Another one of those obligatory "Gotta have something to say about Such-and-Such-Day"

Meaning of course 11/11 (which is cool because it's one of those days that's the same in US and European/International notation). I've heard a few complaints about it being in the middle of the week instead of a Monday. So I think about the Grumpy Grampies I've heard snarking that "The War didn't end on the second Monday of November it ended on the 11th" and so then I think "Well yeah, that's true, but it isn't Armistice Day anymore it's Veteran's Day, and it isn't limited to The Great War anymore, so some other non-11/11 Day could reasonably be expected to serve just as well. Are there any WWI veterans around anymore? Could us Non-WWI Veterans not make better use of a long weekend for commemorative purposes? Then again, it isn't even a sanctioned holiday at my company, so Wot-The-Hey, eh? But I'm glad for the notion that some folks have a day off to pay homage to me & my comrades. (I'm being ironic here - I'm a veteran alright, but the closest I came to combat was when some Home Island Guard guys, out on Dear Old P-Y-Do, got uppity and wanted some of the beer we were drinking on the beach during our softball game. I'm not in the same class as folks who actually got shot at, or took risk of same.) (And thankful for it, I might add) But let's all think about veterans; I'm not one who thinks "thanks" is necessarily appropriate, but I guess it could be. I'll defer to others with more reason to be thanked I guess. (Is my ambivalence to this whole thing coming through adequately? Good.)

Dream journal – 11/1/2010

Two recent snippets survived waking. The first, which seem related to some others I've had over the past year or two, had to do with a rather nasty, decrepit house in which we were living ("we" being wife & I, though she didn't actually appear, but was present by implication, I guess). As in some others recently (year or two) the house was a huge, rambling affair that seemed to keep going in many directions, and didn't seem to "repeat itself" meaning if you went in a single direction then turned around and retraced your steps, you didn't actually come back the way you went originally, but through different hallways & staircases. Some outer walls did not actually exist, that is some rooms were open to the elements. People were living in seeming "apartments" though there were no definitive boundaries to these various apartments; they seemed to flow into each other. I'm pretty sure "we" owned the property, but none of the other inhabitants seemed to be very tenant-like, more like squatters. In this most recent incarnation of the setting (a few nights ago now) water was a big factor (no doubt as a result of the suggestion posed by the fact that our real-waking-life drain was acting up, putting some overflow on the cellar floor); seems like water would flow from walls and down staircases, etc. I should have recorded this sooner; I've lost what few details survived my awakening.

Last night, I was in a similarly rambling arrangement of rooms, but I was not the owner, nor even a regular tenant, but a casual guest, staying over for a night or two. I forget/never knew where I was going, but I was in the midst of a longish journey that I was eager to take up again. My "daughter" – and I don't know which one, I don't think it was one of my real daughters, none of them showed up as an actual character in the dream, it was a fictional daughter, had put my car somewhere, and the somewhere wasn't where I would have put it (apparently I knew my way around this particular dreamscape), nor was it easily findable, so I had to wait for her to return (whence I have no idea) before I could get on my way. I recall that in the dream, getting on my way again was a matter of some urgency to my dreaming self, I didn't like being where I was, and getting to where I was going was important. Daughter did not show up prior to final awakening. I do remember that at some point my dreaming self tried the "This is only a dream so I can make my dreaming self find the car" but I don't think it worked; I (the dreaming "I") did however stop fretting over "Getting on my way" since it realized "it's only a dream."

The thing about pre-history, apparently, is that

no one wrote anything down. I've just been reading a blurb about a new theory that the White Horse of Uffington might be a dog. Other theorists suggest a feline configuration.

Will you still need me, will you still feed me?

How odd to be entering my sixty-fifth year.

I watched "The Men Who Stare at Goats" last night

on the recommendation of a pal. Not that it needed a recommendation, with George Clooney, Kevin Spacey, and Jeff Bridges at the top of the bill. Somehow I'd never heard of it - apparently it didn't get a lot of ballyhoo in the places whence I get my movie ballyhoo. It was a fun movie, but a little unsettling. The underlying notion is nothing surprising (or unknown) to most of us - that the military has been investigating applications of the paranormal for quite some time. At least since the hippie days and it hasn't stopped. The "basis" for the movie was a supposedly "factual" piece of investigative journalism (a book bearing the same name as the film) from a few years ago. The main revelation that reached public eyes & ears was the fact that insurgents/terrorists/whoever-the-bad-guys-du-jour were at the time were being subjected to long stretches of Barney the Dinosaur. So big deal, I snicker. But the movie (I don't know about the book) paints a pretty unnerving picture of just how loony some of those involved in such an initiative might have been. That said, the movie is clearly playing Clooney's, Spacey's, and The Dude's characters for laffs; these guys are clearly nuts, and it's very hard indeed to sort out how far into its cheek the movie has its tongue thrust.

Anyway, there are indeed some laughs, if no real knee-slappers, and the performances of the three focal-point actors are all very creditable, if indeed they echoed some "Canned" characterizations the relevant actors have more or less patented. I can't think they got involved for any reason other than it promised some quick bucks and the script looked like fun. Ewan MacGregor was in it too, in more or less the lead role. Someone was VERY cagey in not letting him complete with Clooney, Bridges, and Spacey. He was Dr Watson all the way, telling the story from an arm's length, and doing it very plausibly. I liked the movie, it was fun, but scary, a little, too, making one wonder how many real loonies are in similar positions (not unlike Generals Turgidson & Ripper, and Col Bat Guano and their ilk from decades ago, but in new & refreshing ways).

A while back, Comcast decided to bundled Turner Classic Movies

with some furshlugginer sports package, and I lost about the only premium channel I thought was worth a damn (it wasn't worth paying for sports to get it). More recently, my Chief Negotiator, in the process of the annual wrangle with the cable/internet/phone provider at our house, managed to get TCM "thrown in" as we "upgraded" to more service fo less money (introductory rate of course, to be wrangled over again in six or nine or twelve months). TCM has the insufferable Robert Osborne pontificating over their presentations, but that's fair penance for getting their library broadcast without commercial interruptions. So I've been checking regularly, and put TCM on my favorites list of course, and finally last night hit paydirt - The Big Sleep, 1946, Bogie & Bacall and Faulkner and Chandler, lacking only John Huston directing to have made it perfection. Hawks is a classic director, but his work doesn't move me the way Huston's and Billy Wilder's do. I think I've seen The Big Sleep half a dozen times, so it's in the "evergreen" category for me, up there with Double Indemnity and The Stranger and The Third Man, and of course The Maltese Falcon. But I haven't seen it in a few years, so it was fun knowing vaguely that poor Elisha Cook Jr ("Jonesy") was gonna get it but not remembering exactly how until the last minute. And stuff like that. I will say though that the movie would have been improved by omitting Bacall's singing. I'd love to know how much of the final dialog was actually Faulkner's work.

So I've signed up for PubIt (or however it's capitalized & punctuated)

and in the course of perusing around the B&N website, where I've had an account for practically as long as there's been a B&N website, I see that it's changed a great deal in the last year or two. Maybe it's been longer since I've been there but I don't think so, really. But my point is that B&N have jumped with both feet (all four feet?) into the digitalization of literature. Between eBooks, and their proprietary e-Reader "Nook" and the free Nook apps for all sorts of devices including PC, they are wholeheartedly embracing where words are going, and making it very clear that they intend to be a presence there (wherever "there" is when it comes to digitalized literature). What strikes me is the proliferation of "meta-literature" that's aggregating on the relevant site/portals/whatever-they-are. All the author chat that used to take place face-to-face in one bookstore at a time is now - more or less - available on demand. You can click to get access to anything from Billy Collins reading his stuff accompanied by cute animations, to Jeff Foxworthy yakking about why he likes writing poetry for kids. And with the advent of "PubIt" B&N is inviting everyone into the game. A brilliant recognition of the so-called "democratization" of writing (if not literature - yet) that's been going on for a few years with blogs and comments from the plain folk on new stories and columns/blogs. Now folks who used to holler at the idiots on their TVs can have their golden opinions immortalized in the digital ether by appending a comment to the words of anyone from Henry Louis Gates to Sgt. Crowley. The frightening thing though is that there are actually folks who think all opinions are equal. But I digress.

So Barnes & Noble has opened the gates to the riffraff & hoi-polloi, and I suspect that sooner rather than later I will publish an e-book "just because I can." God only knows what I'll do if anyone actually coughs up cash for a copy.

Went to see Gordon Lightfoot tonight, in Concord

I feel like a heel saying it but he was bloody awful. His voice is shot to hell and what little of it's left is not really under his control. We bolted at the break between the sets. I was uncomfortable for the guy. Others seemed not to mind the fact that what they were hearing bore little resemblance to the quite serviceable baritone of yore, most of the audience (or at least a sizable chunk of it) applauded and cheered enthusiastically. I have to suppose it was recognition of it being done, rather than it being done well. I truly hope it was just the way he was tonight rather than the way he's gotten to be entirely. If that's what he's routinely like, he really needs to stop booking shows.

It is, I learn from Garrison Keillor, T.S. Eliot's birthday

Happy Birthday Old Possum and thanks for all the words. Especially

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

I hated studying Eliot back in 1965 and '66, when he was freshly dead, and had only recently ceased to be a threat by issuing new work. I didn't get his stuff. Something made me keep looking & looking, and in the course of more study, I began to get it. Now I love it. I went through the same thing with Joyce. It's hard to convey to someone else - especially a young person in the throes of "WTF is the POINT of studying this crap I'll never use it yatta yatta..." and it's doubly discouraging because so much stuff that seems obscure and difficult really is just bullshit, and so much that's very good and eminently worthwhile takes next to no effort at all to get (like Wodehouse) if you're going to get it at all.

It's a mystery. But Eliot had so much to say outside of his poetry, most of it very valuable indeed. And he stands along with Wallace Stevens as a shining example of how to be successful in your art and achieve great things in your day job too.

So I guess it's Fall now, and I should issue the obligatory

"Gosh this is my favorite time of the year" bleat.

Well dammit it IS my favorite time of the year. The weather's still warm, but I expect the hot days are dwindling. Nights are cool. We have a few weeks before the November Nasties strike. I have pledged to myself to get in at least one day of leaf-peepin' this year; I have not driven the Kancamagus for three or four years, since my pals from Belfast were over. That particular excursion was less successful than I'd have liked because 1) the Old Man of the Mountain was already gone, so when we pulled into the scenic lookup, all I could say was "There's where he used to be. Now he's down there, in a pile of rubble. Sic transit..." And then we were late arriving at the station for the Cog Railway, and couldn't/didn't want to (never have been sure which) wait for the next train so we missed that wonderful experience, though the drive up the auto road was a hoot, which I recommend (take the Cog first though, just in case you only have one opportunity for the Summit of Mt. Washington, the railway's the way to remember it.) And then we took the Kancamagus back down into Lincoln, but it was late October, and instead of being on fire with blazing crimson and gold, we got brownish, and beige-ish, and grayish, so I had to say "Just imagine what this looked like a couple of weeks ago..." but it wasn't quite the same.

So this year I want to do what I used to make an annual ritual, at least once per Fall - hike up north of The Lake, peruse the foliage a little, meander on back home, and rest reassured of one of the reasons I'm so comfortable in New England.

I signed up over the summer for the local Freecycle board/group/whatever-it-is

Some of the offerings are interesting, some junk of course, and some of the requests are plaintive, but one has to wonder at some of them. Is there REALLY anyone who can't afford $3.00 for a phone-jack multiplier so their Aged Parent can have a Life Alert? Or maybe they don't really know what it is they need, and how easy/cheaply they're available? A while back there was an interesting kerfuffle on the email list - one participant - who was apparently cleaning out a large estate that had been inhabited by destitute hoarders, based on what she was offering - was posting lots of items one-per-email. Someone actually complained that the emails (offering free stuff, mind) were intrusive!!! Completely ignoring the fact that she (the complainer) had the option of getting daily summary emails instead of real-time delivery. Well let me tell ya, a right old brouhaha ensued, until an admin broke into the fray with a sternly administered "cut the shit you guys" and things calmed down. People are hilarious.

I'm looking forward to October 3

Hieing us up to Concord to the Capitol Center for the Arts (there may be a "Performing" in there, not sure, too lazy to look it up) to catch the author of several of my favorite Folk Scare songs - Early Morning Rain, For Loving Me to cite the biggies. I've seen recent footage of Gordon Lightfoot performing, and I have to say that though he LOOKS every second of his almost 72 years (and maybe a few minutes of someone else's as well) his chops seem pretty much in place.

It Depends on How I'm Feeling

A few stragglers from breakfast lingered over cold coffee and toast crumbs; the plates were stained with the blueberry left from diner pie, ketchup from home fries, and yellow goo from long-gone eggs. Sally the waitress was speaking to the old man in his booth by the window. From where we sat we could not hear her even though the early morning throng had finished and gone, and the lunch horde had not yet descended. The place was almost quiet enough for us to think we were in fact having our last conversation in privacy.

"What are your plans?" she asked.

"Well right now I think it's time to go. Then I will have lunch. After that, it's hard to say, it all depends."

"What does it depend on?"

"It depends on how I'm feeling."

"What are the possibilities?"

"Endlessly limited, I'm afraid. I might go home and wash my clothes; I might go to The Tin Hat and have a drink, whereupon I might or might not get drunk; I might get on a bus to Manchester, and forget to get off. It depends on how I’m feeling, like the man said"

"And how are you feeling?" she asked.

"Like puking and shitting and running naked through the park, of course. Wouldn't anyone?" I got up, picked up my folded Banner and my cap. "At the moment, I'm not feeling. Or at least I can't really tell what I'm feeling. I suspect that before the day is over, I will have felt a number of things, and some of them I might recognize. If I experience any epiphanies, I'll be sure to get word to you." I put on my hat, squarely at first, then I tipped it jauntily and in a flush of foolishness assumed a tilted, Fred-Astaireish stance and flipped a song-and-dance salute off the brim of the cap. "In the meantime, my dear, ain't we got fun?" I flipped the newspaper under my arm as if it were a swagger stick, turned on my heel, and fled as elegantly as one fleeing can possibly be expected to flee. I held down the tears until the door of the Chit Chat Café closed behind me.

Out of pure habit I turned north out of the door of the Chit Chat and headed down the back of The Hill. My shoes were already soaked from the morning's walk so there wasn't any point in trying to avoid any of the slush piling up on the sidewalk. The cold rain blowing into my face was a mercy; it seemed to numb me against the effects of the recent conversation. Suddenly I was wondering whether I was plodding or trudging down Chestnut Street, and what the difference might be, or if no difference, whether there was a distinction, then just as suddenly I realized that I urgently wanted to get out of the rain and the wet, and sure enough here was the door of The Tin Hat, opening at my tug. The inside of The Tin Hat, was brighter and emptier than I usually found it. I didn't often arrive before four or five in the afternoon. I'd probably never come here at noon. The lights were up and there was a vacuum cleaner grumbling. The bartender looked up as I came into the empty bar. I didn't recognize him nor he me. "We don't really open 'til one" he barked.

"Shit" I rejoined

"Sounds like you're not in shape to wait," he said. "What'll tide you over?"

"Scotch would be a step in the right direction" I said. "Straight up, a double please."

"Must have been quite a morning" he said, as he poured four fingers from a bottle from the bottom shelf into a rocks glass. "I can't really serve you, you know, so this'll have to hold you."

I slugged down the whisky and pulled a sawbuck from my pocket and laid it on the bar. "Thank you very much" I said. "If there's enough change in here for another, hold it for me 'til tonight, or pass it to Jeff, the night tender. I'll be in after dinner to catch the rest. Keep a couple bucks for yourself." The bartender lifted the ten to his brow & used it to salute with. Then he stuffed it in his shirt pocket.

"I'll tell Jeff when he comes in. Who shall I tell him has the credit?"

"Hard to say. Describe me to him. I think he'll nail me if you're careful to include 'oldish, shortish, stoutish bachelor professor from around the corner.' "

"Ah" he said. "Gotcha. I'll put the change from the ten in the tip jar. You oughta get a snort out of it."

I flipped him a returned salute and turned back toward the door

Went into town* Saturday night

("in town" or "going into town" is how Boston-area folk refer to The Metropolis) to catch Jerry Seinfeld in his new (or new-ish, I guess, I dunno) "concert" standup act. It was at The Wang, down in the theater district, on Tremont a block up from Stuart St. started life in 1925 as The Metropolitan, became The Music Hall, then The Wang; now part of the Citi Group center. Gorgeous theater, heavily gilded rococo interior, etc. etc. Seinfeld was very funny, and it was an enjoyable experience; BUT - I think sixty bucks a pop was pretty steep for an hour or so of laffs, even if you do have a brand-name.

Slippery Slope

The parts still work, mostly,
though some not as well,
as formerly.
And I don’t feel that
I’m as well, either,
as I used to be.
The insults to the tissue
still heal, if not as quickly,
and illnesses, so far,
have fled with time,
and rest, and lots of fluids.
Unused days pile up,
like unstopped newspapers
on the stoop,
one more thing forgotten.
Then slip away as if
the wind snuck up
as we were bending over to
gather them in.

It hasn’t started yet,
the long slow slide of
irretrievable decline,
as life outlasts
ability to live it.

The places we went back then...

(that sounds a lot like the title of a Raymond Carver story, dunnit?)

The post immediately below, with its coda about Benson's in Hudson, brought to mind some of the trips in the days when gas was 15 cents a gallon. Sometimes there were "gas wars" going on and on Sunday afternoon Dad would put us all in the '41 Mercury and drive south on US 5, along the river, down into Connecticut, (usually no further than Windsor Locks) and fill up the tank at eight gallons for a buck. Then we'd get ice cream, and it was a recreational experience. We lived in what's known as The Forest Park neighborhood, "Forest Park" for short. This is (or was, I've no idea what it's like now that Springfield is on its uppers) a lovely, huge park, mostly built on land donated by Everett Hosmer Barney, an industrialist who made a fortune in clamp on ice skates (who'd a thunk it). His family Mausoleum is still in place on the grounds of the park, and is a well-known Springfield landmark. His house, alas, was sacrificed to Interstate 91. We lived within walking distance of the park, and it was a frequent destination for the family when I was very little, and when I got a bit older, a destination for pals & self though under the tutelage of older brother. There was a zoo (still is, I think) and gardens and miles of trails. Dr. Seuss's father was in fact in charge of this zoo once upon a time, I think.

Just up the street (Sumner Ave.) from the Main Entrance of the Park was a shopping district known as "The X" which sounds weird until you look at a map and see that Sumner Ave and Dickinson Street cross there at an acute angle (though I guess it's an obtuse angle if you look at it differently) and form, ayuh, an X. There were Mom & Pop stores there as well as some national outlets, back in the day when a national chain didn't require that the market population be in the millions and the stores take up city blocks. There was, at the X, the Phillips Theater, a "nabe" and many a Saturday afternoon we spent ensconced in its gum-encrusted, popcorn-scented womb. The Phillips had a balcony, whence I learned how to wing an empty popcorn box such that it sailed straight up the middle of the path to the screen, then banked 90 degrees just before it made contact.
Further up Sumner Ave, away from the Park entrance and out of the X, was another nabe, of later construction and smaller capacity, called The Bing, named after the crooner (so legend has it anyway). The Bing was slightly closer to home and didn't require crossing as many major streets, so it was our venue of choice on our 50-cent Saturday expeditions (a quarter for admission - two features, three cartoons, previews, newsreels, usually a sports short, a good full afternoon out of the Parents' hair - plus a dime for a coke, a dime for popcorn, and a nickel for a candy bar - Three Musketeers for me) - but after 1953 the Bing became problematic for mass outings to the movies.

They ran a movie called "The Moon is Blue" in spite of said flicker being denounced by the RC church, which was a major social and political force in the neighborhood (Holy Name). It wasn't a problem for us (we didn't go to ANY church much less the RC flavor) but some of our pals did, and some of their parents were more involved in paying attention to Monsignor's pronouncements than others. So when Monsignor said "Don't go to the Bing" a number of our cronies' parents acquiesced and denied permission to their offspring to frequent said cinema. So we either went to The Phillips at The X, or we went without Smitty and Choochie and Whatzisname with the runny nose. The offense of "The Moon is Blue" by the way was its use of the word "virgin."

Honest to god. Apparently the RCC figured they owned it.

More places later.

Once a week or so, ("or so" meaning more often when I can arrange it)

I stop into a little store in Hudson, New Hampshire, on Route 111 just outside of Nashua* called "The Drink Shoppe" and wander through their collection of microbrews from all over the place, and select something to bring home for spouse & self to try out, ostensibly over pizza, but most of the stuff is good enough to sip on through the rest of the week. Once upon a time there was a micro out in Milford called The Pennichuck Brewing Company, that put out a brew called Bagpiper Scottish Ale that was amazing. And then of course they went out of business.

So last week I grabbed a six of something called Storm King Stout, from Victory Brewing Company in Downington Pennsylvania. It was tasty, lots of body, etc. but the next morning (I had exactly one bottle) my head was fuzzy and uncomfortable. I thought it might have been something else, but the next time I had some of this stuff - a day or two later - the same thing happened.

Now I don't mind having a wee hangover if I've had a dram too many (not that it's happened all that often... lately) but it doesn't seem right that one beer should do that kind of thing to one. Especially at a sawbuck a sixpack. Bluefin Stout, from Shipyard Brewery in Portland, btw, is quite excellent. Almost everything from Shipyard is. Smuttynose puts out some terrific stuff too, especially Old Brown Dog.

* For folks of a certain age and a certain familiarity with this particular part of the world, The Drink Shoppe is diagonally across Route 111 from a large chunk of derelict blacktop that was, in days of yore, the entrance to Benson's Wild Animal Farm. Somewhere, I have a very old photo of self atop an elephant at Benson's. When my grandmother lived in Lowell, it was a special treat for us, as kids, to be driven up into what seemed to be the backwoods at the time (and I reckon it was pretty backwoodsy back then) and visit Benson's. Apparently a GREAT many other folk remember Benson's fondly - http://www.bensonsanimalfarm.com/

Not sure exactly why, but

I signed up for gmail, finally. Initially I stayed clear because of privacy and "content ownership" issues, but it occurred to me that no one is really likely to give a flying fart about my puny little emails. And then I was introduced to "Buzz" which is clearly Google's answer to Twitter, and their bid in the "social networking" sphere. So naturally it got me to thinking about Twitter and social networking, and Droid phones and text messaging, etc. and it further occurred to me that I suppose I should have an opinion about all of this, or at least should say something about it even if I don't really have a fully formed opinion. Which I think I don't. Or at least, I'm not sure if I do, and if I do, I'm not really 100% sure what it is.

One side of my head is very much attuned to technology, and making use of it - I think having all the digital stuff we do is ultimately a good thing for the species and will continue to differentiate us from reindeer and wildebeests, though maybe not so much from chimps if they get hold of iPhones anytime soon. I think this sort of mass communications technology will quite possibly help lift huge chunks of humanity out of their only-slightly-post-neolithic existences more quickly than any other set of tools to date. This will (I think) be a good thing.

On the other hand, the same mass & instant communication capabilities are in the hands of people who wish me ill, not because of anything I've ever done to them, but simply as a result of where I was born & grew up & how I live. I'm enough of a happy idiot to believe that there aren't millions of these people out there who wish me ill, but the downside of our modern age is that there don't have to be millions of them in order for them to potentially do me & my ilk grave harm. And they are indeed working on it, with greater diligence than I'm spending on my day-to-day activities.

But the real "final question" that I suspect I'll spend more thought on, since there's nothing I can do about those bad guys in the paragraph above - nothing much to be done, really, I think they're probably part of the fabric of human life from here on out. They've always been around, of course, but now they're much better armed, in touch with each other over long distances (only a few years ago most of them would have been unaware of the existence of most of the rest of them), and they know where I live, so to speak. But my point, back at the beginning of this paragraph, was that I'm wondering whether we are in fact really seeing something evolutionary taking place. Some years ago we used to joke about teenaged girls having phones surgically implanted. We are not far from that capability (not far hell, I'm quite sure the technology exists, and is in the plans of more than one organization of some kind or another in the real world. And not all of those organizations wish us sweetness and light). But in a nutshell, my ponder is this: are we seeing the beginning of the Borg?

What is it that makes us decide we want to see a movie, and order it in,

and then let it sit on the coffee table of the family room for days on end ("bogarting the queue" we call it) until we either decide we don't want to see it after all and send it back unwatched, or else we decide we're in the mood for it and finally devote a couple of hours away from Cops and World's Dumbest to actually watch something at least ostensibly artful, or else we decide "Geez I'd better at least put it in the DVD player" and we do, and give it 20 or 30 minutes, and like as not walk out on it, and sneak it into the mailer and back to the post office with all due stealth. I think there shoulda been a question mark up there after "stealth" but I"m too lazy to go back and see if that was really all one sentence. Good for me if it was.

I think it's because Netflix gives the impression of being free & unlimited. But bogarting the queue is a bad thing, especially if more than one person feeds it, and tastes are not shared. I gotta cut that out. So I"ll watch The Road and Transsiberian over the weekend. Honest...

If it weren't "One damned thing after another" it would

be everything all at once. A'propos of bupkis, of course, it just occurred to me this morning. It actually re-occurred to me this morning. A while back my wife - in the throes of the sort of concatenation of events that's typical for lots of folks our age & socio-economic bracket - uttered the classic "One damned thing after another" remark, purely as a conversational deadair filler, and the response above just sorta popped out of my mouth. It made her laugh, which was a plenty gratifying result. Of course it's the converse, or contrapuntally moebius or whatever the logico-rhetorical descriptor would be, of the old "Time is just nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once."

Summer is almost over, at least notionally if not calendrically. I always point out to the captive audience of family that - technically - Summer lasts well into the school year by which we all seem to be bound when it comes to seasonal milestones, but in general, no one is having any of it. Summer is over on Labor Day. And it didn't really start 'til the Fourth of July, in spite of the fact that Commercial Summer runs from Memorial Day to Columbus Day (at least in New England. I realize Columbus Day - historically 12 October - is not universally observed).

More important than Summer being almost over is the fact that Foliage Season (or "Leaf Peepin' as we like to call it) is about to begin. This was brought home to me just yesterday when I noticed that the big shade tree out in the garden is beginning to shed its trashy little dull yellow leaves. We have no attractive trees on our property, that I know of. There may be one or two out in the Wayback, but mostly those are poplars and pines. I don't go out there unless I have to, there's too bloody much poison whatzit. So the poplars will dump their gnarly, leathery leaves all over the place, and the scrub maples will turn sickly yellow, while down on Main Street, toward the center of town, the stately oaks and maples that have lined the right-of-way for about 150 years will turn glorious gold & crimson, and burn themselves out in October, which will warn us that dismal November follows to be endured until at least we get a little pretty snow to distract us for a while. And as soon as the year is over we'll be sick of that and wish for spring.

One damned thing after another...