Better Living Thru Chemistry...

OK here's the short story.  I break my foot first week of march, that's three weeks after i got laid off but four days after my Kaiser health insurance kicked in.  So i'm hobbling around with a plastic walker cast on my right foot and that puts my whole body out of whack.  May i go see the doctor who diagnoses fibromyalgia because i hurt all over, but then the last thing she says to me is that a little lighgt daily excersize might be helpful.  four days later i get called back to work and i'm on tens six days aweek twisting pipe and humping 50 pound hubscrubs and drive motors.  by the time i go to my fibromyalgia class i no longer have any of the symptoms and except for my foot still hurting i'm back to normal.

I was so strung out from pain and the worry of being out of work that i switched from effexor back to prozac in may.  Prozac does damp down the panic and the depression but it also makes me extreamly with drawn and it became impossible to write or call or hang out with anyone outside of the cats and ronni.  Drinking 4 shots of vodka as soon as i got off work every day didn't help much either. 

much as i love being drunk it really had lost its appeal and i stopped drinking beginning of november.  Then I went back on effexor monday last and suddenly i've become much more the extroverted social butterfly i imagine myself to be.   it is absolute fact that a week ago i could not sit down and blog, even the thot of writing or calling anybody tied my stomach in knots.   things are so different today (i hear every mother say) and they're even yellow pills too.
  

Better Living Thru Chemistry...

OK here's the short story.  I break my foot first week of march, that's three weeks after i got laid off but four days after my Kaiser health insurance kicked in.  So i'm hobbling around with a plastic walker cast on my right foot and that puts my whole body out of whack.  May i go see the doctor who diagnoses fibromyalgia because i hurt all over, but then the last thing she says to me is that a little lighgt daily excersize might be helpful.  four days later i get called back to work and i'm on tens six days aweek twisting pipe and humping 50 pound hubscrubs and drive motors.  by the time i go to my fibromyalgia class i no longer have any of the symptoms and except for my foot still hurting i'm back to normal.

I was so strung out from pain and the worry of being out of work that i switched from effexor back to prozac in may.  Prozac does damp down the panic and the depression but it also makes me extreamly with drawn and it became impossible to write or call or hang out with anyone outside of the cats and ronni.  Drinking 4 shots of vodka as soon as i got off work every day didn't help much either. 

much as i love being drunk it really had lost its appeal and i stopped drinking beginning of november.  Then I went back on effexor monday last and suddenly i've become much more the extroverted social butterfly i imagine myself to be.   it is absolute fact that a week ago i could not sit down and blog, even the thot of writing or calling anybody tied my stomach in knots.   things are so different today (i hear every mother say) and they're even yellow pills too.
  

Things Change...but not enough.

I have no idea what the title of this post refers to.  I did an hour ago but it has gone the way of 'Spit on a Griddle'.   I've been away so long i didn't know that there was a new editor and have been frothing and fizzing because everything i tried to post  wasn't co-operating.  ronni clued me in and now you can see how well i'm doing.

Things Change...but not enough.

I have no idea what the title of this post refers to.  I did an hour ago but it has gone the way of 'Spit on a Griddle'.   I've been away so long i didn't know that there was a new editor and have been frothing and fizzing because everything i tried to post  wasn't co-operating.  ronni clued me in and now you can see how well i'm doing.

There's a there there after all!!!

                            maybe this will work let's see...

WHOA !!!  i've been away so long there's a new editor and i can make it do stuff! cHeCk this out!!!

Rain chain pixs again.  (once they're thawed i'm going to polish and lacquer the outsides so they won't tarnish so much.   I've another one in process that is made of a number of cheap (thrift store) glass bottomed pewter-esque mugs.  The plan is for the water to pour from mug to mug all the way down to the ground.) 

I'm sure I was here just a moment ago!

I really don't think I should have to apologize or explain my absense, I agree with the Duke of Wellington on that. All I can really say is to quote a very wise man who once said "what a long strangs trip it's been." That describes my entire life, even tho I have never thot of myself as more that "an ordinary average guy." So here's something new...

I have no idea why, but i have suddenly been fascinated with rain chains. (Actually I do know why, I don't want to fix the down spouts) Anyway spurred on by the purchase of a bunch of brass cones (I bought them because they were to cool to bypass and I was sure that I could find a use for them) here's pix of the rain-chain I made.

This compose post thing is more like COM-POST. I cannot figure out what I'm doing!!!

Another Spinwinder...

I am not sure he is going to work. The red ball is fairly heavy and it will take a high wind to get him flailing correctly. Also watching him slowly spin in the wind makes me dizzy, I think that is because he has a front and back and my eyes track that. All the rest of the spinwinders are radial-symmetrical. For no apparent reason I call this one "OhNoMrBill!".

It helps to know..

So I went to the doctor yesterday and she says I have Fibromyalgia, a disease with no known cause, no known cure and no clear way to diagnose it. I would rather have a broken leg. But that's the way things go. Right now I am channeling three of the seven dwarfs (grumpy, dopey and sleepy) and having my doubts about the whole blog thing. The Muskrat (Moomin reference) was a philosopher and his favorite book was titled "The uselessness of everything" with which thot I generally default to. But at some point the book was changed magically into one on "The usefulness of Everything" which upset the philosopher Muskrat but that's what I will not stop trying to do. Keep my sunny side up, look on the bright side, and make every effort to come up smelling like a rose.
I wonder if I am allowed to write cheerful hopeful things in this BLUE blog?

It helps to know..

So I went to the doctor yesterday and she says I have Fibromyalgia, a disease with no known cause, no known cure and no clear way to diagnose it. I would rather have a broken leg. But that's the way things go. Right now I am channeling three of the seven dwarfs (grumpy, dopey and sleepy) and having my doubts about the whole blog thing. The Muskrat (Moomin reference) was a philosopher and his favorite book was titled "The uselessness of everything" with which thot I generally default to. But at some point the book was changed magically into one on "The usefulness of Everything" which upset the philosopher Muskrat but that's what I will not stop trying to do. Keep my sunny side up, look on the bright side, and make every effort to come up smelling like a rose.
I wonder if I am allowed to write cheerful hopeful things in this BLUE blog?

CSOM

It is hard to re-read my posts. Expressing my stress and writing it down separates it from me, it's like the difference between thinking something and actually saying it. I suppose that I have suddenly discovered one of the reasons for journaling. I have always written my thots down as a way of moving them from inside to outside my head but having gotten the upper hand by naming and formalizing my passion-points (so-called because they are not just bad thots but also good thots, thots and ideas that elicit an emotional response) I really don't want to revisit the seen of the crime or, put a better way, stop the wound healing by picking off the scab.
Then there how irritated and frustrated I get because I never think I have expressed myself exactly the way I intended. Between the limitations of language itself plus my own limited language ability I constantly fight against throwing a temper tantrum and sulking with beer!
I have written thousands of bits and pieces of fiction and non-fiction during my life and still suffer from the curse of the neo-writer, that is, to compulsively re-write the first chapter, trying to get it absolutely perfect, and never ever move on to the rest of the story.
There is always such a difference between what I mean and what I write that I feel like I am feeding pork sausage makings into a meat-grinder and getting vichyssoise out the other end.
Also it is really hard to write with brucie curled up on my lap, it makes all my raging against the the cruelties of the universe kind-of pretentious. Aww, she's giving me belly-love!

CSOM

It is hard to re-read my posts. Expressing my stress and writing it down separates it from me, it's like the difference between thinking something and actually saying it. I suppose that I have suddenly discovered one of the reasons for journaling. I have always written my thots down as a way of moving them from inside to outside my head but having gotten the upper hand by naming and formalizing my passion-points (so-called because they are not just bad thots but also good thots, thots and ideas that elicit an emotional response) I really don't want to revisit the seen of the crime or, put a better way, stop the wound healing by picking off the scab.
Then there how irritated and frustrated I get because I never think I have expressed myself exactly the way I intended. Between the limitations of language itself plus my own limited language ability I constantly fight against throwing a temper tantrum and sulking with beer!
I have written thousands of bits and pieces of fiction and non-fiction during my life and still suffer from the curse of the neo-writer, that is, to compulsively re-write the first chapter, trying to get it absolutely perfect, and never ever move on to the rest of the story.
There is always such a difference between what I mean and what I write that I feel like I am feeding pork sausage makings into a meat-grinder and getting vichyssoise out the other end.
Also it is really hard to write with brucie curled up on my lap, it makes all my raging against the the cruelties of the universe kind-of pretentious. Aww, she's giving me belly-love!

On self-pity and drivel...

I guess I have to admit that my stream of consciousness writing is a lot less like revelatory inspiration and more like channeling 50 million drunken monkeys. If I ever thot that anyone else actually reads this I might be tempted to apologize but that would, I think, defeat most of my purpose in starting this blog. It is so easy to lose oneself in a crowd of umpty-million other little blogs, it's right up their with waving your lighter at a concert (or has that been banned too).
I can say pretty much what I want here and bask in the fantasy that I actually have something wise and illuminating to impart to a wondering world. Since in fact nobody actually does care, it's 'no harm, no foul'.
Oh the utter joy of passion without consequence!

On self-pity and drivel...

I guess I have to admit that my stream of consciousness writing is a lot less like revelatory inspiration and more like channeling 50 million drunken monkeys. If I ever thot that anyone else actually reads this I might be tempted to apologize but that would, I think, defeat most of my purpose in starting this blog. It is so easy to lose oneself in a crowd of umpty-million other little blogs, it's right up their with waving your lighter at a concert (or has that been banned too).
I can say pretty much what I want here and bask in the fantasy that I actually have something wise and illuminating to impart to a wondering world. Since in fact nobody actually does care, it's 'no harm, no foul'.
Oh the utter joy of passion without consequence!

Know the enemy and know yourself...

I have been at war with myself so long that I know longer know what my natural state is.
Soldiers have said that they have never felt so alive as they are when in combat. Despite the fear, pain, and horror, the in-the-moment state of awareness is a satori/peak experience that can not be described nor understood. It has been described as the "it is here, it is now" moment, like orgasm, that cannot be both experienced and observed at the same time. You can know the moment before and the moment after but never ever the moment OF.
I make the point of saying war with, not war against, myself. I and myself in a purifying dance balancing between self-destruction and enlightenment. The only respite from the fury comes with alcohol.
It is said that 'in vino veritas', in wine truth. Not that you will find truth by drinking but that drinking will reveal your true nature. I have the great good fortune to be a gentle happy drunk rather than a mean one. The benefits are many, my bones don't ache nor does my mind, I tend to giggle a lot, kittens amuse me, even thinking about kittens amuses me, in general I find myself looking at myself and humanity in general with bemused affection.
The disadvantages are less pleasant but no less valuable to me. I don't mind hangovers, they are part of the package, but alcohol does make it difficult to work with sharp objects and power tools. But since it is a break from cruel self analysis, it is even more enjoyable by contrast as in "why did the idiot hit himself on the forehead with a hammer all day long? Because it felt sooo gooood when he stopped".

Know the enemy and know yourself...

I have been at war with myself so long that I know longer know what my natural state is.
Soldiers have said that they have never felt so alive as they are when in combat. Despite the fear, pain, and horror, the in-the-moment state of awareness is a satori/peak experience that can not be described nor understood. It has been described as the "it is here, it is now" moment, like orgasm, that cannot be both experienced and observed at the same time. You can know the moment before and the moment after but never ever the moment OF.
I make the point of saying war with, not war against, myself. I and myself in a purifying dance balancing between self-destruction and enlightenment. The only respite from the fury comes with alcohol.
It is said that 'in vino veritas', in wine truth. Not that you will find truth by drinking but that drinking will reveal your true nature. I have the great good fortune to be a gentle happy drunk rather than a mean one. The benefits are many, my bones don't ache nor does my mind, I tend to giggle a lot, kittens amuse me, even thinking about kittens amuses me, in general I find myself looking at myself and humanity in general with bemused affection.
The disadvantages are less pleasant but no less valuable to me. I don't mind hangovers, they are part of the package, but alcohol does make it difficult to work with sharp objects and power tools. But since it is a break from cruel self analysis, it is even more enjoyable by contrast as in "why did the idiot hit himself on the forehead with a hammer all day long? Because it felt sooo gooood when he stopped".

Ecco Egg finale...

It works, it's alive, spins beautifully in the wind and Ronni says it is finished and not to dick with it anymore. How well she knows me...

Ecco Egg...

In spite of depression, my latest addition. The blue balls are actually free to swing out under spin, you just can not see the fishing line suspension. I have not seen it in a strong wind so I do not know if it might need a little more tweaking but over all I it amuses me.

On happyness and guilt...

I had to have a Smee-like epi-whatsit last night before I understood one of the subtle tricks depression plays. When things are going badly I feel guilty for doing something that might make me happy. Obviously, since it is my fault that my life is out of control, feeling happy, even momentarily, is the sin of 'denial of reality'. I can not allow myself to take a nap when I'm tired because sleeping during the day is a surrender to depression. Neither will I eat or drink until I am dried out and shaking.

Well of course it is irrational, I know that, but depression speaks louder than words. It is a constant war, waking or sleeping I am on guard. I think about someone washed overboard in the middle of the ocean. You dog-paddle to stay afloat and you hope, but in the core of your heart you know that you can not win. Unless you are found you will weaken ever so slowly and finally drown, and the thot keeps returning "why bother, just get it over with".

Because the ocean, like depression, does not know about you or cares, it just is.

Which explains why while I enjoying blogging and facebook more and more it is becoming more and more difficult to write.

On happyness and guilt...

I had to have a Smee-like epi-whatsit last night before I understood one of the subtle tricks depression plays. When things are going badly I feel guilty for doing something that might make me happy. Obviously, since it is my fault that my life is out of control, feeling happy, even momentarily, is the sin of 'denial of reality'. I can not allow myself to take a nap when I'm tired because sleeping during the day is a surrender to depression. Neither will I eat or drink until I am dried out and shaking.

Well of course it is irrational, I know that, but depression speaks louder than words. It is a constant war, waking or sleeping I am on guard. I think about someone washed overboard in the middle of the ocean. You dog-paddle to stay afloat and you hope, but in the core of your heart you know that you can not win. Unless you are found you will weaken ever so slowly and finally drown, and the thot keeps returning "why bother, just get it over with".

Because the ocean, like depression, does not know about you or cares, it just is.

Which explains why while I enjoying blogging and facebook more and more it is becoming more and more difficult to write.

workin' for the birds

There is a robin, a stupid robin, a manipulative robin, trying to build a nest under the eave on the front of our house. What he does not know is that the mass of ivy is only supported by one strand growing thru one xmas lite eyebolt! So of course i've been out there stringing a strip of chickenwire under the ivy so his nest won't go splat! i hate birds!

(what i woke up to this morning, it was 80 on saturday) ^

When it's springtime in the rockies...

I woke up to this...what happened! I have (had I guess) blooming daffodils! There is a robin trying to build a nest under the eave at the front of the house and the poor thing has to sweep the snow off his driveway before he can get into his house. Oh well, knowing Colorado is suppose I'll be complain about sunburn by Wednesday.

Echos of 1918...

Now I'm scared, deep down inside scared, like I have not been since I used to lie awake in bed back in the 50's and think about Nuclear annihilation.

The 1918 flu, the 'Spanish Flu' was the biggest and fastest killer to hit humans since the Black Death in the 1300's. That erased between more than half the population of Europe in just a few years. I have heard that the population did not recover to the number before the Plague for 300 years.

Modern medicine is no real consolation to me on this one. Just as the death toll in natural disaster keeps increasing because there are that many more people to kill, so too an aggressive adapting disease will spread far faster than any of our systems can control. There is a good symbolic reason for naming an outbreak of an alien or neo disease a 'wild-fire situation'. Just as with the right wind and fuel-load a brush fire can blow up from a dozen acres to thousands in a few hours, an aerosol infection can flare up in a relative instant.



One of the things that saved humanity from both the Black Death and the Spanish Flu was the the fact that travel was slow. The Plague arrived by sailing ship and traveled no faster than a good horse and the Spanish Flu was limited by the speed of railroads and Steamships. And since communication was in 1918 and, even in the 1300's faster than the spread of the disease, warnings went out ahead of the death front. As well, 90 percent of the world was in both cases agricultural and spread out which meant that communities could isolate and quarantine themselves and others and let the disease kill its hosts and burn out. It is interesting to note that the first cases of Spanish Flu have been identified, the source was an US army depot and staging station in Kansas. From there the infection was carried to other parts of the US and on to Europe with the US soldiers entering WWI. It killed far more people in far less time than all the consequences of the war did. People did not travel much, travel far, or travel fast.



The are big difference between the Black Death and the Spanish flu. It takes time for bubonic plague carried by infected fleas (which requires bite to bite transmission like malaria) to turn into pnuemonic plague which is transmitted directly from human to human by sneezing or touching (like the common cold). Living in plague country as I do doctors are quick to test for plague and treat it before it becomes pnuemonic or fatal.


Secondly, plague was indiscriminate, it infects everybody unless they have some natural immunity and can burn itself out by killing its host before they can transmit it. The Spanish flu, in sharp contrast to earlier and later flu strain, primarily attacked people in their prime and not children or the old who normally are the groups most at risk. Like the current flying-pig flu in Mexico.

Thirdly, plague is a bacteria and flu is a virus. It is quite likely that modern bubonic plague is not the same disease that struck in the 1300. Or rather the 1300's plague was a wild variant of plague which appeared out of Asia flashed around the world and burnt out leaving behind immune survivors. (On a curious note, there is some evidence to suggest that the genetic traits that allowed some medieval people to resist and survive the plague have given their descendants greater resistance to HIV infection.)

The viral nature of flu means that it can and does mutate constantly, the strains combine and separate constantly as they travel thru one species of host after another, pig to bird to man and round and round again, vary similar in a way to a computer program attempting to break a security system by trying all the possible variations and combinations of variations to find the key-code. Think of massive parallel processing where every human, pig, and bird on the planet is running its own investigatory program and periodically sharing viable results with all the other systems.

Do you now catch a glimmer of my fear? It has been said that courage is solid evidence for a lack of imagination, I rather agree with this.

If, dear reader, you think I make too much of this, then consider...this is signs and portents and a red sky at morning.

How panic makes goobers of us all... This swine flu looks like a dud compared with the 38,000 Americans ordinary average flu kills every year. A little panic goes a long way when my meds aren't working well. On the other hand, it is absolutely fascinating to watch people running in circles screaming about nothing! Perhaps there is some truth to the idea that this is a panic manufactured to panicking the lumpen proletariat into demanding security over liberty. Bunch-a-monkey time again!

Echos of 1918...

Now I'm scared, deep down inside scared, like I have not been since I used to lie awake in bed back in the 50's and think about Nuclear annihilation.

The 1918 flu, the 'Spanish Flu' was the biggest and fastest killer to hit humans since the Black Death in the 1300's. That erased between more than half the population of Europe in just a few years. I have heard that the population did not recover to the number before the Plague for 300 years.

Modern medicine is no real consolation to me on this one. Just as the death toll in natural disaster keeps increasing because there are that many more people to kill, so too an aggressive adapting disease will spread far faster than any of our systems can control. There is a good symbolic reason for naming an outbreak of an alien or neo disease a 'wild-fire situation'. Just as with the right wind and fuel-load a brush fire can blow up from a dozen acres to thousands in a few hours, an aerosol infection can flare up in a relative instant.



One of the things that saved humanity from both the Black Death and the Spanish Flu was the the fact that travel was slow. The Plague arrived by sailing ship and traveled no faster than a good horse and the Spanish Flu was limited by the speed of railroads and Steamships. And since communication was in 1918 and, even in the 1300's faster than the spread of the disease, warnings went out ahead of the death front. As well, 90 percent of the world was in both cases agricultural and spread out which meant that communities could isolate and quarantine themselves and others and let the disease kill its hosts and burn out. It is interesting to note that the first cases of Spanish Flu have been identified, the source was an US army depot and staging station in Kansas. From there the infection was carried to other parts of the US and on to Europe with the US soldiers entering WWI. It killed far more people in far less time than all the consequences of the war did. People did not travel much, travel far, or travel fast.



The are big difference between the Black Death and the Spanish flu. It takes time for bubonic plague carried by infected fleas (which requires bite to bite transmission like malaria) to turn into pnuemonic plague which is transmitted directly from human to human by sneezing or touching (like the common cold). Living in plague country as I do doctors are quick to test for plague and treat it before it becomes pnuemonic or fatal.


Secondly, plague was indiscriminate, it infects everybody unless they have some natural immunity and can burn itself out by killing its host before they can transmit it. The Spanish flu, in sharp contrast to earlier and later flu strain, primarily attacked people in their prime and not children or the old who normally are the groups most at risk. Like the current flying-pig flu in Mexico.

Thirdly, plague is a bacteria and flu is a virus. It is quite likely that modern bubonic plague is not the same disease that struck in the 1300. Or rather the 1300's plague was a wild variant of plague which appeared out of Asia flashed around the world and burnt out leaving behind immune survivors. (On a curious note, there is some evidence to suggest that the genetic traits that allowed some medieval people to resist and survive the plague have given their descendants greater resistance to HIV infection.)

The viral nature of flu means that it can and does mutate constantly, the strains combine and separate constantly as they travel thru one species of host after another, pig to bird to man and round and round again, vary similar in a way to a computer program attempting to break a security system by trying all the possible variations and combinations of variations to find the key-code. Think of massive parallel processing where every human, pig, and bird on the planet is running its own investigatory program and periodically sharing viable results with all the other systems.

Do you now catch a glimmer of my fear? It has been said that courage is solid evidence for a lack of imagination, I rather agree with this.

If, dear reader, you think I make too much of this, then consider...this is signs and portents and a red sky at morning.

How panic makes goobers of us all... This swine flu looks like a dud compared with the 38,000 Americans ordinary average flu kills every year. A little panic goes a long way when my meds aren't working well. On the other hand, it is absolutely fascinating to watch people running in circles screaming about nothing! Perhaps there is some truth to the idea that this is a panic manufactured to panicking the lumpen proletariat into demanding security over liberty. Bunch-a-monkey time again!

Meet Night the wonder-cat

She's feral altho she has lived indoors with us since she was around 12 weeks old. She came with a sister Day (they were different as which explains the names.) Day had to go to the shelter after she decided (at maturity) no only to start peeing on the favorite sleeping spots of all our other cats but escalated quickly to peeing on the cats when they were sleeping. She was sweet but being a sweet-pee was too much. But I digress.

Night has never liked people. She has never been quite right in the head and in fact the vet agrees that her head is small for her body. She is an odd shaped cat. She is built like a drag-racer, tiny head in the front and HUGE back legs. The similarity does not end with shape, she is also by far the fastest cat I have seen if 50 years of having and loving cats. Incredibly fast, astoundingly agile (just a blur threading her way thru a dozen chair legs (think flat out ground level attack helo)) and reluctant to be touched.

She is black with delightful white markings. Sometimes we think of her as 'Knight' since she has a perfect white garter (as in Knights of the Garter) around one back leg. Her imposing white whisker add to the accurate impression that she has a pin-head.

I decided to write about Night because of the pose that I photoed. Cats of course were deified in ancient Egypt and have never forgotten that fact but I have never before seen a cat that stated it so

indisputably.

Here is Night, posed like the Sphinx before the Great Pyramid at Giza.

THIS CANNOT BE ACCIDENTAL!

all the joys of a hangover...

...without the pains of a wonderful night before! I rarely get real colds, the number of virus's you are not immune to drops with your age and the number of colds you have had. (You never catch the same cold twice, but there are more than 200 rhino-viruses each producing exactly the same symptoms so it does feel repetitious). If only pneumonia was a virus.

Mostly I have allergies, which I am so used to that I can work around the symptoms without too much trouble. A real cold on the other hand bites the green wienie!

Strictly speaking (strictly strictly writing) I should be blogging in BLUE but my solutions to constantly losing my snot-rags amused me, so PINK it is.

Yard Art

Some of the spinwinders that hang in my trees.

i make them,

the wind spins them,

sometimes

they fall apart

Some things about me those silly surveys overlook...

I am obsessed with kitchen utensils. I don't know why. I have 99% of a BA in psych but all that has told me is that I really don't want to go there. There are somethings man should know know and the source of my obsession is one of them.
Whatever the reason, I have a large and diverse collection of spoons, bottle openers (ok, that one is obvious), stove-top toasters, snail serving sets (to serve snails in butter and garlic), collapsible cups, and odd and forgotten time-saving devices, mostly from the 50's and early 60's many of which are recorded in the wonderful book 'ATOMIC KITCHEN'. Bear in mind that I do not cook.
Devices with a definite but completely unknown (to me) purpose are irresistible. I will spend hours on the net trying to identify them. Today, in between job hunting and dishes and mad bouts of sneezing, I am trying to identify what I think is a Tofu press I bought for 50 cents. It has a screw top with a spring and a round disk attached to the spring. There is Chinese and Japanese writing on the bottom.
Ok, so I am easily amused.

On Blog-o-lap

I have just realized that there will always be some points where PINK and BLUE blogs will overlap if only because certain subjects are both tragic and funny by their very nature...like stupidity.

On the Diverse and Wonderous forms of stupidity

For my own amusement I continue to work on defining clear differences between LEFT and RIGHT (liberal and conservative) culture. Here is one that just occurred to me.
LEFT stupidity is loud, passionate, highly energetic and juvenile; whereas RIGHT stupidity is so often calm, measured, thoughtful and quiet.
Far too many humans mistake style for substance. As has been said many times, "no matter how thin you slice it, it is still baloney".

On the Diverse and Wonderous forms of stupidity

For my own amusement I continue to work on defining clear differences between LEFT and RIGHT (liberal and conservative) culture. Here is one that just occurred to me.
LEFT stupidity is loud, passionate, highly energetic and juvenile; whereas RIGHT stupidity is so often calm, measured, thoughtful and quiet.
Far too many humans mistake style for substance. As has been said many times, "no matter how thin you slice it, it is still baloney".

On the murder of Angie Zapata

This case is a perfect example of three maxims, 'if it bleeds it leads', 'half a truth is a lie' and the best one of all, 'never spoil a good story with the truth'.

I suggest watching the excellent movie, 'To Wong Foo with love, Julie Newmar'.

The mob wants to believe that Angie was killed because she was a Shemale when in fact she died because she lied. This fact is no excuse for the killer, there is no excuse for murder. (I do make a clear, even biblical, distinction between killing and murder but that is another story.) So the cold facts are not that the murderer decided to act because he hated the trans-gendered but because, believing he was with a woman, he reached down while they were fooling around and found the girl was a boy down below. Me, I would have jumped up and run. This thug defaulted to his cultural biases and beat her to death, thereby reaffirming his machismo.

So tell me, where's the "hate" crime? It was just another collision between stupid people that only one walks away from. Happens everyday.

I think the whole 'hate crime' concept is evil because it is a reversion back to the old feudal concept of tying the worth of a life to the persons social class and status. Kill a serf, pay a fine; kill a noble, hang.

So now, with the supposed deep desire for equal social justice, a system of levels within the category of a particular crime has been instituted. To paraphrase a wise man, 'all murders are crimes, but some murders are more crime-y than others'. Consider this, a straight man murders a straight man, crime; a straight man murders a gay man for any reason (even road rage) OMG hate-crime! White murders Black = hate-crime (HC), Black murders Vietnamese = mere murder (MM); man murders woman = HC, woman murders man = MM.

Even more destructive to equal justice is the often blatant fact that any self-defined victim class (SDVC) is automatically treated as if they have an innately higher level of justification for their actions (no matter what those actions are) then any member of the victim-class defined oppressors (VCDO).

Now that we have our acronyms in a row we can move to equations, venn diagrams and syllogisms.

On the murder of Angie Zapata

This case is a perfect example of three maxims, 'if it bleeds it leads', 'half a truth is a lie' and the best one of all, 'never spoil a good story with the truth'.

I suggest watching the excellent movie, 'To Wong Foo with love, Julie Newmar'.

The mob wants to believe that Angie was killed because she was a Shemale when in fact she died because she lied. This fact is no excuse for the killer, there is no excuse for murder. (I do make a clear, even biblical, distinction between killing and murder but that is another story.) So the cold facts are not that the murderer decided to act because he hated the trans-gendered but because, believing he was with a woman, he reached down while they were fooling around and found the girl was a boy down below. Me, I would have jumped up and run. This thug defaulted to his cultural biases and beat her to death, thereby reaffirming his machismo.

So tell me, where's the "hate" crime? It was just another collision between stupid people that only one walks away from. Happens everyday.

I think the whole 'hate crime' concept is evil because it is a reversion back to the old feudal concept of tying the worth of a life to the persons social class and status. Kill a serf, pay a fine; kill a noble, hang.

So now, with the supposed deep desire for equal social justice, a system of levels within the category of a particular crime has been instituted. To paraphrase a wise man, 'all murders are crimes, but some murders are more crime-y than others'. Consider this, a straight man murders a straight man, crime; a straight man murders a gay man for any reason (even road rage) OMG hate-crime! White murders Black = hate-crime (HC), Black murders Vietnamese = mere murder (MM); man murders woman = HC, woman murders man = MM.

Even more destructive to equal justice is the often blatant fact that any self-defined victim class (SDVC) is automatically treated as if they have an innately higher level of justification for their actions (no matter what those actions are) then any member of the victim-class defined oppressors (VCDO).

Now that we have our acronyms in a row we can move to equations, venn diagrams and syllogisms.

Dr. Blog and Mr. Hyde

I had to create a second blog to that I avoid the mental judder that alternating angst driven rants and cute kitty tails caused. I hope that from here on no more explanation will be necessary. Run along now and play outside, it's a beautiful day.

Dr. Blog and Mr. Hyde

I had to create a second blog to that I avoid the mental judder that alternating angst driven rants and cute kitty tails caused. I hope that from here on no more explanation will be necessary. Run along now and play outside, it's a beautiful day.

I have my reasons...

Well of course the reason for having two semi-dentical blogs is that the juxtaposition of angst driven rants and cute kitty tails is too jarring even for me. It's a lot easier just to switch between them as my mood changes. There I've answered your question, now go outside and play.

bluetoadinthehole: February 2009

"The Tail of FrankenBrucie..."
Brucie loves her mother Zoe and love to lick Zoes face. Mostly Zoe tolerates the attention but Brucie can be a little obsesive. Brucie loves to lick the edges of books for hours making tiny zip-zip-zip noises as the pages slide off her rough little tounge and she does the same thing to Zoe. So Brucie is cleaning Zoes face and always ends up working on the inside of Zoes ear, rooting around inside with her nose like a dog digging up a bone. If you've had a cat lick a sensative part of your body you know it feels like a small belt sander. Eventualy Zoe (not the most zenlike of cats) has had enough. She'll growl, hiss, twitch, and if that doesn't work, it's thumpity-thump time with paws and claws.
Brucie just closes her eyes and cowers like 'but mama mama i luv you'. Finally Zoe will get up and run cursing.
I guess what happened this time was that Zoe hooked the top of Brucies head. She got an abcess and by the time I noticed there was putrid pus leaking out of the top of her head. Off to the Vet! (plug for Planned Pethood Plus.)
Poor little thing. Brucie was the runt of the litter and she is really small. The smallest adult cat I have ever seen in 50 years of having cats. She is also pompous, pretentious, arrogant, demanding, and has a ego the size of Godzillas'. So she had to put up with weeks of us saying 'oh poor brucie', and then bursting into uncontrollable hysterical laughter. Oh and she's still rooting in Zoes ears.
Posted by keith at 8:50 AM 0 comments"

Polar Ice Worries - North and South « Watts Up With That?

Polar Ice Worries - North and South « Watts Up With That?: "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick
themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” Sir Winston Churchill"

Polar Ice Worries - North and South « Watts Up With That?

Polar Ice Worries - North and South « Watts Up With That?: "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick
themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” Sir Winston Churchill"

Twisted Eyes

I've had a bad two weeks. My fumbling research and amateur diagnosis leans towards an argument between my prescriptions and/or compounded side-effects and/or an abscessed tooth. No matter which I've been deeply depressed, mind-fogged, dizzy, nauseous, and all my joints feel like someone hammered a nail into them. Somebody call 9-wah-wah.

Twisted Eyes

I've had a bad two weeks. My fumbling research and amateur diagnosis leans towards an argument between my prescriptions and/or compounded side-effects and/or an abscessed tooth. No matter which I've been deeply depressed, mind-fogged, dizzy, nauseous, and all my joints feel like someone hammered a nail into them. Somebody call 9-wah-wah.

Know Yourself

It is said you should know yourself, that an unexamined life is not worth living, and that the truth shall set you free. The assumption is that you are not going to lie to yourself. When I am sober I see myself as an old, retarded, cripple. When I am drunk I don't see myself at all. How can you tell whether what you tell yourself is lies or truth? How confusing not to know.

Know Yourself

It is said you should know yourself, that an unexamined life is not worth living, and that the truth shall set you free. The assumption is that you are not going to lie to yourself. When I am sober I see myself as an old, retarded, cripple. When I am drunk I don't see myself at all. How can you tell whether what you tell yourself is lies or truth? How confusing not to know.

My Imaginary Life part 2

I have had an imaginary life because I don't remember it. A little research came up with a form of Aphasia called Anomia, the inability to recall names and numbers. I also have no sense of time.
My mother has much milder anomia so since I take after her rather than my father in many other ways I think there is a genetic component to my current condition. My father was an artist and linguist, he learned Italian, French and German so he could sing along with his favorite operas. He could also read and write about 20 others languages including ancient Greek, Latin, Aramaic and pre-christian Hebrew. Then there were all the Indian languages. He could and often did make puns that were funny in three languages two of which were dead.
As I am writing I have no real idea of what I did yesterday. With work I can come up with most of it but what I recall does not feel as if it happened to me but rather as if it was something I had read or been told about. There doesn't seem to be any real way to differentiate between what is personal to me and what is not, it is all the same.
My sister takes after my father at least in her talents and as I said I after my mom.
So growing up was confusing. The stated expectation was of course that I was a chip off the old block and my failure to rise to that expectation was put down to childish rebellion and contrary laziness. And I believed it myself, absolutely, for a while. Eventually when I was in second grade I figured out that I was stupid, retarded down to the bone and deliberately being a bad and ungrateful child.
Realising my own flaws was comforting in an odd sort of way but I was always afraid someone would find out the truth of what I was and that's when I started to fake it. If you can't dazzle them with brilliance blind them with bullpoop.
Every time I failed at something I managed to convince everyone that it was merely a momentary lapse and I would redouble my efforts in future. So after being coached for an hour every evening for the friday spelling test it was obvious that my not remembering a single word was a deliberate act on my part, I was my father's son after all. Then I would come up with a good excuse and it would start all over again.
Much of the reason that I got away with things was my father himself. He was not an ordinary genius, rather one of those who was, if not crazy as a bedbug, pretty close to it. All his life he had thru brilliance of talent and force of charm and personality been able to not only create his own little world, but convince everyone around him to go along with him. What he be lived was what was and it was impossible to disagree with him, one way or another he was one of the most brilliant manipulator's I have every known. So...since my father believed that I was exactly like him I was, to him and the rest our little world. I lived every second in utter terror that He, more than anyone else, would see the truth I saw in myself and throw me away.
I use the words "utter terror" deliberately. Extreme depression and a dreadful constant fear of everything are two more of my little quirks. So two for two now...deliberate stupidity and cowardice, I was informed of both personality flaws repeatedly, for my own good of course, the supposition being that eventually I would get my act together and stop all this wussy foolishness.
Let's go for three for three shall we. I was born with a number of individually insignificant structural birth defects. The ends of all my bones, at the joints, never quite finished forming. This meant that all my hinges like knee and elbow, leaned toward being ball joints, floppy and wobbly. Ball joints like hip and shoulder tended to be a lot looser than normal. I've never dislocated a hip but have both shoulders at least twice, they go out easy but they come back in easy too. A wee touch of the old spina bifida in my lumbar vertebrae, fingers that roll and twist when I squeezed something tightly. Then I fell (walked backwards) over a cliff, broke my arm, cracked a collar bone, cracked some of the fins on my vertebrae, and torn open the back of my scalp so I have a big knotted scar on my occiput (which is why I have only shaved my head once.)
This was followed by Osgood Slaughter's disease, aka growing pains. It was diagnosed later but untreated since the treatment is not doing what is stressing the joints, which in my case was climbing up and down the near vertical side of the mountain every day. At the same time the deformation of my knee joints was slowly chewing away at the internal cartilage and my feet were so crunchy and floppy that I wore custom made (and heavy) shoes with Thomas heels to straighten out my ankles. The weight of the shoes did my knees no good atall atall. When, in my middle teens, I said screw it and chucked the special shoes my ankles flopped over instantly and it still seems to me to have been a long unpleasant trip for nothing. Eventually the knees gave up and I had surgery every couple of years to remove ground up chunks of stuff. Finally, when I was twelve, I was a 5'4" pasty white fat boy weighing 131 lbs, a bit less than 18 months later I was a 6'2" pasty white skinny boy weighing 131 lbs.
Now we have the persona dramatis, a stupid crippled kid who is terrified of everything...and nobody noticed.
Shortly after we first arrived in India, three years I think, the last big polio wave went round the world and my father got it. Parents of several other kids I grew up with were also hit my father was the worst case. After he could breathe on his own again (one week in a hand cranked iron lung) they flew us back to the states. It took two years of surgery and rehab before we could return to India.
My father's will-power writ large. He had been a big 6"1' strong right handed commercial artist. His right arm from the elbow down was permanently paralysed, his legs were half shot, his left arm good from elbow to fingers except for the index finger, all the balance of a pool cue.
They said he'd never get out of bed. They said he'd never get out of a wheelchair. They said he'd never walk without leg braces and crutches.
Finally they said he'd never be an artist again. Then they opened up his left hand, split a tendon, and gave him fingers again. Then he taught himself to draw and paint and write left handed. Then he convinced the Mission that he really didn't need to walk around much to do the job that they had originally hired him to do. So we went back to India.
When I say that nobody noticed me it is for the same reason that you can not see stars in the daytime, the sun is too bright. My mom had a very bad back, my sister was little, and I was my father's son. A good motto not only for my family but for almost a missionary families back then is "Push yourself until you break to pieces...then push the pieces." To fail was not only to fail yourself but to fail your community and ultimately the God whose work you were doing among the heathen, it really wasn't done.
In conclusion, and I hope never to write such a long post again, between constant fear and depression, and chronic unrelenting pain, and forgetting my friends and my teachers names overnight my life was and still is a source of infinite and constant amusement and confusion. And still nobody really knows...or believes.

My Imaginary Life part 2

I have had an imaginary life because I don't remember it. A little research came up with a form of Aphasia called Anomia, the inability to recall names and numbers. I also have no sense of time.
My mother has much milder anomia so since I take after her rather than my father in many other ways I think there is a genetic component to my current condition. My father was an artist and linguist, he learned Italian, French and German so he could sing along with his favorite operas. He could also read and write about 20 others languages including ancient Greek, Latin, Aramaic and pre-christian Hebrew. Then there were all the Indian languages. He could and often did make puns that were funny in three languages two of which were dead.
As I am writing I have no real idea of what I did yesterday. With work I can come up with most of it but what I recall does not feel as if it happened to me but rather as if it was something I had read or been told about. There doesn't seem to be any real way to differentiate between what is personal to me and what is not, it is all the same.
My sister takes after my father at least in her talents and as I said I after my mom.
So growing up was confusing. The stated expectation was of course that I was a chip off the old block and my failure to rise to that expectation was put down to childish rebellion and contrary laziness. And I believed it myself, absolutely, for a while. Eventually when I was in second grade I figured out that I was stupid, retarded down to the bone and deliberately being a bad and ungrateful child.
Realising my own flaws was comforting in an odd sort of way but I was always afraid someone would find out the truth of what I was and that's when I started to fake it. If you can't dazzle them with brilliance blind them with bullpoop.
Every time I failed at something I managed to convince everyone that it was merely a momentary lapse and I would redouble my efforts in future. So after being coached for an hour every evening for the friday spelling test it was obvious that my not remembering a single word was a deliberate act on my part, I was my father's son after all. Then I would come up with a good excuse and it would start all over again.
Much of the reason that I got away with things was my father himself. He was not an ordinary genius, rather one of those who was, if not crazy as a bedbug, pretty close to it. All his life he had thru brilliance of talent and force of charm and personality been able to not only create his own little world, but convince everyone around him to go along with him. What he be lived was what was and it was impossible to disagree with him, one way or another he was one of the most brilliant manipulator's I have every known. So...since my father believed that I was exactly like him I was, to him and the rest our little world. I lived every second in utter terror that He, more than anyone else, would see the truth I saw in myself and throw me away.
I use the words "utter terror" deliberately. Extreme depression and a dreadful constant fear of everything are two more of my little quirks. So two for two now...deliberate stupidity and cowardice, I was informed of both personality flaws repeatedly, for my own good of course, the supposition being that eventually I would get my act together and stop all this wussy foolishness.
Let's go for three for three shall we. I was born with a number of individually insignificant structural birth defects. The ends of all my bones, at the joints, never quite finished forming. This meant that all my hinges like knee and elbow, leaned toward being ball joints, floppy and wobbly. Ball joints like hip and shoulder tended to be a lot looser than normal. I've never dislocated a hip but have both shoulders at least twice, they go out easy but they come back in easy too. A wee touch of the old spina bifida in my lumbar vertebrae, fingers that roll and twist when I squeezed something tightly. Then I fell (walked backwards) over a cliff, broke my arm, cracked a collar bone, cracked some of the fins on my vertebrae, and torn open the back of my scalp so I have a big knotted scar on my occiput (which is why I have only shaved my head once.)
This was followed by Osgood Slaughter's disease, aka growing pains. It was diagnosed later but untreated since the treatment is not doing what is stressing the joints, which in my case was climbing up and down the near vertical side of the mountain every day. At the same time the deformation of my knee joints was slowly chewing away at the internal cartilage and my feet were so crunchy and floppy that I wore custom made (and heavy) shoes with Thomas heels to straighten out my ankles. The weight of the shoes did my knees no good atall atall. When, in my middle teens, I said screw it and chucked the special shoes my ankles flopped over instantly and it still seems to me to have been a long unpleasant trip for nothing. Eventually the knees gave up and I had surgery every couple of years to remove ground up chunks of stuff. Finally, when I was twelve, I was a 5'4" pasty white fat boy weighing 131 lbs, a bit less than 18 months later I was a 6'2" pasty white skinny boy weighing 131 lbs.
Now we have the persona dramatis, a stupid crippled kid who is terrified of everything...and nobody noticed.
Shortly after we first arrived in India, three years I think, the last big polio wave went round the world and my father got it. Parents of several other kids I grew up with were also hit my father was the worst case. After he could breathe on his own again (one week in a hand cranked iron lung) they flew us back to the states. It took two years of surgery and rehab before we could return to India.
My father's will-power writ large. He had been a big 6"1' strong right handed commercial artist. His right arm from the elbow down was permanently paralysed, his legs were half shot, his left arm good from elbow to fingers except for the index finger, all the balance of a pool cue.
They said he'd never get out of bed. They said he'd never get out of a wheelchair. They said he'd never walk without leg braces and crutches.
Finally they said he'd never be an artist again. Then they opened up his left hand, split a tendon, and gave him fingers again. Then he taught himself to draw and paint and write left handed. Then he convinced the Mission that he really didn't need to walk around much to do the job that they had originally hired him to do. So we went back to India.
When I say that nobody noticed me it is for the same reason that you can not see stars in the daytime, the sun is too bright. My mom had a very bad back, my sister was little, and I was my father's son. A good motto not only for my family but for almost a missionary families back then is "Push yourself until you break to pieces...then push the pieces." To fail was not only to fail yourself but to fail your community and ultimately the God whose work you were doing among the heathen, it really wasn't done.
In conclusion, and I hope never to write such a long post again, between constant fear and depression, and chronic unrelenting pain, and forgetting my friends and my teachers names overnight my life was and still is a source of infinite and constant amusement and confusion. And still nobody really knows...or believes.

digression and avoidence post

I haven't quite got the hang of this all yet, somehow I managed to set my posts to be translated into hindi, but I fixed that ek dum!
I have been thinking about the differences between diaries, journals, and blogs. By my definition a diary is pretty much like a log book of what you did during the day where you went and who you saw and not much more.
A journal on the other hand is an accounting of your experience of the diaries events, why you went where you went and what you thot and felt about who you saw. Even more a journal seems to me to be intensely private, a record of unexpressed truth known only to yourself. I refuse to read anyone else's journal for that reason, the journal being in essence a snapshot of how one felt at the moment of writing. Granted people change their feelings and attitudes but reading random bits of truth can be painful, and if it is about the reader, devastating.
Now a blog is something of a diary and a journal but because it is for the most part not only public but exposed to complete strangers a blog seems to me most like the long intimate revealing conversation you have with a bar-tender on a quiet afternoon. We have all had that experience in one form or another, blurting out our most personal feelings to a momentary acquaintance that we probably will never see again. I've been blurter and blurtee a hundred times or more.
Even tho readers might comment on what is revealed in your blog, there is a strong sense of anonymity to a blog that while similar to shouting down a well also carries the possibility (and risk) that the bread you have cast upon the waters might bring home to you more than ducks.

digression and avoidence post

I haven't quite got the hang of this all yet, somehow I managed to set my posts to be translated into hindi, but I fixed that ek dum!
I have been thinking about the differences between diaries, journals, and blogs. By my definition a diary is pretty much like a log book of what you did during the day where you went and who you saw and not much more.
A journal on the other hand is an accounting of your experience of the diaries events, why you went where you went and what you thot and felt about who you saw. Even more a journal seems to me to be intensely private, a record of unexpressed truth known only to yourself. I refuse to read anyone else's journal for that reason, the journal being in essence a snapshot of how one felt at the moment of writing. Granted people change their feelings and attitudes but reading random bits of truth can be painful, and if it is about the reader, devastating.
Now a blog is something of a diary and a journal but because it is for the most part not only public but exposed to complete strangers a blog seems to me most like the long intimate revealing conversation you have with a bar-tender on a quiet afternoon. We have all had that experience in one form or another, blurting out our most personal feelings to a momentary acquaintance that we probably will never see again. I've been blurter and blurtee a hundred times or more.
Even tho readers might comment on what is revealed in your blog, there is a strong sense of anonymity to a blog that while similar to shouting down a well also carries the possibility (and risk) that the bread you have cast upon the waters might bring home to you more than ducks.

Around 9:30 this morning I was sitting on the front stoop with my coffee and a smoke and suddenly loping down the sidewalk about 20 feet in front of me comes this absolutely beautiful red fox. I've seen fox often before dawn and after sunset but I can't remember the last time I saw one in bright daylight. Not remembering leads adroitly into the next topic of my imaginary life, memory and the lack thereof...

Around 9:30 this morning I was sitting on the front stoop with my coffee and a smoke and suddenly loping down the sidewalk about 20 feet in front of me comes this absolutely beautiful red fox. I've seen fox often before dawn and after sunset but I can't remember the last time I saw one in bright daylight. Not remembering leads adroitly into the next topic of my imaginary life, memory and the lack thereof...

My Imaginary Life 1

This is a picture of the town I grew up in. I didn't take it, all my pictures are B/W. It's pretty much the view from my front yard looking west. What you can see is Mussoorie stretching west along the top of the ridge draped like a blanket on a cloths line. I actually lived in a sort of suburb called Landour which ran east from the cluster of houses just above to the red roofed white building on the right side of the picture. Landour was the foreign missionary community and Woodstock School.

From Jabber Khat at the east end to Cloud End in the west Mussoorie is about 12 miles long and a quarter mile wide. Almost all of the town is on the south slope, the north side get very little sun most of the year and the full force of the cold dry winter monsoon blowing out of the Tibetan plateau. Horizontal roads and foot paths run from end to end in fairly level lines like like contours on a map. Zigzags connect the horizontals vertically.

All the houses have names. The house I lived in for most of my childhood was called Zigzag. The story is that the British officer that built the house also built the first vertical path from the top of the ridge down passed Zigzag to Tehri road. Tehri road runs west from Mussoorie along the ridge for 30 or 40 miles until it connects with the road the connects the Doon valley on the south side up and over the ridge and down again to Tehri city on the north side where the Maharaja of Tehri-Gahrwahl lived. (Google Tehri, Mussoorie, Landour, and Woodstock School. )

Zigzag was originally a summer hunting lodge, four big rooms with 16 foot ceilings surrounded with a wide veranda. Later the veranda was walled in making a number of small rooms when Zigzag was turned into permanent housing.

An interesting place to grow up. I turned 3 on a tramp steamer called the City of Bristol on our first trip out. I like to say it was in the Suez canal but I don't know exactly where the ship was. I was 20 when I left India for the final time. I had my 21st birthday in London. I don't think I'll ever go back.

I intend to tell a number of tales in this blog but, when asked what my life was like, after 30 years the best answer still is " kind of a cross between Leave It To Beaver and Lord Of The Flies."

My Imaginary Life 1

This is a picture of the town I grew up in. I didn't take it, all my pictures are B/W. It's pretty much the view from my front yard looking west. What you can see is Mussoorie stretching west along the top of the ridge draped like a blanket on a cloths line. I actually lived in a sort of suburb called Landour which ran east from the cluster of houses just above to the red roofed white building on the right side of the picture. Landour was the foreign missionary community and Woodstock School.

From Jabber Khat at the east end to Cloud End in the west Mussoorie is about 12 miles long and a quarter mile wide. Almost all of the town is on the south slope, the north side get very little sun most of the year and the full force of the cold dry winter monsoon blowing out of the Tibetan plateau. Horizontal roads and foot paths run from end to end in fairly level lines like like contours on a map. Zigzags connect the horizontals vertically.

All the houses have names. The house I lived in for most of my childhood was called Zigzag. The story is that the British officer that built the house also built the first vertical path from the top of the ridge down passed Zigzag to Tehri road. Tehri road runs west from Mussoorie along the ridge for 30 or 40 miles until it connects with the road the connects the Doon valley on the south side up and over the ridge and down again to Tehri city on the north side where the Maharaja of Tehri-Gahrwahl lived. (Google Tehri, Mussoorie, Landour, and Woodstock School. )

Zigzag was originally a summer hunting lodge, four big rooms with 16 foot ceilings surrounded with a wide veranda. Later the veranda was walled in making a number of small rooms when Zigzag was turned into permanent housing.

An interesting place to grow up. I turned 3 on a tramp steamer called the City of Bristol on our first trip out. I like to say it was in the Suez canal but I don't know exactly where the ship was. I was 20 when I left India for the final time. I had my 21st birthday in London. I don't think I'll ever go back.

I intend to tell a number of tales in this blog but, when asked what my life was like, after 30 years the best answer still is " kind of a cross between Leave It To Beaver and Lord Of The Flies."

The Tail of FrankenBrucie...

Brucie loves her mother Zoe and love to lick Zoes face. Mostly Zoe tolerates the attention but Brucie can be a little obsesive. Brucie loves to lick the edges of books for hours making tiny zip-zip-zip noises as the pages slide off her rough little tounge and she does the same thing to Zoe. So Brucie is cleaning Zoes face and always ends up working on the inside of Zoes ear, rooting around inside with her nose like a dog digging up a bone. If you've had a cat lick a sensative part of your body you know it feels like a small belt sander. Eventualy Zoe (not the most zenlike of cats) has had enough. She'll growl, hiss, twitch, and if that doesn't work, it's thumpity-thump time with paws and claws.
Brucie just closes her eyes and cowers like "but mama mama i luv you". Finally Zoe will get up and run cursing.
I guess what happened this time was that Zoe hooked the top of Brucies head. She got an abcess and by the time I noticed there was putrid pus leaking out of the top of her head. Off to the Vet! (plug for Planned Pethood Plus.)
Poor little thing. Brucie was the runt of the litter and she is really small. The smallest adult cat I have ever seen in 50 years of having cats. She is also pompous, pretentious, arrogant, demanding, and has a ego the size of Godzillas'. So she had to put up with weeks of us saying "oh poor brucie", and then bursting into uncontrollable hysterical laughter. Oh and she's still rooting in Zoes ears.

The Tail of FrankenBrucie...

Brucie loves her mother Zoe and love to lick Zoes face. Mostly Zoe tolerates the attention but Brucie can be a little obsesive. Brucie loves to lick the edges of books for hours making tiny zip-zip-zip noises as the pages slide off her rough little tounge and she does the same thing to Zoe. So Brucie is cleaning Zoes face and always ends up working on the inside of Zoes ear, rooting around inside with her nose like a dog digging up a bone. If you've had a cat lick a sensative part of your body you know it feels like a small belt sander. Eventualy Zoe (not the most zenlike of cats) has had enough. She'll growl, hiss, twitch, and if that doesn't work, it's thumpity-thump time with paws and claws.
Brucie just closes her eyes and cowers like "but mama mama i luv you". Finally Zoe will get up and run cursing.
I guess what happened this time was that Zoe hooked the top of Brucies head. She got an abcess and by the time I noticed there was putrid pus leaking out of the top of her head. Off to the Vet! (plug for Planned Pethood Plus.)
Poor little thing. Brucie was the runt of the litter and she is really small. The smallest adult cat I have ever seen in 50 years of having cats. She is also pompous, pretentious, arrogant, demanding, and has a ego the size of Godzillas'. So she had to put up with weeks of us saying "oh poor brucie", and then bursting into uncontrollable hysterical laughter. Oh and she's still rooting in Zoes ears.