Assignment.

1. Draft a dodecahedron using only right angles.
2. Meditate.

Hate Mail

I read blogs sometimes and the authors complain about getting hate mail... I only wish I got hate mail. I once got a mild disdain mail. It tickled me.

Slow news day today.

So I'm not gonna post much

It's the Twelfth Day of Christmas

And what did my true love give to me?

^%&#-all!

(Aww! Jes' kiddin', true love.)

List of Weight Classes in Boxing

Bantamweight
Cruiserweight
Featherweight
Flyweight
Heavyweight
Junior bantamweight
Junior featherweight
Junior flyweight
Junior heavyweight
Junior lightweight
Junior middleweight
Junior welterweight
Light Bantamweight
Light flyweight
Light heavyweight
Light Middleweight
Light welterweight
Lightweight
Middleweight
Mini flyweight
Minimumweight
Pinweight
Strawweight
Super bantamweight
Super featherweight
Super flyweight
Super heavyweight
Super lightweight
Super middleweight
Super welterweight
Welterweight

Never say die.

Oops. I hate it when that happens.

New Year's Resolutions

I broke one last month, never to make a New Year's resolution again, and another one yesterday, to blog every day in January.

The Contrarian List of Do-s and Don't-s

Do:

• mess with Texas;
• have a cow, man;
• talk to strangers;
• quit your day job.
  

Don't;

• bedoobedoo;
• your homework;
• wop;
• right by me.
  

Snakes and Ladders

Ironic third verse of Chuck Berry's Roll Over Beethoven

I got the rockin' pneumonia,
I need a shot of rhythm and blues.
I caught the rollin' arthiritis
Sittin' down at a rhythm review.
Roll Over Beethoven they're rockin' in two by two.

The irony of course is that when Berry was finally diagnosed with stage 3 country-and-western cancer it was already too late; the progressive-jazz chemotherapy gave him at most an extra month. Some say it was the shame that really did him in.

Gotta go; starting to feel a severe bossa-nova migraine coming on.

Second day of Lent.

Remarkable, the flagging of resolution being even noticeable, let alone so pronounced.

I really must start writing them down

... short conversations with perfect strangers, I've been having more of since the cancer took ms away. Few have been as wonderful as this one with a thin serious woman in her late forties or so.


ME: {noticing Perfect Stranger noticing me spinning around a load bearing pillar by the 7th floor elevator while hanging onto it as if for dear life} Have you ever had to grab onto something to prevent yourself from just floating away?
PS {very seriously}: Yes.
ME: I hate that!
PS {a little sadly}: I know.

b

Angels advised me to meditate two people lying in the snow gazing up at the stars, their beating wings grazing one another's once, momentarily.

Chaperons

The notion of the oblivious chaperon occurs to me. It seems an ideal arrangement, the duties of that functionary being carried by the expedient of her presence only and not by the scandalous knowledge, real or imagined, of the sins of her charge.

Fantastic

Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the accidental destruction of the space shuttle Challenger a minute or so into its flight. I remember that day. It was fantastic.

Walking in the Snow

Had a half hour to kill after a swim and delivering some posters to HCP where I just missed Mass. So I walked in the snow, so quiet, muffled traffic sounds all about like a small sad Christmas party two doors down just winding to a close. Thoughts filled with LAFS and things she said.

Doh! What is becoming of this--some kind of Dear Diary affair?!!

No, but I don't want you to forget the walk so warm, and the deepening crystalline snow flakes sharp enough to know to be gentle, and a strange hyphen in a wonderful name.

Fantastic

My favorite use of the word fantastic, meaning of the stuff of fantasy, the word fantasy meaning hallucination is Charlie Brown's in the Charlie Brown Christmas special. Used without irony, it is more akin to horrific than to wonderful or grand. I try always to use the word in that negative fashion, when I use it.

Sometime, though, it's impossible.

Fantastic!

{sigh!} fantastic.

Comes to mind.

I saw someone outside kissing your mother
in the snow;
He's been gone for such a time, and she's still young,
you know.
Her colour was blush and I asked if she was cold.

She said no.
/

Taxi!

I like how the word taxi refers actually not to the automobile itself but the meter inside--the taximeter, which calculates and displays the fare based on some arcane calculation of distance and time and rates--and barometric pressure, I suspect. The car is a taxicab, cab recalling the hansom cabs of Sherlock Holmes' London--which, I presume, did not have meters--and having its etymology rooted in the cabriolet style of horse-drawn vehicle.

So, when I've had a few too many, I will call on my host to summon me a taximeter-equipped cabriolet. That is to say I haven't, but I will.

*

Third-hand Smoke Poses Risk, Say Physicians

"Third-hand" smoke — which lingers in cars, on furniture and on smokers themselves after a cigarette is extinguished — leaves toxic chemicals that crawling children can ingest, say pediatricians.

Expect more warnings as scientists in two separate studies are currently exploring the effects of reading emails sent by smokers and sharing linen with anyone who has ever visited Virginia.
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