Warsaw shine

It doesn’t seem right that orb and zest are actual words while vun and thort are not. Especially since we could use some new words; so many of our existing ones have to serve more than one meaning. Like the ribbon on the front of a ship (bow bow), tedious drilling (boring boring), or a wrapped laceration (wound wound). I’ve asked around and there doesn’t seem to be anyone with the authority to supervise this sort of thing. Somebody should do something. If we’re not careful, we’ll end up living in a world where we understand one another very poorly.

To Summarize

So far I’ve been a pretty good guy, not necessarily a great guy. I’ve done some rotten things. I feel bad enough to make a little grunt if I happen to think about them. Which I try not to do. Then I recall doing some profoundly dopey and embarrassing things which I feel less bad about, because at least I wasn’t being a jerk, just a dope. Okay. But really what I want to emphasize is that however many regrettable things I may have done in the past I never bought one of those J. Peterman dusters. So there’s that.

Dem Bones

If you’re like most people (highly probable, statistically speaking) then like me you’re looking forward to the upcoming day of celebration, November first, when all the candy at Walgreens is half price. First, of course, comes Halloween, which I’m doing exactly zilch to recognize. I thought a bit about decorating the front of the house. I considered buying a few of those plastic skeletons at the big box store, but then it occurred to me, hey, my family and neighbors contain all the skeletons I could possibly use. The harvesting process, however, seemed like it would something of a chore.

Social Climbers

Did you read some weeks ago about how blizzard conditions stranded almost 1,000 hikers on Mount Everest? What the hell? It turns out maybe 800 people a year reach the summit, spending somewhere around $100,000 each to do so. There’s pictures of tightly packed queues curving their way up the mountain, each of them enjoying a glorious view of the back of the tourist in front of them. Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary got there first in 1953. That was the whole point. Nothing else counts. Going there now is like sitting down at your keyboard to write Finnegans Wake.

Ask me how I know this.

When a person gets older they may get greedy with their time. When a person gets older they may get more difficult to buy gifts for because if they don’t have something it’s probably because they already got rid of it. When a person gets older they may find themself having discussions with other seniors wherein various physical and metabolic challenges are listed and compared in a process I’m told is called the “organ recital.” When a person gets older they may need to get up from bed a few times during the night. Hence the term “wee small hours.”

Yes. Worse than this.

I’ve been posting these things since 2007 and a casual reader might be forgiven for thinking, “This guy just types until he hits exactly 100 words and then posts whatever crap results from the exercise.” But that is not so. For instance, today I wrote 100 words and when I read them I realized they were abysmal. Below my standards. Not worthy of my readers’ attention. I just didn’t want to post it. Instead, I’ve saved it to my documents folder where it will reside until some future time when I find myself completely bereft of interesting ideas. Unlike today.

Or what's a heaven for?

When I was very small, I thought that the hooded coat we called a parka had something to do with Fess Parker, who played Davy Crockett the King of the Wild Frontier on television. Davy Crockett was born in the Lost State of Franklin which existed from 1784 to 1788. There are other lost states, including Absaroka, Nickajack, and Forgottonia. Not to mention the lost B vitamins B4, B8, B10, and B11. If only there was some clever way to tie this all together. You stay here and try to figure it out. I’ll wait for you in the lobby.