|
|
|
kinship with lizards
Thursday, July 29 2004
When I get irritated with people or computer programs doing the wrong thing when the right thing is obvious or easier, I commonly mutter, "Are you stupid? 'Cause ya seem stupid!" out loud. With people you have to be careful not to be heard saying this, I'm often heard to say this immediately after hanging up the phone or when someone calls twice in a row without leaving a message on the machine.
[REDACTED]
Gretchen took the dogs Eleanor and Sally to Onteora Lake today and somehow Eleanor managed to tear a triangular piece of skin about the size of a dime from her left thigh. It's nasty gash, but she can lick it so it will probably heal okay. We've got a new nickname for her to augment "Gimpy" and "Stinky": "Gashy." Yesterday she rolled in something unspeakable and two rinse cycles couldn't overcome the stank.
This evening I was doing more wiring at the idiosyncratic house on Eagle's Nest. I have decided to call that place "The House of Stank." I spent most of my time listening to Marketplace at top of a tall ladder putting in a pair of X-10-controlled lights to illuminate the "great room." While I was there, a couple of guys came to drop off a truckload of native bluestone "from Dug Hill." One of the guys was young but was built like a wolverine and, like some sort of postmodern pirate, had pierced everything on his body that stuck out and didn't contain a bone. He must have developed his physique lifting bluestone day in and day out.
These guys didn't know where to deposit the bluestone, so I knocked on the door of Robert the tenant who lives in a little cottage in the back. Robert is in his late forties and seems like a very odd duck. Very Asperger by-way-of OCD. But I think he and I could be friends because I've seen his stuff out in the "barn" and he's the only person I know who owns an oscilloscope. How nerdy-cool is that? Of course, he might have a couple teenage girls in a cage too.
Later the radio started covering the Democratic convention, starting with a speech by Nancy Pelosi. This reminded me that I wanted to see John Kerry's speech on television tonight. Normally Gretchen doesn't want to watch "the news" when what's happening is anything less interesting than, say, 9-11. But tonight she and I watched Kerry together.
I desperately wanted Kerry to do a great job during his speech tonight. He had to. If he bombed tonight, in some sense his failure would serve as a further indictment against the Human species. What, our species fails such an easy test of democracy? Politically we raise a guy like Kerry to this point as an alternative to improperly-elected proto-fascism, and then he proves useless at closing the deal? But no, I thought Kerry did a mostly-excellent job. He had a number of off-putting tics, but these seemed to bother Gretchen much more than they bothered me. Implying a kinship with lizards, his tongue would dart out at the conclusion of certain kinds of points. Regularly, in an effort to reclaim his conch shell from the applauding masses, he'd repeat his next phrase until the din faded.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?040729 feedback
previous | next |
