Tues., May 1, 42 A.B.Mind-Blown Blather
"I hate quotations" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I'm familiar with snow white-out conditions. I've read about them, seen them on the news, even experienced them once or twice in my very own snow globe. They occur when thick falling snow and already fallen snow become indistinguishable and our entire visual field is swallowed whole by a disorienting, all-encompassing whiteness....
I am rather less familiar with swirling blather-out conditions. I've never read about them, seen them on the news, or experienced them in my
own head prior to the last few days. In the last few days, however, it
seems my mind's eye has become utterly confused by them - by a swirl
of glittering blather, of thousands and thousands of odd facts and
pointless ideas melding and unmelding as they blow through my
disoriented consciousness....In the belief that the same survival skills which have allowed lost
travelers, mountain climbers, and wandering children to survive snowy white-out conditions might help me to survive my own predicament, I've
taken to rolling myself up into a little ball and shutting my mind's eyelid
tight while waiting for help to arrive.The occasional flake of mind-blown blather still manages to work its
way past my mind's eyelashes and up under that lid, however. When the
tears of denial fail to wash it away, I have no choice but to attempt to
melt it down into something less irritating by subjecting it to the full heat of my terribly feverish brain....The flake I'm currently attempting to deal with is Dennis Tito - the aerospace engineer/financier who allegedly paid the Russians $20
million to be taken up to the international space station. For months
NASA has protested his planned visit and said everything it could to
make it clear to Tito that space tourists like him were not welcome, not wanted, and a possible hazard to those who are welcome and wanted.
No matter. Tito apparently coughed up the cash and is up there right
now, perhaps staring out the window and listening to Beatles tunes as
he planned while 5 space professionals put everything else on hold in order to keep an eye on him.I just don't understand. If I call a hotel and try to make reservations for a $60/night room and whoever answers is insulting, rude, or otherwise makes it clear that they don't want my money, I don't insist - I make other arrangements. I've simply found from experience that it's better not to go where you're not wanted. And if I ever am in the mood to go where I'm
not wanted, I visit my relatives for free rather than pay for the privilege of being treated like trash.You'd think that a man able to acquire $20 million would know these things. You'd think that he would have taken me up on my offer to let
him stay here and be treated like an unwanted guest for a mere $149.99/night, too. I was more than ready to allow him to listen to my
copy of Revolver while he looked at photos from the Hubble telescope
on my PC and I stood in the corner with furrowed brow, regularly
reminding him that if he stupidly floated up out of my office chair and
broke my ceiling fan with his boot there was gonna be a slight surcharge added to his bill.Ack. No matter how hot and bothered I get about this particular piece of nonsense, it remains lodged in my mind's eye. Better to just try to forget about it and move on....
I've been worried about President Bartlet and his multiple sclerosis. I did
a search of the Merck medical site to learn more about this disease and do you know what I found out? I found out that people who spend their
first 10 years living on the equator virtually never get MS. Only 1 in
10,000 people who grow up in the tropics get MS. Did you grow up in a temperate region? Boom - your chances of getting MS are now 1 in 2000. So, my question is this: Can the writers of "West Wing" who gave President Bartlet a temperate zone childhood be held liable? Can they be charged with authorial negligence or creative malpractice??Ok, THAT little piece of nonsense also refuses to melt and drip out of my head no matter how feverish I become. Anything else I might attempt to analyze to death?
Yes. Of course. Carnivorous plants.
No, I do not mean carnivorous plants in general. I mean the carnivorous plants I learned just this morning are going to be honored with their own
series of US postage stamps come August 23. Can you believe it??
Rod Serling still hasn't been honored with a stamp but soon the Venus fly trap will be. Exactly when did it become official US policy to honor the botanical residents of another planet before honoring all our home grown iconic figures from the '60s?And personally, I really don't believe we ought to be honoring carnivorous plants even after Tiny Tim and Mr. Green Jeans have been given their due. For one thing, I'm almost a vegetarian and I resent the fact that
some plants think they can indulge in food I find morally objectionable merely because they're allegedly too stupid to know any better. Are we just going to look the other way when maple trees start wearing fur coats, too??For another thing, I think putting carnivorous plants on our stamps sends
a very bad message to the youth of America. "Hey, kids! Wanna be honored with a stamp bearing YOUR face someday?! All you gotta do is stand rooted to one spot all your life luring flies into your mouth and biting down!"But of course carnivorous plants don't even expend the effort biting down takes, do they? No! They simply trick passing flies into getting themselves into a no-win situation, then expect certain digestive fluids to do all the work while they themselves enjoy the sun. Is this the work ethic we want to impart to the next generation? Is this the way we expect to promote exercise and increase America's overall fitness and health?!
We already have more couch potato offspring than we know how to vacuum around. Do we really want to expose these vegetative offspring
to role models that are gonna teach them how to secrete juices that can dissolve fine fabric?!?!Ok, well... looks like that bit of nonsense is permanently stuck in my
mind's eye as well now. Let's see if I can rid myself of one last thing...Tantric sex.
I've heard about it. I've read about it. I've even watched a video about it. But for some reason I thought I was hearing, reading about, and watching tantrum sex.
And FYI: Threatening to have a tantrum unless you get sex may work
swell in India or Bangkok, but it only gets you one helluva black eye in Ohio.That's all I've got the energy to say right now.
Gotta resume my rolled-up-into-a-little-ball position before even more blather gets blown into life, never to be expelled....
(©In The Middle Of The Perfect Blather Storm using a misremembered Morse code, a smoking short-wave radio, and an emergency generator that's almost out of gas....)