AMATUERCRASTINATION

I was thinking about writing a post on procrastination but I had trouble getting around to it.  I suddenly found it necessary to read most of the blurbs on Yahoo News before getting started. I did take pride in having resisted "Why the Kardashians Are Popular," but lost some of same when I opened "Cameron Diaz Shows Off Her Long Legs."  Hey, some things are worth the loss of pride.  I also read several articles from the Denver Post Sports Section that added to my knowledge not a whit, and I spent long moments contemplating breakfast choices before settling on wheat toast and a banana along with, my stomach is telling me, too much coffee.  When, finally, I got around to writing the post, read now, I forget what it was I wished to say about procrastination  other than that, USUALLY, I'm not very good at it.  I've got this Enneagram Seven thing about getting to the fun as soon as possible, but I also have this weird, probably of judeo/christain origin, although I don't know why they get all the credit (or is it the blame?) idea that you have to get the work out of the way before getting on to the fun and games.  Curiously, well, at least to me it's curious, I find writing to be both work and play so one would think I'd want to get right to it for either of the two reasons, ie; get it out of the way to get to the fun or because it is the fun.  But NOOOO Dirty Keyboard Breath! Not today!  Today I had to diddlypuck around before getting started.  No reason really, unless, UNLESS, (Wait! Now that I see it in caps I realize what a funny word unless is. Un-less. Kind of a weird concept if you ask me. Doesn't that mean more?) it's because earlier today I had written a writer pal about her not writing.  It was shortly after that that I was stricken with my bout of procrastination.  I mean,  who am I to be giving advice to others about not writing when for most of my life I ignored that I could and didn't! So there you have it, one explanation for my tardiness in getting around to  this post.  The only other one I can think of is laziness.  Couldn't be that, could it?




 

NOW IN THE NEWS

 This is a post I wrote off-line awhile ago and forgot about...until now.

"Your server is not responding."

Tell me about it!  I've been sitting here with an empty coffee cup and no Internet for fifteen minutes!  Who runs this joint anyway? 

Which is why I'm back to Self Serve, writing off line and getting my own damn java. 

Woowoo Charly and I are recently back from a three week jaunt to The States.  I could be writing about that but since it would concern mostly family stuff and mostly family reads this, let me just say... talk among yourselves.

Many happenings of blog worthy note passed before during and after our trip and I thought I would address some of them as that is what I was sent here from my home planet to do.

Taking last things first which is the right way to do it on my aforesaid planet, I will begin with the Ichiro trade.  Ichiro, for those of you who are bewildered by the reference, is not a skin disorder, but rather a talented professional baseball player.  So talented, I should point out, that I consider him to be the best all-around player that I have ever seen.  All though his skills (note here that I have said skills and not "skill set" because the latter is a junk phrase employed by mindless, copycat, sportscasters trying to sound like they are on to something when, in truth, they are usually clueless) have declined somewhat at his now age of 38, he will still be an enormous asset to his new team, The New York Yankees, or, as I am inclined to think of them, El equipo del diablo, the team of the devil.  A fall from grace (all other teams) into pin-striped, cloned zombie land is not a fate I would have wished for Ichiro, but is, alas, what happened.  Too bad, I say, too bad.

It was also revealed sometime in the last few weeks that a man with some sort of dementia drove many miles with his dog in a cage on the roof top of his car.  What surprised me when I learned of this hideous act of uncaring callousness, was that this same man was not arrested or fined, but is instead running for president of the United States!  President of the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Recently Escaped I can understand, but of the U.S.?  How can that be possible?  It was later clarified for me by Woowoo Charly who explained that if you rearrange the letters in the man's name, Mitt Romney, you can make the words butthead, braindead, pawn of the party, and I don't need a mind or a conscience, I have money.

Lastly, and how does one speak of the unspeakable, there is the Aurora, Colorado, theater shooting.  Yet another madman goes berserk, shoots and kills the innocent. "Guns don't kill people" the NRA and others tell us truthfully, but be fucking serious, they sure do help.  How long will it be before our elected chickenshits do something about controlling the sale of automatic weapons and their ammunition?  Ever?

I'm now too bummed to say more.    

  

WHERE HAVE I BEEN?

Oh, I don't know.  Around, I guess.  Here and there.  I don't actually keep track.  Has it really been a month since I logged on to blog on?  It's not like I've been particularly busy.  Oh sure, there was the trip to Maryland for golf and sailing, followed by a jaunt to NYC for fun and games and, well, you all know daughter D came to visit for a week after that, but really, busy?  Not especially.  Yeah, yeah, I know, there was golf and movies and lunches and dinners and long walks and long talks and dogs and new people and laughter, lots of laughter, and the beach and the gardens and the clinking of glasses, but busy?  Not really.  So there is no excuse I say, no excuse at all for not tapping out a blog or two to keep the old monkey mind lubed up and running smoothly.  None. Zip. Nada.  It's just, well, My Bad.

So...what can I do to make up for my lazy old self?  What can I do to make it all right again? 

Thinking.  Thinking.  Thinking.

I know!  I'll drink a lot of coffee and write nonsense!  Here comes some of that now! 

"The exclamation mark is over used," he exclaimed loudly!

The Republican Party.  (When it comes to nonsense the current Re-pub-lycans are a hard act to follow.)

The Denver Broncos will go 19 - 0 and be crowned the greatest team ever; better even than the Gabor's Bar softball team, but not by much, which  won titles in four consecutive years, going undefeated in two of them, that was managed by me and featured my sons and me as star players.  

Interjection:  The above paragraph may or may not be nonsense.  It is simply historical fact not yet recorded or, at least, it exists as such in my mind, a place where I often fear to tread.  And that, of course, is another story.

Sidebar:  I just tilted my cup to take another sip of now cold java and noticed the sludge sloshing about in the bottom of the cup.  Nasty looking stuff.  There is some sticking to the sides of the cup too.  I can't imagine why I drink this oily, dark, substance apart from the fact I like it and it makes my heart go lub dub lub dub in the morning when it is more inclined to go lub....................               dub.

Alrighty then, I'm almost done.  I've got to get back today to writing my novel which I abandoned some months ago because it got hard to write and also because it was awful; two reasons I know are not really good enough to inspire quitting.  I do lots of things that are hard, after all - bending over and tying my shoes comes to mind - and the world cannot really have too many bad novels if paperback best seller lists are any indication.  But before I go I have one or two more things to say that are removed from the nonsense category and border on those of import.

If only I could remember what they were.

I was going to end there with that lame punch line but for a couple of circumstances that cropped up featuring sneezing and dog vomit in that order.  You see I was just sitting here in my recliner, legs up and lap top doing what it was named for, when I began to sneeze.  Not once, not twice, but something in the thirties or forties seemingly without end.  My nose became quite suddenly a running, tickling, dripping faucet of clear liquid that I tried to stem with handfuls of tissues and vigorous blowing to no avail.  Although it is rare, this sort of seizure is not without precedent in my recent history, read living in Panama, and I have learned to keep Clarityne on hand for just such an event.  Ah-chooing my way to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, I did not notice the also clear dog vomit, reminiscent of the goop leaking from my nose, on the floor -  when sneezing, one's eyes close - until slipping on it.  I did not fall, which is to say that my gifted-athlete status remains intact, but I did do a fairly comical slapstick version of man-meets-banana peel- arms-flapping-madly-to regain-balance.  You know the dance.  A You Tube version of such would surely garner many "hits."  I cleaned up the mess while still ah-chooing madly and giving the Clarityne time to kick in.  I would venture that this was proof that life is a comedy but for the knowledge that one of my dogs is sick and that's not funny.  

Okay. Now I'm done.