go here, and then here.  i did. 

no appreciable progress made.  time to leave for supper at stephanie's (hey!  that sounds like a title, like maybe the sequel to breakfast at tiffany's.  umm, no?  <sigh>) 

aside from that, wasn't george peppard surprizingly attractive when he was once-upon-a-time young? (not to mention once-upon-a-time alive).  umm, no?  well, <huff>, you obviously don't like dead young blondes.  (hey!  that sounds like the name of a band....) 

<sigh>

you know, stealing webcam images is getting pretty tedious.  i mean there was a time when it was interesting to learn about http and html, tracing links back through server redirects, frames, and javascripts, across domains, extracting and deconstructing html designed by others...  <sigh>    i do a lot of sighing, don't i?  heh. 

so, the point is that right now i'm gonna try to update all my webcam image links, or write a script that will do that for me.  whoopeee.  just wanted to alert the world. 

oh, and btw, good morning.  apparently, i'm following the time zone of the central pacific, or someplace.  oh, and btw-#2, what the hell is up with those half-hour time zones?  like india.  or central australia.  if you know, please speak

oh-#3, here's a site i stumbled upon (meaning i have no idea how i got there -- this ain't surfing, it's drowning!)  aaaaanyway, it is created by and imbued with the personality of a dweeby nerd, who's really not dweeby at all.  and she's not a nerd, either -- except that she likes not being dumb.  i guess that makes you a nerd. 

oh-#4, that's her blue-tongued dog.  cute, huh?

(addendumb: i am mortified.)

here's a view of the place where i was born (which is not far from where i am -- about a pixel away).  as i write this, the day's light onrushes from the east; the shadowed curve of that face turns toward the dark at mid-atlantic and there takes on the cloistered quiet of night. 

the bright shine from the sahara, and the gleam from scandinavian glaciered coasts are vexing lights to me in this image, they mark the awakened day as beacons in basking revelry, while the cities on the dark side -- my friends -- display their puny helplessness in tiny zits of faint light beneath the massive comforting oppression of night. 

a day in the life

got the letter from unemployment today.     :-(     quoting from the claim adjuster's comments: "you left your work because of stress.  you failed without adequate reason to request a leave and thus your seperation became final.  leaving work under these conditions is voluntary and without good cause attributable to the employing unit.  therefore, you are disqualified..."

well, what'd i expect?  hell, based on that version, i'd have denied me.  i called the director of human resources at adcare hospital (where i worked) today, a very nice guy named paul.  he started-out working in the admitting department, and i was on occasion his supervisor during that time.  anyway, i called because i need to liquidate my retirement funds, i would not have called if i could have avoided it.  paul was cordial, even friendly, explaining the retirement fund's procedures for wresting money away from them.  it takes two weeks. 

then, paul felt it necessary to address the denial of my unemployment claim.  hmm.  i had hoped to bypass that awkward issue and his complicity in it entirely.  but he had a need to talk about it.  (awww).  without coaching from me, he said of his brief tenure in the admitting dept., "i know firsthand that job is the hardest in the hospital.  it was the hardest work for the least money i ever made."  he went on.  "just this week we had a woman walk out of there after only three days."  i found out later they had another walk-out after fifteen minutes.  awww... 

not. 

 

plausible deniability.  if i were in their position, i would use it.  the employee has no written proof of his expressions of distress, of gasping, choking and drowning.  no taped recordings, or even transcripts, of his conversations with administrators about abusive conditions and about incidents of specific abuse. 

but i knew all that when i went there.  it is pretty obvious right up front (aparently within three days), how not up-front they are about things, about their responsibilities and your responsibilities, and how policies are tolerated in a loose-leaf binder, somewhere apart from actual practice, and how a wink and a nod or a glare and a scowl is how things are really done.  it comes across the first time you see that face, the face of a smiling glassy-eyed refusal to care.  'it's all very nice, you bringing this to my attention, thank you very much.'  period.  it is the face of a pledged allegiance to a particular set of corporate self-interests, a narrow inflexible and dehumanizing framework that denies any reality outside of itself, inviolable no matter how compassionate the impetus to reach beyond its limits (or rather, its limitations).  and they call themselves a hospital. 

there should be rage, but there is not, from one who came perilously close to reaching there and fitting in, but didn't.  fortunately. 

 

it's midnight, and i'm just getting started.  (maybe i should move to new york.)  i unplugged the phone today, about an hour after i plugged it back in from being unplugged since yesterday.  <sigh> 

where is this tedious place?  what strands touch it from afar, anchor it within the (in)firmament, at once toying and discarding?  and why do we stay...  we, who can do anything, be anything, even reinvent reality; is this life perhaps a fun-house we chose, during some past enlightenment, to visit -- a dark and startling place intended for amusement only -- and have we perhaps forgotten this?  taking life seriously leads to suicide.  it really is all a joke -- and i don't mean that derogatorily.  i'm serious.  it's a comedy, a light farce, heavy with camp and desperately believable, and tempting, so very tempting to believe...

and where is faith? belief? the concreteness of knowing?  should we just make it all up as we go along, like so many do?  how much should we allow ourselves to lie?  and we really only lie within ourselves; everything else is costume and pretense, even when we try our best, still then, the expression of our truth is incomplete.  any representation of the other -- of what they think, say, or do, of who and what they appear to be -- is never as significant to us as who and what we are ourselves.  besides, one could argue that no truth survives intact the transit across the interval between persons.  we are only naked inside.  the best we can hope is to discover our own nakedness, and perhaps to approach the nakedness of another.  but we can never get all the way there.

 

along that vein, it occurs that i would like a chance to approach the nakedness of my abercrombie-attired neighbor, matt.  he is young, short of stature, innocent of eye, fresh of face, italian of descent, and loose of boyfriend; my neighbor is gay (i hope?) like me.  of course i am almost 20 years his senior, and somewhat reclusive (interpreted, i hope, as enchantingly mysterious).  i am probably viewed by him as somewhat strange.  he and i seem to be up all night, every night lately.  he comes and goes til about 5 am which is when he sleeps, i think.  on those rare occasions when our paths do cross, he gives me a look that might be saying, "gawd! you're so fucking desperate!  will you get a life!"  but i like to think his shy, expressionless glance is saying in breathy, whispering needfulness, "did he notice me? doesn't he want me? isn't he ever going to grab me and press me against the wall and hold me as i faint?  well, isn't he!?!" 

well, it is possible.  remotely. 

 

in the end it is all intellectual dishonesty, a game that i am drawn to no less nor more than anyone else, a game i would gladly play with matt, because we humans are a species that does very much love to lie.  come matt, come lie with me. 

i must be getting very, very old.  a prarie home companion (a.p.h.c.) has become my comfort, like brioschi, or motrin.  some parts can be tedious, but it has gems, jokes, and joy.  And a fair amount of 'biting' satire. 

i would like you, generous reader, to do me a favor.  below is a link to a sound clip from a.p.h.c.'s most recent show, of John Hiatt singing a song he wrote, and i would appreciate it if you would listen to it.  be patient if you do, for the song does not begin until about 2 minutes in.  but it's a very nice song. 

they say all good things about you in retrospect.  he had a good career, he did good things, he was a good man.  but while we are in the throes of these moments what's real is all there is, and what people will say or are saying cannot matter -- because what's real is all there ever needs to be.  the mistakes we made, the bad choices, the stumbles and falls are all forgotten in deference to the flying we did, but i have always been troubled by the dismissal of those lesser moments when we take time to remember, for there is as great a dignity in them as in any. 

Mr Hiatt flubs a line, but in so doing, and in the way he recovers, he makes the experience of this song immeasurably more moving -- at least for me, and for you, too, i hope.  and it's timing in my day today was almost appropriate, too, because i heard this song right after i started writing this post, which was right after i got up at about 2:30 pm.  it took forever to get it posted -- but you know me and tweaking... 

good morning.  it's a bit past my bedtime, but the roast beef sub i had at midnight keeps returning (it's the onions).  so i tweak.  all night i tax blogger's web servers with tiny template alterations and style sheet touchups.  i am insatatiably curious, but lazy and undisciplined -- a combo that leaves me comfortably unsatisfied.  not comfortably numb; i don't want to lose my curiosity, i just don't persue it, much. 

staying up all night is not so bad -- it keeps me out of the world and away from... from people?  so i post a weblog.  this really is like mumbling in the subway: know me know me know me know me know me know me know me, but... don't come near me.  those wild-haired subway lunatics and i have a lot in common; we're all stuck in isolated prison cells aware of the world and unable to engage it, aware of each other down the halls or through the walls, and gaining some half-assed sense of companionship from that, and always afraid to be released.  "don't hate me cuz i'm beautiful," i hear the pretty boys on the street call out to each other in mock indignation, disembodied voices intruding through steel-barred windows, and sometimes i want to lift myself and glance at life, sometimes i don't. 

i don't hate you cuz you're beautiful.  i hate me.

alright, 'nuff a-that.  time to take a nap, reset the neuro-chemicals to a better place.  time has turned us again to face the sun, and i need get me cheerful for that, or for what's left of it after i awake.  good night. 

i have been made real.  the best kind of grace is annonymous grace -- she's the lucky person who was first to post a comment (actually i was the first, but me and all the employees of publisher's clearing house and their families are inelligible).  as such she gets my gratitude, and a coupon for a free foot massage, redeemable at any public men's room (just pass your foot under, oh yeah, just like that, oooo baby...).  if you want it in the ladies room, you got to give me 24 hours notice to do my hair, and find some pasties.  (but don't the stall dividers go all the way to the floor in ladie's rooms?  and if they do, why the difference?  hmmm...)

me and blogger mcgee are starting to get along quite well.  finally. 

now, if i could only acquire a little taste...

tweaking...

SDF

what was that all about?  i really have to stop drinking so much fuckin coffee.  i mean it.  last night, i downloaded and listened to the song that was #1 the day i was born.  then i proceeded to get quite psycho, and balled my eyes out.  (cried)  as if that is not enough, i then had to describe it all in great detail to a complete stranger in an e-mail.  which is i guess kinda what i do here, but here it is more like mumbling out loud in a subway station.  the e-mail thing is a little like pouring your heart out to the cashier-kid at the supermarket.  creepy. 

gotta go make coffee...

h e y !  had another of those spontaneous daylight (sort of) fantasies -- at night they're called nightmares (or wet dreams, if you're lucky).  it went: i was doing laundry, met a guy there who i'd probably met there before during my anti-social depressive state (recently ended, i hope).  i said hi, rattled on and on about my love of snow (we have fifteen new inches here in Worcester), and i was generally just nauseatingly friendly.  he was, in my spontaneous daylight fantasy (SDF), living in with the single mom and her two little girls upstairs from the laundry room.  as he left with a basket-heap of clean laundry he said something about buying some other kind of white stuff.  he wanted to sell me drugs. 

i said, "what?" knowing exactly what he had said.  he replied, "nothin," and he darted out the door.  feeling like that had just made me appear like a prude who was temporarily in the middle of a friendly-talkative-manic phase, i went outside after him.  "  h e y !  " i yelled.  he stopped -- this was a good thing.  he could have ignored me, abandoning our encounter as just another wasted few moments of human interaction.  he certainly could have misinterpretered anger in my voice when i yelled 'hey!' -- imprecise vocal modulations are the way with us manics, and i was a bit loud.  but maybe it was my frustration because another social effort (which are rare as gold in these parts -- at least for my part) was wasted because i was mistaken, again, for something i am not, or at least for something i don't want to be. 

he probably thought i wanted to rat him out, or fuck with his head, or threaten his apartment situation just because -- oh, who knows why, just because once-upon-a-bad-time-reagan told us it was o.k. to hate certain people for certain reasons.  but he (my laundry encounter) stopped anyway and waited to hear me.  i look for that; people who still hold out for the potential of the unknown in spite of their fear of the known.  it felt like kindness, and as he stood there looking at me, his eyes were clear as innocence. 

anyway, (this is going on forever) i didn't want to take the easy way out, and stay with my laundry while he brought his home, and let it end without at least an effort to be clear, to understand and be understood.  "maybe i do and maybe i don't want some," i said to him. 

"i don't know what you're talking about," he started to say before i got the first 'maybe' out.  i forged on, tolerating his understandably defensive reaction, hoping i did actually understand, hoping i was not acting irrationally.  i've done that before...

"i know a lot of people who have used lots of drugs in the past, some of my friends still use drugs, occasionally.  i like them all, a lot.  i might even consider buying some weed from you in the future, who knows, but right now i just don't want there to be any misunderstanding; i don't have any problem with that.  it was nice talkin to ya, i'll see ya round." 

i turned back to the laundry room, half expecting him to roll his eyes and dismiss me with a disconcerted sneer.  i left him just standing there, holding his laundry.  'i tried' i thought with resignation, as i descended the few little steps back down to the basement laundry room door.  when the door didn't close behind me, i looked, and there he was. 

he sat on top of one of the dryers, and we talked until my laundry was all dry.  it didn't seem to take long at all.  over weeks we got to know each other, he would stop by for coffee.  he'd smoke, i'd pass.  usually.  one day he walked in, i said hi, he didn't say anything.  he closed my apartment door, and leaned back on it.  and never taking his eyes off of mine, he grabbed his cock and... 

speaking of   h e y !  , check out hey mercedes (their cool front pictured above).  of course they have a blog!

bernard says, "i think if you are secure and strong at home, you can be secure and strong anywhere."  how true.  shit. 

mmmm, coffee.  hmm, me.  coffee and me. 

still up, waiting for inspiration to come home.  it's out partying with those other two -- love, and success.  the three are getting blitzed at a bar someplace waiting for me to show up.  i'm going to bed. 

a hole in the wall is worth far more in guilt value than the cost of the spackle it would take to fill it.  one of the best deals since horse-hair plaster. 

now HERE is a blog.  check out them hippos.  i'm now finally having this morning's pot o'coffee #2 (long night ahead, i guess) and before tomorrow morning, i may give in and bid on the mug of the sixty-nining ungulates.  I especially like their expressions of wide-eyed surprize. 

fixed tire.  bike was very grubby.  just finished cleaning it--with a toothbrush.  i get a little carried away.  hey, when i was still depressively employed, i would have sooner stuck needles under my nails than take care of something so intimate to me--so very 'joe'--as my bike.  i even cleaned the fridge last week.  i do laundry.  i might even replace those rags i use for towels with new ones.  but right now, i still need milk before i can have some more coffee.  and i am desperate for coffee...

still tweaking the template for this page, colors and such. large layout changes, and pleasing table affairs will no doubt be forthcoming.

i need to go get milk. i have to bring my weekly unemployment claim form to the post office (still not approved for it yet). i have to fix my bike's flat tire (or keep pumping it up every seven minutes). and it's snowing, hard.

there is a very dark brew in my cup.

out of bed. finally. have to make coffee with 2 scoops decaf and 6 scoops regular, different than my usual 1/2 and 1/2 recipe, because i only have enough milk for three cups of coffee, plus a real dark fourth, maybe.

hoo-eff'n-ray! now it's all almost the way it's supposed to be... er, i mean, it's all almost the way i want it to be. after trudging through supposed to's all my life, i am now stunned and charmed every single time i watch as my legs lift off and fall back under rediscovered wings and a new trust of flying; what i want is what i am supposed to do. i'll be damned!

(good night, Irene.)

well, getting sleepy, and can't shake the journal-type template. if i fuck around with it much longer, i'll be up all night.

diving in, playing and splashing. hope i catch a cold.