General Update

     I've been feeling kinda... laid-backadelic lately.  Like somebody slipped me a slow motion kind of groovy when I was hanging ten or catching z's.  I'm not complaining, but it certainly is a place I don't get to much anymore.  
     Like an attic of the mind, and me with legs too weak to get up the damn rickety ladder safely anymore.
     And once I DO get up there, someone needs to call the fire department to help me get back down.  
     I think the fire department has better things to do, too.
     Like listen to my cat laugh at me from the bottom rung of the ladder....
     No matter.  Outside of an obvious loss of color control, I doubt that the casual reader will notice any difference....
 

Specific Update

     Typing "specific" into the Alta Vista search engine has just yielded me 4,217,875 hits.
     WOW.... ... .. !
     I had no idea there was so much specificity out there!
     The bag boys at my grocery really need to get themselves some.
     Maybe then they'd actually get a few of my groceries in the bag!
     And at least one in three of those bags in the right car trunk....
 

Weekend Flashback

     Ok, so we were (giggle) shopping at a home improvement store called Lowe's on Saturday (heehee!) and we were in the garden department (*snicker!*) and we found this big, beautiful potted green plant we "liked" (SNORT!!!) and... and... we went to look at the tag on the side to see what it was, see (HAHAHA!) and... and it said... "Basic Foliage - $6.99"  (LOLOLOLOL!!!).  Like, you know, they're selling GENERIC GREENERY now!  (ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!)  And then we went down the next aisle and saw these smaller plants labeled "Premium Foliage - $9.99" (*NUCLEAR GUFFFAW!*) and so... and so I picked up one of the "Basic Foliage" numbers, took it to a clerk and asked...  and asked (HEHEHEHEHEHEHE!!!!!)
     Damn, I forget.
 

I Have A Dream

     Ok, we all have dreams.  
     I don't mean nighttime dreams - I mean sustaining dreams.  Dreams that keep us going.  Dreams that give us a reason to live.
     I have several.
     Plus a spare.
     The only one I can talk about in public, though, is this one:
     I want to make a series of movies.  A series of genre movies.  A Western.  A Roman epic.  A space opera.  Etc.  
     And I want to tie them all together not with a plot or a theme or a common cast but with one guy in the background who never says a line.
     A guy whose face is never even seen because he is always reading a newspaper.
     See, in the Western the guy would be sitting on a bench or a barrel outside the general store during the climatic high noon showdown, and he'd be totally oblivious to the showdown.  Because he's reading the paper.
     And in the Roman epic, he'd have a front row seat in the Colosseum as the gladiators battle the lions - but he'd be totally absorbed in the newspaper.
     And in the space opera, as the spiffy rocketships shoot fancy lasers at each other - zip! zip! BOOM! - he'd be visible behind the pilot reading his newspaper!
     On and on - Bible epics, gangster flicks, my remake of "One Million Years B.C." - always the same guy reading a paper!
     Weddings, funerals, crowd scenes, mob scenes - always and forever The Guy and The Paper!
     (Or Le Type et Le de Papier to you French amoureux de filmers and rats de cinéma.)   
     Why?
     Because all those movies in which a cast of hundreds focuses on a single event drive me nuts!
     Reality is subjective.  Internal.  Isolated.  We live in our minds, not the "real" world, and just because this fact doesn't photograph well - just because cinematographers and directors know they can focus an audience's attention on subject X by having everyone in the cast look at subject X - is no reason this fact should be ignored.
     
     Interested parties should send their old but still usable movie studios to: Dan Birtcher, C/O P.O. Box 8121, Lima, OH  45805-0121 - ATTENTION: ENFANT TERRIBLE.
 

Botanical Update

     The Buckeye trees are blooming!  The Buckeye trees are blooming!  SEE??

Cat Update

     He's moved up to the second rung.  Still laughing at me.  So:  If he thinks I'm gonna tell you how cute he is tonight, he's one loco felineski.
     Instead, the space I usually devote to him will be used to say this: I just saw a baby brown bunny in my back yard!!!
 

New Phrase I Learned Today

Laissez flaire:  The fashion doctrine which asserts that things just naturally go better when the government keeps its hands off our bell bottom jeans.