What Price Eccentricity?

Tags

Adam Lambert, Annie Oakley, Cyndi Lauper, eccentricity, individuality, Lady GaGa, lemmings, Liberace, Mae West, personality

Let me say right at the beginning, that what I know about  Lady GaGa, or more specifically Stephani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, you could put on the head of a pin with room to spare. All I know is that she is a singer/songwriter, a celeb of major proportions, and she sounds a lot like an Italian Jersey Girl.

I’ve seen the gal here and there, snapshots really, of her appearances at various affairs where a person of her station would be. Beyond that I am clueless.

Until this morning when she appeared on GMA. She was there in tandem with Cyndi Lauper, a singer more of my generation, and one whom I have always liked and in some sense admired.

The ladies were there to promote AIDS awareness for women. As usual women often are neglected in these things, witness how long it took the medical community to even think about women’s heart health. In any case, both women acquitted themselves well, and were thoughtful and clearly rather bright individuals. This I knew about Ms. Lauper, but it was new information regarding Ms. GaGa.

It struck me that we do allow a fair amount of eccentricity in our creative artists, whether they be singers or painters, actors  or poets. We fairly expect it, since out of their brains come worlds that are often mystical and well, other worldly. Witness if you will Salvador Dali’s work, or that of Andy Worhol.

If we look back to times earlier, we have the fine examples of Mae West, and Liberace, Annie Oakley perhaps. People who refused to accept a mold, who found being like everyone else abhorrent in some real sense.

And that seems to be the real indicator of true eccentricity–the desire, or more correctly, the compulsion to stand out as “different.” This must be done at all cost, even if everyone turns away in laughter or horror.  There is a self-confident pursuit of being “as is” to the public at large, along with I would argue, a fair amount of ambition to be KNOWN.

I find something refreshing in all this. I think that perhaps is why we uphold these “misfits” and adore then even when we might personally find their behavior not one we would want to emulate. We are touched and feel a perhaps unconscious guilt at our own tendency to be a lemming.

And make no mistake, most of us are lemmings. Oh sure, we may be radically liberal versus extremely conservative, but we are identifying to a group. We are not standing alone. We are not naked before a world that loves to criticize and pick apart the rich and famous–or should one say infamous.

A good deal of the package is meant to startle and get your attention surely. I’m sure Lady GaGa doesn’t wear the outlandish costumes we see her in at home when she is curled up before the TV.  The creative spirit normally wants attention–that’s why they play to the public arena whether it be a sculptor, a composer, or the actor.  But the flamboyancy is real–it is part of the “this is who I am and if you don’t like it, tough” statement that challenges people to choose sides.

It seems to me that the people behind all the glitter and sequins, the outlandish hairstyles and Cleopatra type makeup, evidence  a mind of some consequence. For when they speak, very often, wisdom comes forth. They turn out to be thoughtful, inquisitive, discerning minds capable of reading and thinking and coming to logical conclusions.

I’m reminded that my boy Adam Lambert is one such. He is fast becoming his “own” persona, unapologetic to those who don’t like this “in your face” gay man. Yet Lambert seems to understand himself and what is happening to him. I doubt  that he will end up broke and vilified having been taken in by unscrupulous “handlers” such as Fantasia complains about. That woman was in no way prepared for the world she so suddenly entered by winning American Idol some years ago.  But then, no one has accused Fantasia of being an eccentric.

Yet what we laud and applaud in our creative artists, we deplore and turn away in shock from in our political leaders and others we trust with care of our needs. No doctor or dentist, no therapist, accountant, lawyer, no one trusted with our welfare better show up in sequined jackets and bling. No, we want them looking properly conservative, and all about business.

We allow some eccentricity in scientists, mostly because we don’t really understand their world and it seems all fairly weird in and of itself. Talk about quantum mechanics and string theory and up and down quarks for long, and heck, you too would expect the scientist  to be more along the lines of Dr. Frankenstein.

In fact, it seems we allow a fair amount of it to permeate all academia, as long as it stays clear of those who veer into the above categories of doctor/lawyer that we depend on so dearly at times.

I suppose I have no particular concerns if my plumber shows up wearing a tutu because he likes to cross dress as a ballerina. I don’t worry that he can’t fix the leak.

Similarly I don’t think I care if my mail carrier has orange hair and tats covering every available skin surface that I can see. I may ponder erotically what is on the hidden areas, but I don’t demand a “regular” post-person to drop off my mail.

Why do we attribute such frivolousness to the law maker who is flamboyantly a Tammy Faye Baker, when we make no such assumption about the master shot maker Annie Oakley? Why is one authentic and the other scary and untrustworthy?

I as usual have no answer, I just noticed the difference, and well, felt duty bound to share it with you. 

Just sayin.’

I Am and Am Not Simultaneously

Tags

contradition, mind, paradox, personality, personhood, psychology

I came across this post today and darned if it didn’t get me to thinking. I mean, obviously it doesn’t take much to get me in that frame of mind, but it was something I honestly hadn’t considered this idea before.

In case you didn’t know, I’m struggling a bit now with the weather and with a general malaise of ideas for blogging. I figure it’s just a blip on the radar screen and am not overly concerned that I’ve run out of topics, but who knows, maybe I am.

In any case, the post was about the concept of paradox and how we are, each of us, a motley assemblage of such seeming contradictions.

The point of the article was that rather than trying to reconcile these oddities, we should embrace them and live more fully through them. I’m not sure as I get that, but let’s proceed.

According to the dictionary, a paradox is:

A seemingly contradictory statement that is or can be true.

Something like this: I am deeply curious about the world, and I am a very lazy person.

That one applies to me. No one who reads this blog regularly would argue with the first claim. I am as eclectic as they come when it comes to topics. One of the appeals of this blog, so I’m told, is that one never knows what one might find here.

I’ve commented more than once that I’m a lazy person. I can think of all kinds of ways to avoid most anything, and I often reject things I like until I have completed a list of shoulds each day. The problem is, sometimes I never get to the things I like.

I’m a verbal crusader for things I believe in. But I’m not a person who is motivated to take up the placard very often. I’m too lazy for that. So, in a real sense, sometimes my actions don’t back up my rhetoric.

The upshot as I said, of the article, was that we are better off accepting these paradoxes about ourselves, for they truly reflect the authentic self. I’m not so sure. If the paradoxes suggest real opposites within ourselves, then it seems to me, something is being shortchanged.

I do think it’s a good jump off to better understanding oneself. This can lead to more effective choices to combat the limitations we structure into ourselves. I do think, as the author suggests that it can make us more tolerant of others. When we see seemingly contradictory behavior in another, we can sympathize, since we have recognized similar anomalies in ourselves.

No doubt the addictive personality has a life filled with paradox. The addict sees the damage that results from the over indulgence of the object, yet finds great comfort in the object at the same time. No doubt many relationships are also fraught with such enigmas.

I’m more of a mind to think that it is better to have a strong preference one way, and to work at reducing the effect of the paradox. To me, they seem to be pulling in opposite directions and therefore limiting the satisfaction one finds in some of our desires. I can tell you that I sometimes feel guilt at not “doing” more that I write about. I am angry at my laziness.

I don’t see a lot of ways of making these two things fit together. So I differ with the author that somehow we ought to be embracing these paradoxes as our “true” selves. They may be, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t engage in a self-help improvement to reduce the magnitude of those elements of ourselves that we find counter productive to the execution of others that we find meaningful and important to us.

Given my rather flat emotional response right now, this is a subject that I will spend more time on. First, I want to examine in greater detail all the paradoxes in my life, and I’m told, that for most of us, there are many. Then the next step is to see which ones I consider helpful to my being and which not. Then of course, the hard part, working out ways to reduce the effect of the those that are not helpful.

It’s a work in progress, but then, life is that isn’t it? Tell me your thoughts and lets muddle through this together.

Building a Better Me

Tags

nurturing, personality, psychology

I may be somewhat unusual. Other’s could speak to that more clearly than I. But I think humans are benefited by periodic assessments of goals and means. I think that what works today may not tomorrow and innovation is key to our journey.

As winter approaches and thoughts turn to more indoor pursuits, it seemed a good time to reflect on what I am doing, what I want to be doing, and what I should be doing.

First, as you may already know, I function with some negatives. I’m lazy. No point in denying that. I’m also steeped in the concept of delayed gratification. This helps to get around the laziness by pairing what I don’t want to do with something I do want to do, and then denying the latter until the former is done.

I also function with a reasonable amount of guilt. Note I said reasonable, since I think a certain amount is useful in motivating thought and change. But when all is said and done, I don’t do as much as so many others, and I feel self-absorbed to a degree.

I have come to conclude after nearly six decades upon this whirling dervish of a planet, that we as sentient creatures need five needs addressed to be whole. They are, in no particular order, the needs of the body, the needs of the personality, the needs of the intellect, the spiritual, and lastly the creative impulse.

I think most of these needs require attention mostly every day, but at minimum, several times a week. So, for no other reason than I thought of it last night, I thought it was wise to assess how well I’m doing and make whatever adjustments are necessary or at least compelling.

The needs of body are obvious: food. Not just any old food, but good nutritious food. I’m fairly good at that, though many would conclude we eat a diet too high in both fat and sugar. No matter, we don’t eat out of boxes or freezer sections. I C O O K. I make biscuits, I don’t open a box of Bisquick or Jiffy or that tube stuff. I make salsa, I don’t unscrew jars containing manufactured “salsa.” I do it, because I enjoy cooking and frankly my digestive system appreciates it. I can bake a loaf of bread with work time down to about  10 minutes. I figure it counts that we don’t eat a lot of additives and preservatives.

I walk a mile a day, six days a week. I seldom miss. I use a treadmill if the weather is too nasty to walk outside. I don’t like it, but I admit that it makes me feel better than when I don’t.

Psychological needs are those things we need to feel loved and respected, valuable. Much has to do with relationships and building good ones that compliment one’s needs. A touchy feely person is not advised to try for an intimate relationship with a cold withdrawn type. You get the drift. We need validation, acceptance. We get them from friends and relatives. We feel satisfaction in finishing tasks. Any number of things throughout a day can be psychological pluses in our lives. We seek to cultivate them.

Intellectual needs are met by thinking hard on subjects that don’t always make themselves easy of understanding. We have to stretch, concentrate, push beyond our comfort zone. We need to learn every day, and things that matter to us and to the world. Reading can be the solution to this, but so can judicious use of the television and computer. I read a  lot during the day. I’m reading upwards of 4-5 books at the present for instance.

Spiritual needs are essential and must be met daily I think. This can mean any manner of traditional religious practice, but may involve no religion at all. Walking in nature and seeing the immensity of the world can point one to something larger than self. That is the point here. It is getting outside yourself and your petty needs and wants. It is engaging in the greater world. I can imagine sitting at the ocean’s edge, steeped in the tides, and sensing the enormity of the moon and it’s power on this planet. I can, religiously, see this in the context of a God who has created a series of laws that permit this evolution of the universe.

Lastly, we need to feel creative. And here we have many choices. This doesn’t have to relate solely to a hobby, but can be more mundane things. It can also be one’s life work. This would be most true of those who are artistic and make their living from art. But the rest of us can do it as well, through crafting and cooking, gardening, and so forth. We create beauty, serenity, life.

When we have balance between these various components, I believe we are in synchronicity with the world and with life itself. We are nurturing all those parts of ourselves that require attention.

Since we live in a world that tends to keep score, we may neglect one or more for long stretches. We may be forced to “schedule” fun time and intellectual time, and relationship time. If we needs to that, then we should, for neglecting any of these for long leads to imbalance and inauthentic living.  Our human experience is meant to be expressed and experienced in all it’s totality. To miss any aspect is to deny ourselves in a real way.

Think about where you are today. What is being neglected in your life. Do something about it today. Take charge of being human again.

How Shouldy Are Ya?

Tags

Humor, order, personality, psychology, rules

(Yawn). Oh yeah, excuse me, I’m still waking up. I took a nap. Not just any old nap, but a late morning nap. And I took it before I wrote my blog post, and before I fixed dinner, and before I did any of a whole list of things I normally would do.

And that is something to write home about and alert the media too. Because that is not me. I am a should do person. And I am a delayed gratification person. All required tasks for the day must be done before we engage in such frivolous behaviors such as napping, or reading for pure pleasure, or well, you get the idea.

I recently took the Myers-Briggs personality test, again. I always come out pretty much the same.(Super duper important aside: Johnny Depp comes out the same as me. We are simpatico!!! I just knew it) I always answer those “spontaneous” questions the same way. You know the ones I mean. The ones that ask if you are orderly, organized, and not subject to a lot of “on the spur of the moment” kinda behavior.

I have answered similar types of questions in personality tests designed to find your perfect relationship, back in the years before I became a Mrs. and gave up such pursuits. (I found him)

They make me feel uncomfortable, because I know I’m supposed to answer that, in the middle of dying my hair (again something I no longer do), I  can be enticed with the crook of a finger, to  jump in the car and go off to watch a rodeo, a towel covering up the wet strands of hair still soaking up the blondy liquid designed to make me drop dead gorgeous in 20 minutes.

I’m not OCD of course, no, I leave that obsessive-compulsive chit to the Contrarian, who delights me unendingly with his quirky sandwich making requirements and demented need to examine the date on the milk container every 30 minutes or so.

No, no such compulsion, just a big watermelon feeling in the pit of my stomach should I even contemplate basking in the sun when there are still a bunch of “shoulds” on my mental list. That’s not OCD, surely not. I don’t break out in a sweat or anything, I’m not afraid the sky will freakin’ fall or anything, though I’m sure there are bad consequences from not attending to shoulds. It’s a perfectly normal genetic evolutionary development after all. Otherwise the cave would have been made unlivable with all the mastodon bones piling in the corner and all the bugs in the animal skins building up from lack of proper cleaning.

No, it’s not something I HAVE to do, it’s prudence. There I said, it. It’s just smart living, right? I can quit it any time I want to, but I know it makes for orderly living and clean living is next to Godliness, and we know what that means don’t we? See?

(Whoa, I thought I was channeling Randal there for a minute.)

Seriously, I think orderliness and attendance to shoulds is a reasonable way to live. It makes life manageable and we all want that don’t we? Who wants to be surprised every freakin’ morning? It’s Tuesday, so the toilets beckon to be cleaned. That’s normal right?

I don’t spend a lot of time looking over my shoulder I tell you. Because there is nothing crazy about the way I think, and so nobody is staring and pointing at me. Maybe at you, if you are one of those frivolous people who don’t do your laundry on Thursday and Friday and Monday, the days appointed by the great Laundry God Tide.

In my world, shoulds means using procrastination as a defense to being labeled as shhhhh OCD. So you pick about three things and don’t do them until the end of time only to prove that you are not a prisoner of shouldy living.

For me, it’s things like paying bills. I don’t pay bills. I quit paying bills when I married the Contrarian. Pretty much the first question I asked was, “do you mind paying bills?” When he said, “umm nah, not really,” I knew he was the one. I hate paying bills, and that is that.

So that all brings me around to the nap. The nap was a test to prove that I’m not ummmm compulsive. (Why does that word keep coming up here?) I took it, and I admit it and I’m proud I did. It was nice. It was not on the schedule. As a judge I knew once said to a defendant he was about to sentence. ” you knew it was wrong, but you did it anyway.” Yep, I did, and I’m not looking down in shame or trying to cover it up. It was not on the list, but I did it anyway.

So, I can only now look around superiorily and wonder why you’re so trapped in the world of should. I’m not, as you can see.

To Be or Not to be ME?

Tags

being true to self, maturity, peer pressure, personality, psychology, self-esteem, sociology

We all struggle with the concept. It hits most of us for the first time in our teens–the pressure to conform, to be what others want and expect of us.

Somehow, we dismiss this when we leave our teens, thinking it is all behind us. But for most, I suspect it is not, and worse, for some of us, it started long before our teens.

Luckily for me, it was brought home to me once again, and I must own up to the fact that I have still not completely removed this cancer from my system. My personality is still driven to one degree or another by it.

Maturity knows no age as we all come to realize. Being who we are, being “comfortable in our own skin” is something to be striven for, and as I said, I suspect most think they are, until someone criticizes  us, and we realize that we are still held all to tight by the tendrils of wanting to be what is expected of us.

As I said, mostly we encounter this in our teen years in the form of  peer pressure. We want to be part of the crowd, and that means liking what the “crowd” likes and disliking what it doesn’t. Sometimes it causes us to do really shameful things, things we know to be wrong, merely to be accepted.

For some of us, it’s far worse than the general stupid behavior that our parents used to complain about, ending in the often heard phrase, “well would you jump off a cliff just because your friends did?” Some of it is generated by our parents themselves.

I’m not just talking about the parents who assault their kids and thus create children and later adults, who through fear, are willing to do anything to curry favor. More to the point, curry love. No, the parent who denigrates the kid, calling him stupid, ugly, fat–these esteem killing sentiments result in adults with low self esteem and they too are willing to conform to others expectations and desires in an attempt to feel wanted and, yes, loved.

I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s, and I deeply felt the pain of not being the ideal. Though I was above average in intelligence, nobody cared much about that. Beauty was still the key to success for girls. Girls were wives and mothers in the making, college was just a means to that end, hopefully nudging up the scale of income.

I was chubby and wore glasses. Not ugly, but not “cute” either. Kids made fun of me, dating was a painful and not often met hope. I was willing to do a good deal to be part of some group, and be accepted. And even there, I suspected I was thoroughly disposable, the one who if  late, would not be waited for. (I was never late as a result, and still am not).

Added to that I had dysfunctional parents, who both were good at ridicule. My brains were no big thing, expected as it were. So I was often taunted as being clumsy, stupid (in anything of importance- of which school work was not), fat, etc. My mother once exclaimed regarding my slightly buck and crooked teeth, “why you seem to have inherited all the worst qualities of both me and your dad.” (the teeth were straighted by orthodontics of course)

As a young adult, I latched on to anyone who was kind and supportive, and tried my best to be to their liking. This certainly included men, and I suspect a whole slue of women would agree with me on this. I became that which they desired. I became an enthusiast of football, or prize fighting, or interested in science fiction. I learned about muscle cars, I learned to love hiking or X-Files. It didn’t matter.  If he liked it, I liked it.

Worse for me, was always to be criticized by someone. Not just any criticism of course. If I was learning something and the criticism was clearly intended to improve my work, so much the better. But if it was of the kind, that suggested  that the person just plain didn’t like ME, well then I was deeply hurt.

Not just hurt, I was devastated. I would relate the circumstances to others–had I done anything wrong by their estimation? Was the other person being unreasonable? In most cases, I went to the person and restated my case, sure they had misunderstood. Usually they misunderstood nothing, they still reiterated the same complaint.

I couldn’t let it rest, I would grouse, replay, rethink, re-discuss, all in an attempt to rectify the situation. I couldn’t handle not being liked by someone. Usually of course, I was forced to, and often, in my younger years, this took the form of getting all my “friends” to agree with me and to avoid this person. After all, if they were my friends, they should, right?

Maturity comes of course, in realizing that we are all put together a bit differently. We don’t all like apples, we don’t all like Johnny Depp. The world would be a bore if we did. A person may need a certain type of friend. I may not be able to fulfill that need. That doesn’t mean I’m lacking, it means what it means.

For indeed, no friendship or relationship lives or dies by whether I truly like football or Mozart. Sure, we can have casual acquaitances whom we get together because we share some hobby or sport, but those who care for us, ultimately care for who we are in the deeper part of our psyche.

It’s whether we are kind, warm, loving, compassionate, empathetic, and so forth. If we are fudging on those factors to retain someone’s love, then we are but putting off the inevitable break, when they discover the truth.

Being true to self, means being who you are, even when you know it will bump up hard against the beliefs of someone you care about, or don’t care about. It in fact can’t respond to that at all. It means we are simply in all things true to who we are, letting the chips fall.

In my recent experience of feeling rejected unfairly, I started down the same path of justification and explanation. But I stopped, thanks as usual to the wise man I married. I can’t be and am not what someone else expected or wanted. So be it. I am who I am, like me or don’t.

I’m okay with that. In fact, I’m feeling pretty liberated by that. I’ve grown a bit, and I’m walking a little taller. To thine own self be true. Shakespeare would be proud! Are you  really being you?

Peeking Inside My Head

Tags

ego, faith, God, meditation, personality, religion, self

Eye of God

Sitting in the bar the other night, having a rousing conversation with God, I paused. . . .

Okay, so I wasn’t sitting in a bar, but I do have rather intense conversations with God on a regular basis. No, I’m not crazy, I don’t hear voices or see things that other folks don’t. Nothing so mundane and thoroughly explainable as that.

But I do imagine God’s response to things I think about a lot. It seems rather normal to me, and is, I find a pretty good check on my tendency to put me first. Who is me, after all?

I’m tempted to say that I’m not really who you think I am, or I think I am, most of the time. This is a bit of a test actually. Imagine someone, anyone asking you, who are you? Note your response. . . . I’ll give you a minute.

If you said, “I’m a wife, mother, accountant, Catholic, feminist,” etc, etc, etc, you’ve fallen into my trap. You are repeating what other people define you as, what your ego defines itself as. That’s not at all who you are actually.

(TRUMPETS PLEASE). You are: “a spiritual being having a human experience.”

The ego takes the sum total of memory, of experiences, and conversations, of the looks given and received, words said and received, and creates a “personality” from this, and declares itself IT. Our conscious mind does this automatically it seems, without direction.

Yet, those of us immersed in meditation practices know that hidden deep inside, under all the chaotic yammering that goes inside our heads, is our real self, inextricably bound to God, or at least  many of us so  believe.

It is God as us, that spark called Spirit, shared with this living flesh, abiding in us, as us, watching, experiencing, and when given permission by “us” acting through us.

It’s at the same time, simple as a drop of rain, and as complicated as the most detailed of chemical compounds. We ignore it, and go blithely on our way, stumbling through life, thinking we are personality us, or we recognize the true us, and spend hours upon hours searching and trying to connect, to be aware of God within us.

It’s hard, and it can take a lifetime. It sometimes no doubt is never achieved, this blissful state of Oneness we so desire. Yet, those of us convinced of its reality, cannot stop the quest.

I was over at Dave’s blog earlier today, commenting on a post he did on Bill Richardson and the death penalty. I saw a “quote of the month” that was ironic to me, true and not true at the same time. To paraphrase, it said basically, that you are probably on the wrong track if you find that God dislikes the same people you do.

No doubt there is a lot of truth in that, but it’s one of those things, that also carries its opposite I think, or it can. It depends you see. Depends on whether you are on the right track in fact. Then perhaps your sense of good and bad is pretty darn good, and God would agree with you in principle at least.

Now, you have to understand that I start from the premise, that no one is lost. I don’t believe in hell, except for the fact that you can create a pretty darn nice one here on earth. God is sad when we do that, but he can’t stop us from our choices.

I believe that God calls us to him, but those who can’t or won’t answer, for whatever reason, aren’t punished but received home with open arms come that point of transition. What comes next I have no clue, but I sure hope its growth and learning, and lots of traveling around the universe, seeing all the sights and having important  work to do.

I do tend to think that those who progress farther along the path in life graduate higher and have more important work than others, but that doesn’t mean that the non-believers are left to being janitors, it just means they start learning from farther back.

This means of course that the proverbial bad guys (Hitler, Dalmer, bin Ladin, Stalin, etc, etc, etc, ) get there too. This drives some people utterly wild with anger. I find it right and good that God does thusly, and I find it amusing that it rankles some minds to distraction.

After all, these self-proclaimed righteous types always claim they do “right” because they love God. Truth is, they do it because they feel this is the price to be paid for eternal life. And it drives them batty to think that they “sacrificed” so much for nothing. They cannot and will not allow that it is possible. Why society would fall apart if everyone acted out from their baser instincts.

I guess that depends on what you think about humanity. I tend to think that we basically “get it” instinctively that we can’t steal, kill, and otherwise disrupt each other willy nilly and survive. What we do to another would and will be done to us. Common sense tells us to behave and to do so fairly rationally.

After all, I know of no study that suggests that atheists are law breakers and immoral turds to a degree any larger than anyone else. In fact, I think they tend to be at least as good as everyone who professes God.

So like I said, I have these conversations with God. Sometimes they are a hoot. Like this one:

“Okay, Pops, what do you REALLY think of George Dubya and Darth Cheney? The truth!”

God: “Two of my favorites actually smartie. George is like a big dumb kid, with a good heart, hoping to please. But I admit, you can get lost in that head of his. Not much up there, if you get my drift.Easy to manipulate and he ends up doing stupid things. He never got over that meeting when they sat him down and told him they wanted to run him for president. Reality never really set in until about year 7, when he started to get the feeling he had been. . . err used. That’s why he wouldn’t pardon Scooter Libby, just wanted to stick it to Dick for running his presidency into the ditch.”

“Dick, now there’s a piece of work. He actually thinks he’s me. Thinks he knows what I want. Couldn’t be more wrong, but wow you can’t get passed that arrogance. I keep toying with the idea of letting him think he’s gone to hell when the time comes, just for a few minutes…just to shake him up. Otherwise, he’s gonna argue with me about how we conduct business up here. And well, there is only ONE of us after all.”

Hope you enjoyed the trip through my head!

Plugging the Holes

Tags

animals, blogging stats, fundamentalism, intelligence, Iowa, meatloaf, moral majority, personality, relgiious right, spring, winter

"First Kiss," by Ron Draine, Art.com

I have a bad habit of thinking, and so periodically, I have to post a lot of drivel, just to clear out the debris to make room. I tried using corks to plug up the oozing tidbits of extraneous info, but that both gave me a headache and increased my hat size a bit too much. People were starting to stare, if you get my drift.  So in no particular order:

Animals just continue to freak me out. It’s not just the variety and so many shapes and sizes, so many attributes and such. It’s the personality that, as I get older, gets more and more complex. I realize indeed that we human have just upped the ante a small bit, we are no great leap.

Take our dogs. No, no not literally. First we have Bear, the “A” dog.

Bear is a singular example of the dog in charge. He is willful and stubborn, yet level headed, basically quite kind, and he watches over the girly girl Brandy as any big brother ought to.

He is a stern task master, and during Brandy’s youth, she was tumbled and shaken a good many times until she properly learned the ways of a “B” dog.

Bear will behave, unless he doesn’t wish to. Then you get the blue eye, and well, it’s best to just back off and let it be. Brandy learned that freshly caught game was off limits, sometimes for days. Just because he wasn’t hovering over it didn’t mean she could take a close whiff.

Yet, dear Bear is monumentally afraid of thunder. Has been since day one. It must be embarrassing for him, yet he succumbs to the first rumbles and gets into the house fast, and lays close to any human. Brandy, heck you have to order her in the house. She could care less.

On  the other hand, Brandy has her own oddity.

When the Girly is asleep, everyone treads carefully and away from her. If she is even breathed upon, she erupts a snarling fang bearing behemoth, ready to kill.

All the cats, all the humans, and even the King, Bear, know this and respect it. Bear will even whimper to have help getting around her, should she fall asleep in some way that boxes him in.

In every other respect, Brandy is pure love. The tail never stops wagging, and she has yet to figure out that anyone has ever been mad at her. You can yell your fool head off, and she wags away. She pretends to not know the meaning of any word that would limit what she wants to do, but has an amazing vocabulary of words that symbolize things she likes.

Both are adept at going out alone, barking up a storm, thus enticing the other to come out, then coming in and grabbing the best seat in the house, their couch! Don’t tell me they aren’t smart.

***

I’m given to understand that the religious right is having some name pangs. Seems they can’t settle on how they would like to be addressed. For reasons that escape me, they don’t like being called fundamentalists, though that describes their religious theology quite well I believe. They don’t like  religious right either, again I’m not sure why. They do seem to like Christian Right. Not sure how that’s really different from religious right. They don’t like American Taliban and things like that. I can understand. I guess they have come to realize that the term “moral majority” is a bit presumptuous. They seem to have abandoned that one.  They don’t like extreme right, and well I guess I can see that.

I call them idiots. It seems descriptive to me. Sometimes I call them the wacko right, sometimes the wingnut right. But that is as much political as religious I guess. I guess I’d settle on Extreme Radical Religious Right. I’m sure they won’t like that either. But heck, I don’t find them sensible anyway so why should I care?

***

I’m puzzled as all get out at what has been happening here on this blog. One day I opened up the stats to discover that nearly 400 people had visited. That would be double the usual flow. I checked the forum here to see if there was a bug or glitch. No one else was reporting bizarre numbers, and seldom is a problem singular to A blog. I added another counter, and it is keeping pace as best I can tell.

I’m confused. The second day, it fell off a tad, but was still around 350. Yesterday it fell back to 175, respectable, but still a significant drop. I don’t know if I had some tag that just got picked up or what. I find the “key words” thingie most unuseful in figuring things out. Most of the terms used are artists for some reason, or weird bastardizations of phrases that make no apparent sense.

It’s one of those shrug the shoulders kind of things. Perhaps just more evidence of my universe shopping.

***

It’s cold here in Iowa again. Much too cold for me. I’m through with this chit and ready for spring. I don’t want to see a snow flake again. It would suit me if I never saw one again. That is unlikely as long as we live in Iowa of course.  Less than two weeks until spring by my calculations. March can’t come too soon, and I mean that in every respect. Of course it will come exactly on time no matter what I want or need.

***

It’s meatloaf today. I made up a big batch and will freeze one. I decided to cook both though. Figured it wasn’t a good idea to refreeze raw meat. It will come in handy one day when I don’t feel/have time to cook. The Contrarian loves meatloaf, more for the cold sandwiches afterward, but meatloaf means mashed taters and gravy, and well, if you read yesterday, you know about gravy.  Just a tip on the meatloaf: I don’t use filler in mine, but if you put about 1/2 a packet of unflavored gelatin in your raw mix, it will be nice and solid. I cook mine free standing, having molded it in a bowl or pound cake pan. It slices nicely and holds together well.

Well, the brain feels a bit more comfortable now, room to stretch out a bit. Unburden your heavy brain here if you need to. There seems an endless ream of paper on this Internet. You can write forever and never run out!