Linux is not just for Geeks anymore

It’s not quite morning yet. I will get some sleep tonight. I promise.

But I do have a few more things to say before I go to bed.

I like my computer again. Actually, she seems a bit faster than before, which leads me to believe that it is entirely possible that I might have rushed the first install just to get it working.

Ubuntu will rule the world. I expect that everyone should be using a dual boot of Windows and Ubuntu. I mean it. This version, 9.04, is the easiest thing in the world to setup. The overall install took a while, but it was all done from a single burn of 700MB onto a CD-R and away I went. When I visited wordpress, it prompted me to install all of the missing plugins ( even the naughty ones that I really shouldn’t have if I really support the whole opensource thing ).

So, because Ubuntu is free, I am going to go to their website and buy some swag and support the cause.

Do you realize that you can even get them to mail you a free (and very pretty) copy of their CD? Free! Oh, there is an option for you to have to pay a token fee, if you want 20 or more. But, you can get an operating system mailed to you for free. Does Billy do that for you? I think not.

So, for those of you who visit this journal – yes, I am referring to all three of you – please go here and download a copy and buy some swag and support a good cause.

Ubuntu Swag

Linux – it’s not just for geeks anymore.

I.Still.Hate.Computers.

   I am journalling from work.

   Yeah, I really shouldn’t and yeah, I totally realize that I should be working. I am probably going to be here until at least 7:00Pm or 8:00PM tonight – hopefully earlier, but I don’t think so. It doen’t help that the Mexican government is shutting down some of the most swine flu infected cities – and it just so happens that those are the cities that are home the the factories that make parts for us ; so we have to make some changes to all of the schedules to accomodate. But that’s enough about that. For now, take my word that I am doing this here so I can get at least some journalling done today.

   I stayed up until a little after midnight with my computer.

   The USB ports on the front of the tower came loose, so I had to tear the tower down to get at it. While I was in there, I checked out the SATA HDD physically. It looked fine to me – no different than when I installed it. So I went to start it back up (I didn’t put the panels back on it ; just in case it might have been a heat issue) and still it hung up. I booted it from an external HDD (my old IDE that I had when I first installed the SATA) and while it was slow (a 32bit version doesn’t run as well or as fast but it runs without problems, so long as I am patient – I keep a copy of Don DeLillo’s ‘White Noise’ while I am waiting for my computer to boot or when I am bored) it did work. That made me feel better.

   So, I tried the SATA boot again, and it still didn’t work. I got the command prompt and tried fdsk, but that didn’t fix it either (and that function is intuitive enough that I don’t have to be smart).

   I tried the Ubuntu LiveCD boot and that worked and tried to use that to partition the SATA so I put the bad sectors on one part and a new install on the other part, but it wouldn’t install because there was an error with the partition table that it could not fix. I don’t have a copy of GParted, otherwise I would have used it.

   So, instead, I copied and pasted my important files and my Thunderbird profile onto the external. And then I will burn me an 64bit version of Ubuntu 9.04 (it just came out a couple of days ago, I think) and then I will do a whole new install on the SATA.

   I think all of it happened when I had it on during one of the power outtages – and maybe when it shut down it caused a problem by not writing to the drive properly. I can’t be sure and I might be wrong (I’m very likely wrong) but it gives me as good an opportunity as anything to install Ubuntu 9.04 and see how that runs.

   So, I will be out of a computer for at least another couple of days – between the need for an install and then having to set it all up the way that I like it ; the video card setup can be such a bitch with Ubuntu. Maybe 9.04 fixes that.

   Wish me luck.

I.Hate.Computers.

My computer

Hard drive crashed. Again. Fucking SATA HDD. Fucking crashed. Typing this because I am using a recovery disk to see what the fuck happened.

I fucking hate computers.

Suggestions for Writing

Yeah, I’m actually working on a big writing project too, but having a lot of trouble in getting myself to sit down and actually write. Maybe you have some suggestions?

-Bobby

That was a comment on my blog. I really like comments. I like that people read what it is that I write, no matter what it is that I write.

I especially like comments that ask me for my input. That means, not only is someone reading my stuff, but someone actually is requesting to read something that I will write. That is like money in the bank. I read this comment the other day and sat on it for a while, seriously debating on how to answer it. And I want to treat it as seriously as I can.

And, so I would ask someone who asked me for suggestions how serious they were about their writing project. Do they want to keep a blog like everyone else does? Do they want to keep a handwritten journal like so few people do? Do they have an idea for a short story or a novel or a novella or – Lord help us all – a poem or a ballad? So, my first suggestion is to pick your project.

If you want to regularly update your blog, then what exactly is regular? Do you want to update it with 1000 words every weekday? That’s 5000 words a week. There are professional writers that don’t have that kind of regular output. And, write down the number of words you do every day on a calendar where you can see it every day. The more crazy of us (like me) keep a spreadsheet tracking efficiency and productivity.

Do you want your blog to be topical? I mean, do you want to discuss your hobbies? That makes your word count even easier, if you write about what you know and love. If you want it to be topical, then get yourself a little black notebook. I have grown snobbish and I use Moleskin notebooks almost exclusively (I think the feel of the paper is delicious) but truthfully, take a jaunt to the dollar store. There are some really good hardbound notebooks you can get your hands on. Or a ring notebook. Whichever you prefer. And, when you get this notebook, use it to make notes on your first entry. And then let to notes flow until you have let them run dry. Keep the notebook handy at all times and update it with more ideas as required. This is because, when you get to the second or the twenty second journal entry and you are out of ideas, go to your notebook, check off the ones that you have already visited and tackle one of the one you haven’t.

Writing a short story or a novel or a novella, that, in my opinion, is a little more ambitious and it requires a few more rules. The rules are because it is so easy to start a story but it is a royal pain in the ass to finish one. It gets worse when you have to edit it and rewrite it. The rules are there to keep you honest and to keep you working. Because writing an honest short story or novel or novella requires that you make a commitment to a project which creates nothing more than words on a page. You won’t get paid for it. You won’t be idolized by millions. You will be told to keep up the good work but you probably won’t get any support for it. Unless it’s published, you won’t be able to use it on a resume or on a cover letter to a periodical or magazine you want to publish in. Contests are a good market – a remarkably well paying market, actually, relative to what magazines pay – but you have to finish the story to enter it into a contest.

I have one friend that I talk to about writing as often as I can. I harped on her for the need for rules. Because without them, our creative impulses would overwhelm us and we would be surrounded with the frustration of unfinished projects. So, she created her own rules. Click on the link and go to check them out if you will.

Desired Equal

My rules, well, are more comprehensive. They are a kind of twenty questions I started playing. My brother started it with me a long time ago. I always operated on these rules, more or less, but when my brother suggested coming up with twenty questions to ask myself every day. I came up with these 20. I keep them with me in my Moleskin miniature accordian folder.

1. How happy was I today?
2. Did I tell my wife that I love her today?
3. Did I tell my children that I love them today (this was before Elena – I wanted to be able to use these questions for the rest of my life)
4. Did I read at least 1 chapter from one book today?
5. Did I write at least 250 words today?
6. How many stories did I submit for publication today?
7. How many books did I purchase today?
8. Did I finish writing one or more novels today?
9. Did I speak to at least one member of my immediate family today?
10. Did I meet all of my deadlines todaty?
11. Did I make one plan for my future today?
12. Did I take on a leadership role today?
13. Was I team player today?
14. Did I take responsibility for any mistakes I made today?
15. Was I clear and concise in all of my communications today?
16. Did I call back everyone who left me a phone message today?
17. Did I take any calculated risks today?
18. Did I recognize someone today for having done a good job?
19. Did I attend to all of my responsibilities around the house today?
20. Did my behaviour today reflect my values?

I do this because I cannot write my stories if I do not focus. And asking myself these questions focuses me so that I know that I can get to work without anything else getting in the way. I ask myself 19 questions so that I can get around to answering one of the yes – you can guess which one.

I do have one more suggestion. This is one that is more recent – a ratio of reading to writing. It really should be 10 to 1, I think. You have to read at least 2500 words every day if you expect to write 250 words regularly. As you get to a point where you are writing a novel, that ratio can maybe fall to to 2 to 1, or even 1 to 1, but never zero. Because you have to be able to distance yourself from your work to effectively write.

Delays

  I had every intention of writing on Thursday and Friday.
  Really. I did.
  I even mapped out what the journals would be this week. Which is likely the source of why everything went wrong.
  I wanted to write a review about a book that was given to me by one of my cousins when I was much younger but not so young that I couldn’t appreciate it’s content. This is also a cousin who – because she wanted to show that she could trust me – snuck me into an R-rated movie ; specifially the first Robocop. It wasn’t any attempt to get rid of me because she was babysitting me and she was on a date. She just thought that I would appreciate the flick more than I would whatever else it was she wanted to see. Maybe she was seeing a guy, I’ll never know and I bet she doesn’t even remember it. But Robocop remains one of my favourite movies, moreso because of the circumstances than the movie itself.
  I wanted to do a review of my friend’s photos. There was only one I was considering, but now, I think there is two and maybe three I want to review. Now, remember, I title them so I can remember them – I don’t think she titles them. So, if you ever go to her site and ask for ones that I have named, you will have to describe the picture to her, because she probably called it something else. ‘My’ pictures to review are “Word of God in The Face Of Man”, “Heroine / Aldar Rok”, and “Icarus”. Yeah. Those are the three I will have to do next week.
  I wanted to do a short journal entry about my two cats, Max and Mulligan. Just because, you know, they are my guys and I love them very much. I generally call them The Orange One and The Fat One, but their ‘given’ names are Max and Mulligan. Max because, well, my wife named him because he looked like a Max. Mulligan because when we saw him he reminded me of the opening sentence of Ulysses.

“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.”

  Mulligan is a very big cat. I”ll post a picture of my daughter strangling him later on.
  And finally, I wanted to do an obituary for my cars. Or more of a review of the ones that I have wrecked. Funny thing is, even before the BMW got wrecked, I was already thinking about this. Mostly because, when I think about it, most of my concious life has in some way, involved a car. It is almost as if my life is a transition from one car to the next. I’m sure that many people can say that, but I’m talking about me here.
  What I’m reminded of is something I read about in some class at one time or another – that if we were remotely viewed from outer space by aliens who had no concept of humanity, they could rightly consider us slaves of either our pets or our cars. I would be of the second group.
  I came home in a Chevy Nova, my uncles car (because I think, when I was born, Dad had to work and saw me a day or two later – I would have to ask him for confirmation). I obsessed over a Chevelle that was parked in my grandmother’s garage for most of my adolescent life – a car owned by a friend of the family that I believe has passed into someone else’s hands and is still roadworthy.
  My cousin Paul ‘willed’ me his Dodge Dart, a car he held together with spit and bindertwine – I never did anything with that because I don’t think I was quite thirteen when he died.
  My first hands on with a car was building a Ford 302 into an AMC Gremlin – the paint job came from cans of Canadian Tire spray paint. I remember crying when I snapped one of the cylinder head bolts when I was torquing it down and I remember the ingenius (and I do mean ingenius – I will never forget how he pulled it off) way Dad got the bolt out. And I was crying.
  I remember having to replace the universal joint in Dad’s GMC Van when I thought it was cool to do a neutral drop when the van was full of people – I remember the thunking noise that the driveshaft made when it almost came through the floor.
  I remember Dad’s Dodge Colt station wagon – one of the nicest cars we ever owned. Really a beaut.
  I remember all of the cars Dad drove when he sold Ford at Shannahan Motors over at Sheppard and Warden – most especially I remember the white, convertible Ford Mustang GT he picked me up in from school. I remember going on car transfers with him – when one dealership would have a car he wanted to sell and he would trade cars from lots to go and get it – and he pointed out how he could safely smoke in the new cars if he hung his arm out the car window. This was a habit I got into when I smoked – never used the ashtray ; but the stink of cigarette smoke still lingered in them. I couldn’t stand the stale stench once I quit and Febreezed the shit out of the fabric to get rid of it.
I remember lots of things with lots of cars and it just seems that, when I reflect on it.

Every car, save 2, I have ever driven were Dad’s.
Every car I have every wrecked, was Dad’s.
The first car I ever owned I still have, though I haven’t driven it in 7 years – a 84 Fiero
I never would have afforded my second car were it not for my wife
I cannot think of a period of time in my life where I cannot relate it to a car or something that has gone wrong with a car.

Other than that, I don’t got much to say. But I do have next week’s journals already mapped out. Matter of writing them, now. And then, when those are done, maybe I can get to some real writing.

The Dollar Store Green Squiggly Flashy thing and my Flat Tire

Daddy got a flat tire

The little green squiggly thing that we bought at the dollar store for Elena has a little multicoloured led inside of it that goes off whenever you shake it. It is made out of the same, tough, rubbery material that they make thick surgical gloves out of. And, if it were a surgical glove, it would be one worn by a doctor with about two dozen thin tentacles that someone blew into and tied off at the end. Elena thinks it’s one of the coolest things of the world. When we got into the car accident tonight, it was the first thing she grabbed for when I dashed her out of the car.
We had been travelling along, listening to Rush. She was banging her head like a good little rocker, her eyes squinched shut and her fists pumping. The station was Q107 and the song was Tom Sawyer. I remember that because my wife is not a huge fan of Rush and I remember thinking that it would be funny to tell her that Elena was rocking out to them.
“Rock out, Daddy,” she said. “Rock out.”
I remember telling her that Daddy would rock out when he got home. I thought we could get home in time soon enough to listen to some music and maybe re-read “And to Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street” – a Dr. Seuss book that I bought for her at Chapters this past weekend.
And then I saw the guy pulling out of the side street. He looked away from me, to the other side of the street, to see if there was traffic. He was not looking at me, in the direction of direct, on coming traffic. He drifted forward and I slowed down and laid on the horn. He then shot forward and I tried to get around him so he would not hit me head on.
“Get him away from Elena,” I thought. “Get away.”
He slammed into the car hard enough to spin me around one hundred and eighty degrees. I didn’t say a word. I just tried to control the spin as best I could. The deflating passenger side rear tire helped that. I jammed the brakes and the car stoppped.

Passenger Side Mirror Gone Bye-Bye

“Uh, oh, Daddy, you got a flat tire,” Elena said. She could hear the sound of air hissing out, too.
I burst out of my door and looked at the guy who hit me. He had already backed out of the intersection – he was going fast enough that he was almost all of the way through it by the time he stopped – and approached me, saying over and over again that he was sorry for hitting me.
“I don’t care about me,” I said. “My daughter.”
Elena was fine. I grabbed her out of her seat and checked her over a halk dozen times, not even sure that my heart was beating. A dear lady from the other side of the street – a dear lady that I was very harsh with at first merely because the whole situation had caught me off guard – cautioned me not to yell and not to swear.
All I could say was “my daughter”.
She reminded me that was exactly why I should not yet and should not swear. She was right, and it calmed me down a bit.
The guy asked me what he wanted to do about this whole thing.
“I want to get my daughter out of here for starters,” I said. “Then we can talk.”
“Listen, I don’t have any insurance,” the guy said. “So maybe we can work something out between us. Just between us.”
“Let me get my daughter out of here and we will talk about this.”
“Okay,” he said. “Thanks, man. I’m just going to go over to my friend’s house, okay?”
I did not touch him but I did deepen my voice and get a little loud with him.
“Sir, if I you move from this spot, I will dial 911 right now, do you understand me? If I cannot see you, I am dialling 911. Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I’m just going to go over here.”
“No, you are not,” I said. “You are staying right here.”
I called my in laws and asked them to come and help. My mother in law thought that I was calling to give her a hard time for what she gave Elena was dinner – because she thought that she might have spit it up because it didn’t agree with her. She had bits of fruit plus some bumbleberry pie, all of which Elena told me she liked very, very much.
I yelled over to the lady – the very nice and remarkably patient and fantastic citizen of Newmarket – that the guy didn’t have insurance and I didn’t know what to do. She, apparently, knew more than me. While I waited for my inlaws to come and get Elena, she called the police. She is the one who took these photos in this post and emailed them to me. She is truly, truly awesome.
My mother in law took Elena away and me and my father in law waited for the police to show up. Over and over again the guy asked me not to report this and I didn’t give him and answer.

Passenger side damage. Thanks a million, Ashley

The police showed up and took my statement. It was pretty straightforward. The one officer had to ask me twice which direction I was originally travelling in. He was amazed I got hit so hard. I told them about the no insurance thing and, strangely enough, more officers appeared.
The police charged him with a whole mess of highway traffic act offences, not the least of which was a minimum $5000 dollar fine for operating a vehicle without insurance and a need to appear in court – a need to appear such that if he doesn’t a bench warrant gets issued for his arrest. There were more charges and more things, but the officer did not appear to be very forthcoming and I figured he had enough to deal with without having a curious manchild wanting to know everything.
My dad, who is the real owner of the BMW I was driving, just made sure that me and Elena were okay and laughed the car off. It wasn’t the first car I had wrecked on him but he hoped that it would be the last. I figure that I have wrecked every car he has given me, and he has given me all but one of the cars I have driven. The 84 Mustang that I wrecked – twice. Once on the Don Valley Parkway the second time being rear ended in Scarborough ; but it wasn’t really a rear end and I can tell that story later. There was the collection of Ford Tempos and Mercury Topazes that I wrecked, the most memorable of which was the one that was standard, was made up of a variety of coloured body panels, and it’s steering wheel had to be held at about 100 degrees to the right in order to drive straight. To those in teh know, that’s called dogpadding – because you drive like an old dog walks, front legs not in line with the back legs. There was Black Betty – the 84 Monte Carlo that I locked myself in it’s trunk ; another long story. There was the Nissan pickup that was so much fun for me and my now-wife-then-girlfriend would drive and listen for all of the new noises it would make – the best noise of which was the change in air pressure on the highway on and off ramps would cause the roof to pop in and out like a soda can. The 94 BMW 528i that I just managed to wreck was just one more – but he hoped it would be the last ; though that is no guarantee.
My middle brother wanted to come into town and beat the crap out of the guy. Literally. And it wasn’t because he hit me. All my brother could say was that “someone hit my niece and I’m gonna hit them back” – a sentiment that I appreciated but wasn’t really necessary. I tried to explain to him that Elena thought it was nothing more than a flat tire, CAA was picking up the tab for the tow, Dad was getting a rental car until the insurance adjuster declared that the BMW was a write-off (and Lord, is it ever a write-off), and I could drive Mom’s car until that was settled. The guy who hit me was the guy to worry about. He hadn’t had insurance for over two years and he made two bad choices. One was to not renew his license and the other was choosing not to care about it. He was operating on borrowed time as it was. What if he had of hit someone else who could not recover as well? What if he had of hitten an old lady on her way to see her grandkids? What if he had of hit a family on their way to visit friends? Nope, he had to hit me, who, in the grand scheme of things, was merely inconvienced for the night and would be put out for another week or two at most. No, I explained, everything was fine.
“I still wanna kick his ass,” my brother said.
My wife was concerned about Elena and me. But she wanted a piece of the driver of the truck. Really, really badly. I don’t want to speak for my wife and what it is she would do to him, but she can be mean sometimes and when she is, you are better off with not getting in her way when she is feeling mean.
But, the best part of it all, is when I was at my inlaws, and my father-in-law had grabbed me a beer and gone upstairs to see my mother-in-law, who was preparing me something to eat (because I hadn’t had much of anything to eat – except for the gum I bought at the nearby convenience store ; gum that served as a substitute for the cigarette I wanted so very badly – and the can of Red Bull I needed to keep me focussed), and Elena wanted to sit in the leather recliner next to me. I sipped my beer and had half an eye on Jeapordy and she just looked at me.
“Daddy,” she said. “ I want to play a game. You want to play a game?”
“Sure,” I said, and put down my beer.
And she whipped the green, squiggly flashy thing at me. And I whipped it back at her. And she whipped it back at me. I caught it and tossed it behind her. She looked at me with mock suprise, asking me where it went, and if I could see it. I replied no, and she would tuck her hand behind her, pause a moment, then whip it back at me. Beer and jeapordy were forgotten and we were just tossing around this green, dollar store, squiggly flashy thing back and forth, back and forth, laughing the whole time.
Then she stopped.
“Daddy,” she said. “You got a great big smile and yo face. Are you feeling better?”
I shit you not people. Two and a half years old this past Sunday, and she is worried about me.
“Yeah, Beans,” I answered. “I’m excellent. How bout you?”
“I’m sorry about yout flat tire,” she said. “Is it my fault?”
“What?” I launched out of the chair to sit in front of her and look directly into her eyes, the way I do when I try to explain something to her.
“A man made a couple of bad choices today, Beans. And he hit our car. But we’re both okay and everything is going to be alright and this has nothing to do with you. Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay, Daddy. You-you-you want to play with me?”
We went back to tossing the green, dollar store, squiggly flashy thing back and forth until my mother-in-law came down with a plate full of food to make me feel better. Me and Elena shared it while I watched BBC news updates with half an eye.

Worms and Crayfish

I remember being at Gramma’s house and my cousin Paul took me aside to show me a creek.
Gramma’s house was at the top of a hill in a town up north. You went up around a bend, passing houses that are deeply off the road, and then you turned left into her driveway. I call it a driveway now but it was more of a small, gravel parking lot. My memory tells me that the lot was enormous, standing at the road it looked like a whole world spread out before you. The grass was always emerald green and the house was a pleasant and comforting white. I remember that she had white Kawartha chairs on the grass and a matching white table to go with it. I also remember a vegetable garden and a firepit made from red bricks. I am certain though, that around the back Gramma’s was Dad’s old dune buggy. I think I rode in it. I definitely remember it. And I think, deep somewhere in one of my family’s forgotten photo albums, there is a picture of a very young Dad, younger than he could possibly ever have been, behind the wheel of that dune buggy, with a shit eating grin. Pictures from then aren’t colour but they aren’t black and white either and they aren’t sepia toned. They have the washed out colour of memory, if that makes any sense. And that was where I was when my cousin Paul took me aside to show me a creek.
I was the youngest of the cousins by ten years at least. The rest of them were teenagers and I was all of maybe six or seven years old. Possibly eight, but definitely not ten. These were teenagers that came ‘up north’ to be with family and old friends and to get into trouble that they ordinarily would not get into when in the city, though, I imagine, as they got older, the tricks they learned about getting in and out of trouble translated as well ‘up north’ as they did in the city. I didn’t really mix with them well. I played with action figures and colouring books and I read and I spent alot of time by myself.
I don’t remember what he said, and I’m not sure he even asked my parent’s permission. But he took me aside and wanted to show me something cool. I think he held my hand as we crossed the street and went into the bush. And the deeper he went the more curious I got as to where we were.
He pointed out some old shack well off the beaten path and he told me that Gramma and Grampa lived there for a while and my aunts and uncles were born in that shack. I never knew Grampa other than what Dad didn’t tell me about him, if you get my drift, but the knowledge that my family lived like wild people amazed me. I don’t remember where the creek was, but it couldn’t have been far from the shack where my grandparents lived.
He put his hand in the cold running water and invited me to do the same. My skin drank it up and it tasted delicious and I put both hands in. And that was when he showed me the crayfish. I didn’t exactly shit myself but I am sure I did scream. He showed me how to hold the crayfish and got me to turn it over in my hand to get a sense of it. He told me about how some crayfish have one claw bigger than the other because sometimes they fall off and a new one grows back. We were there for a long time, but before long, I realized that I wanted to know everything.
Paul died a long time ago. I really don’t remember when. But I think about him and those crayfish about once a month or so, if only for a fraction of a second. Like when I am learning something new or if I think that something can’t be done or when someone tells me that it just isn’t possible.

But it came back to me, most especially, this past week when it rained one whole heckuva lot around here and there were worms everywhere all over the driveway and Elena would not so much as step foot off the porch.I wanted to know what was wrong and she was scared of the worms because she thought they would hurt her. I only smiled and picked her up.
“Do you want to say hello to the worms?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she answered.
So I carried her down to the driveway and I sat on my haunches. I perched her on my knee, careful to keep her feet from touching the ground. I found the biggest worm that I could and I said hello.
“Say hello, Elena,” I said.
“Hello, wermin,” she said.
Please remember, that she is a huge fan of The Backyardigans and there is an episode where Tasha keeps a really clean house and Pablo comes to inspect it to see if she can be part of the clean house club but Tyrone and Austin have to get rid of one pesky worm they called wermin. I liked the episode myself – most especially because it was one of those where Pablo doesn’t take himself too seriously (like the episode where his spaceship is powered by pancakes and when asking for more pancakes, as an aside, he says ‘with blueberries if you got ‘em’ ; kinda like he’s saying to the adults that might be watching ‘if you thought this shit is fucked up, yeah, I agree, but lets run with it and see where it takes us).
At any rate, you can skip the above paragraph. She called the worm a wemin.
I explained to her that worms really like the rain and when it does tain they come out to get as much water as they can. And when the rain goes away, they go back undergound and use the water to grow and get bigger and help the grass to grow. A simplified version of the worms duties, but it served our purposes.
“Do you want to touch it?” I asked.
“Mmmhmmm,” she said.
I waited. She didn’t move.
“You touch it, Daddy.”
“Okay,” I said, reaching out.
“Nooooo!”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Watch.”
I picked it up with one hand and put it in the palm of my other hand and showed it to her. I demonstrated how soft it was and how slimy it was and how interesting it felt. Her fine motor control is not all there just yet but she was careful not to press on the worm too hard. I tried my best to distinguish the head from the tail – the direction it was moving was it’s head, as far as I was concerned – and she wanted to know where it’s eyes were.
“Worms don’t have eyes,” I said.
“Then how can he see me?” she asked.
“He can feel me holding him and he can smell where he’s going.”
“He sees with his nose?” she asked.
“Kind of,” I shrugged.
“And you know what worms like best?”
“Water,” she said.
“Yes, but better than water?”
She shrugged her overshrug, that incredibly cute and huge lifting of the shoulders and pouting of her lips. It’s funny how her curly hair bobs when she does it.
“They like dirt. You want to put the worm back in the dirt.”
“You want to go to the dirt, little wormie?” she asked, talking real loud to it, bending down to make sure she was heard.
“Yeah, he does, Daddy,” she said to me.
So we picked him up and put him in the dirt. From the top of the step, I could hear the front door open and then close again, but not quite shut. We put the worm back in the dirt and Elena told him good bye and told him “Thank you very much for fixing my grass.”
I told her to go to the steps and sit down because we needed to get a wet wipe to clean her hands. My wife was there and she liked what she saw. She grabbed wet wipes for both of us.

Prayer on Easter for the Slothful

I am going back to basics.
I need to. I’m out of gas. I need to count journaling as part of my output, because the story ideas are coming to me like normal, the output just sucks. So, I’m going back to where it started. Just writing. Writing about whatever is on my mind.
Not everything, though. I mean, I’ll spare you the dream about the horny legless midget surrounded by Chinese people who are assembling cellular phones. That was a weird one. Right up there with being in sun-god robes and having scantily clad women throwing little pickles at me. I can write about that later.
What I want to write about it a photo that a friend of mine took. It truly is an awesome photo. She wanted me to write my review of it at her deviantART site, and I still will, but for now, this review is mine. I’m going to ask her permission before I post anything, though. (note – she gave it)
First of all, she is a great photographer. I don’t care what anyone says. I’m not much of one myself, so when I tell you that she has an eye for it, consider that the opinion is coming from a guy who doesn’t know much about photography other than what he likes. And her photos, I tend to like. I can read them like a good short story. Maybe they are not always the words that she has in mind when she is taking the pictures, but they always, always have a story for me. And I like a good story.
She does justice to abandoned houses. She gives them the dignity that they deserve. And when she shows those pictures, I think that she is trying to tell me that to be thankful for what I’ve got, because it is only because of either good luck or someone’s good graces, that the house is not mine and the past owner of it is not me. I think she imbues the houses with energy and lets it release it’s history.
For example, there is one photo that I really like. I think I’ve come to think of it as “Prayer on Easter For The Slothful”.

Awesome picture

When I look at it I see the chair, all tattered and torn. It’s life has been tough. What can be tough on a chair? Someone sitting on it all the time. And I mean all the time. And sat on by a fat man.
An obscenely fat man. The kind of fat that is bulbous and sad. The kind of fat that a man could look down at and hate like his worst enemy. There is a saying that if you wait by the edge of the river long enough, you will see the body of your enemy go floating on by. But the fat man who lived in that chair, if he ever thought that, he would be contemplating his own death, which would lead to more hate. And then he would lose track of who he was hating. Then he would just be seething.
And a symbol of the fat man’s slothfulness, in my weak eyes, is the Coke can just behind and to the right of the chair. It is really shiny and the red of the Coke can has faded to gold. I see it as a bauble of excess, but then again, I’ve never been much of a Coke drinker. Though, of late, I have become a big fan of Red Bull and it’s much cheaper and equally effective little brother Red Rain.
But, leaned carefully on the right arm of the chair, is a ladder. No one dropped it there to get it out of the way. The chair, while worn, does not look like it ever had been intentionally damaged. The chair is a mummy removed from it’s sarcophagus, it’s eons-old tatterred burial shrouds hanging from old, thin bones. But the chair is also a sarcophagus – a carving that is representative of the unseen soul that once occupied it. It fills a dual role.
And despite the grim imagery that I am depicting, the picture is full of light. As a matter of fact, if someone were to argue about symmetry in the picture, and claim that the chair is not in the middle, they would be right. The light is the centre of the photo and the darkness surrounds it. And the last rung of the ladder is almost in the centre.
So, despite my rampant atheism, I can still appreciate religious symbolism, and I can see it in this photo. The light, the centre of the photo, is the light of God. The ladder, is Jacob’s ladder, leading up to heaven.
Now, Jacob’s ladder represents different things across the various Christian faiths. This one, in my eyes, has the same dual role as the chair. On one hand, it represents a ladder that the soul climbs through the virtues towards salvation and on the other hand it represents the souls journey towards the light of God. It can also represent the ladder that Christ took up to heaven, which in turn, represents Christ, because he can be seen, within the context of Christian myth, as a bridge between heaven and earth.
I really could go on about this photo at a ridiculous length because of all that I see in it but this is enough for me for now.
I think that this is a good start to how I am going to write all of this week. Just start with one thing that was on my mind and take it from there.