the matrix is now...
Driving around the other night just after sunset I watched a thick veil of grey clouds pull slowly back to reveal the face of the low, yellow full moon... it was achingly beautiful, and yet my first thought was... "Wow, it's like something from a movie."
How sad is that? Does the distinction between real and artificial mean anything anymore??
D.
Sunday, July 13
Saturday, July 12
new mail
Somehow, even though I only use my mail.com address for my weblog and journal readers, it has become a spam target. I don't know if an address-sniffing-bot picked it up, or if I just accidentally used it to register for something online, but... whatever happened, it's now contaminated.
So now, I have a new address - silence@doctor.com - that my readers can use. Unless of course you are one of the Chosen Few... the long-time trusted readers with my "real" address. You all can keep using that one too.
D.
Somehow, even though I only use my mail.com address for my weblog and journal readers, it has become a spam target. I don't know if an address-sniffing-bot picked it up, or if I just accidentally used it to register for something online, but... whatever happened, it's now contaminated.
So now, I have a new address - silence@doctor.com - that my readers can use. Unless of course you are one of the Chosen Few... the long-time trusted readers with my "real" address. You all can keep using that one too.
D.
Friday, July 11
Mumb-oo Jumb-oo
I was watching "The Amazing Race" the other night and discovered that somehow, unbeknownst to me, there is no longer a place in India called "Bombay"... rather it has been re-designated "Mumbai" or some such bullshit.
What the fuck? I didn't get a memo. Does this mean I have to start telling people we bought our new bedroom set from "The Mumbai Company"??
It's like the whole Burma/Myanmar fiasco all over again!!
D.
I was watching "The Amazing Race" the other night and discovered that somehow, unbeknownst to me, there is no longer a place in India called "Bombay"... rather it has been re-designated "Mumbai" or some such bullshit.
What the fuck? I didn't get a memo. Does this mean I have to start telling people we bought our new bedroom set from "The Mumbai Company"??
It's like the whole Burma/Myanmar fiasco all over again!!
D.
old scars...
Always the same story, I get irritated that nobody leaves me notes or reads my weblog, when the main reason is that I NEVER WRITE. Summer... Pheh...Who says vacations are so great?? I’d just as soon be sitting on the train.
I was going to say more about the family we visited... the wife’s aunt and uncle and her three cousins, aged 17, 19, and 21. The 21-year-old guy I mentioned already... Coast Guard guy... about what you’d expect from a 21-year-old guy who is in the Coast Guard and thinks this is somehow a cool thing. The 19-year-old girl was, again, about what you’d expect from a 19-year-old girl... in and out all weekend... class, work, boyfriend. But the youngest girl is NOT what you’d expect... not what I’d expect anyway... mature, smart, funny and seriously fucked up... with a medicine cabinet full of antidepressants and forearms full of scars. I mean, I’ve known girls who were into “cutting” before, but I’ve never seen anyone who had mutilated themselves like this before. She’s been in and out of the hospital for a couple of years... in therapy now... supposedly getting “better”, but wow... what a mess. The thing is, my wife and I liked her SO MUCH... she’s such a great kid, she was so great with our daughter and the horses, she’s just really fantastic and we all really hit it off. We’re seriously considering inviting her to stay with us for a month in a sort of “au-pair” capacity.
The thing that freaked my wife out the most was the matter of ... how do we make sure this doesn’t happen? I don’t think you do, any more than you make sure your kid doesn’t get hit by a truck. You tell them to wear a seatbelt and to look both ways, but some things are just nobody’s fault. It’s not this girl was seriously “abused” or anything... sure her family is a little fucked up, but whose isn’t? I think it’s just a bad spin of the neurotransmitter roulette wheel.
The thing that freaked me out was the fact that the whole “mature, smart, funny and seriously fucked up” characterization means that she reminds me of a few people I’d rather NOT be reminded of. Long-time-readers will know that I have something of a weakness for fucked up and depression-prone chicks. I can imagine a situation in which having a girl like that in such close proximity could cause no small amount of mental anguish.
Haven’t had much of THAT in a while, huh?
Dr. D.
Always the same story, I get irritated that nobody leaves me notes or reads my weblog, when the main reason is that I NEVER WRITE. Summer... Pheh...Who says vacations are so great?? I’d just as soon be sitting on the train.
I was going to say more about the family we visited... the wife’s aunt and uncle and her three cousins, aged 17, 19, and 21. The 21-year-old guy I mentioned already... Coast Guard guy... about what you’d expect from a 21-year-old guy who is in the Coast Guard and thinks this is somehow a cool thing. The 19-year-old girl was, again, about what you’d expect from a 19-year-old girl... in and out all weekend... class, work, boyfriend. But the youngest girl is NOT what you’d expect... not what I’d expect anyway... mature, smart, funny and seriously fucked up... with a medicine cabinet full of antidepressants and forearms full of scars. I mean, I’ve known girls who were into “cutting” before, but I’ve never seen anyone who had mutilated themselves like this before. She’s been in and out of the hospital for a couple of years... in therapy now... supposedly getting “better”, but wow... what a mess. The thing is, my wife and I liked her SO MUCH... she’s such a great kid, she was so great with our daughter and the horses, she’s just really fantastic and we all really hit it off. We’re seriously considering inviting her to stay with us for a month in a sort of “au-pair” capacity.
The thing that freaked my wife out the most was the matter of ... how do we make sure this doesn’t happen? I don’t think you do, any more than you make sure your kid doesn’t get hit by a truck. You tell them to wear a seatbelt and to look both ways, but some things are just nobody’s fault. It’s not this girl was seriously “abused” or anything... sure her family is a little fucked up, but whose isn’t? I think it’s just a bad spin of the neurotransmitter roulette wheel.
The thing that freaked me out was the fact that the whole “mature, smart, funny and seriously fucked up” characterization means that she reminds me of a few people I’d rather NOT be reminded of. Long-time-readers will know that I have something of a weakness for fucked up and depression-prone chicks. I can imagine a situation in which having a girl like that in such close proximity could cause no small amount of mental anguish.
Haven’t had much of THAT in a while, huh?
Dr. D.
Wednesday, July 9
goober says "hey"...!
Well, I made it home... just barely. yesterday’s flight itinerary looked like the cut-scenes from “Raiders of the Lost Ark”... Bangkok... Nepal... Morocco... Spokane... Portland... Phoenix... Baltimore... New York. Ok, the first three were made up, but we did hit 5 Southwest destinations yesterday. Who knew Southwest even HAD five destinations??
But the kids were remarkably well behaved, all things considered... only a few minor breakdowns. (Not counting the half-hour crying fit in the CAR on the way home!) Portable DVD players are amazing things. When the little one is old enough to watch movies, we’ll be able to go ANYWHERE and do ANYTHING!! But for now, the flights consisted of handing the baby back and forth over the heads of the movie-watching older sister, trying to get him to sleep as much as possible, and trying to keep him contained while awake. It worked for the most part, although it made the parents pretty much as cranky as the kids. But a night in our own beds, and tricking the kids into sleeping until 9:30... all is pretty much back to normal. Well... except that the house is a stifling, cat-vomit encrusted shithole...
As for the trip to Idaho... pretty relaxing, as much as possible. (Only so much relaxation is allowed when you have a 6-month old.) My daughter rode an awful lot of horse... had lots of fun... she really got to know my wife’s teenage cousins, as did we... more on this later. But yeah... it was Idaho, so you can probably imagine that not much else went on.
We did go to a fourth of July parade, cuz my wife’s cousin was prominently featured as some sort of “Local Hero”... riding in a convertible and waving. See he’s in the Coast Guard. Uh-huh. And never mind that he spent the entire Iraq War breaking ice in Antarctica or something... but apparently that’s as close as Coeur d’Alene can get to a genuine War Hero. Yeah. Oh, how I love Post 9/11 America!
Actually, seeing a 4th of July parade in Idaho was a bit of a sobering experience. Turns out that a major feature of the parade was a performance by a troupe that goes by the name of the “Red Hot Mamas.” Now, as best I can explain, this group consists of several dozen women wearing housecoats and hats made of groceries, pushing shopping carts and performing choreographed routines to the accompaniment of “Born to be Wild.” What. The. Fuck.
It makes me think.... Jesus, if this is what passes for entertainment in the strip of “red” states up the middle of this country... it’s no fucking wonder we’ve got fucking Goober from the Andy Griffith Show for president. God, I’m surprised it’s not even worse. It makes me want to pack up the bags, buy some warm socks, and learn the lyrics to “O, Canada” beyond the first two words.
And yet, there was something attractive about a neighborhood where nobody locks their doors, where people borrow your lawnmower when you aren’t home, then put it back in your garage, and where you’re look at as being a little odd if you DON’T own any livestock. It was an interesting place, to say the least.
Anyway.... more about the family to come. It’s nice to be back.
D.
Well, I made it home... just barely. yesterday’s flight itinerary looked like the cut-scenes from “Raiders of the Lost Ark”... Bangkok... Nepal... Morocco... Spokane... Portland... Phoenix... Baltimore... New York. Ok, the first three were made up, but we did hit 5 Southwest destinations yesterday. Who knew Southwest even HAD five destinations??
But the kids were remarkably well behaved, all things considered... only a few minor breakdowns. (Not counting the half-hour crying fit in the CAR on the way home!) Portable DVD players are amazing things. When the little one is old enough to watch movies, we’ll be able to go ANYWHERE and do ANYTHING!! But for now, the flights consisted of handing the baby back and forth over the heads of the movie-watching older sister, trying to get him to sleep as much as possible, and trying to keep him contained while awake. It worked for the most part, although it made the parents pretty much as cranky as the kids. But a night in our own beds, and tricking the kids into sleeping until 9:30... all is pretty much back to normal. Well... except that the house is a stifling, cat-vomit encrusted shithole...
As for the trip to Idaho... pretty relaxing, as much as possible. (Only so much relaxation is allowed when you have a 6-month old.) My daughter rode an awful lot of horse... had lots of fun... she really got to know my wife’s teenage cousins, as did we... more on this later. But yeah... it was Idaho, so you can probably imagine that not much else went on.
We did go to a fourth of July parade, cuz my wife’s cousin was prominently featured as some sort of “Local Hero”... riding in a convertible and waving. See he’s in the Coast Guard. Uh-huh. And never mind that he spent the entire Iraq War breaking ice in Antarctica or something... but apparently that’s as close as Coeur d’Alene can get to a genuine War Hero. Yeah. Oh, how I love Post 9/11 America!
Actually, seeing a 4th of July parade in Idaho was a bit of a sobering experience. Turns out that a major feature of the parade was a performance by a troupe that goes by the name of the “Red Hot Mamas.” Now, as best I can explain, this group consists of several dozen women wearing housecoats and hats made of groceries, pushing shopping carts and performing choreographed routines to the accompaniment of “Born to be Wild.” What. The. Fuck.
It makes me think.... Jesus, if this is what passes for entertainment in the strip of “red” states up the middle of this country... it’s no fucking wonder we’ve got fucking Goober from the Andy Griffith Show for president. God, I’m surprised it’s not even worse. It makes me want to pack up the bags, buy some warm socks, and learn the lyrics to “O, Canada” beyond the first two words.
And yet, there was something attractive about a neighborhood where nobody locks their doors, where people borrow your lawnmower when you aren’t home, then put it back in your garage, and where you’re look at as being a little odd if you DON’T own any livestock. It was an interesting place, to say the least.
Anyway.... more about the family to come. It’s nice to be back.
D.
Tuesday, July 1
b'deek - b'dook...
The baby woke up about 7 times last night between 11:00 and 7:00. As a result, I never really got into deep sleep.... I think I was in REM sleep pretty much all night... I had tons of weird dreams... most only half remembered... one of them was one of those “cinematic” dreams... more like a movie than anything else... where you aren’t really even IN the dream, although there may be a character that you “identify” with. Anyway, thus dream seemed to go on for hours, and featured the exploits of a bunch of Swingers-style incomprehensible hipsters, as well as a couple of PVC-clad polyamorous circus performers... trapeze/contortionists of some sort.
I don’t really remember enough of the details. It’s the kind of thing that makes you wish they made a TiVo for your head.
D.
The baby woke up about 7 times last night between 11:00 and 7:00. As a result, I never really got into deep sleep.... I think I was in REM sleep pretty much all night... I had tons of weird dreams... most only half remembered... one of them was one of those “cinematic” dreams... more like a movie than anything else... where you aren’t really even IN the dream, although there may be a character that you “identify” with. Anyway, thus dream seemed to go on for hours, and featured the exploits of a bunch of Swingers-style incomprehensible hipsters, as well as a couple of PVC-clad polyamorous circus performers... trapeze/contortionists of some sort.
I don’t really remember enough of the details. It’s the kind of thing that makes you wish they made a TiVo for your head.
D.
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