Just Passing on a Jaw Dropper

I was just reading an article that Ryan Air had to return to their flight takeoff point after some tape which had been used to repair the pilots' window came loose and the pilot's attempt to duct tape the window failed to work.

That pales in comparison with the final paragraph of the article, which I quote below.


"Ryanair has had quite a string of bad press lately. Earlier this month, the airline came under fire for its announcement that it will remove toilets from planes to make room for extra seats. This summer, the notoriously cheap airline gave a passenger in cardiac arrest a sandwich...and later charged him for it."

Gotta love it!.........sigh.

I Think I Want to Be Somebody Else for a Change

Some odd thoughts have been popping up and down and in and out of my mind recently.....wispy, uncompleted thoughts.......fragmented, disorganized but determined, insistent to  be noticed and definitely repetitive in their meaning.  The gist of them has something to do with the fact that "I" ( as the entity which occupies this body ) was having trouble dealing with the ongoing disintegration of my "enclosing vehicle".  Been feeling a  bit like a turtle whose home /shell no longer fit well didn't navigate well and was no longer acceptable as a container for "me".    Worse yet......I hadn't a clue about what the hell I could do about this strange mismatch other than to just schlepp onward.  Very unsatisfactory to my way of thinking and I have been hoping for an idea to circumvent this undefined ennui.

Then today I was directed to a blog  from one of my favorite bloggers and found some beautiful, profound words which filled in the holes around my thoughts and and expressed them better than I ever could.

     "Is the self a cage from which one should struggle to be free?

      Or should we see it as a home?

      Is it both things?

        Maybe I should treat it both ways while I try to work through the conundrum. I can patch and  paint         the  worn walls, knock down the cobwebs, scrub the floors, fix the toilet, open the windows to let  in         some light.

    At the same time, dig at a spot on the floor with the spoon I hide from the guards under my mattress, ,                  take a handful of dirt out each day,  working on my escape."

The above was quoted from a wonderful blog  I first encountered today, thanks to the incredible Mary Moon of Bless Our Hearts.   The blog is called   "The Dishwasher's Tears" written by The Tearful Dishwasher and I am so delighted to have found it and him........for many reasons, not the least of which is that he clarified and crystalized my thoughts and described exactly the way I have been feeling inside.  I will try to expand on that.

The body and the persona that goes with it no longer feels like the real "me" .   Or, rather, it feels like somebody the real Me is just damned sick and tired of.   I have said many times that I feel like I have had a wonderful life (despite certain bumps  and detours along the road) and feel lucky and blessed with every bit of it.  I still stand by that, but suddenly, I am tired.   Not quite sure if I am tired of living or just tired of living as Lo and being this persona.  After all, 84 + years is a helluva long time to be with and part of an entity night and day, wouldn't you say?  The only damned vacation you ever get from yourself is when you are anesthetized for surgery and that is just a brief respite but not a really a renewal.   Besides, it's not much fun when the anesthetic wears off.

It keeps reminding me of all the stories reported by people who have died and been revived,  had near-death and out of the body experiences and every one of them seem to describe the same wonderful feeling of release in getting rid of and floating free of the body like being able at last to take off a choking girdle and agonizing bra and a costume that is cumbersome and at least 3 sizes too small to fit comfortably. 


 All in all I feel that the creature that I have worked on becoming for all these years has turned out to be a fairly decent job of work.  I am ashamed and sorry that I have not really utilized all my gifts and my full potential to the max,  but I feel that I have done pretty well considering some of the pitfalls I have had to navigate and conquer. No excuses.......I just took all the parts and pieces that came in the box labelled "Lois", assembled them,  took them apart and reassembled them in a million different variations over the years and am rather proud to say I have managed to have used all of the pieces without wasting anything, except for a few parts that were obviously my Father's worst traits and which I had no choice but to dispose of discreetly in someone else's  trash barrel so they couldn't  be traced back to me and returned, perish forbid.   When I consider the whole structure objectively I think I look more like I was created by Rube Goldberg than  Michelangelo,  but as long as I don't blow over in a strong wind I shouldn't complain.

And as far as who or what I would like to be if I could be someone other than me..............I swear there is no one I can think of on the planet  I would like to move in on and inhabit.   I guess I will just have to wait and see who or what I will be next.....right now, I think a Rock might be nice.

And, Furthermore.......

When I finished my recent rant about the fact that, in today's world, you can hardly believe a word of anything  that is put forth by any of the media since they seem to have forgotten the difference between truth and lies , I was hardly ranted out.  To go further, they have also managed to avoid, ignore or forget the fact that it used to be their job to put out for public edification as much of the objective truth  as they could manage to establish and express.  Oh sure, the Editors and/or the Owners usually managed to impose their slant on things but still outright lies and fiction were rarely resorted to.  The focus seems to have changed from fact to fiction, and I have already said a lot in my last blog regarding how I feel about this turn of events.

Feh!  and Patoooooey!   (You have to visualize my target, the brass spittoon in the corner.)

What is giving me a hissey fit today is the incomprehensible fact that, with a thousand and one telephone type devices proliferating like rabbits, and  everyone having pockets full of them, people have all decided that they don't ever have to answer any of them if they damned well please not to do so.   Being that everyone I see on the street, in their cars and at the supermarket is always talking to someone I can only assume that some folks out there must be answering their phones, so maybe it's just the people that I call who prefer to let me leave a message so they can decide at their leisure whether or not they want to bother talking to ME.

Who's paranoid.........me?  No way!    Of course, I may be old fashioned, but it seems very disrespectful to fail to respond to a phone call when you are perfectly able to do so simply because you'd rather screen the calls and prioritize which ones deserve your attention.  It is doubly insulting nowadays when we have caller-id and you know you are being ignored on purpose. Faugh!  My contempt for such goings-on is unbounded.  And a lot of good that does me.  But I am not going down without a shriek.  Eeeeeeeek!  There....I feel a mite better.

This behavior has annoyed the hell out of me numerous times recently, but I am really pissed off this week because circumstances have sort of led to me playing a Saint Theresa act and the final good deed I was working on was trying to get a gift delivered to a bridal shower I was unable to attend.  All I wanted was to drop it off to a family member  who was going to be there.  Over a period of 2 or 3 days I sent several emails to the one who was hosting the shower, also several phone calls with messages to her, several phone calls with messages to her Mother and even a desperation email to her husband.  Timely responses = 0.   Bah, humbug.  I have put that  St. Theresa outfit into the bag for the Goodwill and have dug out my Evil Witch garb for use from now on.  Gosh and golly,  I still remember the days when we would all (even the old folks) run at life-threatening speed up or down several flights of stairs to answer the phone before the caller hung up.  In those days a phone call was next best thing to a hug.....a gesture that someone wanted or needed to speak to you..........not so  any more, I guess.   The easier the means of access the more difficult it is to make contact, it seems.

However, my dear ones, I am not going to leave you with the memory of this embittered creature who appears to have handcuffed herself to the complaint department desk permanently.  I have  temporarily unlocked myself to deliver ecstatic news to those fans and admirers of the Delicious Mark Harmon.  A recent made for TV movie starring the beautiful one has been made and will be shown on November 6, a Sunday nite at 9 pm on channel 105......I think it is USA or ION or some such.......do a bit of research yourselves  though I expect there will be considerable interruptions of programming to tell you about it.     It is a mystery/detective plot based on John Sanford's novel "Certain Prey" and features a rather interesting and charming Policeman  named, I believe, Lucas Davenport.  I have read a gazillion of Sanford's series all of which feature the very bright and appealing and ruggedly sexy cop and the buzz is that if this first one makes it big there may be a slew to follow.  Oh, Lord, please oversee this effort kindly and don't let it end up being a load of bullpucky.  There are so many good souls out here who deserve to have the dark clouds chased away and  their spirits lightened by a couple of hours of really enjoyable TV.    (I guess even if the script is not very good we can always put it on "mute" and just watch the pictures......or at least I can, but you must remember how easy I am to please when it comes to the comely MH).

Let all the clan (you know who you are , (all 4 0r 5 of you) send good thoughts to whatever place you think they will do the most good.    I have already begun my efforts and my vigil.

What I Know For Sure,,,,,Is Within These Parentheses ( )

I keep seeing books and blogs by people who have apparently found all the answers or even some of them.....Titles like "This I Know For Sure"  and "Two True Things" or whatever, and I'll tell you, I take my hat off to those people who can state unequivocably  that they are sure about something.

Now I, for instance, have recently realized that I am not sure of anything any more.  Strange, because when I was Forty something I was sure I had everything figured out.  (I was really an arrogant prick for a while back then)  I look back and see so many of my absolute truths that have gone bad on me over time and that I have had to discard or thought I had discarded......, kinda like those small containers of food that get pushed, forgotten,  to the back of the fridge shelf and, when discovered, are displaying questionable spots of green or red mold making it impossible to even guess what they once were.  All you can be pretty sure of is that you probably should get rid of them .........at once.

The other day I  was thinking that the time has come when a person cannot read a publication or listen to a news program and have any confidence whatsoever that what is being told to us with the utmost false sincerity is anything but just hype....a bundle of lies concocted by spin doctors with nothing but the prepositions in the sentences remaining trustworthy and at all dependable.    (Really....how wrong can after, at ,by, down, for, from, in, on,  etc. be ....without a noun or a verb I believe we can be fairly sure they remain blameless?)    I suddenly realized  something shocking .  There are so many things that we accept as "absolute truth" that are so obviously absurd and insane that I don't understand why we haven't all risen up in riotous protest, burned books and stoned the offenders who have implanted these devilish worms of thought in our brains. 

With nothing making any sense to me at all any more my deep introspections have revealed to me something I should have thought of a long time ago....... we have completely accepted premises that our minds and our senses tell us is a bucket of bull crap.  I think I have finally arrived at one new truth.
 
Ladies and Gentlemen........THE WORLD IS REALLY FLAT.

Now just think about it for a minute.


Never mind  Christopher Columbus and all that shit.  He could have very easily have sailed right off the edge of the earth if he hadn't been lucky enough to bump into America or the islands off the coast. I'll bet a lot of those guys who sailed west to get to the East Indies and were never heard of again DID sail right off the edge of the earth.

Hell, just go for a drive across Arizona.......is the world round or flat, just tell me?  Take a cruise and convince yourself and me that the ocean that you see stretching endlessly out there is really on a curved surface.  Climb the highest mountain and when you peer out into the distance, aside from a few protruberances like other mountains,  what is out there?  Nothing  but Flat, flat, flat.

Now just think about this for a minute.......there are only recently a handful of human  beings who claim they have zipped out into distant space and looked back and seen this blue marble thingy and sent back pictures of it and have established beyond doubt that the earth is round..........yeh, yeh.....and we are supposed to believe them 'cause pictures don't lie.  Ha!(What about PhotoShop? )  And how do we know that  blue marble is the Earth?     I am not sure they are any more  believable than the people who claim that the moon landing never happened and it was all done on a movie sound stage in Burbank.


Just think for a minute  about the fact that we are told that, with the earth being round and all, that about half of the people on the planet are actually living their lives hanging upside down by their feet.   Got the picture?   And what is holding them on and keeping them all from flying off into space????  An invisible thing called gravity, we are told.  Can't see it, can't feel it but that is what makes Australians think they are right side up and perfectly fine, when, in fact, none of them have ever been right side up except  possibly Crocodile Dundee who visited NY and the one or two Aussies who may have vactioned in Maine or Canada.  What is keeping all those Aussies from having a constant dizzy, headachey feeling is also a puzzle to me. It, too, is attributed to gravity, but I know how I feel when I have been in an inverted Yoga pose  for just a few minutes and I don't know about that gravity thing at all.

And it gets even worse..........the Scientists tell us we are wrong in thinking the sun revolves around the Earth.  In truth,they say,  the Earth and a bunch of other big rocks all revolve around the sun which does nothing but just sit there burning away.  Well, if that is true how come I see the sun come up just beyond my lime tree in the left corner of the back yard every morning and I often watch it set way out on the right edge of the Pacific Ocean in the evening...down it goes.....plop.......day after day probably just about the spot where the ocean is fighting to keep from running off the edge of the earth.  (I haven't figured that part out yet about the oceans.)    So who is crazy?

They tell us that the Earth not only revolves around the sun, but that it spins on its axis and does a complete turn on itself every nite (that supposedly explains sunrise and sunset) while it is also spinning in it's orbit around the sun, a feat that takes a year to complete and that explains Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter because one part of the orbit is closer to the sun than the rest of it, making summer hotter than winter.   As  far as I am concerned that doesn't explain anything especially, with all that spinning around, how come we aren't all staggering off the sidewalks and falling down in the gutters all the time  without having imbibed a single drop of intoxicating beverage?

Hmmmmm.  Pretty tatty....all of it, I'd say.    I think we have all been seduced into believing a lot of garbage even before this current crop of Fox news hit the fan and I have decided I am going to start making up my own truth from now on.  Anyone who cares to join me is more than welcome.  I'll bet we can create a better reality than the one we are stuck in.  How could we not?

Humph ! Fickle Followers......Can't a Person Just Sit Down and Rest?

Yes, yes, I know it's true......I have been invisible and silent in the blogosphere recently and I apologize to all you beloved folk who keep checking in eagerly and have to leave disgruntled and unsatisfied.

What's worse ....today will not  be much  better but I notice that followers are deserting me by the handful....ingrates, wretches.......and I decided I had better utter a few small grunts and squeaks to let you know I have not traveled on through that dark tunnel to the light....not yet.  Just  been busy with several projects.

To the faithful few, I will be back soon, I promise.

And to the others I say......Feh!  (not what I really want to say, but "feh" looks more civilized than what I really want to say.)  Love ya' all.

Not Plagarism....Sharing Anonymous Genius With the World

Forgive me if you have already seen the following piece.  I just received it from my old and dear friend, Bruce Simkins who happened to be the brother of my beloved friend Anita ....sadly, now no longer with us.  They were my first friends in California and without them I surely would have died of loneliness or just walked into the Pacific and kept going.  However, that is another story.

I do not know if Bruce wrote this.....he may have....he is quite brilliant.  However, to whomever wrote it I give credit and praise.  I think it is wonderful and deserves to be spread as widely as possible.  Feel free to copy and forward it to anyone you know who needs a laugh.  And, if you know who wrote it, please advise me so I can give proper credit.

By the way...I had to work like hell to try to fit the type into my space so please forgive any choppped off words.
                                                        **********************************



DRAFTING GUYS OVER 60

No -  idiot !!  The subject does not read dating guys over 60 -  Put on your glasses & read it again !!

Begin forwarded message:

Subject: Drafting Guys Over 60

Date: October 8, 2011 12:40:34 PM CDT

Drafting Guys Over 60 This is funny & obviously  written by a Former Soldier... New Direction for any war: Send Service  Vets over 60! I am over 60 and the Armed Forces thinks I'm too old to track down terrorists. You can't be older           than 42 to join the military.  They've got the whole thing ass-backwards.  Instead of sending 18-year-olds  off to fight, they ought to take  us old guys. You shouldn't be  able to join a military unit  until you're at least 35. For starters, researchers  say 18-year-olds think about sex every 10 seconds. Old guys only  think about sex a couple of times a day, leaving us more than  28,000 additional seconds per  day to concentrate on the enemy. Young guys haven't lived long enough to be cranky, and a cranky soldier is a dangerous soldier. 'My back hurts! I can't sleep, I'm tired and hungry.' We are impatient and maybe letting us kill some asshole that desperately deserves it will make us feel better       and shut us up for awhile. An 18-year-old doesn't even like to get up before 10am. Old guys always get up early to pee, so what the hell. Besides, like I said, I'm tired and can't sleep and since I'm already up, I may as well be up killing some fanatical son-of-a-bitch. If captured we couldn't spill the beans because we'd forget where we put them. In fact, name, rank, and serial number would be a real brainteaser. Boot camp would be easier for old guys.. We're used to getting screamed and yelled at and we're sed to soft food. We've also developed an appreciation for guns. We've been using them for years as an excuse to get out of the house, away from the screaming and yelling. They could lighten up on the obstacle course however... I've  been in combat and never saw a  single 20-foot wall with rope  hanging over the side, nor did I  ever do any pushups after  completing basic training.  Actually, the running part  is kind of a waste of energy, too...  I've never seen anyone  outrun a bullet. An 18-year-old has the whole world ahead of him. He's still learning to shave, to start a conversation with a pretty girl. He still hasn't figured out that a baseball cap has a brim to shade his eyes, not the back of his head. These are all great reasons to keep our kids at home to learn a little more about life before sending them off into harm's way. Let us old guys track down those dirty rotten coward terrorists. The last thing an enemy would want to see is a couple million pissed off old farts with attitudes and automatic weapons, who know that their best years are already behind them. HEY!! How about recruiting Women over 50...in menopause!!! You think MEN have attitudes?? Ohhhhhhhhhhhh my God!!! If nothing else, put them  on border patrol. They'll have  it secured the first night! Send this to all of your senior friends... it's in big type so they can  read it.

Not a Crock of YouKnowWhat......Here's a Different Crock Altogether

Well, dear souls.....face it.....when you get  to be an octogenarian your options for amusing yourself narrow a bit..... The way it works is, first you try to pick something that doesn't hurt, does not require you to cover much ground  and doesn't compel you crawl around a lot on your hands and knees.

That is why I got so excited a  few weeks ago when I discovered the world of stock options........it allows you to sit at your computer for 24 hours without getting up, especially if you take your laptop into the bathroom and get one of those soft toilet seats to sit on all day.   (Incidentally, that new hobby is working out well.....I am learning a lot and am only down about $47.....and by tomorrow I may even be in the black.  A blog about that will surely follow soon)   However, the markets do close early in our time zone and are not open on the weekends and just how many candlestick charts can a person examine for bullish or bearish flag formations before screaming obscenities and rushing into the street to be run over by a car?......so I really needed another reason to get out of  bed in the mornings.  Happily a cousin of mine is getting married and I was browsing Bridal Registries for a gift when I was reminded that I had always wanted, of all things, a Crock Pot Slow Cooker thingy and had never treated myself to one...........until now.  A real life-changer, I'll tell you.

Hoopty=doo.......I have a new toy for practically no money   (I found a great sale  bargain) and I have a new reason to spend time in the kitchen assembling fabulous dinners.  (I hope).  With my very first effort I have learned an important lesson which I could have figured out by myself had I not been so excited.  Do not expect the same results from a crock pot that you get with a saute pan.  However, if you follow the recipe and put in extra wine the results can be delicious.  Hence I had a fabulous bowl of Chicken Marsala for dinner last night and could not stop licking the spoon and the bowl.    The sauce, replete with basil, oregano, garlic, cream cheese (?) and lots of marsala, was so good I would have gladly eaten my shoe (or even someone else's  shoe)  if it were cooked in that sauce.   As for the chicken......well, it sure as hell was tender!   I can see why these pots are superb for making barbecued pulled pork and beef.  Now that I have that lesson learned I am working on a soup  which should definitely  benefit from long slow cooking.....French Onion Soup with some dry Vermouth and perhaps a slug of Brandy in the 3rd hour.  I have my baguettes all ready to top with Parmesan cheese to float on top and will put the little crocks of soup under the broiler before serving/devouring.  What a good thing I didn't give all of those French Onion Soup crocks to the Goodwill  a few years back.

That whole story just exacerbates one of my problems though..........after spending the last 18 months  convincing myself that most of the contents of my kitchen cabinets and drawers will never  be used again and might as well be disposed of, here I come up with a use for those damned oven-proof soup crocks which have been taking up a whole shelf in my cupboard for 40 years.   Now I undoubtedly will never be able to dispose of anything again.  Sigh.

(I do realize that those slow cookers were really invented for the poor unfortunate souls who have to rush off to work in the mornings and needed a way to find dinner all ready for them when they came home.  The fact that I am home all of the time doesn't matter one whit.......it is a new skill and I intend to acquire it and enjoy it.)

Now, you will have to excuse me.....I have a few more candlestick charts and 50 day Moving Averages to examine before I prepare my strategy for tomorrow's market opening.  Tenks Gott this new hobby has not bankrupted me yet nor has my head  exploded spraying the countryside with numbers and strange symbols and abbreviations, but please............ don't stop praying for me.