Odd Thought

Aw Man, the Bar just keeps getting higher and higher and …

Okay, back when I started to write, it was good enough to be published.  Not paid, mind; just published.

Well, okay … I had a humor column in an internationally published periodical.  Granted, it was for college libraries, but still … I made it under the bar.

Then simply getting published in an international periodical wasn’t enough.  Something you wrote had to be mentioned in a pop song!

Well, okay … several pop songs have had Boingy in them, so I counted it as a possible and moved on.  Bar managed again.

But this!  Now the high water mark for any writer is to have a music video dedicated to them by a sexy woman begging for sex! At present, it’s only Ray Bradbury … which sorta makes sense, actually.  I mean, now only would trying to get anything to rhyme with Asimov be a total bitch, Fuck me, Issac Asimov would be necrophilia.

Anyway, the gauntlet has been hurled.  So if anyone reading this just so happens to be able to sing decently, like to dress indecently, and doesn’t mind video work, please contact me.  I’ll be working on lyrics.

Too bad …

I read that Alex, which has recently been upgraded to hurricane status, is going to miss the entire oil spill.

Which is sort of a shame, if only from a “I wonder what would happen …” viewpoint.  I mean, hurricanes over water suck up butt-loads of water, right?

Well, can you imagine the fall out from a hurricane moving right through the spill zone … and then hitting land?  Neither can I, which is one of he reasons it’s a bit of a shame.

Then there’s the concept of an oil and Gulf water frappuccino being whipped up by the hurricane, which – who know? – it might actually help.

And my all time favorite “what if” scenario … hurricane hits the oil spill and suck up a couple thousand barrels of crude, then lightening crackles and – bla-DOOM! – a mile high whirling cone of flaming death, bearing down on the coast!  Quick!  Somebody find out if Red Adair is still alive … or, at the very least, if Irwin Allen wants to buy the film rights!

Groundhog Day

One of my all-time favorite movies.  Cheers me up with I’m depressed, tickles me when I’m happy, and works my brain each and every time I see the damn thing.

I mean, okay, I can accept that a man can go fr0m musically inept to performance level keyboard player in … what?  Say ten or so years?  If he really works at it daily?

But when he ice sculpts a bust of his love interest, flawlessly, … how the fuck long would he have to work at it to be able to do something like that?  I mean, first he has to learn to be able to sculpt busts realistically, which is a dead bitch from what I understand, but that leaves the specialized form of ice sculpture, which means having to understand the medium well enough not to destroy it attempting to create art.

So how long would it take?  A couple of decades?  Fifty years or so to get really good at it?

I cannot imagine a worse hell than having to relive the same day over and over and over.  Hell, flashbacks to the sinking of my ship damn near put me away.  The fact that he actually relived that day so often to go completely through insanity and end up a better person for it … incredible.

If you’ve never seen this film … what rock have you been hiding under?  Rent or buy the DVD and enjoy a deeply philosophical, but clever, movie.

5-7-5

Seems simple enough.  Ahem …

Sailor Jim Johnston’s
First Nonsensical Haiku:
Refrigerator!

Huh … nothing to it.

In the beginning,
There was void upon the Earth;
Hey Presto – Now Light!

Little Miss Muffet
sat herself on a tuffet …
(The rest is cliche.)

A bird flies over head;
Below, I watch it fly by;
So much for this suit!

Honestly, I dunno what the fuss is all about.

SEX!

SEX SEX SEX!!

HOT MOIST STEAMING UNCONTROLLABLE RUTTING SEX!!

Now that I have your attention … all jokes aside, I was just curious as to how the content sensitive ads on my blog would handle this.

That’s all. Thanks for your patience.

Huh …

I’ve spent the past twelve hours doing pretty much nothing but trying to come to grips with magic.

In my youth, I was convinced that I was going to set the word afire as a professional magician.  I used to spend literally hours in front of a mirror practicing sleight of hand, I used to spend literally every dime I had on magic equipment and books, and I used to literally have no life whatsoever.  I was a full-fledged magic geek, the really dedicated kind who always had two decks of cards, a handkerchief, a couple of silver dollars, a length of string, and at least one magical gadget effect in my pockets at all times.

Needless to say, nothing ever came of it … well, I did perform professionally in nightclubs in my twenties, was a very popular uncle when my sister’s kids were young, I still have astonishingly good manipulative skills, and a very flexible mind, but that’s about it.

However, I did spend quite a lot of time reading about magic, both the performing art and the real thing.  The former to grasp the history of the art and understand what used to be popular (one never knows … something that Thurston or even Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin perfected might come back into style) and the latter to understand what people expected magic to look like.

Let’s be serious … a real magician would simply walk onto a bare stage, dress casually, and start conjuring things and people out of thin air.  (Actually, I always sorta thought that watching a real magician would be fairly boring.)  Stage magicians, however, have to use gimmicks and tricks, boxes and scarfs, trained assistants and animals to get the job done.  That’s why sleight of hand always seems the most magical … no glittery boxes, flashy scarfs, or elaborate props.  Magic just happens in the magicians bare hands.

The point is that I already have a pretty good understanding of what magic, real magic, is suppose to be … however, the more I read today, the more I’m convinced that the vast majority of what is believed to have been real magic is actually just science.

I once, during a school talent show, produced – barehanded – six tangerines, enough to fill a small glass bowl.  I tossed them to the audience afterward.  Less than a year later, the father of one of my friends – a scientist who worked at the labs (this was in Los Alamos) – told me that he’d been trying to figure out where I got all those damn grapefruits from.  In talking to him, he honestly remembered the effect as being me producing, barehanded, a bushel basket of grapefruits.  (Magicians count on this, by the way … Houdini used to walk through a wall on stage and, during his performance, remarked that he’d once walked through the Great Wall of China.  By the time he’d done the effect for a year, various people swore up and down that they’d been there when he did it at the Great Wall.

He’d never even been to China at the time.)

Combining that mental oddity, the need to remember something as being greater than it was, with the fact that many civilizations discovered various technology, most of which was lost when that civilization fell and required eons to rediscover, leads me to wonder exactly how much of the magic people have “seen” was actually just their non-technological minds coping with having seen lost technology in action.

And how much was “She turned me into a chicken!”  “She turned you into a chicken?!?”  “Well … I got better, of course.”

I now have magic in three categories: legerdemain (stage magic), popular entertainment (Bewitched and I Dream of Jeanie sort of stuff), and misunderstood technology.  I should think that the folks from Atlantis would deal with the third category, rather than the second.

Oh, by the way, Atlantis … I’m beginning to think that Plato was a big fat liar. After all, the Atlantis he wrote about in Timaeus and Critias existed around 9600 BC, or roughly 9300 years before he wrote about them in 360 BC … one wonders how he heard about Atlantis after close to ten thousand years had passed since it sank.  I mean, okay … oral history and all that, but holy cats!

Giggle

Okay, how’s this for a future Comic Relief sketch.

Combine House, M.D. with Jeeves and Wooster!

House’s team is already deep into one of their blue sky differentials when House walks in, nattily attired and followed by Jeeves.

“What ho, what ho, what ho,” he calls, sprawling in a wing chair.  “Another medical whatsit looming on the horizon?”

At that moment, Cuddy walks in and announces that she’s broken it off with Lucas and is now free to marry House, who immediately starts to dither in panic.  Jeeves pours him a restorative glass of tea.  She stalks off to arrange the ceremony.  In the meantime, House’s crew has narrowed the possibilities down and presents their findings.

House nods patiently as they do so, but then nods towards the door and demands, “That’s all well and good, but how does it pull me out of the proverbial muck?!  I’m up the bridal walk without a plank unless I can get Cuddy and Lucas back together!”

“Ahem,”  Jeeves clears his throat respectfully.

“Yes, Jeeves?”

“I do believe there might be a way to solve both problems simultaneously, sir.”

Cut it to length and sew it into a sketch.

What ho?

Boobies!

Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!  Boobies!

(Now let’s see what sort of ads they stick up there!)

Breath

Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only change forms.

I can’t begin to describe what it’s like to bring someone back.  To pull a person from the water and, with training and care, to breath life back into their body.  It’s better than any orgasm I’ve ever had and the memory of the five I saved bolsters me when depression strikes.

To put it scientifically, I transferred energy from me to them.  Restarted their hearts and kept their brains alive with oxygenated blood by breathing for them until it kicked in and they could start breathing for themselves.  CPR is hard work, too.  Lots and lots of energy expended, passed to the lifeless body beneath one.

But when their heart starts beating and they suck in a gasp of air on their own …  at that very moment, that very instant, you are a life giver.  You have stood toe to toe with death, spit in his eye socket, and torn one from his bony grasp.  You have proven that life and hope can accomplish anything, even the resurrection of dying flesh!  You are three axe handles across the shoulders and towering miles about all others; a demigod striding the Earth, accomplishing miracles of life as you pass!!

Then they throw up in your  mouth.

(I’m told parenting is much like that, but those who make the comparison always smile, so I’m never sure if they’re serious.)

Brrrr!

Flurries and the mercury stalling out before it even comes near to thirty degrees … I thought winter was suppose to be over by now?

Almost all of the last big snowfall had melted away before this latest bit of meteorological silliness, too.  Everything that was in sunlight, some of the shady areas, and even the huge mountains of snow in various parking lots had started to melt away.

Now I sit her watching the snow fall outside my window.  Our insane little tomcat is happily curled up on his mommy blanket (Dian bought him a sheep skin … he spends a couple of minutes a day grooming it and kneading it with a glazed look in his eyes, then he curls up and is gone to the world) next to my feet (it’s located under my desk … hey, I’m no fool and it feels sooooo warm and furry), while the world freezes once again and I sip a cup of coffee.

I know a lot has been written about the cycle of nature and how it compares to the cycle of human life, but this winter has been especially poetic for me.  I damaged my hands in the military and the cold seems to sink into every cracked bone.  I’ve always had a problem with my tendons and, according to my podiatrist, the problem I’ve been having with my feet is directly related to the cold.  Even my mental difficulties, naturally, flare in he cold.

Still … there is something about watching the clouds shatter into flakes and seeing the vindication of Chicken Little; the sky is falling!  Even the ugliest of urban sprawl is magically transformed by a thick blanket of snow into something Rockwell would have appreciated and there is an odd sort of joy to being able to exercise those winter automotive skills my father worked so hard to ingrain into my mind and reflexes.  An almost savage delight to being able to drive with confidence and verve down roads made treacherous with black ice under a thin layer of snow.

And, let’s face it, anytime one can sit comfortably in a well heated house while the ice age rolls in again … well, that’s a good day.

Okay, I’m getting to my time in life when my body yearns more for the comfort of the sun and warmth, slowly slipping into that winter of my own flesh, when everything that comprises my existence will die and melt away, but that’s no reason not to find joy in the glory of the moment or pleasure in the beauty of the cycle.  Nature might indeed be a bitch, but she’s one of the most delightful bitches around and, if for no other reason, has to be admired for her never-ending magnificence.

To paraphrase somebody or the other; it is better to snuggle under another blanket, than to curse the cold.  The cold fills me and uses me terribly, but without it, how would I know the warmth?  My life would have been easier and less painful had I not spent it in the military, and very likely much longer, but I wouldn’t have lived as hard and as large.  It will pass quicker than most and be much more painful in the final seasons, but it was worth it.  I burned like a sun and gave life to others, it only makes sense that my winter would be as hard as my summer was incredible.

Far trade, all considered.