This blog entry is a dive into some personal meditative repetitive thoughts not designed for public consumption.
The heavier I get (that is, the more fat that accumulates in my posteriour area), the more difficult does reaching around to clean feces from my anal area with toilet tissue after defecating become.
At nearly 250 pounds of body weight, I have reached a new upper limit to my adult size (the minimum being 166 around 1982).
When I was younger, I had occasional thoughts about whether I was taking good enough care of myself to be an exquisite corpse.
That's why a funeral pyre or other form of cremation is in my future.
There's a certain freedom in knowing it doesn't matter if I live a long life - fewer funds expended on life-extending medicine, exercise equipment/clothing and gym memberships.
It's my path toward less vanity in daily living.
Of course, the level of states of energy in my body (e.g., hormones) influence my life-stage decisions.
From now on, the days will pass by, separated by dream states, and natural end of self gets closer.
The body parts slowly lose their fight against entropy.
My goal of becoming less interesting becomes more and more achievable.
No more wordsmithing tricky work combinations.
No more revealing how our simple social connections work.
Leave the planet in better shape than I first occupied it.
Let the hordes of junk dealers/collectors sort through the junk I've hoarded, dealt and collected.
Happiness is a type of silence.
Go in peace, like a slight breeze through the forest, rearranging leaves randomly, without prejudice or bias, nothing to forgive or forget.
And then there were four.
Friday, December 31, 2010
"Terry from Bulls Gap, you're on the air!"
"Thanks, guys. I appreciate you taking my call."
"No problem, Terry. What's your question?"
"I just have one comment.
"Where I sit, the wind is ringing the wind chimes, turning the weather vane, swaying trees and portending a big temperature change.
"Where I sat last night, on the 50-yard line, watching the capacity crowd watching the two schools pit their moneymaking machines against each other, all in the name of putting student-athletes through college on scholarships...
"Well, it got me to thinking."
"Terry, are you used to thinking? We don't want you to strain yourself just for the sake of our call-in postgame analysis radio show."
"Fellows, that's the thing. Why'n the world would I have to have a reason to think about anything after the game's over?
"You see, to me, the game's all about the whole ordeal.
"The drive to the game. Finding parking that's close and cheap. Eating a good meal. Meeting folks from different parts of the country. Seeing all the types of folks who show up. Singing the national anthem. Cheering and booing at the right time just like in church service."
"You boo in church, Terry?"
"Sure do. The preacher's sermons are often controversial and go off on tangents that are inappropriate for the subject stated in the church bulletin. We don't wait for no committee to set the preacher straight. We just boo and yell 'Get to the point' while he's preaching."
"We like your church, Terry. Do you have a point for our listeners?"
"Yes, I do. Last night's game was a doozy..."
"No arguing that one, Terry."
"...And I hear a posse of bear trappers and a gaggle of lawyers are going on the hunt for some Big Ten officials. But let's remember that it's one more game in the game of life. We'll find something new to talk about tomorrow which, according to my farmer's almanac, is going to be the first day of 2011."
"My mobile phone agrees with your calendar, Terry. Thanks for calling in. You have a safe New Year's Eve."
"You, too, guys. One more thing. You know anything about this new country singer, Gwyneth Paltrow? Her name sounds foreign to me. Ain't country-sounding enough. Are we importing our country singers now, too?"
"Terry, she's as American as you and I are."
"That so? Guess I better get out more."
"Thanks for your comments, Terry, as usual. Next caller, you're on the air. Minnie from Grinder's Switch, what's your question?"
"No problem, Terry. What's your question?"
"I just have one comment.
"Where I sit, the wind is ringing the wind chimes, turning the weather vane, swaying trees and portending a big temperature change.
"Where I sat last night, on the 50-yard line, watching the capacity crowd watching the two schools pit their moneymaking machines against each other, all in the name of putting student-athletes through college on scholarships...
"Well, it got me to thinking."
"Terry, are you used to thinking? We don't want you to strain yourself just for the sake of our call-in postgame analysis radio show."
"Fellows, that's the thing. Why'n the world would I have to have a reason to think about anything after the game's over?
"You see, to me, the game's all about the whole ordeal.
"The drive to the game. Finding parking that's close and cheap. Eating a good meal. Meeting folks from different parts of the country. Seeing all the types of folks who show up. Singing the national anthem. Cheering and booing at the right time just like in church service."
"You boo in church, Terry?"
"Sure do. The preacher's sermons are often controversial and go off on tangents that are inappropriate for the subject stated in the church bulletin. We don't wait for no committee to set the preacher straight. We just boo and yell 'Get to the point' while he's preaching."
"We like your church, Terry. Do you have a point for our listeners?"
"Yes, I do. Last night's game was a doozy..."
"No arguing that one, Terry."
"...And I hear a posse of bear trappers and a gaggle of lawyers are going on the hunt for some Big Ten officials. But let's remember that it's one more game in the game of life. We'll find something new to talk about tomorrow which, according to my farmer's almanac, is going to be the first day of 2011."
"My mobile phone agrees with your calendar, Terry. Thanks for calling in. You have a safe New Year's Eve."
"You, too, guys. One more thing. You know anything about this new country singer, Gwyneth Paltrow? Her name sounds foreign to me. Ain't country-sounding enough. Are we importing our country singers now, too?"
"Terry, she's as American as you and I are."
"That so? Guess I better get out more."
"Thanks for your comments, Terry, as usual. Next caller, you're on the air. Minnie from Grinder's Switch, what's your question?"
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Rubbish Canister Enclosure
While my mother in-law returns her house decorations to their pre/post holiday conditions, our youngest Cornish Rex sits gargoylelike on my knee.
I look back over the past week and a half while looking forward.
Quietude.
Solitude.
Etude.
Thanks to many, including Henard Lumber Company and Pal's Sudden Service.
The days get longer every year at this time - some tell me it's because the Earth is tilted on its axis and it revolves around a local star.
I'm never exactly sure what's going on.
That's okay, though - I've lived and I'll die, having enjoyed the ride.
That's all there is, isn't it?
Feel free to disagree.
I look back over the past week and a half while looking forward.
Quietude.
Solitude.
Etude.
Thanks to many, including Henard Lumber Company and Pal's Sudden Service.
The days get longer every year at this time - some tell me it's because the Earth is tilted on its axis and it revolves around a local star.
I'm never exactly sure what's going on.
That's okay, though - I've lived and I'll die, having enjoyed the ride.
That's all there is, isn't it?
Feel free to disagree.
Monday, December 27, 2010
International Irrational
A secret cable was released to special members of the Redneck Mafia today.
The cable details plans for Ireland to seek public comments on possible reparations that Ireland could ask of Denmark for damages caused by Danish citizens who raided the Emerald Isle as Vikings centuries ago.
Indeed, Ireland may, according to the document, claim billions of Euros from Great Britain as well, with the Irish leaders believing that not only did the British disguise themselves as Vikings but that they also continue to raid the Irish economy today.
A footnote in the cable points out that the Viking claim could easily be extended to France and Germany.
For some strange reason, the Dutch government has just suddenly gone into exile. A spokesperson said they are neither confirming nor denying any involvement in Viking activities. However, there's a wooden shoe sale they'd like folks to know about that's supposed to raise funds for propping up the E.U.
More as it develops...
The cable details plans for Ireland to seek public comments on possible reparations that Ireland could ask of Denmark for damages caused by Danish citizens who raided the Emerald Isle as Vikings centuries ago.
Indeed, Ireland may, according to the document, claim billions of Euros from Great Britain as well, with the Irish leaders believing that not only did the British disguise themselves as Vikings but that they also continue to raid the Irish economy today.
A footnote in the cable points out that the Viking claim could easily be extended to France and Germany.
For some strange reason, the Dutch government has just suddenly gone into exile. A spokesperson said they are neither confirming nor denying any involvement in Viking activities. However, there's a wooden shoe sale they'd like folks to know about that's supposed to raise funds for propping up the E.U.
More as it develops...
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Confessions of a teenage computer user
I was informed by AOL that I have been a member of their computer network since December 1979.
Before PCs with the familiar desktop WYSIWYG software, Internet browsers and mouselike input devices...
Thirty-one years later and we're back to touchtyping again?
This is progress?
[Frequent reminder to self : Silence is my friend from forever.]
Adieu.
Before PCs with the familiar desktop WYSIWYG software, Internet browsers and mouselike input devices...
Thirty-one years later and we're back to touchtyping again?
This is progress?
[Frequent reminder to self : Silence is my friend from forever.]
Adieu.
Home-made for the Holidays
This year, my wife and I kept our holiday giftgiving simple.
I gave her a set of swing dance lessons and tickets to a stage performance.
She gave me a carved cricket that when stroked with a stick of wood sounds like a cricket in summer/fall, a couple of handblown glass balls and some handmade notecards.
In our later middle years we've grown accustomed to each other's desire for less.
Some our age rule the world and some live in a world of underpasses.
My father gave me a rubber mallet and I gave him a single blade knife for Christmas.
Time slows down - I'm happier about peace on the Korean peninsula this year than with much else.
The way muscle tissue and tree limbs can bend without breaking fascinate me more than monetary investments or sports scores.
A log in a stream am I, spinning and bobbing toward a river or lake or sea, maybe, I don't know.
Going quietly into the dark, snowy night.
Once you shatter the illusion of the body as a sacred vessel, there is no turning back - you can only create a new illusion that accommodates the belief set you best (or better) believe in.
I am an old man who has stopped counting his days.
Every day is a new beginning and a new end.
I have given this world all I have which is all I know.
Anything more and I'll repeat myself dogmatically.
The quest for life is the satiation of anticipation - I have nothing left to anticipate.
I sit, no longer waiting.
The moment is here.
All is all.
I gave her a set of swing dance lessons and tickets to a stage performance.
She gave me a carved cricket that when stroked with a stick of wood sounds like a cricket in summer/fall, a couple of handblown glass balls and some handmade notecards.
In our later middle years we've grown accustomed to each other's desire for less.
Some our age rule the world and some live in a world of underpasses.
My father gave me a rubber mallet and I gave him a single blade knife for Christmas.
Time slows down - I'm happier about peace on the Korean peninsula this year than with much else.
The way muscle tissue and tree limbs can bend without breaking fascinate me more than monetary investments or sports scores.
A log in a stream am I, spinning and bobbing toward a river or lake or sea, maybe, I don't know.
Going quietly into the dark, snowy night.
Once you shatter the illusion of the body as a sacred vessel, there is no turning back - you can only create a new illusion that accommodates the belief set you best (or better) believe in.
I am an old man who has stopped counting his days.
Every day is a new beginning and a new end.
I have given this world all I have which is all I know.
Anything more and I'll repeat myself dogmatically.
The quest for life is the satiation of anticipation - I have nothing left to anticipate.
I sit, no longer waiting.
The moment is here.
All is all.
House for sale/at auction
When one is left alone to meditate (albeit in public view amidst crowds and family), one is no longer one.
Praying for people to accept what has happened and will happen with no thoughts/dwelling on what might have been.
Listening to conversation at a Christmas open house about: enjoying the Andy Griffith TV show, trying to sell a nice one-story rancher house in this economy, becoming a great-great grandmother, the 93-year old sixth grade teacher alive and doing well (the student in his 70s still appreciative of the teacher's positive influence), the city schools' band director recruiting flute players, the storyteller Doc McConnell's young daughter now retired with a teenage daughter of her own, Crook & Chase back at it again...
The world has changed but it hasn't.
One's 16-year old niece with a job of her own, buying her uncle a box of practical jokes (joy buzzer, whoopie cushion, flies-in-ice, etc.) with her personally-earned money - just like her mother and uncle before her, buying family gifts with their first jobs. Keeping her sensitive, artistic side open through painting, expecting perfection.
One's 17-year old niece getting engaged to a nice young man in the military - wasn't her stepgrandfather a military man when he proposed to his bride-to-be?
One's 18-year old nephew continuing the family thespian tradition a [BIG] step further.
Dogs making tracks in the snow.
Cats curling up under the covers.
What if the power to brighten a single light bulb was more significant than deciding whether to add ambiance for a holiday gathering with the flick of a switch?
Assuming much when assuming nothing.
What if, instead of filling prisons, we found meaningful work for those who were willing to risk their families' health and security to build meth labs at home? Fulltime pharmaceutical laboratory test subjects, for instance, earning minimum wage, hazard pay and medical benefits.
Turn self-interest into something more profitable.
Meditating the self out of the picture.
The father's speaking tours on industrial engineering in the U.S. become the son's blog about reengineering the species' place in the universe.
Praying for people to accept what has happened and will happen with no thoughts/dwelling on what might have been.
Listening to conversation at a Christmas open house about: enjoying the Andy Griffith TV show, trying to sell a nice one-story rancher house in this economy, becoming a great-great grandmother, the 93-year old sixth grade teacher alive and doing well (the student in his 70s still appreciative of the teacher's positive influence), the city schools' band director recruiting flute players, the storyteller Doc McConnell's young daughter now retired with a teenage daughter of her own, Crook & Chase back at it again...
The world has changed but it hasn't.
One's 16-year old niece with a job of her own, buying her uncle a box of practical jokes (joy buzzer, whoopie cushion, flies-in-ice, etc.) with her personally-earned money - just like her mother and uncle before her, buying family gifts with their first jobs. Keeping her sensitive, artistic side open through painting, expecting perfection.
One's 17-year old niece getting engaged to a nice young man in the military - wasn't her stepgrandfather a military man when he proposed to his bride-to-be?
One's 18-year old nephew continuing the family thespian tradition a [BIG] step further.
Dogs making tracks in the snow.
Cats curling up under the covers.
What if the power to brighten a single light bulb was more significant than deciding whether to add ambiance for a holiday gathering with the flick of a switch?
Assuming much when assuming nothing.
What if, instead of filling prisons, we found meaningful work for those who were willing to risk their families' health and security to build meth labs at home? Fulltime pharmaceutical laboratory test subjects, for instance, earning minimum wage, hazard pay and medical benefits.
Turn self-interest into something more profitable.
Meditating the self out of the picture.
The father's speaking tours on industrial engineering in the U.S. become the son's blog about reengineering the species' place in the universe.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Ubiquity
Ghosts of Students Past - found in my parents' basement an old homework assignment, a poster of a one-hour snapshot of a "hot clock" of a local radio station, WTFM, when I was a student at ETSU in 1985.
Thanks to Walgreens for being open today to allow me to make a few last-minute Christmas purchases.
Thanks to Daniel Boyd, Sarah LeRoy, Holly French, Mr. Robert G. White, the solo dancer, the servers of the sacrament of Holy Communion, and members of the congregation who showed up last night for the Christmas Eve service at Rogersville Presbyterian Church.
Thanks to those serving in official capacities today, including police, fire, air traffic controllers/pilots/attendants/ground crew, hospital staff, petrol station clerks, salt/scraper road crews, restaurant workers, TV/newspaper techs/reporters, military personnel, Internet infrastructure support employees, and whomever I've forgotten to mention who are often forgotten but perform important duties like power plant operators.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Pi Safe
Is it all right to think about one's self when many unsolved mysteries would provide more food, shelter and clothing for others after self-contemplation opened the mysteries for serious consideration of their perplexities?
In other words, to give oneself permission for self-reflection, when one's self is the combination of others, means one is permitting the self to see itself as its components/parts and thus examine anything and everything at the same time.
Time for dissociating the cultural clues to what the states of energy attempt to associate with.
Deep meditation or prayer (actually very shallow, if you want to know the truth) - back to one's prelanguage/symbology days, when all our senses were flooded with unidentifiable images and we saw life as abstract art.
The journey of the self is a filtered view of the universe.
In other words, to give oneself permission for self-reflection, when one's self is the combination of others, means one is permitting the self to see itself as its components/parts and thus examine anything and everything at the same time.
Time for dissociating the cultural clues to what the states of energy attempt to associate with.
Deep meditation or prayer (actually very shallow, if you want to know the truth) - back to one's prelanguage/symbology days, when all our senses were flooded with unidentifiable images and we saw life as abstract art.
The journey of the self is a filtered view of the universe.
Decorating Cookies
Like pieces of broken cookies scattered across the floor, leaving a trail behind playful children running around the house provided for them by loving parents, characters from previous stories and blogs drop crumbs here and there to hint to me they want to be talked/written about again.
For whom do I write?
I have no idea.
What about the GE 'jet engines' at the John Sevier steam plant and the use of exhaust to power another turbine (Toshiba, left over from a project) to create a setup as efficient as a coal plant?
Or the control center in Chattanooga that makes sure cities have power and TVA operates at the lowest cost possible?
How long does it take for an efficiency expert's recommendations to be read, understood and implemented?
Do you realise how inefficient most computer/smartphone interfaces are today?
Can you automate intuition?
Can you create synergy?
How do I keep myself busy so I don't have spare time to analyse my thought process that is busy analysing how to keep busy integrating itself seamlessly into the environment on its lifelong journey to death of self and release of states of energy one last unselfish time, the self completely integrated and finally invisible?
The way to one's end is neither beginning nor end.
Some would have us eliminate "to be," the ism of life.
Right now, in this instance of the instant of the moment, I don't know if I will eliminate the "I" of the thought process before the body to which the "I" is attached perishes.
Perish the thought!
For whom do I write?
I have no idea.
What about the GE 'jet engines' at the John Sevier steam plant and the use of exhaust to power another turbine (Toshiba, left over from a project) to create a setup as efficient as a coal plant?
Or the control center in Chattanooga that makes sure cities have power and TVA operates at the lowest cost possible?
How long does it take for an efficiency expert's recommendations to be read, understood and implemented?
Do you realise how inefficient most computer/smartphone interfaces are today?
Can you automate intuition?
Can you create synergy?
How do I keep myself busy so I don't have spare time to analyse my thought process that is busy analysing how to keep busy integrating itself seamlessly into the environment on its lifelong journey to death of self and release of states of energy one last unselfish time, the self completely integrated and finally invisible?
The way to one's end is neither beginning nor end.
Some would have us eliminate "to be," the ism of life.
Right now, in this instance of the instant of the moment, I don't know if I will eliminate the "I" of the thought process before the body to which the "I" is attached perishes.
Perish the thought!
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