Doodle-Bug

Ok. The election is over and the pretentious female candidate from Alaska will soon disappear into the wild but I was reminded of one of my favorite stories about one of my favorite people.... my favorite candidate......my daughter.

Her mother and I split up when she was only three. The kids lived with me primarily for the first five years, but her mother and I always tried to do 'team-parenting' as needed and necessary. When Miriam was five she had developed a habit of writing on the wallpaper behind her bed some rather, ah, descriptive comments about her older brother. The spellings were very creative and I was pleased that she had developed an early aptitude towards written communication, but some of the creativity called for a bit of parental intervention. I called her mother. Team parenting.

Well the talk went well. We assured her we were not mad and would gladly furnish better writing materials. The inappropriateness of certain nouns, adverbs and adjective used to describe older brother were also addressed. Done Deal.

We also used the opportunity to touch on the subject of growing up and how such a creative and intelligent girl as our daughter could grow up to be ANYONE and ANYTHING she would like to be......even PRESIDENT!!

"I don't want to be president," Miriam said.

"Why not?", mother asked.

"Well, if I grow up to be president, no one will like me. No one likes the president."

"Fair enough," I said, " but what would you like to be? You can be anything!"

"A waitress."

Mother was aghast! "Surely you don't want to be a waitress; you work hard for not much money and you are so smart! You can be anything you want to be!"

"Why do you want to be a waitress," I asked.

"Well, " she said, " No one likes the president, but EVERYONE likes the person who brings you dessert!"

Now that she is in college she is aspiring to be World Dictator. You can have any dessert you want.

JUST IN TIME.....for holiday SHOPPING

http://www.mcphee.com/items/11895.html

Shit and Whiskers! WHY was this not around when my Grandmother WAS around????? It is impossible to calculate HOW many pieces of fruitcake I did eat simply to make my Grannie happy! I think it stunted my growth. Gave me gray hairs prematurely. Repressed my juvenile sexual well being!

Well the folks at Archie McPhee's have come up with a great idea before the snow flies, before Holiday shopping begins.... Inflatable Fruitcake! Now, why didn't I think of that!!!

Ok. I just got my new Archie McPhee catalog and it is a hoot!

There are Zombie cats&dogs playsets, squirrel underpants.....

AND... a skydiving Sigmund Frued!!

Just the thing for when you need a shrink to drop in!

(which covers nearly everyone in my corner of the blog-O-sphere)

Ok. It has been a long week... and it is only thursday.

I gotta get back to work, ah, reading the catalog.

I hope the brief interlude of inanity brings 'Joy to the World'

"Is not life a hundred times too short to be bored?”

I try to feel words in the same manner as I view trees. They are solid and firmly planted but are endlessly growing and branching, gnarly, yet kind. If you listen to trees carefully, as they converse with the wind, they never sound the same twice and with the multitude of moments in a life the possibility of viewing a tree twice and having it appear the same is non-existent. I like trees. I like words. Words are like trees to me. Sometimes. It can get confusing.

I can eat my words but I cannot eat my trees. Unless they are apple or pear trees. Then maybe I can. I can give my word and still keep it, but if I plant a tree, it is no longer possible for anyone to give it or keep it. It is just there. I can ask, "What's the good word?", but if I say the wrong 'bad' word I could get punched in the nose. Trees seldom share the good words and never will utter a bad one.

Ok. Maybe it is a lame analogy but I do like trees and it upsets me when one is cut down needlessly. Tree abuse. It also distresses me when words are twisted and abused. Lately some have been so repetitively misused that they have become shrouded in a vagueness of no meaning at all.

Liberal.

Conservative.

Christian.

One of my favorite no-meaning phrases is 'Mass-Media'. Wowsers!~ Brings to mind a Catholic church service broadcast on TV or some huge globby engulfing gang of gangreous villagers with pitchforks and torches marching toward the mad monster's manse at midnight. Would that be a conservative view? Personally, I prefer the term 'Mini-Medea'; a nice, clean, neat abridged Greek play that is only an eye away, you see, from being 'Mini-Media', which sounds either like a mixed-breed lap dog adopted from the Humane Society or a blog written by an insane Cleveland Brown fan. Hard to tell the difference. Might not be one. But that is a liberal view.

Another phrase that I love is "Conservative Christian Right Wing". It rather infers that there IS a Liberal Christian Left Wing" because without two wings how can Christianity fly? And anyways, it is well know that Christians are soldiers and the 'March Onward', not 'Fly Onward' and besides, Jesus was probably too bummed out from knowing that he would never have a 34th birthday to really give a shit about which party he was going to vote for! Perhaps that is just an Independant view.

Word abuse? Tree abuse? Either way it is this trend of wanted to push people into categories that kinda upsets me. Boy&Howdy! I fell into a category, once, and let me tell you, it hurt like hell and took me a whole buncha time to crawl out! Bumping into a category is dangerous enough, but if you happen to fall into one? Dangerous! I think someone should fix all these categories before someone really gets hurt and besides, winter is coming and how can you adequately plow snow with all those categories in the street? That might be a Manic view.

OKee Doke. The point is, besides the one on my head that makes it difficult to comb my hair, is the esteemed (mostly) R. Graves over at Lenny's Melodies

http://lennui-melodieux.blogspot.com/ lays this awardee-thingee on me....

And I am wondering what he meant by that. Is it just words?HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmm...... and I am thinking and thinking.... and will get back to that later.

Yet there is this nice little word that I like to carry around with me................ one that has always confused me with it's clarity...

Love. Amour. Liebe. Amour. Любовь. ацапг. Rakas.

I think I will sit under a tree and think about it.

Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.

Nietsche

Gone

Not tho' the soldier knew

Someone had blunder'd:

Their's not to make reply,

Their's not to reason why,

Their's but to do and die:

I missed America's episode of Empire building in the early 70's. Not that America did not want me. My lottery number was 33. That was a clinching number in 1971. I failed my induction physical. 4-F. It is amazing what a pacifist Swedish Doctor with connections can do.

I remember early college hanging out with some older guys...... 23-24, who had amazing adaptations. Glass eyes and patchwork faces. One dude had the neatest roach-clip for a left hand.

I miss some of them, now, very much...... Rusty and Doug Boone, Nellie and Krazy Karl.

It is what it is and it was what it was and it ain't no deal now, but it is much easier to plant flowers than it is to plant friends.