N’s look of panicky excitement reminds me of what teeny Owen Meany must have felt like on visits with Johnny Wheelwright to the rowdy cousins’ house at Sawyer Depot in John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany:
Family Reunion
At the family reunion this weekend, N met her second cousin J. Here’s a photo from their press conference:
Cousin C had her own sort wildness going on:
And some of the cool cats took some time just to hang tough:
I Know Who You Are
Well, the poll results are in, and public guess is that my own make up 37% of visits to this blog. That seems like a pretty accurate estimate to me, although I’m sure I could research it more, if I felt it important.
That said, however, I’m not only sure I could research it more, I actually could. It’s a bit unnerving what I know about visitors here, since I added the visit counter: their cities and states, their Internet service providers, on which website they were before and after this one, even their browsers and operating systems.
But please, be calm. I am entirely amicable.
In My Judgment
It is perhaps impossible to write without sounding judgmental about others’ judgment of judgmentalism; pointing out the falsely grounded and smug self-assuredness of those who condemn smugness may also render any critic himself smug–but here goes.
I am self aware enough to know that most of the many songs I have written are silly, sentimental, pathetic, boring, sub-clever, sappy, preachy, and probably ridiculous. That said, when listening to folk music I often pull remaining hairs from my head.
Last night we listened to a “live performance radio” program on which a folk musician was introduced with a glowing review of her latest album, a gospel-genre celebration of agnosticism. This singer, in songs that could have been written by any overly introspective college student, gloatingly protested all that is in fact wrong with “Christians,” namely judgmentalism and that the “Christian” heaven is “too small.”
But here was the catch, I realized not long after my annoyance at her mis-characterization of Christianity had turned into chuckles at the inevitable irony of her own judgmentalism: Her ardent denunciation of these traits of certain religious factions placed her not in some camp diametrically opposed to Christianity, but in bed with Christ himself! That is, even while she delighted in revealing the missteps of that certain “Christian” faction, her very rejection of those downfalls–and they truly are unfortunate–affirmed her even deeper, maybe even subconscious, agreement with that which Jesus taught.
During the program, we played Scrabble. With N’s help, M beat me by three points:
Super Do
This morning (yes, another ice day) N and I had a serious conversation about torture. I asked her whether or not, if investigators know that a terrorist attack is going to happen and know that a particular person knows what exactly that attack will be, it is justifiable to torture that particular person in order to thwart the attack. (Actually, I think she finished the sentence for me…I never would have thought of using the word “thwart.”)
At the moment I was performing a routine cleaning up of her eyes, face, and ears, and she wasn’t too happy about it. “Torturist! Torturist!” she kept accusing me.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “You know you’ll feel better in just a few moments, just like everyone would feel better after a justified waterboarding.”
That calmed her down, and so I wiped off the top of her head, too–which resulted in this super-cool hairdo, which is only sort of visible in this picture:
“Geriatric” Air Force
Yesterday I caught a glimpse of a newspaper headline, something about the sky falling for the Air Force, whose equipment is aging rapidly. My coworker D said to me, “I just hate it when that happens to our weapons of mass destruction.”
For my birthday I was given a poster, which is now on my classroom wall. It says, “It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.”
Time for a bake sale! (Just keep the sweets healthy, for the old bombers’ sakes.)
What’s HappyN
Old Fart Bloggers
If the problem with kittens is that they grow up to be cats, and if the problem with puppies is that they grow up to be dogs, then the problem with old people is that they turn into old farts. The definition of an “old fart” is this: a person who has strong opinions and lacks the inhibitions necessary to refrain from stating them.
Likewise, if the problem with television is that it turns viewers into mush brains, and if the problem with personal music players is that they turn listeners into public recluses, then the problem with blogging is that it turns bloggers into old farts.
And so I am an old fart. See, on my blog I pick the soup de jour. I pick the priorities. I pick the information. I pick everything–and since it’s solely my platform, I can build my opinions into fortified towers of posts, virtually unassailable.
This may sound arrogant, but one ultimate fact remains. That is, the saving grace about an old fart blogger, as compared to the necessary grace required by regular old farts, is that a blogger’s menu and venue can be set aside with but a click.
C and N
Today N visited with some of her cousins. They take care of her.
I also had fun, here with another N:
Cheesecake
For the second time today, we ate for dessert from the cheesecake that M made yesterday for our premature but perfectly timely Valentine’s Day dinner. Both times, the white piece of cake with bright red strawberry sauce drizzled over and around it on my shades of teal plate almost sent me running for the camera. But, as M said tonight, “Just enjoy it. You can’t always take a picture of everything that’s lovely.”
So I did. And it was lovely.
Here’s to you, unpictured cheesecake.
Cousin C had her own sort wildness going on:
And some of the cool cats took some time just to hang tough:
