From 4/8/2011 in Normal entries

Monday morning you sure look fine, Friday I got traveling on my mind, first you love me, then you get on down the line, but I don’t mind — Fleetwood Mac

On a Monday I was arrested — Leadbelly

Monday, sad, sad Monday, she’s waiting for me, but I’m a long long way from home — Foreigner

Mondays child is fair of face — Traditional

Monday Monday dah daaa, dah dah dah daaaa — Mommas and the Poppas

I may not know what hour it is, but I got my day of the week down. I neglected to mention that when I was at my sons I kept picking pink fuzz from my shirt. Laundry has been difficult to do — the washer is in a corner and a deep top loader, and even just using my right hand to pull wet laundry out, turning and putting it in a lower front loading dryer to the left, involves balancing myself on my left shoulder. So when I washed all the dog blankets to keep the corner the cable guy needed to get through free of fuzzy dog stank, I thought what the hell, I’ll throw a few shirts in too. One of the dog blankets is very pink and fuzzy, a little less so now since some of the fuzz abdicated and sought asylum on my shirts.

The granddaughter, who may yet have the steely resolve and heightened intelligence and psychosis of a serial killer, also has the sensibilities of a little girl, her being one (or both) and was a little tickled at the pink fuzz, both on my person and the idea that my pit-bulls have a fuzzy pink blanket. Though she is actually one of the few people on the planet my dogs have ever made cry ( the other being my grandson) she is convinced they are the kindest and sweetest critters ever. No, they did not attack my grandchildren. The kids were playing with the dogs and the dogs were trying to show their appreciation, the kids were kneeling down and, even standing up, my dogs are in a different weight class, the kids got knocked over to be licked. The dogs were mortified when the kids started crying, I mean tail between the legs, sitting in the corner shivering sort of mortified, even before they were chastised, and then they followed me to the back and accepted being locked in — the kids complained that they still wanted to play. No, I’m not going into a pit-bull love entry or the evils of breed specific legislation for the billionth time — except maybe to say, axe grinding wise, all them folks that think abortion is murder? Yeah, so is legislating my dogs to extinction. All those who think a woman’s body is her own? Yeah, my body and lungs as a smoker are my own too, and yet I’ve been legislated out of even bars (where the main thing sold there is demonstrably as health detrimental as tobacco, and the main activity that brings folks to most bars leads to STD’s. Oh, how does that joke go? Some health conscious religion, let’s use the seventh day Adventists — why are seventh day Adventists against sex? It leads to smoking. Sort of a rip off of the old Baptist joke — why don’t Baptists have sex standing up? Too much like dancing).

Sometimes I feel really old when I use songs from thirty years ago or political points from at least forty years ago (I’ve mentioned both Lt. Calley and Ollie North in the last two weeks). And yet in between current events, the OD politics circle still flogs abortion, prayer in school and other such anachronisms. Again, not to go all pit-bull crazy here, but Roe vs. Wade was decided and subsequent legislation passed, breed specific laws are still being passed and PETA’s campaign to basically eradicate the American Pit Bull Terrier from the face of the earth is still in full swing. Any dog attack is a pit bull (look at the pictures, many a different breed, and yet, anyone promoting getting rid of dogs in general would find themselves in a straight jacket drinking lunch through a straw and being talked to slowly, loudly and simply by folks in white coats). I guess all I’m saying is that if ones agenda really is to save life and preserve it, it’s a much broader issue than abortion. I mean, also be pro gun control, anti-PETA, anti-war, donate to cancer research, be pro stem cell research, you know, the broad range of things that preserve life. Oh, and pro government, advocating the idea that folks need to have their choices legislated or they’ll hurt themselves and others. Just sayin’, It takes a whole village isn’t just a poster or slogan or ancient negro wisdom, the whole village has to be able and willing to act in a compassionate and reasonable manner, otherwise abortion comes closer to euthanasia. I would like to live in a village that acts in unison in a compassionate manner. I have no idea where that mythical village might be.

Oh, shit, dangerously close to flogging some issue. My granddaughter wanted to talk about coastal Japan and Christchurch, tsunami’s and earthquakes. She wanted to tell me current events and ask, in a roundabout way, me to tell stories (well, “Have you ever been in one of those grandpaw?” As a matter of fact I have, well, several earthquakes, and a hurricane or two, Alaska, California and Oregon for the former, Galveston and Tampa Bay for the latter). I think this is how nine year olds and fifty year olds probably talk best; the one with current events, the other with ancient events, both casual and both instructive.

And maybe that’s how the OD politic circle should work, non partisan relief for current victims of tragedies first, before personal tales of ancient partisanship. Real civility to those in need before complaining about verbal incivility for abstract party lines. Preserving the lives of the already born before getting to the unborn. Compassion for the concrete before the abstract. Helping the person next to you with their oxygen mask before putting your own on.

The biggest quake I was ever in was in Anchorage, sometime between 76 and 78. I had traveled a long way and hadn’t slept or eaten much and was finally at the tail end of a sixteen hour nap. My friend had forgot to turn off the alarm (I was in his bed, he had slept on the coach and left for work) and the alarm was playing a song from Pink Floyd Animals at the part where there are mournful animal cries over a menacing synth and guitar. AS I woke to that the bed was shaking as were books on the shelves and pictures on the wall, the phone was ringing — I picked it up in a panic “What?” I shouted. “Did you feel that?” it was my friend. “Oh Christ,” I was relieved and relaxed untensing all my hardened muscles “You felt it too? Great, I thought it was just me.”
“Nope, earth quake,” he said.
“Fantastic.” I said.

My granddaughter told me the story of her dad and an earthquake, the featured element in it was how I was asleep during it and her dad was in the hallway holding the walls together coming to warn me. She quoted the year and month anticipating my disbelief. Heh. I remember it because my kids and Sunny were very excited, I believe it was their first, and I think only, time in a quake. I’ve never been in one that was strong enough to scare me, but there is a sense of helplessness, it’s not like you can run or hold the ground down to keep it from moving.

As I’ve mentioned before I’m sort of compulsive. If I wasn’t still nursing my arm, I’d be arranging things mentally and have started some packing already for my run to the winter water wonderland IMI’s one the slogan, the other being If you seek a pleasant Peninsula look about you. One day it’ll be something like “Welcome to ghost town Detroit, Historic remnant of the industrial age!”).

Know what? Sure, I knew ya did. I’m going to post this in the politics circle. The fuzzy pink bits on my shirt are as relevant, or even more so, than the current ongoing rash of Anti-Global Warning, Anti-Abortion and Those Fuckers Aren’t being Civil to Us Fuckers entries.

And I’m spent. Oh and please, please don’t judge me harshly for quoting foreigner. It was a Monday theme, they had that song with Monday in it. I am not nor have I ever been a fan of the big hair castrati electric band. No foreigner, No Journey, no Styx — Christ Queen were out of the closest gay and they didn’t do that castrati sound. Not that I’m homophobic, I’m bad tune phobic, especially bad romantic tunes sung by a guy who sounds like his nuts have been welded up under his taint. But as long as this is a political entry, I may not listen to foreigner but I support their right to marry, though I’d prefer if they married either men or women with deep voices who know more than three chords and whose hairstyles have evolved.