Minalzan Muses Mostly

Keepin' It Real

2006-04-22T21:47:00.000-07:00

This is *always* stuck in my head (it's from here):

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."

The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him.

Hmmm. Well. And why do I keep posting this stuff?

Perhaps to remind me to quit deluding myself. Too many cracks and sharp edges...it ain't gonna happen. I should shut up and go back to my carrots.

'Nuff said.

What Women Want

2006-04-18T23:15:00.000-07:00

That title down there on the previous post is from my very, very, very, very favorite poem (yes, even more favorite than "There was a young man from Nantucket").
It just occured to me (yes, I'm *that* slow) that the members of the y gender are frequently puzzled about what makes us double-x'ers "happy".

It's really all in the last 2 lines of the middle stanza of that poem.

So, as a public service to the y-boys everywhere, here is The Answer:

When You are Old
William Butler Yeats

When you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

The Sorrows of Your Changing Face

2006-04-18T22:43:00.000-07:00

I'm reading: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
It's a letter from a man in his 70's to his 7 year-old son...an attempt by the father to fill in all the things he realizes he will never be able to tell his son since he realizes he will not be present for most of his son's life.
While that sounds sad, the book really isn't. It's a quiet, calm book...and, in every true sense of the word, graceful.
There's little grace to be found in today's world in my eyes, so it's always a...relief, really, to find some.

And, in probably violation of every copyright law known to man, here's some for you:

"...now, in my present situation, now that I am about to leave this world, I realize there is nothing more astonishing than a human face...It has something to do with incarnation...Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it...I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any."

Forgive Them For They Knew Not What They Did?

2006-04-08T18:09:00.000-07:00

At least until they did it:
Dark Miracle

An excerpt:

There's an old story that in the hours before dawn on July 16th, 1945, a young woman named Georgia Green was being driven back to school at the University of New Mexico by her sister Margaret and her brother-in-law Joe. Suddenly, she saw a bright flash of light, and she gripped Joe's arm hard enough to make him swerve the car. "What's that light?" she asked.

The thing is, Georgia Green was blind.

At that moment, some fifty miles away, a tall, gaunt man in a porkpie hat was also staring at the light, through a pair of darkened welder's glasses. He was the architect of Georgia Green's dark miracle, and he was very, very tired -- as tired, perhaps, as anyone can be and still move and breathe. It had been a long road coming out to this empty desert spot, which he called Trinity. It had been a long war.

Some of the men around him cheered. Some of them wept. A few, mostly scientists, were quietly sick in the sand beyond the dim lights of their camp. But he just stood and watched the great glowing mushroom cloud that rose in the darkness like a judgment from one angry god or another.

I am become Death, thought Robert Oppenheimer, remembering an ancient Hindu text. I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

The world irrevocably changed that day, yet how quickly these things fade into the past. Read about a re-visit to the Trinity site 61 years later.

Virtual Makeover (or Where the Hell Has She Been?)

2006-03-30T00:41:00.000-08:00

http://www.secondlife.com

That's where.

For one thing, I look way better there...see:

BEFORE:

AND AFTER:

AND, I can build stuff there. I apparently am able to be creative in places where the laws of physics can be defied.

Of course I seem to be better anywhere that things can be defied.
:-)

Read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.

It will make more sense.

(P.S. Get well soon Monkey O'Blue!!!)
:-)

You Heard It Here First...

2005-08-10T12:49:00.000-07:00

So the blue monkey has been harrassing me to update my blog. Sadly, I've had absolutely nothing to say for 5 weeks until this suddenly popped into my head - feel free to use it in conversations to impress people with your topical wittiness:

Tony Sinclair is the Rula Lenska of the new millenium.

Yup, you heard it here first (and will undoubtedly never ever ever hear it again...if you're lucky).

But Then Again...

2005-06-30T01:59:00.000-07:00

It may not be as bad as we thought:

You speak eloquently and have seemingly read every
book ever published. You are a fountain of
endless (sometimes useless) knowledge, and
never fail to impress at a party.
What people love: You can answer almost any
question people ask, and have thus been
nicknamed Jeeves.
What people hate: You constantly correct their
grammar and insult their paperbacks.

What Kind of Elitist Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

The Results are In...

2005-06-28T12:11:00.000-07:00

And nobody's really all that surprised:

Which goes pretty well with:

But I am kinda disappointed with:

and with:

You'd think they'd be higher given my first two results.
Guess I'll have to read more O'Reilly books and stop watching TV...

However, the good news is that seeing as how I don't have much longer before I shuffle off this mortal coil:

I can stop stressing about my pathetically perfoming retirement accounts...

And if you're wondering why I bother with the inane crap listed above, it's because:

So there. :P

Rats...

2005-06-28T00:43:00.000-07:00

I had something amusing only to me and pithy (not) to post, but I left all the info on my computer at work...and on the hard drive instead of the server to boot, so I can't get at it from here since I shut the puppy down every night.

Phooey phooey phooey...

Well, I've had Angels in America on ON DEMAND (which I would like a whole lot better if it would stop skipping if I watch more than one thing) running in the background, so I probably should start paying some attention to it since it looks like it's actually getting....odd...and, therefore, interesting...

And on yet another meaningless note: I get my new glasses tomorrow (wait, it's 12:47 a.m., so I guess I mean today!)...yippee-skipee! I'll finally be able to see stuff in the distance again....that ought to make driving a wee bit easier....
:-)

Scenes From a Wedding

2005-06-25T15:45:00.000-07:00

Well, the Blue Monkey got married today...hurray! And it was lovely...I know people always say weddings were lovely, but this one really was...The day was perfect, the decorations were beautiful, the bridesmaid dresses were definitely not of the Oh-My-God-I'd-Never-Be-Caught-Dead-In-This-Tulle-Ruffle-Monstrosity kind, all the boyz looked very handsome and, of course, the bride looked wonderful (if a bit stunned). :-)
And the food was nummy!

But I'm sure there were a couple of things our shell-shocked but happy monkey may have missed, so I shall chronicle them here:

The DJ/Announcer dude telling everyone to take their seats so they can stand up for the introduction of the wedding party...was I the only one confused by that?? :-)

Same guy later telling everyone to raise their glasses...and then put their hands together for the bride and groom...good thing none of us follow directions very well, or it would have been messy...

Minnie's daughter decided that her shoes were uncomfortable...So she spent the first part of the wedding trying to give them to everyone she met....then later she just gave up and hid them under somebody else's table...Okay, I guess that's funnier if I mention that she's 3...or maybe not?? :-)

They asked for all the unmarried women to gather on the dance floor for the bouquet toss....Everyone at our table tried to urge Shelley to go (she is very happily unmarried, thankyewverrymuch!)...So she finally turned one of her rings around so it looked like a band, put in on her left hand and grabbed Lola's husband and proceeded to tell everyone she was married....Michael looked a little surprised, but Lola just laughed...

A grand time was had by all...and now I'm going to go snarf down the yummy favors we got while Maow frolics with the purple ribbon from the box they came in and we both send sweet wishes to Monkey & her man for their new life together!
:-)

Cellll-leh-braate....

2005-06-18T23:18:00.000-07:00

Some scenes from the party today for my close friend's dad's 85th birthday & her son's graduation from Universal Technical Institute...

All the various kids/grandkids leaping in & out of the pool until they were shivering and practically blue when they got out....then leaping right back in and swimming until they finally got hauled out when mom/grandma/dad/grandpa was ready to go home...I remember being almost impervious to the cold at that age when there was a swimming pool around...Doesn't quite work that way these days...I couldn't be getting...{{shudder}}...old, could I?????
Nahhhh...
:-)

Glory the labrador valiantly leaping into the pool to rescue the pool sweep...
(Fortunately, it survived the rescue attempt with little to no trauma.)

Auntie P telling the graduate that she never thought of him as being a mechanic...she always thought he'd be something different...like a geolofist! Er....geosofist! Er...."I know it was something really important and I'll remember what that is in the morning..."
(Apparently leftover white merlot has an odd effect on the English language... :-) )

It was a fun day.

And Your Little Dog Too...

2005-06-14T20:29:00.000-07:00

I hardly ever had dreams I remembered when I was growing up. Mostly murky images or impressions. But there was one that was always crystal clear...a tornado seen through a large living room window...I would always run outside to the front porch and I remember the sound of the wind - electricity in the air...and the roiling clouds in the distance.
I'd always wake up with a start from these...the only nightmares I really remember. For years I could never figure out where the image came from as I'd never seen a tornado or lived anywhere near tornado prone places. Then I saw Wizard of Oz as an adult and there it was! The exact tornado from all those creepy dreams...It's funny because we watched the Wizard of Oz a lot when I was a kid...a yearly Easter ritual, as I recall...I always thought the witch was the thing that scared me the most (I remember hiding behind a pillow whenever she'd come on), and I didn't remember that particular scene of the tornado at all (just the flying house and the lady on the bicycle turning into the witch)...I guess I completely blocked out the thing that *really* scared me.

So, I'm all grown up now...I see that the witch isn't evil, just misunderstood (read Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West and all will be made clear) and that tornadoes are cool.

Not only do they make great desktop pictures:

They are nifty to watch - especially from the inside:
Eee-haw!

The Bear

2005-06-12T00:16:00.000-07:00

My first and, if I do this right, only ever new vehicle...The Bear. Adopted May 14th.

Yes, it's been said before but, for me, bears repeating: A girl and her truck, it's a beautiful thing...

And lookie, I actually used the digital camera for the first time in 2 years...

A Girl and Her Truck

This Explains Everything

2005-06-11T23:44:00.000-07:00

From The Onion AV Club Commentary Tracks of the Damned :
The Movie: The Hollywood Knights (1980)
The Quote: "[Studio head] Frank Price asked me what this movie was going to be about, and I said, 'Well, there's this guy who can fart "Volare,"' and he said, 'Let's make the movie.'"

These are the guys who really started reality TV, huh? C'mon fess up...

In The Beginning

2005-06-11T18:51:00.000-07:00

...There was the blank page...or window, I guess.
No, actually, it would be mind at the moment.

Well, here's hoping I find some interesting ways to fill it...

As archie said: "listen:there's a hellof a good universe next door;let's go!"

;-)