Thank Yous and Odds and Ends

 
Photo: Rick, with a customer, from Pawn Stars, on History.com.

--Just read a poem by a Goodreads friend.  At the end of the poem, the bomb-diffuser unfortunately sets off the bomb, and the poem ends with a thrice-repeated "silence."  (It's a good poem, so read it here.)  Anyway, the question I raised was: Would the bomb expert even hear the explosion before he died, since he's leaning right over the thing?  My comment was this:

"Only caveat is the blast at the end, followed by the silence. Since I'm expecting the blast--cuz my glass is always half empty, and damn that glass anyway--I'm not as surprised when it comes. (Of course there'd be silence, both existential and literal, afterwards.) I'd have been more surprised if the blast had not come, and there'd been just the thrice-repeated silence. In fact, that repetitive silence would be open for even more interpretation. After all, would the bomb-diffuser with the pliers even hear the explosion if there was one, as he'd die immediately since he's leaning right over it? Seems to me that he'd get all silence, either way."

I suppose this is a tree falling in the forest question, but I'm still interested in my readers' responses to this.  Read the poem and comment here, should the feeling strike you.

--Thanks, everyone, for giving this blog over 12,000 pageviews in about a year and a half.  For a blog with just one picture and some text, that's not bad at all.  Quite a mystery, in fact.  Even more mysterious is how my Redroom blog (link in the header) has had over 25,000 pageviews in just under a year, with pretty much the same material.  That one's been getting about 200 pageviews a day lately.  So I thank you all for making this writer feel like he's being read.

--Hello, The Monica.  And my 29 other Followers.  I appreciate you all stopping by.

--Speaking of glasses being half-empty, I recently explained the definition of the word "morbid" like this: "You know how negative people think the glass is always half-empty?  Well, a morbid person has a dark, negative attitude about the existence of the glass itself."  This was met with nods of understanding.

--The new book in the Jesse Stone series, Fool Me Twice, is a good, quick read, as I read it in just a few hours.  Having said that, I can't say much more positive about it, since the plot is a rehash of Parker's Looking for Rachel Wallace (with somewhat the same result for the characters), and the dialogue is almost stolen from Parker's style cabinet, but without the wit and flair.  I read it like I put on last year's professional wardrobe.  Quickly, without effort, appreciating the comfort, but still wondering why I'm still wearing it.

--What do I have at Fenway that the Red Sox don't?  A winning record for this season.

--I've never eagerly anticipated a manager's dismissal before this year.

--It's been getting cooler and the leaves are turning red, for those of you in New England who haven't noticed.  I'm closing the pool this weekend.

--And you have to order Octoberfest instead of Summer Ale around here.  Every year, this is the real change of the seasons for me.  And I don't remember a turnover as soon as this.  Usually they wait until the 20th or so of September.  Not this year.  When the Sox suck, it's not summer anymore, so the vendors say bye-bye to the Summer Ale.  This is an actual philosophy of mine.  Had the Sox made the playoffs, I'd still be seeing Summer Ale around here.  I swear.

--Since recovering from an illness that had nothing to do with my sinuses, I'm breathing better and sleeping like a normal person.  Odd.

--My hammock and I have become good friends.  Brand new.  Tightly-woven rope.  Yard sale, twenty bucks.

--Fall is Brandi Carlile weather.  Hearing her voice is like seeing rock walls and falling leaves.  Listening to her now.  Her latest CD is nowhere near as good as her previous stuff, but it's growing on me.  I don't care if listening to a female folk singer makes me sound like a wussy man.

--I've been in the habit lately of leaving my clothes in the dryer so long that they get very wrinkly, and so I have to throw them back in and put it on wrinkle guard.  And then I let it all sit again.  You get tired.

--Recently I've wondered: If Jesus is God, Eternal and Omniscient, how could Judas have betrayed him?  How can an all-knowing being be betrayed, by definition?  I learned recently that the original text uses a word that probably means "brought to" or "turned over" instead of "betrayed."  I'm just sayin'.  Consider.  I wish I could read Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek.  It's not that I don't trust anyone or anything--it's just that I don't trust anyone, or anything.

--A friend of mine watches Hoarders because she says it makes her feel better about her life.  I can kind of see this, but whenever I watch it, I want to sob openly, or vomit.  These people aren't slobs or clutterbugs--they're mentally ill.  I have papers all over my office, but I'm not pooping and peeing on my stereo speakers.

--Not that I'm so old or uncool that I even have stereo speakers.

--Almost time again for Boardwalk Empire and The Walking Dead.  A friend of mine had a great point about the latter: Whenever a character has to go, bring on a deus ex machina zombie.

--Watching Pawn Stars is like watching American Pickers, except that you see even more awesome historical stuff on Pawn Stars.  But they're both sad, in a way.  People in Pickers are often old, and/or dying, or sad, lonely guys who amass a ton of garbage because they're without female companionship (a chicken and egg question there).  People in Pawn Stars have to pawn off awesome things because they're so broke, they have no choice.  Rick pays great prices to people we see on camera, but you know he's severely underpaying many others.  The whole point of a pawnshop is that you're so desperate for cash that you know you're going to get fleeced--and you don't care because you need the money that badly.  They're wisely editing out the gambling addicts, who need to sell off anything at all so they can gamble away their mortgage payments and kids' college tuitions (they're on the Vegas Strip, after all); they're also wise to edit out the junkies who come in to pawn off their mother's jewelry or their kids for their next quick fix.

--(Kind of a glass is half empty sort of day, apparently.)

Randomness

photo: The Victorian Rocking Chair in question, taken by yours truly

A few random things rattling and echoing around the empty brain cave:

--In the 2010 movie The A-Team, Liam Neeson looks exactly like Carl Yastrzemski--tanned face, pronounced nose and chin, close-cropped grey hair, all of it.  They could be twins.

--After about a month of craziness, including a breaking vacuum head, snapping hoses, tubes that won't stay attached, a filter that didn't filter, a vacuum that didn't suction, and poolwater that had been left stagnant for three years to the extent that it was black, not green (and it was awesome when the tubes snapped and that three-year old stagnant, smelly, sticky, icky, foul water drenched me from head to toe)--after all that, the pool is just a ph test away from opening.  Don't even ask me about the number of man hours spent on it, or the number of nights I was vacuuming it until 11pm.

--And now to clean out the basement.  I'm not even going to get into the years of...stuff...I found behind stacks of wood and metal against the wall, but I will say that the so-called experts insisted that the problem would not die in the house after it ate the poison provided in several traps.  Are you sure? I asked them.  I think there's nests in here somewhere, and since you guys left the poison, there've been flies.  Nope, they said.  They just come in to snack and leave.  They'll snack on the poison and die outside.  So...uh...No.  Didn't happen.  Where's my power vac?  Ewwwwwwwwww...............

--At a yard sale recently, I spotted this old-looking rocking chair from about two houses away.  (I had to park a short distance from the yard sale.)  I went up to it, and, since I've always wanted an old rocking chair (and since there had been one in this house when I was younger, but now there isn't), I've been looking for one at a good price.  This one (I'll provide pictures.) has a leather seat, a leather headrest, and has been re-supported beneath the seat (you can't see it unless you turn it over).  The whole thing is very strong and very, very old but regal looking.  I sat on it before I decided I wanted to buy it.  She asked for $100.  I pointed out a couple of minor rips in the seat (which are actually no big deal; tiny drops of fabric glue will solve that problem), and the fact that the seat re-inforcement will decrease the value (it probably won't), and that one of the curved rocking pieces has been supported on the side, and that means that there's either a lack of support on that side, or that the other side will soon need strong re-inforcement (not likely), so she dropped the asking price to $85.  Then $80.  I asked for $60 and bought it for $65.  Immediately I took it to a woman I sometimes sell items to (I pick at yard sales and flea markets and then sell them for higher amounts to antique stores, consignment shops, or my own rare yard sales; purely for fun and part-time summer income), who owns her own vintage/antique store.  She said it was a (I've already forgotten the name) from the 1890s, most likely 1895, and it's worth at least $150 to $165, and she'd be interested in it if I ever wanted to sell it.  So I made a profit of $100, just like Mikey on American Pickers.  Not bad, and I'm sitting on it as I type this, and my laptop is on the 1890s library table I wrote about a long time ago.

--A guy I know just said that he had to give his ex-wife his 401k, and he said this with relief.  He explained that she could have taken half of his pension, too, but she didn't. Made me shudder in the summer heat.

--I'm just remembering now that The A-Team tv show was an odd combination of characters who were former armed forces professionals, but the show was aimed at young kids and younger teens, so they had to nix any and all violence.  So Mr T., George Peppard, et al. used to defeat the bad guys by shooting heads of lettuce and frozen vegetables and stuff at them.  Odd.  The cartoon violence of the movie might actually be more realistic by comparison.  Well, okay, maybe not.  Discuss.

--I'm happy that the bus monitor's harassers have made her rich (I'll support that irony anyday), but I'm not altogether sure she deserves over $650,000 for essentially not doing her job for the past ten, fifteen years.  I feel badly that she's been clearly (and perhaps clinically) depressed all these years, and the kids were obviously little monsters (and they got vilified because one of them thought their monstrosities were so cool that he posted it to his Facebook page, and then someone else thought it was so awesome that they downloaded his video and then put it on YouTube--all of which only reinforces my irony-fed happiness), but she was clearly not the right person for an important, safety-focused job, and the bus driver, school vice-principals and principal, and district all dropped the ball for a very long time here, as this situation had obviously been going on for many, many years.  I'm writing a treatment on this and hoping to sell it to a magazine's commentary section.  I'd better get it done soon, as it already may be old news.  And I'll write it better than I just wrote this.

--I get great sunset views from my westward windows and second-floor deck.  Cool, man.  You've gotta enjoy the little things.