Dichotomy in F Sharp

 Dichotomy In F Sharp

                           i

she stands alone staring out her window pane

while the trucks go west and the cars go east,

a blurry dance after the needle’s left.

she scratches the places she lies about

-like just another flea bite on her arm-

tonight it will take me, tonight it will be 

she prays in her mind, she prays in her mind.

 

he will wait for me after the sentence is passed

she practices saying before the dull silver mirror

swaying, swimming, and grabbing table and chair

black ovals running reckless with careless remorse-

her colors colliding with the sharp stinging stick,

she lays on the carpet, letting loose of all care.

                                      

                                   ii

he lays in the covers enclosed like a womb

passion with position, placement and pillow

steeping in memory after bedtime routine.

he flips in the dark with a careless delight

the dreams of the ocean wide with sea foam

as sailing alone to where waters collide

the figures all passing, the figures all gone.

 

he practices the faces, the lines, and the songs

the nights and the days, the storms and the calm

the mountains, the valleys, the sheep by the sea

the motions, the dances, the dialogue, the tea.

he stretches to take them, and cuddle them near

but wakes with a start to find they’re not there.

but silence is fleeting, and the Faithful One is kind

so he closes his eyes again…with God on his mind.

 

 

Mountain Quintet

 MOUNTAIN QUINTET # 1

the red roads round the map of state

and cross the deep divides of form…

splattered with pockets of pea-green paint

lands over which boots and backpacks reign

land of the rhododendron domain.

Let's make blogging better again

 Are you as bored with the normal blogging world as I am? Do you remember when it was actually fun to read blog posts? 

I have decided to help change the blog world....one post at a time. One way to do that is to challenge the blogging world to break through the boring into the interesting.

So, without further ado, I have some ideas that might make blogging better again. In random order, I have generated a list from the edge of my mind that may actually interest the bored. 

Here are 11 fascinating ideas that would make the blog world a better place to live, 11 possible blogs:

1.   Write daily entries about your dog's day. Write the day according to your dog's point of view...like "Today, I watched my human make boloney sandwiches..."

2.   The 30-Day Dragonfruit Diet Journal. Eat dragonfruit for a whole month daily. The theme is 'A day without Pitaya is like a Day without Sunshine."

3.    For those with a "fond memory..." it might be The Gallstone Celebration Journal: 14 Days of Hellacious Pain

4.     The Seven Continent Challenge Blog: Chronicle your attempt to date a woman/man from every continent. Those who have been to Antarctica count for citizens of that continent.

5.     Rewrite famous poems in the language of a pre-teen.

6.     Just as I once dreamed...write 101 recipes featuring Ramen noodles.

7.    Write a journal about your journey as a Fruititarian. 

8.     The Big Blog of Bloat. Write about what bloats you, what doesn't bloat you, and what could bloat you and your adventure with belt sizes.

9.   The Bladder Infection Blog, (commencing with onset, through the duration of medicinal treatment) complete with Physician’s desk reference notes, wonderful flip chart graphics and side notes, including supporting material from the International Gastrointestinal Disease Conference for 2023.

10.  The 30 Days Running in a Kilt Challenge (of course, complete with pictures of a kilted lad running to get on the bus, running in the supermarket, running from hairy cows, running past the boss at the office…). After each run, do a weigh-in. After 30 days write your groundbreaking discoveries about the journey.

11.  The Wonderful World of Menopause, a daily chronicle capturing all the highs, lows, highs, and lows...and highs and lows

People Who Haven't A Clue They Changed My Life

 The LIFE book 100 People Who Changed The World is not on my coffee table. It is not in my bookcase. It is not anywhere in my house...

...nor are there many traces of influence from 99 of these "100 most influential people" in my life. The only one who qualifies as having changed my world is the living word of God, the one LIFE identifies as "Jesus." 

The others are a cast of characters who have maybe influenced someone's culture, but they certainly have not touched mine.

But what I really want to explore instead is the 100 people who have randomly had an impact on my life and who haven't a clue that they did.

Like the keeper of the unabridged dictionary in the school library when I was growing up. I looked up to that nerd, not just because he was keeper of the book, but because he could actually carry it down the stairs.

And that pretty freshman cheerleader who sat behind me in study hall...who, unlike many of the others, had a personality more interesting than a candy wrapper, and did not want to make a move on every high school quarterback.

Or, that mind-numbingly wealthy Slavic girl in college who didn't seem to have a clue about the poor and oppressed, who inspired me to write poetry exposing the lack of compassion for the downtrodden by the social elite.

Or, that freshman who came into the donut shop after the bars closed and propped her feet up on a table in the corner, too drunk to walk alone to her dorm room, inspiring me to walk her home, as if she was my own daughter...instead of seeing her as a possible date.

Or, that anemic-looking character who stood on the corner trying to scam money out of passing former WalMart customers so she could buy her next heroin fix. Addicted. Dying. Living in a roach-infested apartment across from the Salvation Army. But God had told me to stop and take her into the store and buy her food...and socks... because He had compassion...and that, and her utter poverty of spirit, changed me.

Or, that guy who came running out the middle of a wilderness area ...running across the road to my car, where I had been enjoying the view. I drove him 45 minutes down the mountain to a pay phone so he could call for a chopper to fly one of the boy scouts to a hospital. So now, while I am as cautious as the other guy, I do believe there are divine appointments...

and there are so many more...and you could add you own here, but suffice to say, there have been so many people who have changed my life, just by their presence, just by being in the right place at the right time...or the wrong place at the right time...

....but they have no clue how they have changed my life.

who are the random people who have changed your life?

no more poop in the coop

 chickens running free through sweet meadows and forests, clucking their way into the sunset, free to run across the range…smiling, happy chickens…spreading their wings under the vast blue skies, with no….

caca grande en la casa

this bucolic vision of bird heaven reminds us all that it is a much better world we live in when we too are freed from the coop full of poop- in the Big Coop with the Big Rooster.

The Big Rooster rules the roost in the Big Coop because that is the way things go. The way things have always gone. That is what they say. That ubiquitous they. And they are always right, even when they are wrong.

The Big Coop is a clucking palace, where the chickens cluck away, strutting about as if taking selfies, running into their neighbors, eating everything in sight, and decorating the floor with verbal and visible manure. They may be clucking about The Big Rooster,  but their clucking is so loud that even the Big rooster rarely hears them. This keeper of the coop ensures that weak ones die, that clucking continues, and that the order of all things remains in his power. The growing mounds of shite collect, members oblivious to their smell, and sometimes oblivious to their presence,  with no…

prospect of freedom from the decay surrounding them.

But I am not speaking of chickens, I am speaking of weak souls…weak, pellet-fed souls repressed by a religious regime where an autocrat rules inside a boxed-in world…

that Jesus never came to proclaim…instead, He proclaimed…

 “A time is coming, and is come, when the true worshippers will  worship the Father in spirit and truth; for indeed the Father seeks such worshippers. God is spirit, and His worshippers must worship in spirit and truth.”

“Do you not know that you are a temple of the Holy Spirit?”

Jesus did not come to establish the coop mentality. He came to destroy the man-made temple. The age Jesus came in was filled with temples worshipping gods. He came to see that all would be filled with the Holy Spirit, becoming temples of the living God.

If you are a temple, you have no need to be confined inside someone else’s temple culture, with its pagan rituals that stink to high heaven. Jesus came to give you freedom to live outside the religious building structure and its self-made gods of Big Egos. He came to create an environment where you, like free range chickens, can network and live free in healthy community, with…

no more poop in the coop.

the other language

how can I share what air cannot reveal,

what eyes cannot reach,

what words cannot contain?

though the wind whisper it,

my ears cannot translate for you,

only these lips that speak without thought

thoughts as a vapor rising.

The Society For The Prevention of Abuse To Unabridged Dicitonaires

 

When I was in school, the unabridged dictionary sat like an alien death weapon on a podium too small for the monstrosity. Most of the boys and girls in my class were afraid to even touch it. The librarian treated it like some kind of ancient relic from Vulcan.

Then, one day, it disappeared. It was piled in a gargantuan book-pyramid with numerous other dishonored lonely books. The speckled-faced librarian gathered them in a wheelbarrow and positioned them behind a hideously wide red truck.

In the morning, as I walked to school, I saw the red truck parked haphazardly upon the mound beyond the northern end of the school building. I walked over, peered into the bed. Below the truck bed, a few pieces of browned paper lay scattered about. I reached down and found they were crumpled into dust when touched.

The unabridged dictionary- along with other notable books- met their death that day…before I found the remnants of ash-like fragments.

I confess today that I do not own an unabridged dictionary. Someday, I will buy one….in secret. But for now, it has become a problem.

It is because I get words stuck in my head and often have to search to find their meaning.  So many times I cannot find it in any of the mamby-pamby dictionaries online or in any public library.

In fact, while I was dour, writing a very serious post, I got a word stuck in my head. Not like a song stuck in my head, but an “unknown” (for best effects, please pronounce with a Scottish accent) word. I flung open my dictionaries, scavenged the online dictionary venues, to no avail. I nearly flailed myself upon a piece of plastic to buy a subscription to the unabridged dictionary online…OK, I am exaggerating…but repented when I did some cost analysis.

You can read an account of my Shakespearean disgust at not finding that word in one of my former posts. 

But for now, I am calling on all students of life... those graduates from the University of hard knocks, soft knocks, and knock knocks, to rally the troops and demand your local library association bring back the massive volume of The Fun Stuff. 

My Lugubrious Peasant Life

 yonder pile of fetid mud,

so tender to the touch

contains the thatch remains

I must tend to very much.

I have no time for politics

no lengthy words or speech

my life is tied up with the mud

not in the words I’d preach.

Though I stand against the wicked sky

and stand against the rain

the filth remains my trusted friend

the place I will remain.

For I am just a man with plow

with furrowed face and ground

keeping busy on the landlord's land

‘ere he come and mow me down.

what we don't speak of

 what we don’t speak of

found inside our hearts

down in certain corners

it hides whenever we start-

thinking of the day,

thinking of the night,

soon we feel it passing

just another pang tonight…

if we had more choices

if  we had a second time

if we had more knowledge

would we face the door aright?

opening to our moments

opening to our regrets

but finding pages empty

those memories one forgets

and passing through all seasons

and passing through all lines

there among the stories

the tender times that rhyme…

we have scrawled such a story

acquainted with such a life

if we had more knowledge

would we face the door aright?

beating at the window

knocking on the walls

ignoring pains and process

ignoring breaks and falls

flying moths are dying

winter comes tonight

where the heat is waning

will there be another fight?

if we had more choices

if we had a second time

if we had more knowledge

would we face the door aright?

the night is not so black

 the night is not so black

not so dark

not so hidden

that we cannot see

the alleyways of the soul.

buried in the trash of these

the stench of these

the color of these

Red cries from within

the walls high and divided

muting the message and the pain.

and another steps in-

the solution is plain.

the culprit of all our problems

soon sitting at the bottom

below in a hole in the ground

and someone says, “it will be forever,”

and no one rises to test it

and no one rises to declare

the hole may be a hole

but no one seems to care.

and so we labor, so many in the blind

like scattered cats scattered wide,

troubled alleyways of the soul

confused by the refuse in the hole.

what will change to bring change

what will endure with the loss of sight

what will you do with the hole

that stands on the edge of night.

when i was on the ledge

 there is that crusty ledge-

with swordplay above

the sidewalk below

or the fire escape

with nowhere to go-

you think that you have me,

but I will not stay-

my heart is not touched

by your game of decay.

my mind is on Heaven

I stand to declare

while yours is on Hell

and baggage-filled care.

you call into question

the right and the pure

while your heart is rotten

with no earthly cure.

beware spreading rumors

beware spreading hate...

touch not God’s anointed

lest you be those now Late.

The first time

 The first time isn’t easy. You have to lean slightly to one side, shake a little bit, then look down and make sure you’re dry. And when you’ve finished, you must analyze the warm plastic cup and make sure you’ve filled it at least to the line. Next, you place the beaker-like container into a secret compartment where an unseen hand will reach in and extract the happy fluid…when you’re gone. You hope. And next time, you follow the same pattern, and maybe then you remain dry. The problem is…how do you practice peeing in a cup?

I was once a child…back in olden times. Thrown into an adult setting, white-coated people everywhere, I was given a speciman container and given confusing instructions about “catching the stream.” I walked into the restroom, took down my shorts, took one look at the huge-butted comode, another at the speciman “jar” and thought “you’ve got to be kidding. what am I supposed to do- again?” I pulled up my shorts and pants, went outside the door and tried to get a nurse’s attention. “What do I do again?” Do you know how silly it is to look up at Mattilda-the-Hun on steroids and ask “Do I pee into the poddie first or do I pee in the cup first?” I never quite understood her adult response, so I went back into the restroom feeling embarrassed and ready to pee in my shorts if I didn’t start playing fireman fast! Well, I tried to hold the bottle out and hit it a few times, and my hand, but I managed to fill the thing up past the line and almost overflowing. I washed my hands, pulled up my shorts and pants and went out the door to find the nurse. “I’m done.” She went in and pulled the cup from the back of the comode and marched past with a prize-winning jar of yellow stuff. One nurse moved out of the way in surprise- or was it envy?- and then I found my way back to the waiting room. Wow, peeing properly in a cup was a tiring experience…

But today, I have conquered the stream-method, I have mastered the moment-long spray in the cup. It is no longer me who is embarrassed about stream-catching, but rather the new young recruits to the pee-pee lab.

I asked the cute blonde what amount of euphoria convinced her to become a urine analysis expert. She said it was “just a job” and smiled, as if she was trying to think of frisky puppies or cute lop-eared bunnies. She had on one of those not-so-serious looking health care outfits with Eeyore and Pooh dancing across her…but what really stopped me was her vacuously happy smile. I imagined her going home to her husband…

“How was your day, honey?”

“Oh, the same as usual. Until this old guy came in.”

“Old guy?”

“Yeah, he was at least 35.”

“That’s old.”

“I know…”

But I don’t believe she likely told him about our ensuing conversation after I returned from the restroom…

“I was wondering…has anyone ever asked you how to practice for the urine speciman test?”

I say this because she looked at me like I was from the Bolivian Navy. It struck her, like a Time Rift.

“Like…I hadn’t thought of that!”

“Well, maybe you should…because, not everyone is as practiced as I am!”

Two Flies are better than one

 It was a horrible day at work, but at least I am not a Beijing washroom attendant. The latter, Chinese serfs with dubious fringe benefits, have been given a new directive- no more than two flies per stall. These are ironic rules for the potty police, who are already understaffed and overworked, considering that more people line up to give an offering at a porcelain protrusion in a Beijing restroom than cue up for a “Pin the Tail on the Zuckerberg” game at a “Stock Implosion Party.” Counting flies is serious business, and a whole lot of money should be thrown at the problem so that the communist government can justify a five-year plan.

But how…how…does one obey such a directive, considering five year plans may not include all the utilities for the plan in the first year or more?  Do attendants get fly swatters, portable fly-paper houses, or big-fat bug zappers? Or, do they mount this offensive while straddling white plumbing equipment? It seems to me that a policy requiring stall inspection would necessitate occupiers counting total fly populations while vacating their bowels, unless they were vacating the said stall areas to allow washroom attendants to do systematic checks.

Which leads me to the next logical question: if there is now a two fly policy, what was the former policy? In a country where babies are regulated, where ghost cities lie in wait for future generations, and where “reality” is manipulated by the government,  the regulation of flies in a metropolitan smog jungle restroom might actually seem logical. So, what was the former count? Surely there was a system in place that allowed for a particular number of flies per stall. I believe that number was chosen by a party leader who read a Fortune cookie prediction containing the lucky number. This makes perfect sense because these are the same people who have regulated the installation of strangely worded signs in fractured English throughout China as a part of the “Communist Party Comic Relief Program” for all English-speaking tourists. It’s just a shame  that they have to have a spy program so ubiquitous. It’s no wonder they are trying to eliminate the image of the Chinese “fly on the wall…”

the days of the weak

 In the course of human events, the ancient world was rife with conflicting schedules for the unit we call “the week,” from five days to ten days, with some societies choosing alternating numbers of days in the week to balance the year. In the so-called “West,” it was a Roman Emperor, Constantine, who endowed us with a much more reliable measurement, standardizing the week into seven days….which, of course, made him look like a super genius. Constantine, who appears to have been a wee bit of a super narcissist, stole the idea from the ancient Hebrews, Babylonians,  and other empires….and God.

The average man or woman in 322AD, in the area influenced by the Roman Empire, went to work on “A” and might go shopping on “H.” The Romans were less original with their days of the week than just about any other civilization ever to wake up from a bed in the morning. This might explain why there were so many murders among the imperial family, who must have taken the blame for not exciting workers into more production on “Day E,” and for the shopping day fiasco “Black F,” our predecessor to “Black Flag,” which is always a nasty surprise to insects, infidels, and 16 year old Snowflakes…

And while everyone- including the Hobbits, elves, unicorns, My Little Ponies, Democrats and Cybermen- could rationally argue which day Christ was born in Bethlehem, and which calendar should be consulted for that….and which day is the true seventh day…and which element should be used to calculate when a day is officially over…and which calendar is the most accurate for predicting the end of the world…there is  enough history revealing how corrupted and inaccurate ancient time-keeping was that it is simply a waste of time in the end.

What does not make sense is that the names used for the days of the week in much of the western world is still attached to long forgotten pagan mythology that makes little sense to use in the 21st century. And while there have been mostly forgotten attempts, like those by Pope Sylvester, to change the names to more reasonable and useful references, none has shaken, nor officially changed the days of the Western World.

Strangely enough, Sunday, the first day of the week now, is closest to some semblance of usefulness. Sunday, like Son-Day, the day celebrated as the day when Christ rose from the grave, at least makes a bit of sense. Monday, on the other hand, sounds like “Mun-day,” the Day of The Mundane.

Many of us have to get up early and go to work on this Monday, Mundane Day, not nearly as happy as Son-Day, because it is most likely to be the least exciting day of the week. Hence, it is more appropriate to rename it “Munday,” short for “Mundane Day.”

Tuesday…well, who knows what in the world that refers to, other than it is “Twos Day.” On Twos Days, we know that it is the second day of the standard Western workweek, still so far from the weekend. Twos Days are good days for Two For One specials because we…those of us who must take time to stop into a restaurant to eat our meals while working in our fields…are more likely to succumb to this two-for-one deal as it is early in the week, and we are still hungry from the terrible day we had on Munday (Mundane Day).

The third Day of the week, sometimes called Hump Day, which is not helpful for the chronically single, is Wednesday, which makes absolutely no sense. No one I know says “Wed-ness.” Can I get a Wed-ness that it is Wed-ness-day? Wind, yes. Winds-day- that I hear all the time. Of course, this Winds-Day is the day when it can go  either way- good or bad- being the third day of the work week, and the day when you do not know which way the wind blows, nor which way the week will blow…

The fourth day of the week is Thursday, or “Turzday.” I prefer those who pronounce it in the latter form, as it reminds me of just how frustrating the day can be. Turz is like Turds, and while it is not Friday, you can certainly smell it from here…

Back in the day, I remember the lads talking about “getting fried.” Well, if you have a really terrific job, you don’t have such pathetic days. But if your job is a pile of Turds, Fry-day is the day you either eat all the fried chicken, chickfry (deep fried breaded anything fried in the same grease as fried fish), or some other ghastly grease-enriched gastrointestinal adventure…or….because your brain is so “fried,”you need to go do something stupid like watch every season of a 70's sitcom until your eyeballs bug out, or you collapse like a three-toed sloth on the bedroom floor…

And then, there is Saturday. What can you say about Saturday? Nothing bad, surely. It is a good day to relax from all the hectic work days. Some of us do have to work on Saturdays, but even then, there is something uniquely pleasing about Saturday that says to us that it is a good day to sit at some time. So, Saturday is not too far off from Sat-ur-day, or sit down and do nothing so stressful as what was done the previous five days. 

While there is currently no mass movement to change the names of the days of the week…this post should inspire you to come up with your own ideas for new names for the days of the week. After all, how long is the western world going to be writing “Wednesday,” when practically nobody pronounces it that way?

 

grandma

 when I was twelve, I thought life was like chocolate cake…

 yet so many sobering faces confronted me

 from the crowd that lived the longest-

 no sunshine in their veins,

 nor smiles in the topo lines etched in flesh

 with the scent of faded gardenia

 in an old musty beige house, 

 that sadness lingered. 

 silence was my grandma's friend

 but a clueless mystery to a boy of nine

 clinging to the porcelain edge while taking a bath

 as if the flood of years would invade

 and I drown in her memories

 but silence slept with sadness

 when grey eyes drooped, and the mouth dropped open.

 it terrified me at six, the stillness 

 that came when I closed my eyes and opened my ears

 in the dead of night, the purple black.

 listening to the wheezing of the old one

 in the room beside me

 wondering if it was catching, this awful sound-

 would I get it too when I became crusty?

When life is short...and so are you

 

when you have to stand at the back of the line- behind twenty-five monsters- your toes pointed straight ahead, your mouth shut, and your arms down at your sides like some kind of toy soldier- it isn’t fun when some wiggleworm can’t keep still in front of you…and you end up getting in trouble. because your teacher isn’t going to be able to see it wasn’t you who had ants in his pants. but that’s the way it is when you’re the shortest one in line.

back in the olden days. back when little girls wore dresses to your patio birthday party, organized by your big sister and her bigger friend. and everyone had a paper name tag, complete with a giant safety pin, pinned right there on the front of your shirt or blouse because, well, life was kind of clunky. you’d stand around in a circle waiting for your big sister to tell you what to do next, because she knew exactly what came next. and when it was time to play spin the bottle, why everyone played and you just couldn’t get out of it, even if you tried.

i know. i remember Katy-did…that’s what we called her….with the insect-like hairdo…spun the bottle and it pointed directly at me. in the ensuing panic, she managed to graze me slightly on the side of the head, lips touching hair, and i was spared the cootie invasion.

at least it wasn’t Judy, the girl who galloped around, whinnying like a cartoon horse whenever you said something she didn’t like. she galloped around the playground at recess like she’d lost her mind…but here, sitting in the circle, she couldn’t do that. as long as my big sister was there, she was half-way human.

and after a few games, it was time for treats. not the decadent processed goodies you get today, but some baked peanut butter cookies and a big glass of green kool-aid. i loved the taste of green, and although i cannot tell you what it tastes like today, i know it turned my tongue green, and that was good enough for me.

when you’re short, you have to do something to attract the cute little girl from down the street…so i practiced making my tongue green…and purple and orange. i ran down the street in my father’s boxer shorts…over my own pants. i rode my skateboard into her father’s vehicle, and face-kissed the front.

But because i was short, and life was short, I was too nervous to take the time to settle down and respond to the female gender with some vocal fluidity.

by the time i managed to get the courage to speak to her in complete sentences, she’d found herself some real friends, and i was standing at the back of the line again…literally and figuratively.

i managed to grow up, graduate from the line, and grow tall enough to not be the shortest man on the street. but back in the olden days, being the shortest one in class always meant you were probably the last on the cute little girl's list.

 

no more time to waste

Evil has a long leash, and he is running about like a Rottweiler with rabies, threatening to pull the stake out of the yard…longing to tear into something, anything…to gnash his teeth, to taste the frenzy…heart and mouth full of impatience…he senses a time to fulfill, to satisfy.

he is easily discernable to the naked eye, yet so many stumble around him, as if he was invisible. The one who fails to recognize the sounds of his deception, these naked men and women…naked in thought and deed…are hell-bent to share in his own self-destruction. It would be pitiful, if it was not so alarming. The blind multiply while evil is glorified.

the days are here, there is no sign that they are not. it is a useless question, to question the times and seasons when the season is obvious. when the sun sets, you call it night, when the sun rises you call it day. how then can you not see the sun going down when it is fading in the west?

there are more than wars and rumors of wars. more than plagues, fires, and pestilence. more than lawlessness about every turn of the corner.

this is our time- we were born for these last days. the time to wait is over. the time to waste is past. the time for being deliberate is now.

deliberate in selfless love

deliberate in boundless hope

deliberate in fear-shattering faith

deliberate in being the reflection of the One who made us.

The Super Genius

the super genius

after a long hard day of work...for the job that really pays my bills, and not writing, which is my heart...I come home like an old wet dishrag, slump into a Lazy Boy, and ponder how I was born for such a time as this.

I was born too early to be a YouTube star, too early to make much money on the web. I'm like a time traveler stuck in two different eras at the same time. And everywhere I look, some super genius has a technologically superior website that makes me feel like a third grader at a talent show. The real world has forced me into making a living using lower-level critical thinking skills, while there is someone above me making decisions on a level comparable to my dog’s IQ (if I had a dog, but I've no time for that sort of thing). You would have thought Momma would have told me there’d be days like this….but she never did...so...

...every day, I do the same old thing…get dressed, eat some dippy eggs and buttery bread, go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, open the door, close the door, go back and open the door, go back and put the toilet seat down…and finally, get my gear and head for the mobile office…

now, my neighbor has a dog…who never shuts up. He barks at mashed potatoes, he barks at running water, he barks at street lights, he barks at car doors. when I climb into my vehicle to go to work, he runs away from the fence and into the house and back out the front door to say good-bye. I appreciate it, because at least someone thinks I am a little more interesting than discarded food. But it shouldn’t be this way. I have talent. I have skill. And I have a longer attention span than a poodle…

But you wouldn’t know it, if I sat in the same room as these profiles you see online. no, you surely wouldn’t. so what if i am trilingual…they are the feckin’ easter bunny. and don’t you forget it. they will charge you $297 to show you how you can take photos that no longer look like Mister Potato Head in a friggin’ snowstorm. Color palettes of shades you never dreamed of because you were born in a hovel somewhere and your education never gave you a pallet, except one to lay on the ground. and your likes? right, they have enough likes from over 1.7 million subscribers, you will never be in their league. so how can I compete against these know-it-alls with mysterious acronyms behind their names?

sure, it may take me awhile…but after a time, i'll forget about the audacity of fuppin' eejits who know how to code. I will remember again that I am certainly as intelligent as that narcissistic eejit hawking earth-shattering photography lessons for hundreds of dollars online. I'm no eejit. If I was, I might be spending my hard-earned money on a course of photography from someone who may be a brainless twit. I am not going to have any delusions of being the next super genius. I understand there are "gifted" people out there with thousands of dollars of equipment that can make them look like a great photographer, even if they have the IQ of a banana. So I may never be a great photographer, but at least I will not have wasted $297...