old-fart adventures

Spent the better part of the morning and early afternoon with what can only be described as old-fart adventures -- to wit, getting a computer tech to unravel Google Chrome from this computer (I'm not a game addict) and replacing the most up-to-date version of Solitaire with an older, slower, more visible and less-ad-strewn version.

Am I exhausted? Of course, but then damn near anything wears me out these days. Somewhere I read that 20 percent of the body's energy goes into thinking, when it occurs. If true (and I am skeptical of that sort of quantification), it accounts for the drowsies that overtake me after a reading or writing session that is followed almost immediately by a feeling I have actually done some work ... when clearly, based on the five senses, I have accomplished precisely squat.

The twinkling lights dim down and with them flow the energies of consciousness. Shiiieeet!

I'd love to say I would spend the rest of the day chopping some ancient oak out on the back-40, but it's not true. Time for a nap.

So it goes.

$210 million church settlement

It wasn't so long ago -- it feels like a couple or three years -- that the Roman Catholic Church expressed its concern for the alleged victims of clergy sexual abuse with what can only be described as the Vatican Two-Step -- endless obfuscations and 'caring' press releases lobbed at men and women who were once hurt. Now the tsunami seems to be reversing itself: Victims have learned that the damage done cannot be expunged or healed -- and the time cannot be reclaimed -- so the next best thing is to hit the world's largest corporation where it hurts ... the pocketbook. Suddenly, the humble-pie fabrications are told by voices other than the church.

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has agreed to a $210 million settlement with 450 victims of clergy sexual abuse as part of its plan for bankruptcy reorganization, making it the second-largest U.S. payout in the scandal that rocked the nation’s Roman Catholic Church.
Victims’ attorney Jeff Anderson said the settlement was reached with the victims and the archdiocese and includes accountability measures. The money, a total of $210,290,724, will go into a pot to pay survivors, with the amount for each survivor to be determined.

And from the Guardian:

Pope Francis has become the first pope to publicly denounce a “culture of abuse and cover-up” in the Catholic church, saying he was ashamed that neither he nor church leaders in Chile truly ever listened to victims of the country’s sexual abuse scandal.

if only life were that simple ... or complex

Late one day last week, the much-wrinkled, good-natured face of a woman I estimated to be in her 90's looked out from the TV screen and said simply, "Men love war. Always have. Always will."

The topic that enfolded her observation was lost to me. The simplicity and good-nature embedded itself in my mind. "Relax," her face said to me. "It's just a fact. Relax and find something useful to do."

Isn't it funny how anyone might search and dig and sweat and swear in an effort to boil things down to a single simplicity -- a universal solvent of some sort? In the searching, the reasoning is that if the single simplicity were inhaled and digested, the topic might be resolved and the search would end.

But the fact seems to be that once having shaped and attained the simplicity -- whatever it is -- the mind rushes forward and asserts, "Well, it's not quite that simple..." at which point the search for a new and improved simplicity begins. There is research and parsing and dissecting and charts and history and all sorts of efforts to round off the understanding, to explain why and how "it's not that simple."

It is that simple, on the one hand.
It's not that simple on the other.
And the beat goes on.
There is a period on the sentence that brooks no periods.

It all reminds me of the old joke in which a bird flies around a mountain top in ever-smaller circles until finally it flies up its own asshole and disappears.

Also of the old third-grade silly:

Everybody's doin' it
Doin' it
Doin' it --
Pickin' their nose and
Chewin' it
Chrewin' it
Chewin' it.

And of the words attributed to Gautama:

"It is not what others do and do not do that is my concern. It is what I do and do not do -- that is my concern."

"Men love war. Always have. Always will."

shrinks, firefighters and facial hair

Among the imponderables I am unlikely to iron out before my death is this: Is it true, as some niggling part of me insists, that firefighters and shrinks have disproportionately more facial hair by ratio than the population at large?

What would I know if I knew the answer? Nothing, perhaps, but the niggling might abate.

"Class of '57" offering in music and song

Here, as a follow-up to the "Replacing the National Anthem" blog post, is the musical version by The Statler Brothers:

as if an eruption were not enough

Officials at the Pompeii archaeological site have announced the discovery of the skeleton of a man crushed by an enormous stone while trying to flee the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

spicy insults

An insult I have always enjoyed was this: "She's ugly and her mother dresses her funny." It has both soft edges and sharp places. Anyway, I wish I'd said that.

Closer to the bloody bone and yet a to-and-fro I always admired was posted in a men's room stall at the army base where I was once stationed. "Niger [sic]" one hand-written message began, "go back to Africai [sic]." Below it, in much better penmanship was the rejoinder, "I'm taking your mother and sister with me."

A good insult is not always easy to find. More, there is what I always took to be a fact of life: Everyone needs a certain thickness of skin when passing off this mortal coil. Someone's bound to insult you or your friends or your beliefs and the best you can do is swallow and move forward. And at the end of the day, I suspect the world would be a lesser place if all the insults were swept up and whisked away: Purity can be tiresome.

Now comes the tale of Roseanne Barr whose resurrected TV serial "Roseanne" was abruptly canceled after Barr shot her mouth off:

In a since deleted comment on Twitter, Barr compared Valerie Jarrett, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, to an ape. Barr wrote that if the Islamist political movement “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby = vj."

Various Google sites say that Jarrett is black or African-American or whatever the non-insulting terminology is these days. So Barr stepped into a multi-faceted shit pile... black, 'terrorism,' and who knows what other associative bells she set to ringing.

[It may be worth noting here that resurrection of black comedian Bill Cosby's "The Cosby Show" seems to have no problem with re-runs even as the actor faces a raft of insulting charges of philandering.]

This is an era of great 'sensitivity.' Politicians and moguls are dropping like flies from the parapets of their grand castles. Women who were abused in the past come forward and are, at long last, believed. Victims of the Vatican are listened to. Black victims of police bullets come forward with yet another compelling tale. A presumption of guilt seems as pervasive as once a presumption of innocence was. Quit before you get fired ... and a lot of people are quitting.

But with virtue tapping at the door of insults, I find myself balking. Where is the line between driven-snow decency and a little sass on the seas of this life.

Honestly, I can't draw the lines in these sands. A little kindness goes a long way. But does a lot of kindness go too far? Please spare me the oleaginous rejoinders.

I honestly don't know, but I do know that lately I have noticed a growing enjoyment of horse radish. 

as dangerous as communism -- accountancy

A Guardian article points out the unsound practices that accountancy once was charged with ferreting out. And you thought communism was a threat to capitalism.

Just four major global firms – Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Ernst & Young (EY) and KPMG – audit 97% of US public companies and all the UK’s top 100 corporations, verifying that their accounts present a trustworthy and fair view of their business to investors, customers and workers.... There are no serious rivals to undercut them. What’s more, since audits are a legal requirement almost everywhere, this is a state-guaranteed cartel.
[E]conomist JK Galbraith had ended his landmark history of the 1929 "Great Crash" by warning of the reluctance of “men of business” to speak up “if it means disturbance of orderly business and convenience in the present”. (In this, he thought, “at least equally with communism, lies the threat to capitalism”.) Galbraith could have been prophesying accountancy a few decades later, now led by men of business rather than watchdogs of business.[B]y shaping the world in which they operate, the accountants have ensured that they are unlikely to face their own downfall. As the world stumbles from one crisis to the next, its economy precarious and its core financial markets inadequately reformed, it won’t be the accountants who pay the price of their failure to hold capitalism to account. It will once again be the millions who lose their jobs and their livelihoods...
[T]he demise of sound accounting became a critical cause of the early 21st-century financial crisis. Auditing limited companies, made mandatory in Britain around a hundred years earlier, was intended as a check on the so-called “principal/agent problem” inherent in the corporate form of business. As Adam Smith once pointed out, “managers of other people’s money” could not be trusted to be as prudent with it as they were with their own. When late-20th-century bankers began gambling with eye-watering amounts of other people’s money, good accounting became more important than ever. But the bean counters now had more commercial priorities and – with limited liability of their own – less fear for the consequences of failure.
 

up and at 'em!

Good morning, gods and godesses!

Up and at 'em!

have meagaphone, lack subject

As it strikes me this morning, this is the era of the megaphone: Everyone, based on the leadership of U.S. president Donald Trump, has got one but nobody can find anything to say. Me too.

What's to be done when everyone has a megaphone and no one has anything left to say?

In the president's lexicon, there are endless things that seem to be "very, very" good (think third-grade book report for those who may remember books) and yet what those things are turned to dust under examination. If the president stands for nothing -- will stand up for nothing -- why should anyone else. Everything is "very, very" good unless it's bad ... in which case the blame is placed on someone other than the president. The chief purveyor of "false news" is a leader for one and all these days.

Coal mining jobs that were promised during the presidential campaign? It's not Trump's fault that all those coal miners are still out of work. Tax cut for the well-heeled? Everyone benefits, except those who really don't. The longest war in American history? No problem, except that it is.

Making a "better" deal with Iran? Well, there's some confusion about that, but the downside is all the fault of Democrats and Trump has yet to enunciate his better deal in the same way he and his cohorts have failed to create a new health law that will replace what predecessor Barack Obama cobbled together with a lot of effort.

Who needs effort when you've got a megaphone? I'm no better.

I've got a megaphone and I'm not afraid to use it. I really do wish there were something of substance I could megaphone-ize ... but it all seems to slip away in this era of the megaphone.

What a crass neighborhood we live in.

Ms. Geek Rwanda

Ms. Geek Rwanda

After years of women in evening gowns vying for the title of national beauty queen, glamour is giving way to geekery in Rwanda.
A group of female tech entrepreneurs decided it was time to ditch Miss Rwanda for a different kind of competition, one that judged women on brilliance rather than beauty. It was time for Ms Geek.
The first Ms Geek Rwanda was crowned in 2014, and the competition has since expanded to include other African countries under the unifying banner of Ms Geek Africa. The event, open to girls and women aged 13 to 25, encourages contestants to use technology to solve everyday problems in their communities. The finalists receive business training and the winner is awarded financial backing to help realise her idea.

filing "music compendium"

Just filing, in no especial order, a random and expandable collection of music that can melt me from time to time. I feel naked even posting it, but don't want to hunt it down if it goes down the computer maw somehow.

MUSIC COMPENDIUM

JOHN PRINE/ iris dement ----  IN SPITE OF OURSELVES -- http://youtu.be/Le4248SiLN0

banco sabadell .. Beethoven's 9th CHORUS  -- http://youtu.be/GBaHPND2QJg

MCGARRIGAL ... LOG DRIVER'S WALTZ ... Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upsZZ2s3xv8

OPENING OSLO ... SLAVE CHORUS FROM AIDA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3Qx_oMH62U

Terere obande african chorus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1caVN7EHL4

James Taylor Sweet Baby James  -- http://youtu.be/iSkaEP2ZqbY

Kiri te Kanawa ... Mozart ... the Golden Flute ... Bei männern, welche liebe fühlen ... http://youtu.be/44TlKhHLH4I

BRAHMS WALTZ IN a FLAT ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPLfOMqLz0E#t=27

LET'S GO FLY A KITE (SAVING MR. BANKS) : https://youtu.be/viMiMku-w2Q

TENNESSEE WALTZ -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cea9oQYKv5k ... NOT PERFECT

I WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR LOVE -- https://youtu.be/1QMlNmb_31Q

HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING -- PETE SEEGER -- https://youtu.be/AH72dgNSAsw

I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE GARDEN ... LYNN ANDERSON... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beKFjPEU_Fw

HALLELUJAH -- LEONARD COHEN -- https://youtu.be/YrLk4vdY28Q

I AM WEARY, LET ME REST (KISS ME MOTHER) ... COX FAMILY ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyOWKhsWSpQ

La boheme - "O Soave Fanciulla"

https://youtu.be/LYB5QS8LS-4

Nozze  Figaro

https://youtu.be/CQ8ZHilxdm8

Song from 1995 "Babe" movie: https://youtu.be/83LNTbeatHE

MASTER AND COMMANDER (LAST) BOCCHERINI --

https://youtu.be/l78VNe_dhAM

BOCCHERINI COMPENDIUM -- https://youtu.be/7p94DFyBBwc

BEETHOVEN Rubenstein concerto # 5 The Emperor -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K25fZRwbeGM

DOES YOUR CHEWING GUM LOSE ITS FLAVOR -- https://youtu.be/x6bFTVi0hHs

ROY ORBISON -- PRETTY WOMAN -- https://youtu.be/_PLq0_7k1jk

BEATLES -- NORWEGIAN WOOD -- https://youtu.be/HnN4f73yvno

BEYOND THE IRON GATE --

GOOFING OFF SUITE ... PETE SEEGER ...

https://youtu.be/yiTBcD36_G4

DIMMING OF THE DAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbzbWwINDYg

(US) Memorial Day

Remember ...

IF YOU REALLY WANT TO HONOR VETERANS, 
           STOP MAKING THEM.            

replacing The National Anthem

A friend passed along, together with lyrics, American author Kurt Vonnegut's suggestion for a replacement for the Star Spangled Banner. This in the wake of the National Football League's new ruling on singing the anthem on-field at football games and remaining off the field if a player wishes to mark the racial division (taking a knee) on-field.

Class of '57

The Statler Brothers

Tommy's selling used cars, Nancy's fixing nails.
Harvey runs a grocery store and Margaret doesn't care.
Jerry drives a truck for Sears, Charlotte on the make.
And Paul sells life insurance and part time real estate.

Helen is a hostess. Frank works at the mill.
Janet teaches grade school and probably always will.
Bob works for the city. And Jack's in lab research.
And Peggy play organ at the Presbyterian Church.

And the class of '57 had its dreams.
We all thought we'd change the world with our great work & deeds.
Or maybe we just thought the world would change to fit our needs.
The class of '57 had its dreams.

Betty runs a trailer park.
Jan sells Tupperware.
Randy on an insane ward.
Mary's on ware fare.
Charlie took a job at Ford.
Joe took Freddie's wife.  Charlotte took a millionaire.
And Freddie took his life. 

Johnny's big in cattle. Ray is deep in debt.
Where Mavis finally would up is anybodies guess.
Linda married Sonny. Brenda married me.
And the class of all of us are just part of history.

And the class of '57 had its dreams.
We all thought we'd change the world with our great work & deeds.
Or maybe we just thought the world would change to fit our needs.
The class of '57 had its dreams.

Songwriters: Ddn Reid / Harold Reid

Class of '57 lyrics © BMG Rights Management US, LLC

Buddhist funerals for beloved robot dogs

Passed along in email today:

... a Buddhist Funeral Service for Robot Dogs

On the one hand, it makes me wonder if the funeral biz -- which is big biz among Buddhists in Japan -- is losing market share. On the other, there is something utterly human in the loneliness quotient.

laughing together

As if to conquor
Some edgeless universe,
Words prattle forth
And vie:
Me-me-me-me-me...

It is a small mistake --
Mis-hearing the solemn and sublime --
When all the time
The freshet burbles over
Small stones,
Clatters around an unseen bend
And comes to rest in a still-still
Pool where laughter meets the sky
And big fish lounge.
*                                        *                                          *

There is an Eskimo tribe, I've read, that refers to sexual intercourse as "laughing together." If that isn't a big fish, I don't know what is.

the advent of 'fact checking' the president

I'm not positive, but I think that it is only since Donald Trump became president of the United States that the Associated Press has adopted the habit of running "fact checks" on the statements that he makes. The results, for Mr. Trump, are largely abysmal.

Eg.: WASHINGTON (AP) — Illegal border crossings, as President Donald Trump measures them, have gone up since he took office, even as he speaks to audiences about a drop of more than 40 percent.... etc.

Imagine having to think it necessary to run an entire article that corrects the assertions of the president of the most powerful country in the world. And then imagine taking the exercise as a matter of  'normalcy' ... no biggie... just the president lying as usual... no need to do anything about it.

Irish dump abortion ban

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland’s prime minister on Saturday hailed the culmination of “a quiet revolution” in what was once one of Europe’s most socially conservative countries after a landslide referendum vote to liberalize highly restrictive laws on abortion.

Voters in the once deeply Catholic nation backed the change by two-to-one, a far higher margin than any opinion poll in the run up to the vote had predicted, and allows the government to bring in legislation by the end of the year.

priceless antiques

If you wait long enough, everything turns into an antique, a priceless gem or a bit of money in the bank.

Look around and you'll see what I mean.

chic patriotism

As is often the case, "it's the money, honey."

WASHINGTON (AP) — With its decision to ban kneeling during the national anthem, critics are accusing the NFL of prioritizing being in the good financial graces of mainstream America over the social justice passions of its players trying to draw attention to the deaths of African-Americans at the hands of police.
Some opponents of the new policy now vow to never watch an NFL game again. The NFL’s new anthem policy — similar to NBA rules in place for decades — makes the athletes stand for “The Star-Spangled Banner” or be absent from the field while it’s played.
Critics say the league acted without input from its majority-black players and buckled to pressure from some major advertisers and even President Donald Trump, who rallied his mostly-white base against players for failing to display their patriotism, shifting the debate from social justice for minorities to how to act during the anthem itself. Others, including some players, applauded the league’s action or took no issue with the policy.

Is there some graven-in-stone reason that the national anthem should be sung at sporting events? How about deleting "The Star Spangled Banner" from athletic money-makers? Isn't one Donald Trump selling off and selling out his country enough?

Is there anyone out there who is grown-up enough to say that racial inequality is just plain more important than a song and that racial disparities deserve more and more serious attention than some feel-good bit of singing? Of course it won't solve anything to delete the song, but it might be a talking point in a thorny debate.

Since the NFL is stuck between a rock and a hard place, how about doing the right thing and damn-the-torpedoes.

tracking down the elusive "Nessie"

... [T]he legend of “Nessie” may have no place left to hide. A New Zealand scientist is leading an international team to the lake next month, where they will take samples of the murky waters and conduct DNA tests to determine what species live there.
University of Otago professor Neil Gemmell says he’s no believer in Nessie, but he wants to take people on an adventure and communicate some science along the way. Besides, he says, his kids think it’s one of the coolest things he’s ever done.

falsies

It is probably just another example of how far behind yet another curve I am, but when I was growing up, "falsies" meant the augmentation women might apply to their breasts -- boobs puffed up with cotton or whatever other batting.

Nowadays, in my untutored eye, it seems that every woman on display is wearing false hair -- "hair extensions" as they're called in an apparently endless stream on Google. It's a bit like looking at the latest automobiles that lack originality of design -- everyone with ass-length tresses (and perhaps expanded boobs)... an idiotic feeding frenzy... everyone racing to be like everyone else, the anointed.

Given the long history of wigs, you might think me stupid to wish this trend would go the way of the dodo. I am not quite sure why I find it irritating as a latter-day trend but maybe it's partly the fact that Donald Trump's trophy children and trophy wives all look the same -- flavorless as the bubble gum stuck up under a greasy spoon's counter.

It's not "fair and nuanced" as a judgment, but when was life ever fair and nuanced?

As fashion trends go ... well, it's not up my alley.

Paul Simon ... a blessing

What is a blessing?

Perhaps a blessing is little more than to have lived in a time when someone loved the music more than he or she loved the self.

I think of this as Paul Simon dwindles. It's not just the music per se, which people may like or dislike at will, but the commitment and ardor that blesses ... blesses ... blesses.

Where the blessings fade away, it is a good time to die.

fuck 'em again ... harder!

"Brazen" is the only word that comes to mind.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress was taking a final step Tuesday toward dismantling a chunk of the rules framework for banks installed to prevent a recurrence of the 2008 financial crisis that brought millions of lost jobs and foreclosed homes....
“This is not a bill that benefits consumers. It is a big-bank bonanza,” Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, said in debate on the House floor before the vote.
The bill would make a fivefold increase, to $250 billion, in the level of assets at which banks are deemed to pose a potential threat if they failed. The change would ease regulations and oversight on more than two dozen financial institutions, including BB&T Corp., SunTrust Banks, Fifth Third Bancorp and American Express.
Eventually, the exempted banks would no longer have to undergo an annual stress test conducted by the Federal Reserve. The test assesses whether a bank has a big enough capital buffer to survive an economic shock and keep on lending. The banks also would be excused from submitting plans called “living wills” that spell out how a bank would sell off assets or be liquidated in the event of failure so it wouldn’t create chaos in the financial system.

disgusted by wealth ... really?

Gregory Stevens

A Silicon Valley pastor [Gregory Stevens] has resigned from his church after calling the city of Palo Alto an “elitist shit den of hate” and criticizing the hypocrisy of “social justice” activism in the region....
“The tech industry is motivated by endless profit, elite status, rampant greed, and the myth that their technologies are somehow always improving the world.”....
“I hate ‘social justice’ in Palo Alto. What a fucking joke.”

On the one hand, you can imagine his frustrations. It's good for a news story.

On the other hand, from where I sit, a larger story goes begging -- how those who might be considered rich fit in to a wider swath of political liberalism. How does being wealthy disbar those who might wish to add their voices to a more generous vision? Shall l fault them by the nature of what may have been their upbringing? As a poor man may be encumbered/limited by an impoverished background, isn't there something to be said for rich people who simply grew up in and with plenty? Are they encumbered by their past as any of us might be? True, there are braggarts and elitists, but for the few who may question their own comforts ... well, what about a background over which you have no control?

Stevens, I notice, is 28 -- a ripe age for discovering the mixed nature or hypocrisy of things. A minister's job, among other things, is to milk the cash cow, much as a college president might. Look around any church congregation and count what I have come to call "the blue-haired ladies" -- devoted widows, often, who have chosen to support their local tabernacle. If money is what they can currently afford, well, movements need money, if only to buy the plastic bottles full of water ... bottles that can wash up on a beach near you. Donning sack cloth and ashes may sound humble-pie, but shining stars are often in need of very tangible telescopes.

I leave it there. I've run out of energy.

beauty and the natural beast

Lava flows into the Pacific Ocean southeast of Pahoa during ongoing eruptions of the Kilauea Volcano. REUTERS/Terray Sylvester

Maybe...
The danger of life is not dying.
The danger of life is living poorly.

It is somehow stunning that wars proceed apace at the same time that Hawaii's beauty-and-the-beast scenario plays out in utter serenity. You might think that difficulties provided by nature -- stuff like food and water and shelter -- would be enough.

Oh well, as a wrinkled woman I heard on TV a couple of days ago put it, "Men love wars. Always have. Always will."

 

 

the rehab scam - John Oliver

Passed along in email:

"take it easy, but take it"

Rattling around associatively in a mind-video this morning, the punchline on folksinger Pete Seeger's version of "Talking Union" raised its head once more:

Take it easy, but take it.

Seeger's bit of history came in the wake of a serendipitous email -- a fellow writing the other day to say he was enjoying reading my book, "Answer Your Love Letters: Footnotes to a Zen Practice." The book's sole usefulness in my present-day mind is its capacity to gather dust, both metaphorically and literally. Definitely a rear-view mirror object ... but hey, who doesn't like having her/his ego stroked?

I wrote back saying thank you and there followed several emails about Zen practice, problems that crop up ... the usual stuff that is never "usual" to the person exercising them. As I was myself once helped by snailmail from brighter lights than my own, so I feel bound to do something similar: If someone asks, well, speak up... lie a little.

The email give-and-take lingered as recollection this morning. I thought about it and invariably came on one of my hot-button points: The greatest single difficulty in spiritual life -- which is to say life -- is probably the crediting of "something else." Some god, some (wo)man, some text ... something else... good, bad or indifferent -- something else.

And the conundrum that accompanies the something-else syndrome is the realization that there is nothing besides something else. Everything is something else and something else is the central difficulty in spiritual or any other sort of life. There is nothing else besides something else. Reality check! -- the greatest problem is something else and yet there is nothing else to work with.

I can hear the objections from here: If there is nothing other than something else, how could something else be the bestest with the most-est problem?

Answer: Tough titty. Practice anyway and don't get hung up on something else. You have to be a little bit crazy to follow this Yellow Brick Road, but what the hell, none of the other Yellow Brick Roads has worked very well, up until now so ... go ahead and be a little bit crazy.

When I once asked my teacher if Zen were dualistic, he said no. When I asked him if it were therefore monistic, he again replied that it was not. "So," I said, "if it's not dualistic and not monistic, what is it?" I watched his face as he tried to frame an answer -- he was obviously caught between wanting to say nothing and wanting to say something. Finally he opted for the latter: "Maybe," he said, "it is like a pointless point."

All of this probably sounds airy-fairy or religious or something, but for someone willing to investigate this life -- its marvels and its horrors -- it's target-central.

MEAT
AND
POTATOES!

I'm getting dust up my nose with all this Zen-recall stuff ... dust stacked on the bookshelf. Am I jerking myself around? Sure -- you got a better suggestion? It's bullshit that bullshit is merely bullshit. Of course it's not bullshit either.

Pick your poison, your something else and then, "take it easy, but take it!"

proud of my daughter

Ever since she sent the photos yesterday, I have been feeling a hard-to-define, deep-seated pride in my daughter, Olivia.

Some will say, "Well d'oh -- she's your daughter," but my half-baked attempts to be a father don't work like that. I have always seen my role as one in which I keep my eyes skinned for dangers and errors that might hurt my children. I don't want them to be hurt by assholes and and I try to turn the volume down when I see them indulging what I consider asshole behavior. Knee-jerk pride is not on my front burner, however much I might wish it were. I love my kids, but somehow protection is the name of my inner game. Not that my approach works, of course, but that's the cut of my jib.

And yet the photos lit up my assembly with pure pride. My daughter -- I guess you could call her a savvy millennial who seems to know how to climb the corporate ladder and navigate its throttling vines -- is willing to break a sweat. The world does not need another millennial flouting all that gear and all those half-masticated answers. And nobody can be a savvy millennial when doing pedal-to-the-metal calisthenics. And that's what Olivia is doing in part at a management seminar this weekend: Roll out of bed at an impossibly early hour, hit the arena and for whatever time period, crank out push-ups, sit-ups and whatever all else under the tutelage of former Navy SEALs. No one has to take part in the calisthenics, but it's part of the seminar which also includes more millennial-friendly classes and lectures.

I figure people capable of exercising a capacity to sweat are smarter and more honest than most, even if they carry designer pocketbooks.

A month or so ago, the first time my daughter took this training and told me calisthenics were an optional part of the training, I told her, only half in jest, that she damned well better get out there and do the exercises, however early in the morning they were. After the first day of that seminar, I got a brief note that said only, "I threw up twice."

There was no similar note this time. Just the pix. And my pride soared. My daughter, who is not averse to a good shopping trip to the millennial mecca (the mall) was willing to break a sweat and I, for one, have a soft spot in my heart for those willing to break a sweat rather than simply expect accolades because of their electronic gear or clothing or certificates or some other millennial chic. She was a good business woman AND she could break a sweat AND she was my DAUGHTER. Who the hell died and left me so lucky?!

Honestly, I cannot describe this feeling, but it feels great ... and I'm proud as punch ... for nothing and for everything ... and it's weird ... and I'm sure glad she's doing what I could not ... all at once. Wubba-wubba... so much for literacy.

"Heaven's Gate" rollerskating

Stuck like some loop tape in my head this morning is the roller-skating scene from the 1980 western, "Heaven's Gate," an infuriatingly-bad and yet somehow-hypnotizing movie I plugged into yesterday and couldn't stop watching despite a certainty that it was largely historical eyewash. On the face of it, the movie is a cattle-barons-face-off-against-immigrant-farmers tale. I didn't realize until later that the director was the same guy, Michael Cimino, who made "The Deer Hunter," a wowser of a movie focusing on the Vietnam war era. Sometimes I just roll over and play dead for a fiction I purely want to be fact.

The roller-skating scene is hard to excise in its fullness ... the Pied Piper cherubic face of the fiddler, everyone in a gigantic building out west in the 1890's, the colonization of the west, the ebullient enjoyment of the immigrants, and finally, I suppose, the fact that I am a sucker for waltzes. I don't care if it's not true in a hundred ways ... I want it to be true and am willing to set aside my incredulity for ... for ... for an immersion I am certain not everyone can or would accede to.

For all that, here is a cut of the scene (short ad first, sorry) followed by a subsequent solo waltz by two of the main characters.





And, now that I've noted it, perhaps I can move on to something-completely-different....