Here be Dragons….
You can’t always get what you want. I miss having cats around but I only like cats outside. So for now I am living in a suburban area and just don’t have cats. Except for my cats on Facebook.
Is that pitiful or just silly?
Their names are Dinah and Eliza. They don’t like too much petting and they catch their own fish.
From something forwarded to me in email this morning:
Recently, in a large city in Australia, a poster featuring a young, thin and tan woman appeared in the window of a gym. It said, “This summer, do you want to be a mermaid or a whale?”
A middle-aged woman, whose physical characteristics did not match those of the woman on the poster, responded publicly to the question posed by the gym.
To Whom It May Concern,
Whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, sea lions, curious humans.) They have an active sex life, get pregnant and have adorable baby whales. They have a wonderful time with dolphins stuffing themselves with shrimp. They play and swim in the seas, seeing wonderful places like Patagonia, the Bering Sea and the coral reefs of Polynesia. Whales are wonderful singers and have even recorded CDs. They are incredible creatures and virtually have no predators other than humans. They are loved, protected and admired by almost everyone in the world.Mermaids don’t exist. If they did exist, they would be lining up outside the offices of Argentinean psychoanalysts due to identity crisis. Fish or human? They don’t have a sex life because they kill men who get close to them, not to mention how could they have sex? Just look at them … where is IT? Therefore, they don’t have kids either. Not to mention, who wants to get close to a girl who smells like a fish store?
The choice is perfectly clear to me: I want to be a whale.
P..S. We are in an age when media puts into our heads the idea that only skinny people are beautiful, but I prefer to enjoy an ice cream with my kids, a good dinner with a man who makes me shiver, and a piece of chocolate with my friends.
With time, we gain weight because we accumulate so much information and wisdom in our heads that when there is no more room, it distributes out to the rest of our bodies. So we aren’t heavy, we are enormously cultured, educated and happy. Beginning today, when I look at my butt in the mirror I will think, ¨Good grief, look how smart I am!¨
Sometimes it comes easy, usually those are the times when you have a lot to say and can hardly keep up with yourself. It’s good to have nimble fingers. I don’t know how the one fingered typists do it!
Other times it is an exercise in patience when you have interruptions and have to keep yourself getting back to it no matter how far away it gets as the day and the interruptions go on.
Other times, not so often, I just feel there is nothing I have to say, nothing I want to say and the world is a nasty, dark and horrible place. Why should I talk to anyone? Why should I even let them know a bit of me just so they can knock me on my butt again, nasty bugger that they are. Those days I give myself the day off, or I write it all down, DAMN THE LOT OF THEM!
Originally posted as a comment in Ken’s blog . Sometimes I want to remember what I wrote, sometimes it helps keep me grounded in an odd way.
I tried acting when I was a kid. The school wanted me to do it. So my Mother had me join an acting group for kids. We put on a play about fish and a pricness and so on. I might still have the script. I did get a fairly big part. I did manage to do it all and didn’t forget what I was supposed to say. But, I’m not a natural performer in person. I have trained myself not to say “ummm” and other stalling things people do in speech. But, I perform much better on paper, in every way. I like the mystery of making the words up as I go along. I also like having the control of being the only one speaking. People who interrupt when I am talking make me want to do bad things.
I’d forgotten about that old thing, the few months of that acting group. Funny how your life can have so much in it when you look back at where you have been. Maybe I just don’t look back enough and think only about looking ahead so I miss myself.
Why are we sentimental about old electronics? I’ve seen them at the Goodwill, those thick monitors side by side, the old towers with their dirty keyboards leaning against them and the mouse dangling like a spider. I’ve seen photos taken by others who have found old computers, video game consoles and assorted technological anatomy discarded on sidewalks, rummage sales, tossed out of windows. It’s funny that they bring more feeling than the other debris, the general run of the mill stuff like cracked dishes, beat up furniture and half-dead clothing.
It’s funny that we do care. I get a funny feeling seeing those discarded dinosaurs, unwanted and hopeless. Of course, they have no thoughts about the whole thing. Whatever emotions or passion they ever had were from the people using them. Maybe it’s because they became something more than a hunk of plastic, a tool. They became familiar, like a family pet you give attention to every day, worry about when it’s sick and feel happy spending quality time together.
Still, they are totally useless now. Unless you can make some kind of modern art with them, deconstruct them and build a new system using some of the old parts. Those old clunky monitors are too far gone though. But, they could make a very unique fish bowl for your goldfish. So there is always hope, if you really want to save your old PC.
The last floating goldfish is still in the pond, making me feel bad. I did my best by them, tried to find out what we would need to do for keeping them alive in the pond over winter. The nice young man at the garden centre was very sure the pond was deep enough and as long as I could dig a hole through the ice and snow once the Spring thaw started, the goldfish would be fine. Well, something went wrong. Maybe it was the long winter and all the tons of snow we had this season past. Everyone is saying it was a very long and cold winter. The taxi driver who gave me a ride from the grocery store today said he hasn’t seen a winter this cold and snowy since 2001. It’s really unfair of those goldfish to die this way.
Before the winter I made sure to keep them fed. I was even getting to know them a bit, on an individual basis. I never did quite manage to count them all. They just didn’t stay in place long enough and then there always seemed to be a few hiding down deeper in the pond. I was feeling kind of sad for that one guy that always seemed to be alone, the left over one, the guy no one else would play with. But, really, the more I watched the more it seemed to be all his own fault. He just kept swimming out from the group, didn’t give any of the other fish a chance to be friendly and get to know him.
Now they are all gone. All just floating bodies, buried in the garden now. My brother used a shovel to flip them all out on a day when there was still ice in the pond. He missed three. Or they were just stuck somehow. I tried to get them with the shovel but they kept slipping off the end. Plus, the pond really stinks. More than just stinky, it’s gut wrenchingly gross. Not so bad now that time has passed, the ice has melted and the water has been exposed to the elements a few weeks.
I’m itchy with allergies to or from something today. I don’t know what. If I had enough cash I’d order something delivered for lunch. But the bank account is low and the cash is lower. I bought bus passes after work last night and that’s going to be my last spending spree until pay day this Friday.
Last night at work I was thinking about how I’m a big fan of clock watching. I count down the half and quarter hours till freedom. One job I had the boss got really angry about clock watching. But for me it keeps me sane to know how far away escape is. Maybe I’m just not the type to work for someone else, all the rules. I seem to be able to handle a few rules but get to a limit and then just screw everything up.
I found out something interesting at work, unofficially. I don’t think I am in as much danger of being fired as I had assumed. I mean, usually when you are told you will be fired if you screw up once more you figure that’s what that means. Last night at work an email was sent around saying the average for everyone is only 63%, about the same as my own. So, I’m not bottom of the barrel, I’m just average. I can still be fired. Maybe it’s not such a pressing issue as I had been thinking.
I just finished reading a book by Kassandra Sims. I’m not sure if I liked the story, a little too much blood and murder for me. But, the most annoying thing were all the typos and totally fixable mistakes which a proofreader could have caught. Maybe Tor can’t afford to proofread their books. At one point the main character was not there yet her name was substituted for the other character in one sentence. Made reading the book and understanding the plot very tricky. I was ready to stop reading before I was halfway. But, Kassandra Sims is a Canadian writer and I felt I had to get to the end. The end was a let down. Just kind of ended, a lot of blood and murder and then it flopped down like a fish out of water. At least it’s done and I can start something else now.
