My vacation's almost over. Didn't really do anything. Actually, that's not true, I did a lot, but I never actually spent the night anywhere other than my own bed. Drove places, but always drove home again. Never left Michigan. Drove to Lake Michigan several times, different spots along the coast. There's no real reason I couldn't do that on any normal week; heck, South Haven is only 60 miles or so away. Furthest away I got was Ludington State Park. Even got the wife and kid to come along for that one. We'd been having a pretty good stretch of warm weather, and the lake water was quite comfortable, close to 80 degrees. After the sun set, we went into Ludington proper, located a pizza joint, Luciano's, on recommendation of a gas station attendant, and ordered a pizza, which was excellent. Then drove home, stopping several times at rest stops to splash water in my face.

Probably the best thing I did was check out a couple of music festivals, which were on the weekends, so they're officially Things I Could Not Have Done Had I Not Been On Vacation, since I work on weekends. One was the Riverfolk Festival, in Manchester. The River Raisin flows through Manchester, which I think accounts for the designation "Riverfolk," though the festival itself was nowhere near the river. The music was great, though, as was the setting, in a park. There was some good Celtic music, as well as bluegrass and jazz. The "best known" and favorite band there, which I had never heard of, was called the "Glengarry Bhoys." Rousing, Kilt-raising fare.

The other festival I found was the River Raisin Jazz Festival, which actually was right next to the river, in Monroe, a bit further downstream from Manchester. This was a two-day affair in the city's municipal park, and was FREE. Not only that, but it attracted some top-notch musicians, like guitarist Earl Klugh, who I missed because he had played the night before, and guitarist Larry Carlton, whom I did see. I sat there in the park in my chair thinking how lucky I was to be able to see such artistry without paying a cent, except of course for the fuel to get me to Monroe. With gas prices now shooting into the stratosphere, that's not an inconsiderable expense, though tempered somewhat by my car, which gets 40 mpg on the highway.

So, I must have done something these past couple weeks; I put 2500 miles on my car in 10 days.

Wow, 3-1/2 years since my last post. Lot of stuff has happened since then, too much to really cover, but I'll try to summarize anyway. I'm leaving out most of the crappy stuff.

Closed my art supply business. Had a difficult time finding a new job. Couldn't collect unemployment, since I had been self-employed and hadn't paid into the fund. Did odd jobs here and there, finally landed a job at a new Target Distribution Center which had just been built near Galesburg. That has worked out pretty good for me; I've become an Inbound Department trainer, get to pretend I'm Really Important. I probably have as wide a variety of jobs in the building as anybody. Also get to travel to new DCs as they open up and help train newbies. Went to upstate NY this spring for that purpose.

Meanwhile, I was in a band called FOM for awhile, composed of a few members of my old band, the Blue Rhythm Diplomats, and a couple other guys. That sort of waned after awhile, but the fellas started talking about reconstituting the old band to produce a CD, and next thing you know, the Diplomats are rising again. We've produced the CD, called Jams & Preserves, and have been playing here and there to support it. We used a session drummer for the CD, and have been using a different session drummer for our gigs, a guy I met at work. This drummer really helps us complete our Diplomats handle, as he is politically conservative and so we pretty much span the full political spectrum, collectively. God, I love America.

Artistically, I'm in a bit of a slump, probably at least in part due to my distinct lack of anything even slightly resembling a studio to work in. Hard to feel inspired in the pile of clutter that passes for my home. Still doing the life drawing gig on Wednesdays, that's about the extent of it right now. That and a bit of digital photography. I've given up on moderating any online forums, as I don't really enjoy dealing with the juvenile outbursts that inevitably occur. And I think artists are particularly given to histrionics.

I have recently acquired a digital multitrack recorder, so I've been getting some of my independent musical ideas down in recorded form. Feeling pretty excited about that.

My body continues to decay slowly, almost imperceptibly. I'm not in too bad shape, I guess, considering my advanced age of 48. Could stand to lose a few pounds around the middle, and the gout acts up now and then, necessitating the taking of Colchicine on occasion. Recently had to have my ears unplugged again. Something about the shape of my ear canal and excess earwax production. Last time I had this done was over 20 years ago, though I've self-treated in the interim as well. As with the previous occasion, after having the ears cleaned, sounds were way too loud for awhile as I adjusted to having unobstructed hearing once again. The brain evidently compensates for a certain amount of blockage by amping up the sensitivity of the auditory nerves. When the blockage is removed, it takes a few days for the nerve sensitivity to abate.

Family is doing basically okay. A bit disjointed, as usual.

All I can think of for now.

My life has been kind of sucking lately, and it's not my habit to whine about it, so I haven't been writing anything. And probably won't, until after things have settled down a bit, and I can look back and see the obvious humor in it.

Just so you know.

Like you care.

Who the hell are you, anyway, and why are you reading this?

It’s been over three weeks since the WTC atrocity, and I’m still trying to sort out my feelings about it. I mean, besides the obvious: outrage, sadness, fear. Overt flag-waving patriotism has always scared me a little, although I’m feeling it myself these days. I printed some American flags from my computer, and have stuck them in various places, like my car window. Partly, this is in response to a conversation with a friend of mine, a peacenik sort, who maybe thinks we can love our enemies, I don’t know. I found myself getting rather fed up with his line of reasoning and decided then and there to go get a flag. Except they are impossible to find right now. So I printed some.

I’m wracking my brain, wondering if I can remember ever seeing the rampant paranoia that’s gripping the nation right now. I’m not saying a little paranoia isn’t justified, but it just seems so odd in this post-cold war world. I guess, until Sept. 11th, I thought those days were over. I’ve lost count of the number of discussions I’ve heard on NPR just this week regarding chemical and biological warfare, and whether or not Arab racial profiling is justified. There’s talk of not having all the seats of government concentrated in one city, to reduce their vulnerability. Not to mention limiting skyscrapers to under 50 stories. These discussions would have been unthinkable less than a month ago, regarded as paranoid delusional; now, nothing is off the table. The more fantastic the scenario, the more credibility it seems to have. It’s human nature to somehow see a progression of events, but when the trigger event is of this magnitude, the logical “next step” is nothing short of catastrophic. Of course, the WTC event was nothing short of catastrophic. One shudders to imagine an even worse event…but that’s what the mind wraps itself around, that possibility. I think of all the disaster movies rendered tame by the reality of Sept. 11th. New disaster movies will have to be really over the top to hold anyone’s attention. Bruce Willis was dealing with unruly kindergartners compared to the WTC. Now, nothing short of nuclear war will do. Does anyone want to watch that?

A hesitant sort of humor is trying to make a bit of a comeback. Late-night comedians are treading carefully in the minefield of political correctness. The Onion is getting back in the satire biz. Our strange culture is starting to re-emerge, though the First Amendment is taking a beating in some quarters, and some of the more depraved aspects of it seem so utterly banal. Celebrity worship in particular just seems disgusting. Who are these people, and what have they done to merit one one-thousandth the recognition of a NYC firefighter? Paraded their stupid political views before a rapt nation on the Academy Awards show? Personally saved a rainforest? Gack, I’m sicker of them than ever. And the tabloids are even worse, bleating on as if anyone gave a flying fig. Osama Bin Laden is just another wacko, right up there with Michael Jackson. Probably abused as a child. He just needs a little love.

Jessica’s school had a patriotism rally today. Can you imagine that? She was feverishly working on a poster for it last night. I have such mixed feelings about all this. Pride, yes, but also sadness, for the world my daughter will now find herself growing up in. A more cautious, fearful world, where people eye each other suspiciously, and everyday life is imbued with a certain solemn gravity. We will come to miss the halcyon days, when irony was fashionable, cynicism merely an alternative viewpoint, satire seemed appropriate. All changed, in one day.

Kellogg Forest is extraordinary this time of year.

We’ve been enjoying some fine Indian Summer weather.

I’ve got the worst case of hay fever I’ve ever had. I never used to have allergies. Immune system going to hell, I guess.

Those fricking terrorists really messed it up for more respectable hijackers, who are never again going to be able to commandeer a plane anywhere. Once on the ground, officials will of course not let it take off again, on the theory that a plane full of dead passengers is better than a plane crashing into a skyscraper. The whole science of how to deal with a hijacking situation is now out the window.

What’s with Bill Clinton going around trying to cover his ass for whatever responsibility he might have had in creating the conditions that led to the WTC attack? I’m not pointing any fingers, but there must be some sense of guilt operating here.

On second thought, Clinton has no conscience, so it must just be the usual political opportunism. Weasel.

September 12, 2001


Yesterday morning, September 11, I drove Jessica to school as usual, drove to the little store as usual, got coffee and a paper, and headed for work. I had NPR on the radio; it was the usual Great Lakes Radio Consortium story about poison groundwater or toxic fish or something. Got to work, turned on the radio; the BBC News Hour was just coming on. Lead story: a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center. What a freakish thing, I thought. It was a clear day in New York; how could the pilot not have seen it? Then, a few minutes later, another plane hit the other tower. I felt suddenly sick at the realization of the obvious: a deliberate hit.

I asked Scott if they had a working TV upstairs; he produced one from a back room and plugged it in. The picture was disconcerting, strangely serene, choreographed; a tall building, smoke rising from its top, a plane arcing around behind, disappearing from view, then flames shooting off to the left in slo-mo, like John Woo special effects. It was a ballet dance of carnage.

I went back downstairs to try and get a little work done. The next thing I heard was that the Pentagon had taken a direct hit from yet another plane. Then unconfirmed reports that the White House or the Capital was burning. Then, one of the twin towers had fallen over. Fallen over? I went back upstairs to gawk at the TV. About that time, the other tower was collapsing in on itself. My mind was refusing to accept what I was seeing. They repeated the scenes over and over: one tower pouring smoke, a plane crashing into the other tower, one tower collapsing, the other one collapsing, the Pentagon burning.

Bush was speaking. I’m not his biggest fan, but I felt glad that it wasn’t Clinton, trying to milk it for smarmy political advantage, as he did after the Oklahoma City bombing. Some may question George’s intelligence or articulateness, or disagree with his policies, but at least he’s real. After his speech, he was off to some unknown destination, perhaps the only airplane in the sky, as the FAA had grounded all air traffic nationwide. The swirl of news, rumors, hysteria became a blur. I spent most of the afternoon staring numbly at the wall, trying to absorb it.

Scott called me from his cell phone to tell me that gas prices were going crazy, were expected to hit $4.00/gallon by Wednesday. I got off work, drove to the nearest gas station, but it was too jam-packed for me. There was a gas panic on. I kept driving east on Columbia, then East Michigan, eventually winding up at Speedway on 11 Mile Road. Gas prices were the lowest I’d seen, and the line was huge. Armed police were directing traffic. It looked like some sort of martial law situation. Faces were grim. I was stuck in a long line, so I just waited it out, got my gas, and drove home. I sat there and stared at the TV screen most of the evening. I went to bed late, and woke up this morning thinking that something was vaguely wrong in the world, then – oh, yeah, I remember - feeling sick.

There is talk of war on terrorism. It’s sad and frightening to hear all of this militaristic talk again, but what can we do? Sit there and take it?

It’s especially sad to see, as happened in the Iran hostage crisis, the ugly side of humanity, as Arab-Americans, and even Indian-Americans, find themselves targets of racist attacks. When I see New Yorkers going out of their way to help each other out, displaying extraordinary compassion in the wake of an unimaginable disaster, and contrast that with such provincial, petty, redneck behavior, I am filled with a rage equal to what I feel towards the terrorists. I want to put them all on a desert island and let them have it out. Then nuke the island.

I try to imagine how New York could ever recover from a disaster such as this, with it’s skyline altered by crude surgery, people of all nationalities vaporized, whole corporations erased out of existence. I guess we just have to move forward as always, absorbing the tragedy, incorporating it into our collective consciousness.

Will we go to war? Will the draft be reinstated? Will my son have to fight? Questions I don’t want to ask, but they ask themselves anyway.

Junkyard, Episode II

There was too much seatbelt missing to just stitch together, so I had to find a length. Amazing how a seemingly simple task can become so complicated. I really didn’t want to go to another junkyard, but new seatbelt material was simply not available. And it was hard to come by at a junkyard, too. Nobody wanted to sell me any. I finally called Lafayette Auto Parts, on Lafayette St., which is in a sort of no-man’s land between Michigan Ave. and Dickman Road. Clark Equipment used to be there, but now it’s just a few junkyards, a couple of dilapidated houses, weed-choked parking lots, and not much else. They told me I could take one from a car that was going to the car crusher.

The office had an actual receptionist. She was helpful and friendly; she pointed me to a guy who could take me to a car. The guy was grubbier than any I had encountered in other junkyards, had a long, forlorn face, like a foal, a cranium about half the normal size, greasy blond hair, but was extremely polite. He picked out a random car near the front of the junkyard with an axle assembly on the hood, started it, and drove me back to where the extreme junkers were. We got to a car that we could reach, and he started to cut the seatbelt with a large steak knife. I was afraid he was going to hurt himself; I had my Super Scissors with me, and I asked if he’d let me cut the seatbelt with those. He seemed skeptical, but I snipped through the belt like a Christmas ribbon. He was impressed. He drove me back to the main building, and the receptionist didn’t even charge me.

Junkyard

My life is a junkyard.

I had to go to the junkyard the other day to look for a couple of shoulder harness mechanisms for the Honda Civic station wagon Sean just got. The only thing wrong with them is that the previous owner’s black lab had chewed through the shoulder harness webbing, and it looked like the best way to repair them was to replace the whole mechanism. I called the Honda dealer and they were about $180 apiece new. I called two junkyards and both said they’d sell them to me for $20 each if I pulled them out myself. Bill, the guy we got the car from, showed me how the devices fit in the car, and it looked simple enough.

I drove to McGhee’s on Raymond Road behind Kellogg’s. The building near the road seemed to be abandoned, and my knock on the door elicited no response. I looked around and saw a rutted dirt road leading down and behind the building, so I got back in the car and drove down to another building on the south end of the junkyard. I parked and went inside; there was a guy at the desk who was covered in dirt and grime, as was every surface, inside and outside the building.

“Help ya?” the guy said, somewhat aloof but friendly enough. I showed him the parts, and he seemed fairly certain they had them out there somewhere. “Grab yer tools,” he said. We got into a small car and he took off at breakneck speed through the junkyard, flying over giant ruts and potholes, through corridors of junk cars neatly sectioned off like city blocks, missing jagged protrusions of scrap metal by inches, whipping around corners, finally skidding to a halt a good half-mile from the building, pointing to a rust heap and said, “there’s your car.”

I hesitantly got out, wondering if he was going to abandon me there. I didn’t particularly relish the thought of having to hike back to my car carrying my heavy toolbox and whatever parts I could salvage. But I quickly realized that the car he showed me didn’t have the right part, so I got back in and we sped off in search of another one. As I surveyed the junkscape, I half expected to see squatters amid the rubble, like in those vast shantytowns on the outskirts of Mexico City, salvaging every scrap of anything that might possibly be fashioned into shelter, or sold.

The parts were not to be found, and the guy expressed his disappointment at letting a customer go empty-handed. He dropped me off at my car and was gone in a cloud of toxic dust. I drove to Whispering Oaks, just across Raymond Road on Bower Street, back in a neighborhood that appears to have no zoning ordinances in place. Some of the houses seem pretty well-kept, if modest, then you turn a corner and there’s another vast junkyard, complete with junkyard dog. “Anybody know whose dog that is?” I hear a raspy voice from inside the grimy corrugated building that seems to be the office. Then a woman’s voice, cackling bawdily at something someone on the other end of a phone is saying. She glances at me as I walk in but doesn’t acknowledge my presence for awhile.

It occurs to me that I don’t really belong in this world, any more than I belong in a room with nuclear physicists. Other people are coming and going, all seeming to know what they’re doing, while I stand there awkwardly; I couldn’t have felt more out of place if I’d been wearing a tutu. The office and everything in it, including the people, the walls and furniture, is coated with decades of grime. The woman finally gets off the phone, and I show her the part; she remembers my call, and pages the owner, who’s out in the yard somewhere. He gives her directions to the car that should contain the part; I walk out there, but the only Hondas I see are so dilapidated, it doesn’t seem possible that they could contain any useful parts. A small green Honda Civic is packed to the gills with hubcaps. Various other cars are similarly being used to store a lot of something that will have to be removed by anyone that intends to get inside to do any work.

I amble back to the office to ask if there are any other Hondas in the lot, and he seems surprised by my question. “No, they’re all right there. Should be easy enough to find.” I mention that none of those cars had the right part, and he sort of snapped “I’ve got over 2600 hundred cars out here and I can’t know about every seat belt.” “Whose dog is that?” he growls to no one in particular. I left.

I’ve decided I’ll try and stitch the danged seatbelt together.

Whew. Hot. Air conditioner is broken. No relief, not even at night.

Went to life drawing tonight – didn’t get the message that it had been cancelled. The naked person was a no-show due to poison ivy. Several of us showed up, and we went to the Copper Bar in downtown Marshall. Played a little pool. You can throw your peanut shells on the floor there. The air conditioner was half working. It seemed pretty stifling in there, until we walked out into the suffocating night. Or is it sultry?

Finally got around to renting Crumb. It was great. I know it was great because my wife was thoroughly disgusted by it. It did go into his perversions a little, but it was cool to see his work in progress. I picked up a few technique tips.


Wife’s taking off for St. Louis in a couple days. Maybe I’ll clean up this dump.

Maybe I’ll get Sean to do it. Equally improbable.

Sean’s been writing some stuff. I’m trying to get him to do a blog.

Checked out the Silverleaf Renaissance Faire again this year. The jousting reenactments and such are pretty cool, and you see some people dressed in some great period garb. Others seem to use the Faire as an excuse to dress in the most bizarre costumes they can concoct, regardless of their authenticity or relevance to the occasion. But at least they’re having fun.

I’m pushing myself to do another drawing. Oh, it’s painful. A form of torture. Might get a chance to do some blues jamming on Saturday. Beer ‘n blues, yeaahh.

The arm still ain’t right.

I injured it last November when I took my daughter roller skating. I was making a graceful left turn, crossing my right skate over my left, when somehow the skates briefly touched and became locked together, and I pitched forward, landing hard. At the time, I was mostly concerned with retrieving my glasses and picking my wracked 6-1/2 ft. body up off the floor before someone plowed into me from behind. My knee was in excruciating pain as I hobbled to the sidelines.

Over the next few days, most of the pain and stiffness worked it’s way out, but my right arm, which hadn’t bothered me immediately after I fell, got worse. My shoulder and especially my wrist were extremely tender. I’m a leftist, so I often joke that my right arm is a useless appendage that just gets in the way, but I suddenly became very conscious of the numerous tasks my inferior arm and hand are responsible for that I hadn’t really thought about before. Tasks like opening doors and dialing phones, that my all-important left hand is too high and mighty to be bothered with. Also important stuff that I couldn’t adapt to left-handed use, like operating my mat cutter. Quite a backlog of mats to be cut built up over the next couple weeks as I waited for my arm to heal.

It’s about 90% now, improving slowly, but the pain flares up once in awhile. I have to be careful about putting pressure on my wrist if I have it turned all the way out.

My daughter had a brain freeze today. I asked her what that was. Same thing as an ice cream headache.

Here it is, July 6th, and we’ve had hardly any hot weather. Which is okay by me. My wife teaches swimming, so anything under 90 is cold to her. But I’m glad to have a mild summer. Hope it continues this way.

Business is slow. Very slow.

Very.

Slow.

Damn, it's hot. I haven't had time to adjust to this heat. Just a week or so ago we were coming out of three weeks or so of March-like weather. It got nice just in time for the Cereal Festival, and now it's downright tropical, in the nineties, hazy, humid, no relief even at night. And the mosquitoes...how in the hell did we end up living in the mosquito sinkhole of the universe? This place puts Fred's Farm, renowned county wide for it's mosquito population, to shame. It's as bad inside the house, what with the kids constantly coming and going, as it is outdoors most places.

I'm in a bit of a dilemma with my business these days. The competition is fierce. My customers mean well; they try to be loyal, but the temptation is too great to head for the mega-store. So what do I do? I took out an ad in the Shopper recently poking fun at their custom framing department, and that was fun, but it didn't result in a sudden surge of business, so I guess it was pointless. Being in business is difficult; I have never liked all the promotional games one must play, and have never been very good at playing them. I really would love to just be able to come in to work, do my job, the things I'm good at, and have everything else fall conveniently into place. But I guess the real world doesn't work that way. I think I would feel better if a truly superior store with great customer service moved into town and cut into my business, (hell, maybe I'd go work for them) but to think I'm being hosed by a giant craft chain store with zero customer service...what is wrong with people? How many of them even care? Why am I knocking myself out?

I have become a fanatic about O, Brother, Where Art Thou? The movie, the soundtrack, the screen saver, I just can't get enough. Very few movies have captured my imagination like this one. Blade Runner is one of the few others. The original Raiders of the Lost Ark did for awhile, as did The Blues Brothers. And a few Hitchcock movies. There are plenty of other movies I have liked a lot, but for one reason or other I just didn't have any particular urge to see them repeatedly. I saw Traffic twice, and that was quite an intriguingly executed piece of cinema, but I doubt I'll be renting it again. Nothing against it, it's just got a certain quantity of imagery I don't particularly care to subject my retina to over and over.

School's out for summer. This will present some interesting logistical problems starting next week. I'll be taking Jessica to work with me sometimes, but Sean is working too, and we gotta get him to and fro. Another car might have to be in the grand scheme soon.

All the wry and witty comments I was going to make have left me. I'll think of them again when it's least convenient, like in the shower.

Beautiful Day. Punctuated by Annoying Person. Ah, well, who wants to know about my personal problems? Not me.

Certain things push me over the edge, into actual insanity. Static. The sound of recorded applause, but only if it's a small group. If it's the sound of a large crowd applauding, that doesn't bother me. The recorded sound of a drink being poured, as in a Pepsi ad on the radio. Will literally make me want to drive into a tree to punish the radio.

Decided it was time to shave off the winter growth the other day, so I got out the beard trimmer and electric razor and went to it. I generally leave a small goatee and Vandyke-type deal all year round and shave off the rest for summer, but on a whim, I decided to see what sideburns would look like. I've noticed 'burns are back in style again, sort of. I've never actually worn sideburns in this manner; the last time they were in style, I couldn't really grow them right. Not sure if I can even now. They look a little cheesy. When I put on my clip-on shades, I look like a seedy trailer-park manager or something. Hit man, possibly.

Seeing my face again after shaving off the beard is always a mild shock. My cheeks look beefier every year. Slabs of beef. Meatface, I call myself in the mirror. Wrinkles are stretched taut. No longer the hollowed-out, hungry look, except in the eyes, which are obscured by gravitational lenses.

Finally made it to the Maple Syrup Festival up in Vermontville this year. It was a perfect, cloudless day for it. Kind of disappointing, though. I expected more local flavor, somehow. It was mostly just a regular old fair, with rides and stuff. We missed the syrup-making and blacksmithing demonstrations. There was an arm wrestling contest. And a schlocky craft fair. We did eat expando-pancakes at the American Legion hall. Bloat. Probably the most interesting thing was talking to some of the locals about the syrup crop this year. Apparently conditions were ideal for killer syrup, and they talked about it like it was fine wine - the flavor, the aroma, the color, the body. We bought some syrup in a maple-leaf-shaped bottle and headed back to civilization.

I'm thinking of holding a Rejected Artist Exhibit, for artists who were rejects from this year's Michigan Artist Competition. So far, every artist I've talked to was summarily rejected from the competition, so I should have no trouble coming up with participants. The judging of art competitions is so arbitrary anyway. There seems to be no discernable criteria for it; really great stuff gets rejected, and amateurish crap makes the cut. It's about as fair and objective as Olympic boxing.

After a couple weeks of quite warm weather for the season, it's turned downright cool. I don't think it even broke 60 today. The sun was nice, though. It felt warm when you were right in it, but in the shade, you needed a jacket. It might frost tonight. Yes.

What is with this weather? Sheez, feels like winter again. It snowed today. Didn't stick, but still. Weather seemed apropriate somehow for the day, tax day. The day our government goes back on the reason the United States was formed in the first place, to get away from King George and Taxation Without Representation. Oh, but we have representation, you say? You call this representation? Some representation. Certainly not getting my several thousand dollars a year's worth, that's for damn sure.
I'm getting to be quite the libertarian these days.
Well, I can see I'm going to have to kill my son. He was supposed to be home an hour ago. Assured me he was on his way. "Oh, yeah, dad, no prob." Such respect.

Happy Easter. Cold, bleak, rainy, did I mention cold, and cruddy. All at the same time. After it let up around 3, we had a quick (because it was cold) Easter Egg hunt for Jessica in the wet grass of the backyard. At least we had a nice home-cooked din-wah, consisting of ham, yams, baked beans, taters and gravy, Stove Top stuffing, corn, and pumpkin pie. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Sean was itching to get out of the house and the hell away from us, the Oppressors. His pretext was that he had to work on his World History project with Ben. His teacher, Nurse Ratchet, has been telling Sean all semester not to hang out with Ben, so naturally, she has them work together on a big assignment. They were mostly done with the project, but decided to add a few imaginative finishing touches, which I cautioned against, seeing how his teacher is the least imaginative sentient being in the northern hemisphere. They partly heeded my advice, but decided they still had to do a videotape depiction of the Fall of the Roman Empire. This involved one sword, some togas, and their friend Val, who had the video camera. Part of the setting for this was the mall. I'm sure the deadly weapon they were carrying didn't concern mall security in the least. Say, I thought the mall was closed on Easter...I had asked Sean to make a copy of the video so I could verify that they were actually working on the project. Sean called from Val's after 11 and said they would be home soon, after they went back to Ben's and picked up their clothes. I asked about the tape. "Oh, we destroyed it....it was so bad, we realized that other humans could never be allowed to see it, ever." I picked him up at Ben's and tried to explain, in my most calm and rational voice, that his mother was...concerned...

Freakin' isobars! Windy enough to blow your car into oncoming traffic. My right rear tire was low...I positioned my car just right, I think it re-inflated. Look out the window, if you dare (wear protective eyewear, or a helmet)...twigs, branches, trees, pieces of the house, trash cans, trash, cats, dogs, deer, all swirling by. I think I hear a cackling witch...leave Toto alone!
This, by the way, is a continuation of EvidenceOfInsanty