Decisions decisions

    Baptist would like to boot Dad out pretty soon, as in today or tomorrow. Not out on the street or anything; just to HealthSouth's rehab facility near Palmetto Richland. Dad would rather stay. It doesn't help that he seems so groggy and his speech sounds garbled. We know that he's completely in there and capable of making his own decisions, but the representatives of both facilities are more likely to treat him like a child.
    The question is how much physical therapy will he get at Healthsouth compared to Baptist. At Baptist, they're just visiting in the morning. If at HealthSouth they give him therapy more nearly all day, that would be better. He needs a lot of physical therapy; he is very very very weak indeed.
    Malcolm (Jr.) says that the Palmetto Baptist social worker said that since he's already on the physical therapy floor, he's got an inside track to stay if he wants to. (6/2 edit: I must have misheard, as it turned out he wasn't on the physical therapy floor. Anyway, things turned out well.) I'm unclear what's best for him. The care at Baptist is a little short of perfect, but it certainly isn't bad. I've heard good things about HealthSouth and I've known people who went there, but I don't have any intimate knowledge of the facility. My preference is to respect Dad's wishes, but I also want his rehabilitation to go as quickly as possible. I guess I'll ask representatives of both facilities where that can best happen, and decide accordingly. Knock on wood.

A simple quiet life

    I have a simple quiet life, which I enjoy deeply. You could call it boring. If you call it pathetic, I won't fight you over it. I read a lot and write a little. I do nearly all my own cooking. I play with the kitty and get yelled at by her for infractions against the Kitty Code that I wasn't aware I was committing. (As I don't speak Kitty, I still don't know what they are.) Maybe it isn't an exciting life, but I like it.
    My dad's situation is scary because it means changes sooner or later. We hope for later and much later at that. The deal was that he was going to live to 100 and we're holding him to that. When he dies, maybe I'll be rich; I haven't done the math. But I'd much rather stay poor and have my dad. The simple quiet life is enough for me.
    Yesterday in Dadville went well. He walked around in the morning with the physical therapist. He said he needed a lot of help to walk, but as I pointed out, it hasn't even been a week since the operation. He ate a lot better and he slept a lot better and he seemed in good spirits. Obviously, we'd rather see an instantaneous recovery, but stability is good, too. We are still hopeful for a near-complete recovery in the longer run.

Grownup stuff

    Although none of us were present to witness it, Dad apparently got out of bed and walked around his hospital room with a walker (and at least one physical therapist) yesterday morning. Malcolm and Bill were there to see him sitting up in one of the chairs in the room for some hours, though. By the time I got there, he was quite tired, but still pretty lucid and eating fairly well. (It's hospital food, man.)
    I'm continuing to try to do the grownup stuff of paying his bills. He explained his system, where he writes the due date and "PA" on the envelope, then when he pays the bill he adds "ID" (making "PAID," in case that isn't painfully clear). However, it turns out that the date he writes isn't the actual due date, but his personal paying date a week in advance. So it turned out I didn't as I'd thought need to pay any bills yesterday, which let me go visit earlier than I'd expected. Also I got to update the guy across the street on Dad's condition, as the fellow came to ask when I got in my car. As the news is pretty good, that was fun, too.

Putting my two cents in

    Today's Dad update is MUCH much more cheerful. He's out of ICU, in a private room with no restrictions on visitors (ICU only allowed two at a time) and pretty largely lucid. (Don't move his coffee!) He is in very good cheer and visiting is a lot more fun.
    He was also a lot more clear on his system for bill-paying, so clear that I found that I'd better go to his house and make sure that I hadn't missed any unpaid bills. The only one that was unpaid and near due turned out to be for two cents. Apparently, he never, ever uses his cell phone unless somebody calls him. Somebody did. Though it was someone from Massachusetts, Malcolm didn't recognize the number as belonging to either him, Anne or nephew James. Dad's previous bill had been for 8 cents some time last year. He actually cut a check for that one and mailed it in, but I just couldn't. I took the bill over to the business office and gave them their two cents. The receptionist was tickled and gave me a photocopy of the remittance stub as a receipt. Whiiiich cost them more than two cents, but what the hey? I thought it was pretty cool all the way around.

Dad update

    Yesterday wasn't particularly good. At about 7:30 in the morning, before visiting hours, Dad had a seizure and quit breathing. They got him breathing again, and are giving him anti-seizure medication, but it's pretty scary. He still hasn't been able to eat much, and he's still throwing up most of what he does eat. (They're also giving him anti-emetics.) By the time I got there in the afternoon, he was mostly quiet. He did remember to tell me (and quite clearly) that "since I'm incapacitated" (a pretty good word for somebody who might otherwise be called catatonic) I (John) need to pay the bills. He also told me where the bills are and where our joint checkbook is. He also asked (brother) William if he'd taken out the trash, which would have been more impressive had William been in the room at the time. However, William had been there fairly recently, so we'll cut him a little slack.
    So not the best birthday imaginable. Birthday wishes from Facebook friends helped morale a lot. Brother Malcolm took William and me out to Mai Thai, which was highly wonderful. Then sister Anne and nephew James made it down from Boston. After ICU visiting hours ended at 10, Anne, James and Malcolm came over for a while for further birthday celebrations. I provided portable baklava, which went over well. And Anne and Malcolm had succeeded in getting Dad to take a little food and drink, so that was a happy ending, too. So not the worst birthday imaginable either.

Jeremiah Healy

    About five years back I picked up a Best Mystery Stories collection, as I was looking for a new series author to follow. I was fairly unimpressed, but liked a fellow called Jeremiah Healy very much. He mostly wrote about a Boston detective named John Francis Cuddy. The series, the character and the author were all fairly popular during the '90s. However, fame and popularity in the book trade are transitory and by the mid-oughts his work was pretty hard to find, even when I looked in New England used book stores. I only ever found one of his novels. I liked it but not to the point of Tolkien-level rereadings.
    His schtick was that Cuddy's wife had died, and Cuddy still carried a torch. In fact, he would go to her grave and carry on conversations with her, including about his new girlfriend. It sounds twee; hell, it is twee. But it's also surprisingly effective, and affecting. I wish I could write about feelings a tenth as well.
    I don't know why it took me so long to think, "What if I look in the library?" When I did, I found that nearly all his books are there. It turns out that he quit the Cuddy series in 1999 (after killing off the girlfriend, too), and started writing a different series under the name Terry Devane. I haven't looked at those yet, but they have a female protagonist. I'll look forward to finding out if she does any grave visiting.

Sweetest relief

    So Dad's surgery went really, really well. A few hours later, he was talking, clearly and cogently. He knew who he was and where he was and that he hadn't eaten since 5 pm the previous day. (Dangit!) My brother Malcolm Jr. had driven down from Boston and though he couldn't make it in time to see Dad before the procedure, he was there in time to visit afterwards. Sister Anne and nephew James are flying down tomorrow, coincidentally on my birthday. She's having her gall bladder out on the 1st. Given the run of fiascoes hitting the Dantzler family, I almost feel like apologizing that the only disaster in my life personally is my life personally.

Where y'all from-- originally?

    A long time ago, a writer named Thomas Pynchon wrote a book called "V." Not quite so long ago but still a very long time back I read it. All I really remember about it (except that the V sometimes stood for Valletta, the capital of Malta) was that a good part of it was taken up with a discussion of East Coast Yoyos. East Coast Yoyos are people who spend a lot of their lives bouncing up and down the East Coast of the United States. Much of my family and most of my friends are East Coast Yoyos. I had a long run yoyoing myself, though my bouncing days seem to be pretty largely behind me.
    For some reason, I felt that the Southern accent was a hindrance for me back in those days, so I ironed it out pretty completely. I've been back for decades now, and many Southern locutions (like saying "Thank yooooooou" at drive-throughs) have crept back. But I still get a certain amount of "Where y'all from-- originally?" from strangers I meet in Columbia. I just point in the direction of my dad's house and say, "About two miles that way."

The soul of a poet

    I think it's time that I admit at least to myself that I'm only happy when I'm in love with someone who isn't in love with me. Apparently I'm just not mature enough to be in a real relationship. I derive joy from the "in love" part without having to risk real commitment. That "walking on air" feeling is delightful; that "actually doing the work" part not so much. You might say it's an addiction to unrequited love. It's called having the soul of a poet, but none of the talent.

    My dad is in the hospital with a hematoma on his brain. Him being 90, even a head cold is scary, but if there's anyone who could survive this and thrive, it would be him. However, it is very scary. If I miss a day or a few days of blogging, I'm sure everyone will understand.

Free your mind

    There is a saying, "Free your mind and your body will follow." But I have a feeling that they have that backwards. I'm pretty sure that as I put less and less crap in my body, my mind is a lot more free. (Freeer? I didn't think so either.) Maybe it's an Asperger's thing. Maybe normal people (I'm supposed to say "neurotypicals," but somehow never do) can eat all that garbage without having it affect them. Given voting patterns and general normal people behavior (mostly crazy), I somehow think not. So give it a try. Free your body. Maybe your mind will follow.
    The saying is probably better known in the form of "Free your mind; your ass will follow," but I'm not sure I can turn that one around as well.

Dream architecture, or maybe contracting

    I dreamed last night that I was at a Mountain Goats show. And then a lady came in and pointed out, in the way that in dreams someone can tell you something while you're doing something else like listening to music, that the establishment we were in had been built that day, atop the wreckage of the just-demolished stadium where the Super Bowl had been played, also that day. In Columbia. I gotta cut back on the chili consumption, don't I?
    (Later, my very orderly subconscious returned to the same dream, deciding that it hadn't been the Super Bowl but Nazi rallies. Hopefully, that wasn't supposed to have happened in Columbia. Tellin' ya-- too much chili.)

Lanolin

    And the Total Avocado Lifestyle continues. As mentioned, some supermarkets helpfully have "Ripe when soft" stickers on their avocados especially for idiots like me. However, they don't specify how soft. And I found out the , uh, hard way. If you keep your avocado too long, it winds up tasting a lot like lanolin. (Or if you prefer, rotten avocados taste a lot like lanolin.) Which cuts into the deliciousness of your avocado chocolate pudding pretty markedly.
    I'm learning at something less than the rate that the average kindergartner does, but I'm learning. Once the dang avocado gets soft, I throw it in the fridge. So far it's working for me. If there are any avocado experts out there, I'd appreciate further guidance. Some of us dumb guys are always willing to learn.

Sweeter relief, RuPaul and TMI

    Amelia forgave me for the vet's trip, and didn't do any skulking around the house (like she was doing in the examination room and like she has done in the past). And she didn't kill me in my sleep. Much. So that was nice, too. Of course, I haven't tried putting the ointment in her eye yet. If I don't post tomorrow, you'll know she got me.
    Dreams last night were peculiarly cinematic. At some point, I was in a restaurant/refectory situation watching people arrive. (Why? Don't know; it's a dream!) One of the people arriving was RuPaul. He was really, really, really tall. I think in real life, he's at least two of those reallys, but in the dream he was at least 8 feet tall. Come to think of it, everybody else who arrived was also about that tall. No other men in dresses and heels, though.

    OK, you can't say you weren't warned. This is the TMI section. Lately, I find that when stretched out on the bed, if I straighten my neck as much as possible, my sinuses go all Play-Doh Factory with regard to mucus. Which I swear I wouldn't mention except that it occurs to me that if I could keep my neck straight all the time, maybe my sinuses would be smaller and thus sinus headaches would be fewer, smaller and less frequent. Which would be great, right?

Sweet relief

    So the vet says it's just a herpes flareup, and Amelia is not and probably won't be blind in one eye. I do have to put antibiotic ointment in her eye once a day for ten days. I promised to try; she understood that Amelia is a "fighter."
    I didn't much appreciate having to wait 40 minutes in a small examination room to see the actual vet. Especially as Amelia peed all over her kitty bed and kitty carrier on the way home, which probably wouldn't have happened with a shorter wait. On the other hand, I have a washer/dryer, so no harm done.
    And now I know what "Ah-HEE-ya" means. It's very ambiguous; no wonder I had trouble. It means, "I've gotta go to the vet! I don't wanna go to the vet!" Ah-HEE-ya!

Ah-HEE-ya

    Recently I remarked on the vocalizations of Amelia the cat, particularly the one in the subject line especially with regard to my inability to understand it. Now I'm afraid that I know what it means. I'm afraid it means, "I'm blind in one eye, stupid!" Amelia's left eye has been running brown gunk forever. Now though, her left pupil reflects red, which some sources indicate means she has a detached retina. I'm feeling terrible guilt. Still, she's never allowed out, so it's not like she's in any danger. And hopefully the vet will tell me that I'm totally wrong and she's perfectly fine. Cross all fingers and toes.

Time flying again

    As I mention now and again, time passes differently. (Perhaps this is where the phrase "from time to time" comes from. Perhaps not.) Lately, it's been passing very slowly for someone of my highly advanced years, almost as if something very important were going on that I need all my attention for. But I noticed yesterday that time has started barreling along again. Of course, with a birthday coming up, I may need no further explanation. After about age 29 or so, every birthday comes along much too fast.
    But I have to assume that whatever important thing was going to happen has happened. I hope I had fun. Then again, that's the signal for time to fly, isn't it?

Nam myoho renge kyo

    A long time ago, probably in 1987, I was on a train. The train was from some point in Germany, possibly Cologne, to Copenhagen. (Or Koln to Kobenhavn, but you have to provide your own umlaut and backslash.) I was buttonholed by another American, though he was expatriate. I have some recollection that this happened even before we were on the train. He was named Charles. He was accompanied by a conspicuously beautiful young woman whose name I forget. I have it in a diary somewhere, but I forget where the diary is, too.
    Charles wanted to tell me about the Nichiren Buddhists. (Later they were called NSA Buddhists, and now apparently SGI Buddhists. CGI Buddhists are just seen in "The Matrix.") They're the ones who chant Nam myoho renge kyo. Charles most likely picked me out partly because I was alone and mostly because of the thick glasses, as that was his selling point. He told me that he had once worn similar glasses, but through constant chanting, he had returned his eyes to normal. He also said I was legally blind in at least 14 countries, which I can well believe. He gave me a Nam myoho renge kyo card, which I probably still have somewhere. I didn't exactly tell him to buzz off, but showed no sign of joining up on the spot, or indeed ever. However, we rode to Copenhagen together.
    The beautiful companion lived in Copenhagen, but was actually from Stockholm or Oslo. (Hey, it was a long time ago!) She helped me a lot more than Charles did. I left Penn when I decided I wanted to study International Relations, and I decided that when I got stuck on one question: Does every human have to have an enemy? (It was the Cold War, man; it seemed like life and death at the time.) I asked her, and she said she didn't have any enemy; apparently Russian tanks seemed less scary the closer you got to them.
    I also mentioned at some point that I like Drambuie. She got me a little bottle of it. I don't think it was part of the Nichiren sales job, nor that she was overwhelmed by my charm. I think she was just really nice. I still have that, too.

Marital aid

    Dee at the Aldi on Augusta Road is the fastest checker in the history of the world. (Her real name is Diana, so perhaps that's spelled "D.") This morning there were two checkout lines open, each filled with people with completely loaded shopping carts. Aldi draws a lot of folks who either do all their shopping for the week at once or who are supplying their entire restaurant. (You can tell the difference by the count of loaves of bread and dozens of eggs.)
    I got in the longer line, the one that Dee was handling. Shortly, another fellow got in line behind me with his week's shopping. His wife, however, got in the other line and castigated him for being in the longer line. He said that he had his faith in Dee. I backed him up, quietly. ("Dee will get us through," I said.) But at length, there was only one cart ahead of her, and he gave in and switched lines.
    Now since I only had four items, the nice fellow ahead of me let him go in front of him. Thus we'll never know if I really would have gotten through the line before him otherwise. Nevertheless, I was checked out before he had even started to be rung up. We laughed our asses off. And he learned an important lesson about marriage.
    What? What marital aid did you think I was talking about?

Facial recognition

    I, I just can't cope. A morning without Blogger! It was just too much to take. Somebody hand me a tissue! (Blogger was down this morning due to some kind of virtual septicemia, recently cleared up. Hopefully, we're all done now.)
    We autism spectrum folks are noted for not being terribly good with facial recognition. We're especially poor at picking up facial expressions. My grasp of facial expressions runs from smiling to... not smiling. I can pretty much pick up the stink-eye, but after that, it's mostly a matter of bewilderment. I do a fairly good job of recognizing faces, however, though on average more people seem to recognize me than I them.
    The one face I can't recognize is Amelia's. I like to think it isn't just me or just Asperger's. Perhaps people just aren't set up to remember animal faces as well as we're programmed to remember people faces. But this particular animal has been a gigantic part of my life for over 6 years. Also, she believes in being literally in my face just as much of the time as possible. Also, when she fails to be, she's also the wallpaper on my notebook computer. So you'd think I'd be able to remember her face, but I can't, not even a second after looking at her. Maybe I just suck at black and white. Often I think I'm just practicing to be blind. I go by voices.

Fluent in kitty

    Amelia the monkey cat is very, very chatty, though she mainly confines such activity to when visitors aren't present. (As such, she represents my version of having voices in my head.) She says a lot of English words, or anyway three: Yes, No, and Hello. Unfortunately, she doesn't do so in any predictable way, so YouTube superstardom is relatively unlikely. Nor does she say them at any time that would suggest she knows their meaning (except for "Hello," which is always appropriate).
    The only word she says that seems to have a specific meaning unfortunately isn't in English. Also unfortunately, I don't understand it a bit. It sounds most like "ah-HEE-ya." She'll say it when I'm brushing her, or when she's following me around suggesting that we should play more kittyball. I'd guess it's just a way of saying she's charged up, something like "Wow!" I hope it means she's happy.
    The area of kittyese where I'm achieving fluency is her actual communications, mainly conveyed by looks. If she wants to jump on my lap, she'll look up. I look up (or nod up) too and she jumps up. When there's a kitty outside or a particularly obstreperous squirrel, I've learned to look intently out the window. Amelia will often come running if it doesn't interfere with her strenuous nap schedule. I used to try telling her to come look; that never worked. Maybe I'll learn to speak kitty yet.
    Update on yesterday's entry: Posted, went to Congaree NP, and EVERYbody I met greeted me with hi or hello. This here is one powerful blog; it's magic!

"Morning."

    Since this latest iteration of Walking John started a couple-three years ago, almost everyone I meet on the trail, boardwalk or sidewalk greets me with "Morning." At first, it mainly happened on the boardwalk at Congaree National Park. I thought, "That doesn't sound very Southern," and decided that maybe I was meeting some of our out-of-state visitors. But then I started getting it on the Riverwalk all the time. While it's a lovely place, it isn't exactly a tourist draw. So presumably these are locals.
    I don't know what it's all about. Maybe it's the economy. Perhaps everyone is so down that they can't bring themselves to call it a good morning. Or maybe people just want to save a syllable. But if so, they could do like me, say "hi," and save another one. So far, I've resisted the temptation to correct them ("GOOD morning!") or go smart ass ("Yes, it is!") and mainly just smile and say "Hey," "Hi," "Hello" or "Howdy." But maybe I'll branch out to "What's your story, morning glory?" Oasis won't mind.

This time with animals

    Someday soon, I'm sure, real life will be more interesting than dream life. Not today, however; maybe it's the avocado chocolate pudding. Last night's dreams were odd even by my standards, and featured an especially unusual array of animals. First there was a dream that left little in memory in the way of details, but I was for some reason with a family and they had a red fox for a pet. Housebroken and cute as a button; sometimes things work better in dreams than they would in real life.
    A middle dream was animal-free but involved my traditional impossible mass transit. I was in a store that had a secret subway-surface station (what they call the trams in Philadelphia) in the basement. As I recall, the line went to London. I mean, don't they always?
    The last animal dream was alarming. For a while I was in a dream where I was basically in a video game. I had a party of adventurers and our task was to find a specific adventurer in a bar and get him to join us so that I could go to sleep. (Presumably, it was a really dull video game. I need to dial back on the William Gibson reading.) I found him, but then just left my party and went to a completely empty building, which as usual was some part of a college. I came to a door and opened it, and found myself in a hotel room unoccupied except for a half dozen dying minks. Well, they were white, which would make them ermines but in the dream I called them minks. I woke enough to turn it into lucid dreaming so that I could find a way to revive them and get help. Good trick if you can do it.

Artisanally sweetened

    I swear, one of these days I'm going to stop with the dream diary stuff. (Or I'll rename the blog "Dream Diary," one or the other.) Last night, I dreamed I got drunk, which I don't remember ever dreaming before. And I was getting drunk on rum drinks, which I'm quite sure I've never done in real life. The drinks were coming in individual cans or bottles, or maybe the glasses they were in were labeled (it being a dream and everything). I checked the label and was annoyed to find that it said "artificially sweetened," odd I thought for a rum drink. Then I looked again and saw that I had misread, that it actually said "artisanally sweetened." I thought that was clever, and I especially think it was clever of my subconscious mind to come up with it. Anyone have Coca-Cola's number?
    (Spellcheck offers "artisan ally"; I like this a lot, too.)

Brain damage

    Someone long important in my life suffers from polycystic ovary syndrome, a fact I wouldn't mention except the phrase has lately been stuck in my head all. the. time. And the reason for this is an odd sort of brain damage I have where my brain pointlessly but consistently switches words. Last year, when I had vertigo, my brain helpfully supplied the word "inertia" every time I tried to talk about or even think about vertigo. Going much further back, my brain has always switched the words "orange" and "green." I'm not color-blind, but apparently my speech center is.
    The word my brain is refusing to supply when it comes up with PCOS is... is... What's that word again? Vasoconstrictor! (Think "boa," John.) Owing to certain doubleplusungood feelings coming up lately, I've been amping up my avocado consumption in the past week or so. Avocado, as I've mentioned before, is a vasoconstrictor, meaning that it cuts down circulation. I think it explains the cramps I get in my forearms and calves. I think it explains the word switching, at least the ones more recent than "orange" and "green." I think what I have here is an avocado overdose, silly as it may sound.
    So I'm going back to my original idea of balancing the vasoconstrictor (avocado) with a vasodilator (cucumber). I did it yesterday, and my arm cramps magically vanished. See? Finding your way to health is fun and easy. This only took me, what? 49 years?

Braille

It isn't so much blindness
as a blindfold
when the message of the heart
comes through
and you refuse to see it.
I don't see no smoke
and certainly no signals
and that's no jungle telegraph
but just the rain running down a noisy gutter.
But I don't need fucking Braille
when the message of the heart
is "No."

The OTHER dream trick

    I guess everybody has these: the dream that is a movie that you're watching but which you're also in. Last night's was... highly memorable. The sheets stayed safe, however.
    (The other other dream trick, I guess, is extreme geographical dislocations. I don't know if most people have those either, but boy I do.)
    As this is so short: in other news, who the hell put muscles on me? Don't you usually have to exercise for that to happen?

The horror, the horror

    Bad nightmares all night. Anywhere I went, which included locales as far away as Europe, there was nothing to eat but pizza. Pizza, pizza everywhere. Also, the psychopath who hates me was blaming me for everything. So nothing at all like real life. I was trying to write him a check for some reason, but had difficulties. For some other reason, I was trying to write it on a sheet of paper about the size of a chair. Maybe that was the difficulty.
    Can you imagine the celiac sprue horror movie though? "They Fed Me Pizza." The terror! The horror! OK, it'll only work on one out of 133 people. But boy would we be scared! Hey, there's an idea for Hollywood: Narrowcast your horror movies! Naaah, that would be crazy. Just keep remaking old TV shows. That'll work.

Impractical joke

    For a couple of weeks in April, I grew a beard. It came out grey, so I removed it immediately, but while it was growing, I took down my Facebook profile picture. First I put up a picture of myself with a book in front of my face (ie, Bookface). Then I changed it every day, generally choosing someone with a bigger and bigger beard each day. I started with Santa, went on to Gabby Hayes, then proceeded through Darwin, Rip Van Winkle, the Chinese kung fu master in "Kill Bill, Volume 2," and wound up with Rutherford B. Hayes. (Couldn't find any bearded pictures of Helen Hayes.)
    It was just me being silly. I'm sure barely anyone noticed; profile pictures are small and hard to make out  anyway, which is what makes it an impractical joke. But I was boundlessly tickled. And if we're terribly honest, I don't look at all bad with a grey beard; just older than I would rather look.

Terror

    Ten years after 9/11, I find that I am still insufficiently terrorized. This is odd, as I have been panphobic nearly all my life. If anybody is going to be terrorized, you would think it would be me. Maybe it's that I haven't hung on cable news the way that most Americans do. I figured out a long time ago what "If it bleeds, it leads" means, and therefore prefer to dwell on the seven billion people who DIDN'T die today, rather than the ones who did. I sense that a lot of Americans cannot keep this straight in their minds, and just focus on all the bad news.
    Then again, maybe it was the formative influence of growing up during the Cold War. The nuclear balance of terror was a lot more all encompassing than anything we seem to face today. Universal obliteration was a lot scarier, fear of it was constant and that fear looked to be never-ending. When it ended, the relief was lasting. And even if idiots can wipe out a building, buildings, or even larger places, there is no sense of a universal threat anymore. Regardless, sorry terrorists; this timid person just isn't terrorized.

Grave dancing

    Hey, I'm glad that Osama bin Laden is dead, or at least that he's no longer able to foment damage. But I feel more than a little creepy about it. I don't believe in capital punishment. I'm not happy about the three pointless wars my country is involved in, with no end in sight. And grave dancing never seems like a good idea. If the death of one man causes you to shout, "USA! USA!," maybe you need to rethink from where you're drawing your pride.
    For all that, at least somebody remembered the point to one of those pointless wars. That it wasn't any of the people who started that war is a credit to him and another bad mark on the crowded record of those who did. And maybe my friend Ossama won't have to go by "Sam" anymore.

Fireworks

    In '04, Alice and I went to New York for a few days around the 4th of July. We crammed a hell of a lot of fun into a few days, though there was too much walking for her tastes. She forced me to see "Rent," for which I'll always be grateful. On the actual 4th, we had an early flight that required us to get up before dawn, so we couldn't be out and about for the fireworks show. However, we surely got to hear it. Memory says that it shook the building, though I'm pretty sure memory is just having fun with me. The building was the Barclay Hotel, which we loved flat to death. Memory also suggests that we weren't having much trouble with traffic noise or other kinds of city noise at the Barclay. In turn, this suggests that those fireworks out on the East River were too damned loud.
    This was brought to mind last night when another batch of fireworks was too damned loud. Yesterday was Olympia Fest, and though it ended at 5 pm, there seemed to be a fireworks show associated with it that started around 9 pm and ended... well, I think some time around next Wednesday. I dig fireworks; I really do. And maybe it just doesn't seem loud when you're watching and you can ooh and aah. But I was trying to listen to a baseball game (and they were trying to play it, also in the neighborhood; seems like the booms might have been a bit of a distraction) and having a little trouble paying attention.
    I wonder if there's some way to make the pretty colors just as pretty but damp down the boom booms just a bit. (Also, you kids get off my lawn!)