Thursday, February 21, 2013

ROGUE BRAIN

My brain needs adult supervision.  I do my best to keep an eye on it, but it manages to slip off and go out on its own far too often.  When it's loose it tends to think about things that have no relevance to anything reality serves up and it just happily skips along from one fantasy to the next.  Really.  Is this any way for a mature brain to act?  Why just the other day when Kate Baldwin of CNN was telling me something vital about the state of the world I caught my brain thinking about where she got that incredibly low voice and why she seemed to like saying Wolf so much.  It, my brain that is, suddenly remembered the premise of the movie Deep Throat which had Linda Lovelace choking down assorted, er, objects to reach her clitoris which happened to be in her throat.  It - still my brain - wondered if this might be the case with Kate and her deep gurgling pronunciation of the name Wolf was her way of giving herself a little pleasurable tweak.  My brain then had me mention this to Woowoo Charly who said something that had the words sick, warped, twisted and therapy in it, but I can't quote verbatim because both me and my brain had moved along by then. Kate was still wolfing away.

 Another thing my brain does without my permission is time travel.  This occurs most often when I am in need of  focus and concentration.  "Brain," I say as sternly as I can, "pay attention!" but it rarely does.  It's off visiting some moment in the past when I had done something embarrassing or leaping to tomorrow's golf game where it says I will play brilliantly throughout.  The former is a favorite of my brain's and the latter is just its way of teasing me. I can sometimes actually hear it saying, "You didn't really think that was going to happen did you?"  And then it laughs.

Lately, while my bod has been under-the-weather - See there is an example! I meant to say "not feeling well" but my brain substituted under-the weather which is a goofy phrase which doesn't mean a thing unless you know what the weather is! - my brain has been..."How would you put it Brain?  Inactive?  Yeah inactive, until the precise moment I turn out the light lay my head to rest.  It then, quite unexpectedly and with no help on my part, goes completely rogue with possibilities, none of which I particularly want to explore.  Stay awake all night and read that book?  Go to sleep brain, I need my rest!

So there you have it readers.  I implore youDo not judge me too harshly, it is not my fault!  I am not my brain's keeper! 

 

  

 




 

Tuesday, February 05, 2013

Doc No Internet Access



 This was written off-line a couple of weeks ago.  I forgot about it until now.

The mirimba (xylaphone?) looking icon in the lower right hand corner of my computer says, "Doc No Internet Access."  It's been saying that since noon yesterday.  I am reminded of those mornings when for whatever reason, bad weather, ailing paperboy, act of God, there was no newspaper on my porch.  How in the world was I going to face my day if I didn't have printed confirmation that the world was still there?  I could, of course, hastily don some clothes and streak to the corner for the paper box that was there and, for a quarter, put my day back on track but - and this was as certain as green on St, Patrick's Day - I knew this would alter the normal flow of the day's events in ways I might not necessarily care for.  Messing with routine, I had learned, can have dire consequences.  I was already off-putt at just the thought of having to go to the corner and that is an example of how things can go wrong when an orderly pattern is not followed.  The necessity of news, however, war, famine, fire, failures and ball scores, takes precedence over fear and it was off to the corner I usually went, daring fickle fate and its consequences all the way there and back.  At the breakfast table minutes later with the newspaper spread before me and hot coffee at the ready I knew nothing really could go wrong.

When your Internet is down there is no corner to go to.  You are just flat stuck.  And so, here I sit...waiting.  It's 9:AM and I have been up since 6:30. I have read many pages of a John Irving novel and done half a dozen small chores.  I check for Internet every fifteen minutes.  "Doc No Internet Access."  I am avoiding turning on our television.  There is news there, but there is no email, no Facebook, no Yahoo clips and Denver Post Sports.  Wolf and Donner Blitzer just don't cut it for me, well, at least, not at this hour.   Woe, I tell ya, woe is me.