My last post.

After reading it I felt like a jerk. This is because, I sounded like a jerk. I am not one. I would delete the post, but as Auntie B says: "like it or not, blogs are forever". Sort of like diamonds. I think its funny that some people want to return to a gold standard. How bout wampum? Honestly now, gold isn't intrinsically worth anything. I think that shells are much more pleasing to the eye. I'd like to see a king-tut type mask made out of shiny shell. The kind that you pick up on the beach and take home by the sandy pocketful and then eventually throw away. Like you eventually throw everything that you've ever owned away. Or put in storage. My guitar is in storage, in Texas. I'm kicking myself. Everything on the East Coast is so expensive. I wish I were an oil baron. Then i could afford a new guitar. Then Soaring gas prices would make my family smile. I think that they all smile anyhow. If you always frown, you come off as a jerk. Just like if you write nasty things about people all the time. But sometimes... you just have to.

professionals at the library

Well, I'm at the library, and this guy across from me is testing my patience.

How bout that! Why is he frustrating me?

Well, he came in about ten minutes ago, in his blue collared business shirt and his mauve tie and his manicured business hands holding his footlong tuna-fish Subway sandwich. My peripheral vision, which, I've been led to believe is actually much more acute that my straight on, has been filled with this guy's smacking lips for the last ten. He's burping and and stretching and yawning and viciously clicking the mouse-buttons. Ya. I forgot to mention that were in the computer room. I think I hate him. The air smells like fish and... Arrhhhhg. Ok. now he's straightening his tie and doing that neck-cracking thing where you crank your neck waaay to the side and grimace and it goes thock, thock, crick, pop. You're getting this in real time. He's still here. Now he's leaning back one hand on the mouse on his knee. Man alive! Even the way he breathes is pissing me off. He constantly lets out those under the breath burps where you tuck your chin in and sort of hiccup them out. Ohhh. Dear. Now he's discovered the little scrolling wheel. Great. Scroll Scroll click scroll, burp, lean back, breathe heavily through nose. The worst part is that he looks like a professional. A lawyer or stockbroker or somesuch. I'm pretty sure he'll get caught in one of those whorehouse drug raids later this week. With his face covered in cocaine. Ok, now he's drinking gatorade. Lustilly throwing his horrible, pampered, face backwards and gulping it. Now he's really surfing the internet. Leaning back with one arm behind him the other hand firmly in control of mouse-button left, mouse button right, and the scroll wheel. I still haven't taken a full on look at this two-year old in Armani. Forget it. Well, looks like he's done here. Getting up, stretching, cracking his neck and... ahhh. gone.

thanks for the blog, jerk face.

What is a "honeymoon" anyways?

I've been spending a lot of time at the Library lately, and have consequently been renting lots of DVDs. I thought I'd look for one about how bees make honey. I've always been a huge fan of honey. I put it in tea, on my cereal, and sometimes eat it by the spoonful. My family once received as a gift, a metal tin containing a large peice of Yemeni honeycomb which was dripping in golden honey. (It looked like this) http://www.aiys.org/webdate/can10.jpg In Yemen, honey is used as folk medicine to treat a variety of different ailments, and can be very expensive. Honey is mentioned frequently in both the Bible and Quran, and people have been enjoying and cultivating bee's hives in order to harvest this sweet product for thousands of years. So....
I was thinking about borrowing a bee documentary yesterday, but was filled with a great fear that it might put me off the stuff forever. You know what I mean. Nature documentarys always take pride in matter-of-face, show-in-greatest detail even the ugly bits type of footage. I decided to get it anyhow. I watched it last night. It was great! Not only did I not lose my honeylust, but I learned a few things as well. Aparently, there are thousands of types of bees, but only a handful, the honeybee variety, produces honey. These bees work for twelve hours a day, braving weather, bee-eating birds, bears, and avoiding hostile people. (I realise that this may sound like the picture of an ideal vacation to some, but to the bees it's a matter of existance ) The majority of these bees are workers which are females. They are small-bodied and build the hive, and tend to the birthing of the male drones. The male drone might make up only 10% of the colony or so. They are slightly lager and have huge black eyes. I wondered why out of all the larvae, why so few became males? They don't build the hive, or gather pollen and nectar-- they just mate with the queen and die. not much of a honeymoon foe them... If this seemed mysterious at first, the sex-ratio of the bees, the circumstances which surround the Queen Bee's life were even more bizzare. At least the documentary explained their lives in more detail than that of the pitiful male drone. All pupae are, when they are first deposited into their hexagonal wax wombs, covered in a substance called Royal Jelly. Obviously, whoever coined the term, had issues. Issues aside, this "royal jelly" (which is secreted from glands in the heads of worker bees) is used to feed all pupae in their very beginning stages of life. They go thorugh several molthings, and even spin thier own cocoons. I'm not sure at what point, but very early on in the process they're quickly taken off the RJ and primarially subsist on pollen and and nectar for the remainder of their metamorphoses, and on into their adult lives. But, if a Queen is needed, a seperate area is constructed, a sort of royal nursery, where pupae are fed nothing but Royal Jelly. Then, they turn into Queens. If several Queens are born, the first one to break out of its wax compartment will quickly "murder" her rivals, by stabbing them with her stinger through the walls of their cells. I thought that all of this was pretty cool. I kind of want to be a beekeeper now. (An "apiarist" to those in the biz)

Robert The Bruce

I've decided. The next animal that I buy, adopt, rescue ect... I am either going to name Robert the Bruce or Nigel. Honestly. I've actually had quite a few "Nigels". A couple horny toads, a scorpion, and a frog, I think. They all died. The name seems to be fated to a sticky end. One of the horny toads was stepped on by a fellow backpacker accidentally after leaping from my hand in a heroic effort to escape. But, I'm convinced that the fault usually lies with the animals concerned. Not me. C'mon. They were obviously not fit to bear the name "Nigel". I will find a nobel creature to name Nigel. Then I will challange it to a game of wits. And I can't wait to name something Robert the Bruce. Just to see what happenes. Naming something or someone is powerful. Names intrinsically contain power and mess around heavily with destiny of the recipient. If you name your child Vincent, he or she will tend towards painting. If you name your boy Henry, he will be a steel drivin man. If you name him Che' he will be rebellious. If you name your child Sage Moonblood, Apple, Fifi Trixibelle, or Pilot Inspektor, your child will have alcohol and drug problems. Not that they are hopeless. Perhaps one of these star-screwed children will rise above their silly names and become, perhaps, the next President of these United States. Watching Pilot Inspektor address the United Nations would be tickling. But, I'd still vote for my ferret, Robert the Bruce.

Story in one sitting

I woke up in a haze of disbelief. The aliens had attacked with such boldness. The bump on the back of my head was killing me...The aliens had taken my truck, my lawn mower and my girlfriend. I grimaced at what might happen to the old F-150. It was vintage and I had just had it painted sea-foam green. Two grand. A real piece of work. And now it was being probed by long green fingers. It made my blood boil and the knot on my skull tingle. "They must be extremely advanced though" I thought as I rummaged around the beer cooler.
They did make a whopper of an error in taking Cindy though. Ah. So goes life. You gotta take the good with the bad. There would be no enjoying sweet if there wasn't no sour, right? I straighted up and tapped the top of a cold one. I smiled. Those buggers are gonna learn that soon enough all right.
Now don't get me wrong. Cindy was a Doll. Happy as a silver dollar. But, she chewed up the couch so bad that I had to chain her to the ball hitch of the Ford! Just to teach her, mind you. They call it positive reinforcement--learned it in college. I took a sip of my frosty brew, and wondered if the aliens had colleges too? I could just imagine it "Zorg, take it to light speed! It is essential that we make it to Alpha Centauri before the eclipse!" A pause, and from below decks the concerned voice of an alien engineer. "Captain, it appears that the earth woman has chewed into our photon reactor--we'll be lucky to get to the moon! Permision to chain her to the stabilizer" Heh! he! You know? Hah! Dadgum it. Thats why they took her. She must have still been chained to the Ford! I walked outside. Whoo boy. Chilly. The dawn was coming and light was spilling over the horizon. Reminded me of the spaceship. I sat on the steps of the trailor and thought 'bout the weirdness of the night. I looked up at the twinkling morning star and whispered, tunefully to my self a bit of a song that always took me through the rough days. "What a wonderful world..."

For the Genuinely Bored

After re-reading this, I realise that the Types Test was developed by Myers and Briggs not Jung.

So,
I remember once walking down the hallway of my beloved old dormitory and hearing people say things like "Oh! so you're an ENTP? How interesting! I'm a INPS." Yavapai was an Honors dorm at the University of Arizona, and so I was accustomed to hearing things that made little or no sense to me. At the time, I figured that they must have been talking about some nerdy roll-playing computer game. I now know that they were talking about Jungian Personality types. Let me briefly explain.

The letters mentioned, correspond to adjectives such as "Extroverted", "Feeling", "Perceiving" ect... All combinations combined(handy how that works eh), there are 16 personality types, all of which are characterized by certain idiosyncratic social and emotional tendencies.
There are the "Visionaries" for example, who are extroverts and are extremely driven to lead and scheme and so forth. There are the "Pedagogues" who are perceptive and lively. I, being curious, recently took a Meyers-Briggs personality "test" online and was intrigued to see that it had pegged me as an "ISFP". The "Peacemaker".

Now, certain family members might not agree with Meyers or Briggs on this assesment, but all in all it jived with me. After looking at general personality attributes of the "ISFP" type as explained on various websites, I decided, though not perfect, the results were pretty consistent. Now, of course, Jung's system isn't perfect. There's no "Peeping Tom" or "Sexual Deviant" personality type, but of course all of the sixteen types do have inherent weaknesses. I found some of "mine" funny.

To wit: May have skewed or unrealistic ideas about reality, May be unaware of appropriate social behavior, May be oblivious to their personal appearance, or to appropriate dress, May come across as eccentric, or perhaps even generally strange to others, without being aware of it, Under great stress, may feel out of control and fearful, dwelling on the "dark side" of things.


Hah! Me? Stressed? Never! *sarcasm. I have plenty of positve traits as well, but wouldn't get such a kick out of writing those. Anyhow, I thought PeaceMaker was apropos because I am in the process of trying to join the PeaceCorps. It must be fate.

Anyhow, go ahead! Take a personality test online! (Mine was courtesy of a Facebook application called "MyTYPE). Compare your results to mine, and see how your type relates to my "ISFP."

Pt. deux of "Character sadism

So, There I was. Reading "Police Beat." You can always tell when kids have started to get back from spring break. "Three students were referred to the office of the Dean when they were found by officers in a state of extreme intoxication. They had been staring at a wall for ten minutes and were covered in vomit" - This would be an example of a fairly mild day on the job for the beloved campus police. Usually, they have far more serious matters to deal with.http://wc.arizona.edu/papers/96/38/01_50.html
ect... Ad entertainment ad infinitum. Amen.
Sometimes though, the details are uncanny, arouse suspicion, and you relize that they're talking about, perhaps, your very own roomate. Moments like those are to be kept and cherished. Many people dear to my heart have achieved fame and recognition of the PB variety. So, what could have been interesting enough to pluck me out of Beatland?
Well, Soren had just said something to the effect of "Today we will be talking about Alfred Hitchcock". I was excited. I like Hitchcock to a certain extent, but what's more important, I'd actually seen some of his films. What happened over the next few lectures changed the way I think of creating stories. We spent a great deal of time (for lack of a better word) in a psychoanalysis of Hitchcock the Person. We really delved. For example: As a child, for fun, he would sit and map out Bus Tansit maps of London completely from memory. Needless to say, young Alfred didn't have many friends. Many years and fully developed neuroses later, he began to make films. Soren told us how he always made beautiful blonde women objects of suspicion and deception. He lived vicariously through his leading man characters (like Cary Grant) who were handsome and had no problem with either taking or leaving these women. But, he also relished beating these good looking characters to a pulp. (The scene in North by NorthWest where Grant in his nice suit throws him self repeatedly on the rocky, dusty, ground as he tries to escape a cropduster which, as it makes low fly-bys, shoots at him with a machine gun came to mind) Was this his way of getting back at who knows what he believed caused him to have the jowls of a manitee? They weren't imposing regal Churchill jowls either. They rather looked like curtains of fat. Well. How, you may wonder, did this information give me a new perspective on writing? Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not a misogynist. Nor am I particularly dissappointed with my looks (I've been told that I have "cute lips"). I realized though, that, as a writer, I have complete control over the landscape of my imagination. I can pardon or damn. I can raise from the dead. I can fly. And, I think that, at least for the next little while, I will take a cue from Hitchcock, and relish in my tyranny.