Some Pictures

Some pictures sit on the desk or the escritoire and mean something different each time you look their way. If you have the type of pictures that most people have in these places, they are probably of some event: a wedding, a birthday celebration, something like that. Or simply of an important person - a spouse, a child, a friend, a pet, even yourself.

And each time you look at the picture, even if you've looked at it a million times, so much so often that it seems a part of the surroundings, as familiar and immutable as the colour of paint on the wall, aren't there still occasional moments, perhaps at a specific part of the day, when the afternoon fading sunlight hits it just right, when that picture, so familiar, looks altogether new?

Too Much Stimuli

Just was thinking write now as I was finishing up the old blog for the books (Nekkid Came da Manatee, donthcaknow!) and I was just looking over at the pile of newspapers that I gots laying around just a-waitin' 2 B or not 2 B red and I suddenly had the thought suprise and hit and curse me that there is simply

too much stimuli

in this world,

I mean/looka tithi sway,
you can break it down into poetry if you want
or you can just write what you feel,
but either way/come what may/

We've got too much crap around us:

Music advertising billboards flashing lights computer screens sirens noise people interrupting our daily reverie, all sorts of things like that - and there's so much that we want to DO - we wanna watch that TV show, see that movie, go to that restaurant, take in that ride, go to wherever that thing is that we saw an ad for and really want to go see . . .

and I'm not even TALKING about all the stuff we want to buy/purchase/obtain.

Holy mudder o'God you couldn't never talk about in one time/volume/sitdown session - you couldn't write it down even if you had a lifetime to do so . . .

all the things we want to buy! Whoa!

Too much stimuli. Too many ads. Too many things coming at me from all sides.

Makes me just want to make bad rhymes, all the times, them make a pipin' hot cup o'tea . . .

then lay down beside thee,
and forget all the worries and troubles and cares
and fall asleep in my lady's arms,
slumber in her charms.

. . . yup - getting a little bit maudlin now.

Better go!

Cheerio!

VG

Thought for the Day

I was listening to GreenDay's Shenanigans this morning and the odd thought hit me:

Dookie is pretty much the ONLY album you'll ever need by GreenDay.

Seriously, everything else is pretty much the same standard GreenDay fare. I mean, if you wanna hear loud crunchy guitars with a melifluous, albeit whiny, fake British-punk accent, then GreenDay is the band for you. But if you just stick with their first album, then you're pretty much set, because anything after that offers absolutely nothing new or different.

Not that that's bad or anything; just an observation.

VG

Explore Blogs (Other Blogs and Bloglets #2)

Whenever I blog-in . . . (heh heh that's a pun, get it? - er, whatever) I see the little message "explore blogs" and invariably I haz click a few and am tumbled into other people's worlds. Fascinating stuff, I must tell you, even if I don't read Portuguese (there are quite a number of sites in Portuguese, has anybody noticed?) - 'tis really a beautiful language, both written and spoken - I tremendously so wish I knew how to speak it.

P'haps a trip to the library is in order. Oh well, back to Other Blogs and Bloglets, I highly recommend all bloggers to explore other blogs if you don't already. This is why we're here, right, to cast our thoughts to the cold winds of the world? Right? And possibly to see what spit blows back at us?

Possibly,

but I really do wish to thank the invisible sages in long flowing robes who have designed this blogworld for all of us to share and take-par (or par-take) and you please must forgive my soi-disant prose this morning,as I have been(reading;prose by eecummings lately and that:always affects me,some
what)

(which I will describe in my other blog "Bookcases" (nice plug, eh?) as soon as I am finished)

As for my point this morning, I am finished.

Except to tell you to check out autumn-berry.blogspot.com - great website with these things called "brushes" which I tried to figure out but don't quite understand - I'd like to use such artwork to improve the look of my blogs, but her blog did state that she's a fulltime mommy and doesn't answer e-mail, but she does have some posts to help you out. So if you understand the "brushes" thing, I'd highly suggest checking her out . . . I mean, her blog.

Get on wid'yo dirty mind!

TTFN

VG

Corridor

Ever feel like life is just one big corridor in a governmental office complex? and that the half of the flourescent bulbs are more than a little dim?

Last Night at the Zen and Tao Acoustic Café

I stopped in at the Zen and Tao Acoustic Café for a coffee with a whiskey chaser. That, and to suck down half a pack of cigarettes while watching the current evening's band, whose name I didn't know. But they were fairly decent. Songs about New Zealand poachers, as far as I can recall.

But what was really interesting is that halfway through the evening (halfway through my half a pack and working on my second coffee) the guy beside me at the bar - your typical sad-looking with the wanna-talk eyes suddenly states, "You know what the problem is in this county?"

That is always such a loaded question. You never know WHAT's going to follow.

But he followed with, "In this country, we worship our children like little gods. When they fall down, we don't teach them to pick themselves up, we LIFT them up. We teach them that they are little princes and princesses, we don't raise them to be heroes. We don't teach them that they have to earn respect, we teach them that they deserve respect simply because they were born."

I really didn't want him to go on, not because I didn't care, but because his paragraph was very eloquent, almost poetic, and filled with cultural truth. Anything that followed would merely be a drunken spilling of moribund detail, amounting really, after all, to nothing.

He did continue, for the rest of the pack, I might add (which I shared with him) but I will spare the post the details. I will leave you with the other quote.

"When you have nothing, you are happy with anything you get, because now at least you have something. But our children - we have given them everything, and as a consequence they aren't happy with anything."

True words for thought, my friends.

VG

Sideways Books

Sometimes at the library (still an old fogey am I, eh wot? hangin' out at dem der stacks and stacks of boooooks) I like to wander among the shelves. Is that bibliophilia or simply biblioweirdia? I don't know, but as it goes I like to check out what I call

Sideways Books.

These are the books that other people have taken from their normal places on the shelves and instead of returning them to their rightful place within the world created by Mr. Dewey, they choose simply to lay them down, on their sides, in pitiful disgrace.

Actually, I shouldn't be so difficult on the people who lay the books sideways, for, even though they are showing great laziness by not returning them from whence they were drawn, at the very least these people are not RE-shelving these tomes in entirely the WRONG space.

Thank the Lord for small favours.

However, back to the original point at thrust: Sometimes these "sideways books" can be treasures that you would never have thought to seek on your own. They are like little troves that little gnomes leave in your path, little nuggets - jewels, if you will.

Plus, I always root for the underdog - I like to check out the books because I feel that they are, in a way, somewhat sad. They had had a flickerment of hope at one point ("Oh boy! Somebody's going to check me out! ME!") and then the crashing disappointment of being laid, side-down on the cold metal shelving unit: far away from it's friends. I can hear it yelling, "HEY R792.831 W892 1999!!! I'm over here buddy, can you hear MEEEEE!!!????)

Now how's that for a little bit of anthropomorphism, eh? Or rather, would it be more correct to say, Biblioanthropomorphism? I like that term. Jot it down; it'll show up on the test later.

But, back AGAIN to the main point: these books can occasionally hold great treasures for us. And in all perfect honesty, I mean to post this on Bookcases. So let me try to send it there now.

OK, swell - I can't even cut'n'paste to the other blog. Crud - could somebody please send me an instruction manual on blogging? Like "Blogging for Dummies"?

Criminy I can just imagine all you 18-20 yr olds out there laughing at this old fogey. Lemme just post this on this blog and if you want to read about some of the sideways books that I find I'll review them on my Bookcases blog.

Just don't laugh TOO hard, OK? Thanks.

VG