Here is a hint about a new “stop action” music video in the works:
While Rhonda’s in the studio finishing up the work on her new album, I’ll use her paper doll set and a song of hers to create an animated, “stop action” music video.
Happy Holidays, everyone…Winter Solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year, etc.
A little break before returning to the story of your lives currently in progress. Have you ordered your suborbital test flight tickets yet?
Chapter of Extreme Measures Merry Making
There are days, when managing the affairs of state from one’s center of the universe…
It seems my hackers, mobsters business associates, colleagues, and others on the take (you decide whether labels like politicians, teachers, pensioners and religious leaders are synonymous with “others on the take”) are happy to give me my usual breaks to live like a regular member of our species.
But, they reckon, it’s time I pick up the reins again and lead this wagonload of Motley Crue groupies out of the rut and away from the road that leads to the town square and gallows that smells of fresh pine wood and hemp (rope, we assume).
I enjoyed that momentary feeling of blissful craziness a U.S. Presidency (that’s a capitol capital P that stands for Pool and that means trouble!) headed (or occupied, if you will) by Newt Gingrich would have given me for four fun years.
My wife does not speak for me but I’ve got to mention at this point my wife is convinced that voting for a Mormon for U.S. President is not that bad an idea. A conservative businessman, governor and man who believes in marriage for life — my wife’s [nearly] ideal presidential candidate. After all, Mormons believe in talking/burning bushes, astrological signs and other miraculous signs of an invisible God, just like any other religion out there. One’s as good as another as long as the kids’ moral and ethical behaviours are all right (or left (or center( or…))).
As for me…well, you see, I’m independent, which means, in this case, that, as a citizen of the state of Alabama, my vote is pretty much useless. Some sort of Republican will receive the state’s vote in 2012, no matter which candidate I think expresses my view that my view is my view and my view only.
Guess I better start attending the Committee meetings again, listening to the same viewpoints and arguments the Committee members have been espousing ever since their predecessors determined they were worthy of Committee member status, no matter whether the status has no meaning outside the Committee meetings…
We’ve a planet to run, a species’ miniecosystem to box up and ship to cosmological parts unknown, and, perhaps, a bit of fun at our species’ expense along the way.
If all I do is express a formula in verbotic, unsanctimonious, mathematically-obscure word form, using a set of nested blogs to fill out the subscripted footnotes before your eyes magically, then I’ve accomplished the goal set before me years ago.
I’m falling behind in my thanks and’ll have to catch up later.
Speaking of formulae, my wife and I sat through a viewing of the film production based on a tired script of “Iron Man III,” set in 1891 apparently. I’m afraid, Watson, there was little that was elementary about all the explosions and pastperfectfuture androgynous, joker-homaged, testosterone-filled, demographically-profiled videogame settings.
Enough of the chitchat.
Back on my high horse I go.
You’ll have to find another chap to whittle your matchbox figurines in foxholes with. I’ve a script to write in realtime…
Sometimes I think about a former work colleague of my wife who, paralysed from the neck down, learned to create artwork with a paintbrush in her mouth.
Here I sit, wondering what I’d do if only I had better computing tools to accomplish my tasks.
If I can’t sing, I can use LaDiDa, by Khush, Inc., to turn my wailings into song.
If I can’t afford to pay for copyrighted music as background to my amateur home comedies, I can use Songify, also by Khush, to turn narration into a backbeat tune.
What to “film” next?
Another satire?
Another tribute?
A view of the future?
Is it just me or does this guy look like the actor/character from The Jewel of the Nile? I know I can’t be the first to notice the resemblance.
Life imitating art, indeed!
“Ever think you’re thirsty and you realise that what you’re feeling is longing?”
Ever been dying and know nothing else matters?
You could be a Presbyterian and not a Christian.
A piece of peanut butter taffy.
Or joke that Qaddafi and the Norwegian mass murderer are both big fans of Coco Chanel.
Stop being hard on myself and keep writing, making amateur movies, getting sunburned, bitten by mosquitoes/ticks and not feel bitter about what was, enjoying what is and let what might be, be.
Time for a nap. There’s plenty of time for dying tomorrow.
Or the next day.
Or whenever the cells can no longer fight off high blood pressure and plaque.
Then play with Ubuntu.
And post another section of novel.
Life, what’s left of mine, at least, is good.
What is the definition of a costume?
Dvorak or “Divorcing Jack” (1998)?
“Countdown” (1968)?
“Rivers & Tides” (2000)?
Or publish a rework of a rework of a series of stories assembled as a novel?
Go for it. Take off!
“Blame It on the Bellboy” (1992).
My wife and I take turns picking movies to watch.
Last night it was her turn so we viewed “The Help.”
Having attended an integrated elementary school in ’68 and ’69 for my first and second primary school years, I have no recollection of racial problems growing up.
Same for my wife.
Therefore, the movie was a bit of nostalgia for those who lived through it personally or by proxy.
The lesson my wife took out of the movie was that an independent woman who attended Ole Miss and who wanted a career in the South in the 1960s had to be hired by an effeminate newspaper man. She was not able to marry a man from her hometown. Even worse, she could only get a job somewhere in a big city away from all her friends and family.
Amazing, the lessons we learn or teach others. Is that what they teach in Abu Dhabi, too?
Reminds me of my friends Brenda Craig and Gina Griffin, both Ole Miss attendees.
Takes me back to my youth, when the lady who came to clean our house every week, Mrs. Rutledge, was the grandmother of a schoolmate of mine, both white. My mother would clean up the house before the cleaning lady arrived to eliminate the possibility of gossip that my mother was a poor housekeeper.
My mother in-law, bless her heart, was the same way, making sure the house was cleaned up after bridge games so there’d be enough to keep Pearl busy all day when she came to clean every two weeks.
Social graces exist no matter the colour of the person cleaning the house.
That’s what I get for growing up in east Tennessee where racial tension might have existed – I don’t know and don’t remember – but a member of the Kingsport city council was black and my fastfood coworkers were a mixture of white, black, Latino and other.
Colour didn’t determine your vocational place in life.
Living in Huntsville, Alabama, home of the first integrated school in Alabama has taught me that human decency is better free than bought.
Just ask those expat Australians, the Murdochs. Kinda feels funny you being the ones gettin’ strung up in the news these days.
Thanks to Sarah, JV and cooks at Beauregard’s; Traci at Mellow Mushroom; Martha, Scott and Zach at Publix; Maggie at Steak Out; Beonca and Renosha at the Rave; Rhonda at Amis Mill Eatery; Traci, Sophie and the always fun server at Plum Tree; Pal’s; Bubba’s in Scottsboro; the trainee at Arby’s; the “family” at HarborChase; more I can’t remember.
Congrats to Patricia Rhoton in her new role.
I’m easily distracted – time for bed.
One observation: when did round hay bales first go into farm production?
Is verbosity rewarded in the SMS age?
14,146 days to go?
Ubuntu or Puppy 528 on SDHC card (cheap SSD) for portable computing?
Is Rockbox still rocking?
Never underestimate the power of an old CPU.
My h0liday of humour moves on – time to get back on the Committee again.
One more set of data points for you before I go, some old and some new:
And to my female friends in the Big Apple – the women in New York City may be smarter but they tell me they’re wealthier in Hong Kong. Smarts ain’t all about money, though, is it?
treetrunkdings 