happen very often that we are all sick. but we are all sick. with colds. it is unpleasant. one of my daughters has a low grade fever, a friend of hers called and was all excited about a dance she was at, that my daughter was missing, and the call was nice, the friend meant to let my daughter know she missed her, but my daughter was sad after the call, and i told her i felt bad for her and was sorry she had to miss the dance, and miss being with her friend, and my daughter looked at me and said, "it's okay, i'm glad i got to be with you today."
i am not bragging about that, i am not a prize to be around, and her statement probably says more about the time i am not around, than the time i am available.
and yet, its nice that every once in awhile something happens that matters.

off limits

there are tribes of small people who live, work and play, among us. they measure about a micro-inch in height and they cause mischief. they are not willful in their mischief, it is through the ordinary course of their lives that ours become complicated. how exactly this happens is a subject for another essay. i am just telling you that the little bastards exist, keep your holes closed.

dough nuts

There is no long Formica counter with swivel stools here. This is no fitting place for a lady or a fella to sit hunched over, be waited on, and sip a cup of coffee, eat a donut, and imagine me in swimsuit. Yes, the lunch-counter donut shop is just a fond memory, but the way i rock a Speedo is as electric as ever. Zap!

gray sun light

today reminded me of another particular wet afternoon. on that afternoon, i was driving a van for someone else. it didn't matter too much when i got to my destination. it didn't matter too much that it did matter when i got to my destination. without contridiction. a heavy gray-skied overcast. leafless trees. passing by the van window. serene. the difference about that day was the lack of color. blacks and browns deeper darker and radiating a unique sharpness of light from that subtlety. no real promise of spring. the something about that drive, its lack of purpose, devoid of hope, in this moment, remembering that place in this moment, i understand that it can be better to be hopeless, than to be hopeful, in these moments.

Help me! Help me!

it depresses me to realize that i could not have written the screenplay for the movie "The Fly." I imagine i could have developed the plot to the pivotal visual scene where man's interference with God's architecture goes horrible awry in the teleportation device mix up, and the human body has a human-size fly head and the fly body has a fly-sized human head. And at that moment, "Whoa," I would have said internally. The corresponding body parts would not change size in any reality based teleportation device. That size melding doesn't just make sense with current teleportation science. Then it follows logically, it is not plausible that the human head would attach to a tiny fly-size fly body and be able to pump enough blood to keep the brain working, it would die almost instantly. And vise versa, for the fly-size fly head - blood from the human-size body would pump with such relative force that it would blow the tiny fly-sized head clean off the human neck stalk, and while that might provide very brief close-up/slo-motion visual excitement, i don't think that would have worked to elucidate my core film thesis. I would have scrapped the whole idea and a classic film would have died in my spiral-bound mausoleum. Is there a lesson to be gleaned? An even greater lesson about technological tampering in God's architecture? A lesson about a writer's lack of self-confidence? A belief in what can be, not in what appears to be? Fate? Plagiary? Probably with a lot more writing skill it could have been any of those; but, really this whole story was a vehicle for me to use the phrase "human neck stalk."

lots of nothing

yesterday, i was given the opportunity to think about nothing. i took that opportunity. i did give in a little bit to think about how, by its essence, time passes very quickly, and it is important to enjoy the moments, all the moments, even the moments of nothing. so, i filled my yesterday with as much nothing as could fit. smile.

life as me

Humanity is a fantasy trying to live in reality.

just cut it out

my commute has me driving by a lot of older suburban 3 bedroom style homes probably built in the late 1970's, and i was looking at the yards and swing sets, abandoned gardens, plastic toys and lawn ornaments, and the windows, bedroom windows, family room windows, kitchen windows, all the too-small windows cutting rectangles in vinyl and aluminum siding. and in their homes those moms and dads had, and may even continue to have, some form of sexual relations. and that is revolting. i mean, a large percentage of those people are ugly, really, probably all of them are too ugly to be engaging in intercourse. so, i wish you would all stop it. just take showers, disinfect and read a book, or a blog, and please make an effort not to choose anything that might get you freaks all sexed-up. you all need to just stop It. I must clear my head of your dirtiness. Your wretched suburbia is loathsome. Hide yourselves and your kitsch. If left out in the open, I can see your life, and i don't want to see your life, it reminds of the things you do. please don't remind me of the things you do. i have a long drive home.

don't read this, really, don't read it, i didn't want to write it, couldn't not

i know a lady who likes to scare people and see people scared - a quick scare, like a "boo," she does not like a "hey, i ran over your dog and it is dead...but i really didn't and it really isn't," kind of painful scare. I don't like to scare people and i don't like to see people scared, but I love that lady i know. seems like a fundamentally important difference between her and me, seems like, well, it doesn't matter, i love her.
i think if i ever really do run over her dog, i'll tell her someone else did it. there is nothing funny about a dog being run over, nothing. i am sorry i brought it up. now i'm depressed and neither of us even has a dog. i'm sorry, it was an accident, he came out nowhere, i never saw him, i just heard the thud and felt the bump. would you like a new replacement puppy? i don't feel good or well.

in general, not just in dollars

a decent, honest person (you) can't compete, on price, with criminals.

oh well

t is for tonight. tonight i figure it all out. because today was the day the Millionaire was going to leave the big check in my mailbox so i wouldn't have any worries any more. but the Millionaire did not leave a check. now it is tonight, and so, i am stuck. again. if nothing changes, i will go to bed later than i should, and wake up earlier than i want to, and do it all over again. again. with the same pain. the same confusion. so maybe tonight, i figure it all out. and it all becomes okay. and it all makes sense. and i am happy. for real. because everyone i care about is happy. for real. for good. i think maybe i won't figure it all out. tonight. again.

i got cracks in my pavement

you see, it is not just age or circumstance that wears a person down. sometimes it is just shoddy construction. From my time as a youngster, my construction has presented me with an unending procession of episodes to feed my excruciatingly real doubt and nurture my debilitating self-pity.
"jimmy," I thought I heard my first date (senior year high school) say, "I am pretty sure I have seen a person uglier than you, once, at a distance, but it may have been a opossum, but you know jimmy, what is most creepy about you is your sickly scrawniness. I think I could do much better."
I took her home immediately and could not even look her in the eye to say goodbye. It wasn't until a week later I found out (in an article she wrote for the school newspaper) that I misheard her.
Turns out what she actually said (and then wrote) was, "Sure, I am pretty and I have to say you're uglier than some butt. You know, jimmy, what is most creepy about you is your sickly scrawniness. I think I could do much better."

Armed with the clarification, I finished high school dateless.

secrets

there are no secrets, just sky. this is how the sun sets and the clouds react and none of that happens unless I notice, so, i guess none of it happens. even if i notice. just secrets.

one mississippi

When the Millenniums are sitting around after dinner, playing with the young Decades, it must be really awkward when the inevitable question comes up, "Daddy, Mommy, where do Seconds come from? When did time start? How was the first Second born? Does time begin at the Nanosecond or is not considered time until it you can see it on a clock?" Awkward.

12-16-19-24-32

oh God, i want to be special. Why can't i levitate? (i've tried floating myself, others, objects, yet we all remain subject to gravity) Why can't i see ghosts? (other people see ghosts, i ask nice, i threaten, i summon, yet not a single sighting of even a wisp) Why doesn't God speak to me? (i speak to him/her/it, i have asked God not to startle me though, please don't sneak up on me, just a daylight gentle "hello, God here, you are doing fine, I've got your back, relax" is all I really would like, yet still all I get is my own brain chatting incessantly fears, doubt, and guilt round the clock) Why can i not be enlightened through meditation? (i try and try and even don't try, yet nothing, and not the good kind of enlightenment nothing, no i get the crappy old fashioned something nothing) Why can't I win the lottery? (i have even played my super-lucky fortune cookie numbers, yet no winner, I mean it cannot be that hard to do - pick 5 or 6 numbers out of 54 - easy, well you'd think so, yet, no) oh God, i am pretty sure i am not special, there is nothing to prove that i am as special as i want to be. except this life. sure. But when i say special, i mean throw it in my friends faces that i am special and they are not special, special. oh God, why do you let me be so disappointed? oh God. I am disappointed, in all of us. (All of us)

"Paper or plastic, or really, like, no bag. No bag at all would be much better for the planet, man." "I know, but I really need the bag, really".

Yesterday I got a dirty look from a store clerk for requesting a plastic bag to hold the single small item purchased. I mean, I really did not want to get into a big "green" brouhaha with him, but I had a really good, legitimate reason to request the bag...the reason being, it would have been nearly impossible for me to fantasize about killing him, with proper irony, without that plastic bag to wad up and shove down his throat*.

*note- No actual store clerks were hurt (or threatened) in relation to this epic fictional tale of societal and individual struggle.

now, i get it

i see tomorrow
as clearly as i see today,
when it was yesterday.

ashes to dust

Not related to this blog, in order to get paid, I have a desk job. During my workday, I often sit poised at my keyboard long enough for a thin film of dust to form on the top of my hands. When i notice it, i go to the restroom and wash it down the drain. I like to stay fresh.

zero

My grandpa has passed, but periodically i remember with passive fondness, some of his delightful banter. He once said, "jimmy, count to 7,000 for me." And i started, "one,"
"WRONG!" He immediately interjected. And then he explained that no proper system of counting could begin without an acknowledgement of zero. There cannot be a complete understanding of one without zero. And he finished that sentence by cuffing me in the back of the head, and settling back into his recliner. The next visit, or next randomly divined visit...grandpa waited until i was within striking distance and here it came..."jimmy, count to 7001 for me."
"Okay, grandpa." I took a deep breath..."zero"
"WRONG!" and the cuff behind the head came before the explanation. "Zero is nothing, the absence of value, why would it matter? I asked you to count, not to take all known variables into consideration and then enlighten me with your useless infantile philosophy." Brief pause. "go tell your mother you disgust me, and after that, let's speak no more of this."
I agreed, without any level of sentience.
I think he was teaching me something. But, I just wished he was dead. I got my wish. One.

i hate analogy, here's an analogy

The sun is our engine. It burns. We live. It drives all we know. It gives the essential initial energy to all we need. And yet is not our god. A car has an engine. The engine provides energy to go, and powers all essential and auxiliary systems, and yet, it did not design itself. It had a designer. I built a fire tonight. I saw it consume and felt it exude. I knew its energy was from the origin as that of our sun. Burn. We all who share this reality, burn.

this is bob

Some of my family members are in a karate club. This is a photo of the sparring dummy. His name is Bob. A couple of days a week they practice beating up Bob. Bob absorbs a lot of anger, frustration, and resentment that would otherwise be directed at me. I love bob. At first i was insulted that he was obviously a middle aged white guy just like me - except he is pretty intense, limbless, and much more muscular than i. So, i decided to let it go. Go ahead world, beat up Bob, he's guilty. On second thought, I don't like him either. Never did.

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my castle

I built a castle out of whimsey, but forgot to include toilets, so, it really was not practical, so, i tore it down. the property has been vacant for some time now.

Be nicer

Politics are a charlatan's game,
and a fool's argument.

a space program needs taxes to flourish unless its purpose is to give rides to the ultra-rich, and if that is the case, private funding is deserved.

All day I wanted to get back to work on my rocket. All day I was distracted by my income tax filing. Tax. Tax. Tax. I just never got to it. Distracted. Distracted. I just wanted to work on my rocket. But even that - I want to build in bomb bay doors like in Dr. Strangelove, and my life partner says bomb bay doors invite structural failure, and I say why build a rocket unless you drop crap out of it? So nothing got done. Nothing.