I have things in my house I don't want. The stuff just appears like a hairball on the carpet or a toadstool in the back yard. I have three kids, six cats, two birds, a dog and a husband who's suspicious that I'm a secret hoarder. My garage is full. Even my front lawn is full of poop from by neighbor's dogs. I have bags of bags, boxes filled with boxes and gorged closets. Worst yet, I have forgotten what I put in them. I did investigate the contents of one closet one time. I came away with a large bag of old Loc blocks, seven long red candles with an unpleasant odor, a pink robe with large red roses appliqued on it that was my mother's, two unopened packages of men's underwear, a Ziploc bag filled with socks without partners, a twenty-five year old swimsuit and some green rubber gloves. Before I fled, I had three dead spiders sticking to my pants, two live spiders in my hair and a dehydrated dead mouse by the tail. I haven't returned since and am too cowardly to repeat this profitless adventure.
No doubt there are more interesting things in my closets but that doesn't mean I want to go there. Life is like that. It is full of interesting places that I don't want to go to. Hell is first on my list. I'd like to know where it is and who is there, but I don't want to go there. Hell is followed closely by a pig farm, prison, Big foots home, the public landfill, a slaughterhouse and a junior high school. A morgue would also be an interesting place to visit as long as nobody moved.
Collecting things just adds to this problem. Hobbies can rapidly get out of control. You start with one antique button, but that isn't enough. Then it's twenty and twenty quickly escalates to a hundred. It has been like that for me with a couple things. I confess to being a aqua phobic numismatic bibliophile. I don't swim, collect shinny round things and books. My husband is suspicious of this. I ignore him.
This is why I approached LibraryThing with a gimlet eye. Would I want to record my phobic collection for everyone to see? I signed in to the site and tentatively added one book. Then I added two more in quick succession. By the tenth book I was hooked. I leaped from my chair and scurried about my house recording books from every shelf and pile. I didn't think this would be a dangerous undertaking until I stepped on a sleeping cat's tail. By the time my heart returned to it's normal rhythm I had fifty items cataloged and was busily scribbling notes on other entries.
LibraryThing turned out to be a terrific and unexpectedly gratifying addition to my life. This is my opinion of course. My husband is convinced I'm over-productive in certain areas and is earnestly looking for a treatment center for me. I'm happy. Until he finds one I'm free to collect and catalog to my soul's satisfaction.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Messages from the boneyard.
Flickr is a lot like my high school annual. It has thousands of pictures of people I don't know. I decided to do a search for the odd and curious stuff. Anything peculiar, queer or uncouth would do. It was then that I learned something that would keep me awake at night. I made the mistake of using the explore option to research zombies. I didn't need to know that zombies desire human flesh or that they are unfailingly tenacious in their attempts to obtain it. The only good news was that they are are really dumb. I thought it best to move along.
So I decided to venture off into another area. Instead of the undead I'd look into the really very dead. What I uncovered, digging into this subject, was that graveyards are facetious and witty places. I found an auctioneer who had "Going, going, gone!" as his epitaph, a Mr. Pease who's gravestone read, "Pease is not here. Only his pod." I found a monument to a young man erected "by his grateful family" and another marker claimed that the man buried there was the "only surviving son" of Admiral Vernon.
As a warning to us, I suppose, many people had to tell you how they died. One claimed it was from eating crab, another claimed that bananas had done him in. One man died choking on a fish bone. I didn't find this unusual, but then there was the woman who claimed her death was due to eating a watermelon. Then there is the hypochondriac who's marker reads, "I told you I was sick."
Ultimately, it is nice to know the dead are really dead and will stay put. It is also nice to know that they have a sense of humor. Some names on grave markers, for example, set you to thinking. Names like: Yul B. Next, Willy Rott, U.R. Gone, Barry M. Deep, Izzy Gone, I. Emma Ghost and Sue D. Bum. One of the best epitaphs I came across was written by a woman who had shot her errant husband and I am sure wrote his epitaph from her jail cell with a big satisfied smile on her face. It read, "At least I know where he's sleeping tonight."
Flickr got me to thinking that maybe I should ponder what I want on my headstone. During my researach I came across a picture on Flickr of the marker of the man with a thousand voices, Mel Blanc. His marker says, "That's all folks!" It seemed so final that I had an immediate vision of Peggy Lee singing "Is that all there is?" So I sat in my kitchen and gave it some thought. I'm vacillating between two choices. Either, "I just knew this was going to happen." or, from Longfellow, "From dust thou art to dust returnest was not spoken of the soul." What do you think?
So I decided to venture off into another area. Instead of the undead I'd look into the really very dead. What I uncovered, digging into this subject, was that graveyards are facetious and witty places. I found an auctioneer who had "Going, going, gone!" as his epitaph, a Mr. Pease who's gravestone read, "Pease is not here. Only his pod." I found a monument to a young man erected "by his grateful family" and another marker claimed that the man buried there was the "only surviving son" of Admiral Vernon.
As a warning to us, I suppose, many people had to tell you how they died. One claimed it was from eating crab, another claimed that bananas had done him in. One man died choking on a fish bone. I didn't find this unusual, but then there was the woman who claimed her death was due to eating a watermelon. Then there is the hypochondriac who's marker reads, "I told you I was sick."
Ultimately, it is nice to know the dead are really dead and will stay put. It is also nice to know that they have a sense of humor. Some names on grave markers, for example, set you to thinking. Names like: Yul B. Next, Willy Rott, U.R. Gone, Barry M. Deep, Izzy Gone, I. Emma Ghost and Sue D. Bum. One of the best epitaphs I came across was written by a woman who had shot her errant husband and I am sure wrote his epitaph from her jail cell with a big satisfied smile on her face. It read, "At least I know where he's sleeping tonight."
Flickr got me to thinking that maybe I should ponder what I want on my headstone. During my researach I came across a picture on Flickr of the marker of the man with a thousand voices, Mel Blanc. His marker says, "That's all folks!" It seemed so final that I had an immediate vision of Peggy Lee singing "Is that all there is?" So I sat in my kitchen and gave it some thought. I'm vacillating between two choices. Either, "I just knew this was going to happen." or, from Longfellow, "From dust thou art to dust returnest was not spoken of the soul." What do you think?
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Swimming with zombies
Zombies are one of those things in life that you never give it a lot of thought to until you have one standing next to you. Looking at you. Abruptly your knowledge on zombies becomes personal and important. I haven't had this experience but if I ever do then I am now prepared thanks to one of the podcasts I watched. I learned more in that three minutes than I ever expected. For example; zombies cannot swim. {I do feel a bit conflicted about this unsettling piece of information because, as you know, I cannot swim and therefore cannot elude zombies by hiding in a lake.) Zombie bites are always infectious and fatal. You should not hide from zombies in your house or apartment. The best escape is to flee to either Costco or the mountains. Why this is the case was never made clear, but I do know that I need to have a survival kit ready to take with me. That kit should include a hatchet, long-handled knife or chain saw. You need one of these three because zombies can only be killed by chopping off their heads. I've chosen a hatchet as my weapon. The reason is clear. I'd have to get too close to the zombie to slice his head off with the knife and the chain saw seems too messy. The other reason is that I have ready access to a hatchet in my library. It is a part of my disaster preparedness kit. Really. It is. It is kept behind the kit which is right next to the courier boxes in the hall closet opposite the ladies restroom. I had no idea the library was so prepared, but I am delighted and feel much safer knowing it's there for me to use to slay a zombie if I need it.
This has presented me with a quandary and that is that I am sure it takes some skill and therefore some practice to swing a hatchet just so. It would appear that you only get one opportunity and you would want to be quick and accurate. So, I am thinking I need some practice. The conundrum is how to practice and become an expert hatchet-handler without ending up confined to a softly padded beige room with no door handle on the inside. I'm going to think more about this later.
What krl2pt0 has done for me is to open the door to a world of pleasing stuff (no other word covers everything like stuff does) and provided me with a way to link that stuff to my front doormat. I don't have to go searching for zombie sightings. Instead they come to me. Could it get any better?
This has presented me with a quandary and that is that I am sure it takes some skill and therefore some practice to swing a hatchet just so. It would appear that you only get one opportunity and you would want to be quick and accurate. So, I am thinking I need some practice. The conundrum is how to practice and become an expert hatchet-handler without ending up confined to a softly padded beige room with no door handle on the inside. I'm going to think more about this later.
What krl2pt0 has done for me is to open the door to a world of pleasing stuff (no other word covers everything like stuff does) and provided me with a way to link that stuff to my front doormat. I don't have to go searching for zombie sightings. Instead they come to me. Could it get any better?
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Learning by the cat method.
My cat peed on one of my books. It was a direct result of my testing Mark Twain's claim that if you hold a cat by the tail you will learn things you cannot learn any other way. That cat was out for revenge. We both learned from the experience.
What I think about learning something new is that it's also a good idea to start at the bottom and work your way up. The only exception is swimming. In swimming you should start on top of the water and try to stay there. That's the whole point of swimming. Swimming is something everybody should know how to do. There are some who never learn how. I'm a pretty logical thinker so it also stands to reason that any body lined with fat would float and therefore swimming would be easy. I know this to be untrue. Take my corpulent body for example. It does not float and consequently I can't swim. I've preached many long stirring sermons to myself exhorting the virtues of posessing that lifesaving ability. But the awful truth is that I just never got the knack of synchronizing my arms and legs. Instead each limb operates independently and seems totally unaware of what the other three are doing. The result is ugly. The last time I was in a pool I beat the water madly into a froth of foam as I sunk slowly to the bottom. This amazed the lifeguard and the small crowd who had gathered at the edge of the pool to watch. After reviving me the lifeguard told me kindly that it wasn't my fault that I couldn't swim. The crowd nodded in silent unison at his thoughtful comment and many smiled encouragingly at me and I felt better about myself.
So the long and short of it is that I don't venture into water above my knees. I will admit to being afraid, but not of water. I'm afraid that there is something very big with sharp white teeth deep under the water that is going to rise up and bite me. I am sure there are others out there like me.
As I have been going through the krl2pt0 training I have been offered up a splendid opportunity to find those other people like me. In addition, I've listened to podcasts, signed up for a del.icio.us account and collected websites on many of my interests, fears & phobias and have stumbled across an assortment of astounding and startling information that I had never given much thought.
I have to admit to being significantly cranky a few times when I was struggling with a particular assignment that was proving to be more formidable than trying to get a toilet seat cover to stay on long enough to get seated on it before the whole thing slides into the water or the floor. Sometimes I felt wildly befuddled by it all. I have a history with IT things. Normally when someone from IT tries to elucidate me to the wonders of the virtural world an odd fuzzy buzzing emitts from somewhere deep within my brain until I can't hear a thing they are saying and my lazy eye begins to wonder. Shortly I begin to feel like an abysmally stupid pinhead and spend my time smiling and nodding encouragingly, trying to pretend I'm not a dimwitted booby.
But this time it is different. I have the feeling that if I keep at it that damned buzzing will stop and I will end up learning a lot and I'll be quite chipper and pleased with myself. I've already had an exhilarating learning experience with a podcast on zombies. I learned the darnest things and have a completely new outlook on that hatchet in the library closet that is part of our disaster kit. It is kept right next to the courier boxes. Tune in next week for the rest of the story.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Carrying water in a sieve & Dear Abby
You won't put out a fire by carrying water from a well in a sieve. I'm not a certified firefighter nor a pyromaniac and I've not tried it out, but I'm pretty sure this is true. There are other truism bantered about that I would just as soon not try out either. Ignorance is bliss is one of them.
I knew a man once who everyone considered a little light in the noodle. In fact, his whole family was considered light in the brain department. I have no idea why this was so. It just was. Their family name was Hereford. Like the cow. I'm sure this was coincidental. I recall my father telling the story of this family driving down a country road when the back seat door of the car flew open and one of the three kids in the back seat tumbled out. As the story goes, they didn't know what to do and after an loud argument between the parents and the two remaining children they stopped the car to discuss what to do next. After more deliberation they concluded that they should back up the car and see if they could find the missing youngster along the road somewhere. Of course they ran over him while backing up.
Please keep in mind that this is supposed to be a true story and that this family was an unfortunate a group of related innocents who would easily qualify for the featherweight division in mental expertise. They were not ignorant. They were all stupid, my father said, and sadly there was nothing that could be done about it.
As I venture valiantly into the world of social bookmarking, tagging and tag clouds, I keep the Hereford family in mind. I do this because it plainly shows the difference between those who can, those who can't and those who won't. I have a lot to learn and if I keep at it some of it will slide off but some of it will stick. As my father would say, I don't have the Hereford excuse for not learning.
"It's true that a little learning is a dangerous thing," Abigail Van Buren said, "but it still beats total ignorance." I think Abbey has a point.
I knew a man once who everyone considered a little light in the noodle. In fact, his whole family was considered light in the brain department. I have no idea why this was so. It just was. Their family name was Hereford. Like the cow. I'm sure this was coincidental. I recall my father telling the story of this family driving down a country road when the back seat door of the car flew open and one of the three kids in the back seat tumbled out. As the story goes, they didn't know what to do and after an loud argument between the parents and the two remaining children they stopped the car to discuss what to do next. After more deliberation they concluded that they should back up the car and see if they could find the missing youngster along the road somewhere. Of course they ran over him while backing up.
Please keep in mind that this is supposed to be a true story and that this family was an unfortunate a group of related innocents who would easily qualify for the featherweight division in mental expertise. They were not ignorant. They were all stupid, my father said, and sadly there was nothing that could be done about it.
As I venture valiantly into the world of social bookmarking, tagging and tag clouds, I keep the Hereford family in mind. I do this because it plainly shows the difference between those who can, those who can't and those who won't. I have a lot to learn and if I keep at it some of it will slide off but some of it will stick. As my father would say, I don't have the Hereford excuse for not learning.
"It's true that a little learning is a dangerous thing," Abigail Van Buren said, "but it still beats total ignorance." I think Abbey has a point.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
My feet used to be small; another musing
When I was born my feet were very small. The older I get the larger they grow. If this continues by the time I'm planted six feet under the soil my toes will be sticking out of the ground.
Of the new do-hinkey's I'm going to be learning this year why my feet are expanding is just one among many questions that have occurred to me since reading the article on 43 things to learn about. I've decided to start close to home. I'm determined to learn how to unlock the lock box that holds the key to my house should I forget or lose my keys. I think this is a smart move. Next, there is my digital camera that currently I can only turn on and off, then I'll learn to adjust my car radio & discover what all those mysterious buttons & dials really do. I'm going to make myself sit down and read that 108 page book on my new cell phone. I'm sure that phone can do surprising things like maybe teleportation. {If I'm suddenly gone then you'll know that this is the case.} There is such an array of new tools, implements, paraphernalia, phobias and accouterments to learn that the list will be endless. It is a time to be glad. A time for change.
There is nothing quite like change. Change can be good as long as it doesn't invlove something on me sagging. I'm determined to retool my cognitive & emotional functions to embrace an altered terra firma. I think the word I want is reformation. Yes. That is it! There will be a reformation in my life. Now I'm really up for and dedicated to making a change. It will be a giant leap forward. It doesn't matter if I feel like a puny turtle trapped in a biosphere of warp-speed rabbits; I've been given the tools to jump aboard, to learn, to grow and to pass it on to others. Hey, it kinda' sounds like fun.
The more I learn the more I like it.
Of the new do-hinkey's I'm going to be learning this year why my feet are expanding is just one among many questions that have occurred to me since reading the article on 43 things to learn about. I've decided to start close to home. I'm determined to learn how to unlock the lock box that holds the key to my house should I forget or lose my keys. I think this is a smart move. Next, there is my digital camera that currently I can only turn on and off, then I'll learn to adjust my car radio & discover what all those mysterious buttons & dials really do. I'm going to make myself sit down and read that 108 page book on my new cell phone. I'm sure that phone can do surprising things like maybe teleportation. {If I'm suddenly gone then you'll know that this is the case.} There is such an array of new tools, implements, paraphernalia, phobias and accouterments to learn that the list will be endless. It is a time to be glad. A time for change.
There is nothing quite like change. Change can be good as long as it doesn't invlove something on me sagging. I'm determined to retool my cognitive & emotional functions to embrace an altered terra firma. I think the word I want is reformation. Yes. That is it! There will be a reformation in my life. Now I'm really up for and dedicated to making a change. It will be a giant leap forward. It doesn't matter if I feel like a puny turtle trapped in a biosphere of warp-speed rabbits; I've been given the tools to jump aboard, to learn, to grow and to pass it on to others. Hey, it kinda' sounds like fun.
The more I learn the more I like it.
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