R.T.L.B.: No Whining

From Richard Bach's Illusions:

"There is no such thing as a problem
without a gift for you in its hands.
You seek problems because you need their gifts."

"Argue for your limitations,
and sure enough, they're yours."

From Hugh MacLeod's Gaping Void

R.T.L.B.: Be Particular

"Take care to get what you like
or you will be forced to like what you get."
- George Bernard Shaw

Jill Connor Browne nailed it with her admonition in The Sweet Potato Queen's Book of Love:

Be Particular!

From Hugh MacLeod's Gaping Void

R.T.L.B: Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say

WW*Y*D? Any rules to live by? I have a few. Some old. Some new. Some borrowed. Many learned, forgotten, and learned again.

Here's one:


Fa' real. The most treasured relationships in my life are those in which genuine communication happens. Words are backed up by those actions that speak louder.

The genuine relied upon in the past can reach the end of its lifecycle. What was, wasn't. Change is a constant. One of the sucky parts of change is that it takes time to find the genuine in the new. Patience is something I'd like to find in pill form. Even with my patience dosage metered out, I sometimes discover that what is, isn't.

What would happen if we all took the 24 hour challenge described on Andy Nulman's blag here? Would we all have our own little Jim Carrey film, or would we be liberated as Andy suggests?

Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Dammit.

"Be who you are and say what you feel,
because those who mind don't matter
and those who matter don't mind."
- Dr. Seuss

Poetry That's Vogon Bad

Yes. It's true that Bucky's poetry on Get Fuzzy is not fit for consumption by human, feline, canine, or any species.


But such great puns! Wordsworthless. Wrongfellow. Albert Whinestein. E = MC Scram. Edgar Allen Schmo. Walt Twitman. Start here and read last week's series before it disappears in another week.

That Darby Conley correlates the unfitness to the depths of badness that Vogon poetry reaches just tickles me pink - Douglas Adams is much celebrated chez Cheek.

In fact, did you know you can generate your own bad Vogon poetry here? Here's mine from today:

See, see the nurturing sky
Marvel at its big mustard depths.
Tell me, Pid do you
Wonder why the ass ignores you?
Why its foobly stare
makes you feel horny.
I can tell you, it is
Worried by your denudilate facial growth
That looks like
A smoked gouda.
What's more, it knows
Your fecund potting shed
Smells of mold.
Everything under the big nurturing sky
Asks why, why do you even bother?
You only charm catsh*t.

My Enormous Penis

Mr. Pid referenced it (the song) the other day in a phone chat. Erin shouts out about Steve's. And other general silliness compels me to share this gem from a few years back.

A Northern Virginia a capella group that opened for Eddie From Ohio, DaVinci's Notebook is sadly now defunct. But they so did not suck.

Gooder Vibrations

With apologies to WhiteNoise, I must confess that I very much enjoyed the season finale of Lost. Sure, it was a tease. But it was a good tease. Anticipation can be a good thing. (Spoiler alert! Stop reading now if you haven't seen it!) The secret to the code to turn off the jamming signal being the notes for The Beach Boy's "Good Vibrations" ... very cheeky, given the double entendre for show history.

It got me thinking. What. is. up. with all the things that vibrate today? Sure, there are *those* kinds. Not that there's anything wrong with them! (and apologies to Erin for *almost* stealing a title from one of her posts)

Cheek recently joined the ranks of mechanized toothbrush abusers. Um, users. Shopping for a new toothbrush delivered thwartation by how large all the brush heads were. Kidding aside about how big my mouth is, structurally it's actually quite small. The big ass-brushes make me wanna heave. The smallest I could find was from Oral B with funky bristles and bonus vibration built in, no batt'r'y required. Day-um! But this baby could give *those* kinds a run for their money!

Thanks to a blog that shall remain nameless, I'm now a happy schmoozer of the Gillette M3 Power Razor, which also vibrates. I sh*t you not, there has been much less blood shed as evidenced previously (that scar is *still* effing prominent). And it delivers a much closer shave for pits, legs and sundries.

It does, however, use a batt'r'y, which one really must remember to remove before checking the razor with other toiletries. That humming noise trumpets as an unintended heralder that your luggage has arrived on the baggage carousel, turning heads, eliciting illicit snickers, and making you rip into your bag to turn the l'il sucker off. Boldly make eye contact with a snickerer and say, "How YOU doin'?".

One of the gifts under the tree last year came from CarolinaKat in the form of a vibrating footrest / head massager.

Recent scapular concerns found me face down on the table in my crack dealer / podiatrist's office for twenty minutes of e-Stim before he cracked me.

NPR reported today on the new "Shuttle Experience" at Kennedy Space Center, built to stimulate - er, simulate - what it's like to be in the shuttle during a launch. 17,500 MPH of vibration simulation, babeeeee! (Wired article here.)

The song was #6 in Rolling Stone Magazine's Greatest Songs of All Time list. It was the only tune of the aforementioned 500 Songs for Kids benefit that was not performed by a musician - lacking anyone to play it, they had Butch Walker paint a canvas while the song played. YouTube yields Brian Wilson's inspiration for the tune:


Vibrations, vibrations everywhere. Good, good, good, good vibrations. Lying in bed just like Brian Wilson did?

Holy Cow, Erin

You know those moments? When a turn of phrase grabs you and throws you down and you say YES! Well, Erin posted one of those today:

" ... the power of wishing upon a star is in the wish, not the star."

Read more here.

Stories

"Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them. You're always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past."

- From Richard Bach's Illusions.

From Thursday's xkcd.com - see the whole comic here


The Sundays, "Here's Where the Story Ends"

500 Songs for Kids

Caught the last night a couple of weeks back of an industrious inaugural benefit concert series known as 500 Songs for Kids. Over 10 nights, 500 different acts played Rolling Stone Magazine's 500 greatest songs of all time (a 2004 issue).

The down side of listening to songs 46 (by the time I made it inside - long ass-line!) all the way to #1: too much smoke, standing for over 6 hours, and the long wait times for some acts to set up or clear out.

But many, many upsides. Dionne Farris (of former Arrested Development fame) sang the #6 song, Aretha Franklin's "R-E-S-P-E-C-T". Pete Yorn delivered #2, John Lennon's "Imagine".

My 3 favorite performances were 2 without lyrics, and one all about them. A string group (I failed to write down their name) rendered Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" in fine fashion. You'll have to crank the volume to do the strings justice, as they weren't plugged in and only picked up by the mikes on stage.


My second favorite performance was by a local jazz group known as Jazzspects. Fantastic delivery of The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows." Play this - it is an unsuck listen!


Best performance was Sanjay Kothari's "One" by U2. Wow. His voice, phrasing, and guitar chops were superlative. He was also one of the organizers of the benefit, working his keester off the entire night. When his hibernation is over and sleep restores his sanity, I'm looking forward to catching him around Atlanta. (I have a vid of his performance, but this broad who claims to have recently joined a band of her own can be overheard singing harmony along with Sanjay. If you want to hear it anyway, say so in comments and I can post the vid there).

Gemini Horrorscope

From Darby Conley's Get Fuzzy.

Happy to you day, my Gemini peeps: Gaywad, X, BroDufus, Cricket, "Beavis", Moose, and the many urchins of peeps (Hollianna, Scotty, Claire, Brady, Adam.) If it's your day too this month, good on ya.

Been a Long Time

So blaggers know this. Blurkers may not care. But lapses happen. The busyness of life, a lack of inspiration, other life / heart / work happenings weighing more heavily on the mind. But for many, it's also a need to wank - uh, write - something more substantive than trivial. All of the above apply.

Days passed. And this emptiness filled my blag. I wanted to do the substantive post - it's simmering - but until I blag that, doing anything else was not enough. More days passed. I needed a plan.

From Hugh MacLeod's Gaping Void.

Instead, a peep's visit delivered a keester kick. In town to catch Cheek's band, said peep delivered a draft copy of his book. HIS BOOK. Here I am looking for focus and inspiration to lift me out of my heart's other heaviness, and DAY-UM! if another's product of focus and inspiration isn't the needed kick in the head. Keester. Whatever.

Starting somewhere is starting. Not only did the blagging wane, but so too did daily perusal of fave web haunts. Getting back in the saddle yields such amusement that sharing is compulsory. It's not the back burnered substance post, but blags in motion to tend to stay in motion (Kernan's bastardized Newton's law).

From Darby Conley's Get Fuzzy.

I've been missing ShakesPug, and it looks like Bucky has too. He's famous for purloining prose and poetry from all corners, but this take on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is priceless and CatPoetry in its own right.

Catching up with Gaping Void yielded this:


While today's Toothpaste for Dinner yielded this:
Coincidence?

And then today's AWAD bonks on Cheek's pointy head. Color me stoopid not to know that ramada was a Spanish word. Dood! I've been saying it fer *years* in context with the motel, but never knew. Dough!

Setting back to rights after listing - sorry for the lapse. Reconnecting with familiars is making today a good day. Realists need not comment - as per today's Pearls Before Swine:

Are you uplifted yet?

From Hugh MacLeod's Gaping Void.

live your way into the answer

... have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. and the point is, to live everything. live the questions now. perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer ...

rainer maria rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Grace

Gaping Void, by Hugh MacLeod

My love for you is unconditional. it's not something I'd previously measured. It's not something I'd thought of, ever, in terms of limits. They have yet to be reached. CarolinaMom gives me the word for my love for you: agape. And that's indeed what I feel for you, my sister in my family of choice. My person.

I'm wordless at present. They're developing, and will soon be yours. Only yours. I found these, for now, from college.

I love you. As ee cummings wrote, know that I carry your heart. I carry it in my heart.

Grace

squares of sunlight fell on her feet
light broken into quarters by shadows
lost in the squares until the sun fell
the aloneness a comfort after years of being heard
only by screaming the loudest

the sun slanted through the panes as she sat in the white room
full of silence and Catholic guilt
there to realize what she did wrong
she called in desperate need
and they brought her for "healing"
the world was caterwauling outside the window
and inside her head
she found safety in her solitary occupation

it reminded her of her grandmother's house
where "Momma" was laid out for hours in respect
she had wished only to close the lid
but her mother pushed her out to play
with her visiting cousins

she should have come here years ago
before her mother bundled her off to shrink after shrink
because of the drug after drug she was given
she might not have dropped out of school
two years and now settled comfortably
in the routine of the pill and the comfort
of a nice Jewish doctor's couch

she leaves the white room, a prescription for a diploma,
and moves to Seattle
where strangers don't ask instrusive questions
the joyce carol oates questions
instead admiring her tenacity

she paints again, her first showing near the university
she spies her work at night, walking home from
her job as a dinner chef
her art and herself reflected
through the front room window
its corner, the ghost of the annual church fair at home
the carnival's swings brightly lit
the chairs swirling at mad angles
the moon waning above, haloed in clouds
men, tilted from drinking, sobering up in the bingo hall
women catching up on parish news

she races the leaves home in the brisk evening
tripping across her childhood supersition
three circles of gusting leaves as bad luck
she stops. waiting. watching.
the fourth circle spirals from the ground
her leisurely pace resumes
calling "ollie ollie in come free"


James, by Mark Tonra

Map of the Innerdnet

Randall Munroe posted this on today's xkcd. Cheek's frequent haunts are listed - are yours?


(The hover over text doesn't appear here, but does on the linked site above.)

Opening Doors

"when one door of happiness closes, another opens;
but often we look so long at the closed door
that we do not see the one which has been
opened for us" - Helen Keller

For CountryMouse.

May Day

At a Daytona concert in 1989, James Taylor shared his grandfather's greeting for this fine day:

"Hooray! Hooray! The first of May!
Outdoor f*cking starts today!"

Grandpa Taylor rocks!

A few weeks back, A Word A Day's weekly theme was "There's a word for it." One of the words was an incredibly serendipitous find, waiting all these years for discovery.

FloridaDad has long discussed navel gazing as a process for examing the old to divine the new. To examine who you are before choosing the next right thing.

He'd rub his belly, which we urchins had nicknamed Ralph, and chant "navel navel navel" as he illustrated navel gazing in action. Little did any of us know, there's a word for it!

omphaloskepsis (om-fuh-lo-SKEP-sis) noun :
Contemplation of one's navel.

From Greek omphalos (navel) + skepsis (act of looking, examination). Ultimately from the Indo-European root spek- (to observe) which is also the ancestor of suspect, spectrum, bishop (literally, overseer), despise, espionage, telescope, spectator, and spectacles.]

Today's word in Visual Thesaurus

Summer, fall, and winter was a time of much omphaloskepsis in Cheekdom. M'aidez calls were answered by many, and my gratitude is profound. In the words of Emily Dickinson: my friends are my estate.

CheekHaiku to illustrate word usage:

Spring's bold green leaves clothe
winter's naked limbs; so ends
omphaloskepsis.

Spring to life!