30 November 2016

Lackluster rambling to save the blogosphere from going contentless

Note: I wrote the following entry very quickly, without any aim other than to waste my evening. Then after finishing, I read it over and disliked it. I almost deleted it, because it seemed so dull; but then I thought to myself: “What if someone else out there were to compose a boring blog post and then delete it instead of sharing it – wouldn’t you be furious at them?” And it’s true: I would be furious. So I’m serving this blah grey mush ONLY TO REMAIN IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE GOLDEN RULE. Also I should offer a word about the image above: The image above is just a couple of doll faces that I cut from an advertisement, to fill the obligatory visual component of this submission; it is neither intended to be pretty nor clever nor funny nor post-historic.

Dear diary,

I’m having a hard time deciding what I want to do. I have a large assortment of political books to read, because the 2016 U.S. presidential election excited my curiosity. I have also a number of titles concerning economic inequality, activism, etc… But I would rather read poetry. I am trying to keep up with the real world of current events; but it’s maddening because the very instant that a grassroots group or social movement gets anything accomplished, the opponents of that group begin to erode the effectiveness of the…

Hey. I just thought of something. Why not simply say: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em?

Pleasant memories: Ice cream… sleepover parties…

I didn’t really like childhood. Some people speak of being young as if it’s the eel’s ankle. Once I started reading the books of the ages, however, my mood improved. (This is another proclamation that I feel I’ve been repeating throughout this Life Diary; I have yet to re-read it (I mean my whole collection of postings over months and years); that’s why I’m suspicious and self-conscious about its contents—nobody wants to appear too foolish.)

When I met him at my mother’s house for the recent holiday, my brother Paul said that a lab technician swabbed his inner lip with a cotton baton and then did a scientific test on the saliva. I assume that a computer was involved. This all apparently resulted in a graph revealing ethnicities and ratios thereof, concerning Paul’s ancestral composition. He decided to get this analysis of his own makeup after being impressed with the exam that the same institution performed on his dog.

And we are all going to die. Unless…

What if a disease is the new you! And the old you is like a stubborn mule. (I don’t mean to advocate anything; I’m just trying to be sunshiny.)

Those last remarks are free associations, by the way: they have nothing to do with the test results. My brother Paul is in fine health; he’s just mostly European.

The professional class: How about those folks?—the top ten percent of wage earners. You go to the dentist and their equipment is on the blink. All the same, they direct you to the office of their financier. Their financier has an office in-house. I’m not saying the financier lives on the premises, shaves and bathes on the premises…

And the S.F. Insurance Company’s secretary just urged me, via voice message on my mobile device, to make an appointment with John, her boss, who purportedly wants to save me from impending lacks of coverage that I might face if I neglect to meet with him pronto. John prefers to talk in person, for an indefinite amount of time: that way, it’s less easy for me to give his hard-sell the runaround. (He actually admitted this to me in earnest, the last time I saw him; except he didn’t label his pitch “hard-sell.”) As Thomas Frank says, pity the billionaire.

P.S.

It’s getting cold here. The only thing I don’t like about wintertime is that it’s harder to take walks. In the summer, my sweetheart and I will get on our bikes and ride to pretty parks named after wildlife, and walk for hours. We bring books of poetry in a backpack and stop and read them aloud. There is one place where a bench looks out on a quiet pond, and there was a single goose always loafing about that zone. Each time we visited, as soon as I started to read, the goose would draw closer. So I said to my sweetheart, “I think the goose enjoys the sound of my voice!” And my sweetheart said, “I think it’s the grass that attracts her: she’s simply hungry.” For good green grass surrounded the park bench, and we could hear the goose pulling it and chomping it. Geese eat rapidly. …But I started this postscript with the intention of complaining about winter: I wanted to mention that it’s harder to ride a bike to the park in wintertime, because of all the slush that is on the roads. Plus the wind loves to freeze the skin of your face.

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