Wednesday, January 28, 2009

25 more

It's gone around again since last time I did it, so why not do it again?

1. In high school I was very proud when I got a letter saying I'd been accepted to Samford. A year or two later I learned they'd not turned anybody down in years.
2. I never quite figured out why anybody would want to be in a fraternity. I was friends with a bunch of guys who were, and I didn't have to pay them.
3. Every time I carry a pistol I pray that I will not need it, and for God to help anyone who leaves me no choice but to use it.
4. I think that everybody should talk abut hard times with someone who lived through the Depression before all those folks are dead.
5. Once in a while I run into the woman who taught me senior English in high school, and I act as if I liked her.
6. I'd go back to Alaska if I could take my son and daughter with me, but I might not want to come back.
7. I have still not figured out the appropriate course of action when someone I don't know wants to be facebook friends.
8. There is a big difference in fighting for one's country, and being sent to one's death in some God-forsaken part of the world for no good reason.
9. Even though I can take 'em or leave 'em myself, I grow tomatoes every year because people love it when I give them some.
10. Mick Jagger is within a couple of months of being the same age as my dad.
11. After 6 weeks of being incoherent after The Wreck, my first thoughts were how tacky the Thanksgiving decorations in my hospital room were, and the body odor of the nurse changing the dressing on my feeding tube. The morphine dreams don't count.
12. The smartest guy I have ever had as a friend--George McNinch--was also the only person who seemed to like Neil Young and distilled spirits as much as me.
13. My lawyer saw me through my divorce for free, and one of these days I'll figure out some way to return the favor.
14. God is not good, God is not bad, God is not your buddy, God is not your enemy. God just is. What are you going to do about it?
15. It frustrated me to no end that the radio station I liked for new music added overplayed stuff from the 80s to its playlist. I didn't like the Scorpions when they were new, and now they're supposed to be classic??
16. Slinging pizza is most assuredly a dead-end job, but my, there are some fun twists and turns along the way.
17. I've only ever shot at paper targets, bottles, and miscellaneous junk, but I am still proud that I can hit stuff with an old military rifle from a couple hundred yards away.
18. I am descendant from Appalachian hill folk on both my mother's and father's sides of the family.
19. Whether it's a car, electronics or plum wine, stuff made in Japan tends to be better than stuff made elsewhere in the world.
20. I laughed all day after I read the headline in The Onion: Black Man Given Nation's Shittiest Job.
21. I go to Wal-Mart not so much for the low prices, as I do for the walking anthropology study a trip there soon becomes.
22. Arguing on the Internet is like cheating in the Special Olympics.
23. Made-up baby names never cease to amaze me.
24. I thought there was going to be something to turning 40, but there wasn't really.
25. It's been years since I was through there, but I can still direct a person to an address in North Shelby County with ease.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Nothing in particular

Getting perilously close to a month since the last post here, which I don't like because I don't want to this to become one of those blogs that doesn't get updated very often. In the the time since my last post I have gone right on living and thinking; I just have gotten slack about telling!
Why not start the telling with the Internet browser that is running this very instant? Back late last year I read about an alarming security hole in the browser I used at the time, MS Internet Explorer. I shut it down right then, went looking for another, found Mozilla Firefox and installed it. What a nice surprise! Not only does it do everything MSIE does, but it also catches typos as you make them...pretty damn cool, I say. It sort of reminds me of what Netscape Navigator used to be like.

It turned out that Microsoft patched the hole in IE the very same day I heard about it, but I am not going back because Firefox kicks ass! It's free http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/
Also since I last posted, I have continued ripping my old records and tapes onto CD, albeit at a slower pace since I closer to getting done and that box of stuff ultimately bound for the thrift store is getting fuller. I have shared copies of my reborn music collection with others, and they liked hearing them, so that was a bonus.

The job I continue to work while looking another job took a turn for the better in the past month when the store was moved to a much bigger and better location. True, the needs of a pizza joint are not very complex, but it's nice having room to stack up our stuff without having to move other stuff around doing it. For those wondering, Domino's is now in Cropwell, back behind The Country Store in the same building with Trendsetters salon. I've affectionately named our new neighbors "the hair honeys" and it has already been fun taking them the carryout orders they place for lunch.

What else...OH...I can't leave out me making use of Internet trying to meet somebody. I've tried a few of the over the past few months, geez, how many sites? 4? 5? The sites are marketed with varying approaches from too much intellectualizing and waiting around to overt sexuality to just throwing one's self up on a bulletin board (singlesnet) to a combination of those (match.com) And I won't glorify any of them with a description...except to say that it and every last one of the other them all sell the very same thing: loneliness.

It is a free site by the name of plenty of fish that I wound up liking more than any of the others. While the response rate (less than 10 percent) I've had in trying to contact women hasn't changed, the site gets WAY more traffic than the others, plus has discussion forums to which I have had fun contributing while waiting around for something to happen. And then there is the fact that it has yielded what the other sites touted but seldom delivered: getting to meet somebody interesting! Hell, yeah...