Crenellated Flotsam

“There are 51,746 words in the file.”

Too bad the novel isn’t done yet.

It’s been a tough week for me, and I wish I were someone else, anyone else.

When I differ with people I feel wrong. Maybe not in a “right or wrong” sense, but more like the way I think isn’t the right one. I see everyone around me handling things, doing things, relating to people and happy and content with their lives or willing to do something to fix them, and I despair. If I were a good person when adversity struck I’d pull myself up and do something about it. Instead, I get depressed and give up.

There’s only so many things you can give up before there’s nothing left.

Maybe I could do or be lots of things. Maybe I have talent or skills, but I don’t have the necessary emotional strength to pursue anything. I quit easily, gladly, and wish I were better. It’s been a rough week and everyone I’ve looked at and everything I’ve seen just reinforces how out of it I am. I don’t fit in well with anyone or anything, have nothing but ego and pride.
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I just lost my ring. I’d been playing with it and had it loose on my finger when I tossed something across the room and it flew off. I feel naked, though not particularly vulnerable.

A cool thing about dreams is how someone is “introduced” as being my best friend. A total stranger shows up in my dreams, sometimes, but in the dream he or she is my friend or lover or whatever and I never question it. I think that’s neat, and consider it meaningful, like there’s one part of our brain that stores associations and another that perceives things and this is proof that they can get crossed up.

In the dream, for some reason, I had a test of determining what was wrong with the garage. I had three flares to use to find out the problem. I punctured a soda bottle and it spun on the floor, spraying the empty walls with water to protect against setting fire to the garage. The first flare burned on the floor and the second I had trouble figuring out how to get in my mouth (!) to heat up a tooth or something (!) to fix the roof. I went in the backyard and there were several ladders because construction was going on and used one of them and the final flare to see that there was only a sheet of plywood for the roof. No joists or framing of any kind. (another roof dream)
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I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving, or holiday, or Thursday or whatever.

Eat lots of turkey, or rice, or corn (candy and otherwise), or whatever.

Look around you in wonder, and be grateful.

Russ

My site (the one you’re visiting) sucks.

George Carlin points out that the word “blind” is much hotter, sexier, and meaningful than “visually impaired,” which has no spirit, life, or excitement at all. PC may have some value for self-esteem, but it sure takes all the flavor and intensity out of language.

We’re pretty clever now and it looks like we know everything. This identity theft stuff can be handled by buying and using shredders. When I was growing up we had an incinerator in the back yard.

Someone used my credit card a few years ago to buy some large woman’s clothing. The credit card people called it fraud, which isn’t nearly as dramatic.

I am really sleepy.

My host is real slow.

The other night I was driving home and glanced in the car next to mine where there was a man smoking a pipe. I don’t think I’ve seen more than one or two guys in the last ten years doing that. Whatever happened to pipe smoking?

Cigars are, or lately were, popular, but pipe-smoking seems to have fallen completely out of favor. That’s odd since I remember pipes smelling better than cigars and the sight of some guy, pipe in his mouth and usually wearing a hat and fiddling with something, is part of my experience.

Vittorio, my ex’s late brother, suggested that we smoke pipes, back when I was married and we were building model railroads for his son (and ourselves). It was Vittorio’s goal to become one of those guys who could keep a pipe lit for hours, and we gave it a shot for a few months.

I think I’d like to see people smoking pipes again.

I’ve been wrong all these years.

For quite some time now, as long as I can remember, I’ve been thinking that I’m lazy. I don’t honestly know if I’m less apt to get off my ass and do something than other people, but many people seem to get more accomplished than I do. Then again, I run circles around others, so maybe I’m in the middle or at least the bottom third.

The thing is, though, that it’s hard to overcome laziness (or inertia, if you’re more comfortable with physics). There are even laws about it, so it appears that this tendency of my body to stay at rest is something that’s already pretty well documented.

I can get up and move when I want or need to, of course. Perhaps it will be painful, but it can be done. My comfort in not doing so isn’t because I’m lazy, however.

I don’t need to overcome laziness, I just need to become industrious!

Oh, now I’ve done it.

So, last night I was out writing with a friend and hammering away on my AlphaSmart. Some of the keys have become a little sticky, but no big deal (and you can probably already see where this is headed).

To make things better I pulled off all the keys and cleaned the crap out. I wish the problem, now, is that I simply replaced them in the wrong places, but I’ve managed to make the Z and the G worse than any key was originally. They stick down, once pressed, instead of the earlier problem when other keys required more force than I cared to apply.

So now I get to use those keys once. Then, they stay pressed down and rapidly fill up lines and lines with the letter until I turn the damn thing off, pry the key back up, turn it on and doing a lot of backspacing.

Yes, I have a laptop, but the battery sucks.

Many people have a lot to say, and they say it well.

I was thinking, during the recent fires, about how interested I am in the doings of homo sapiens and how I think they’re, somehow, important. I guess I have a vested interest in their survival, but I’m not convinced that makes us all that important. The fact that we can pass on news about each other doesn’t make that news important, not outside our own selfish interests.

The world will get along just fine, whether or not I get a job. That scares me.

More importantly, I need to cut my hair. Again.

I think I’ll go out and try writing today. I wish my laptop lasted longer on battery, but I wish for a lot of things.

Woo Hoo!

Thunder rippling across the southland! Big thunder, impressive thunder, and big, fat raindrops! We don’t get many summer thundershowers in LA, and even fewer of them in November, so I’m jazzed. This is weather that’s doing something!

I think it’s a good day be inside and would only be better if I were making a big pot o’ chili.

Dogs up and down the street are howling at the rain and thunder but Minardi is behaving himself.

I’ve come to terms with never kissing anyone for the rest of my life and the novel is continuing. Things are not going at all badly. The roof is holding out the water and the electricity is still on.