Recently in Eclectique Category

I don't know how to write this so it sounds like a song. I don't know how to make these words into a poem. I don't know how it can be anything other than what it is: a self-pitying whine, a weepy call for sympathy.

All about me during my walk today I could see families readying their homes for Christmas. Families. Fathers stomping about on rooftops, sons untangling cords, and mothers rearranging boxes in the garage, searching for wreaths or ornaments. On Facebook and in the blogosphere people have posted pictures showing the freshly cut trees they chose, about to take home, about to decorate. I have a chicken roasting in the oven and the scent of its crisping herbed skin hugs the air inside my house.

When my children were wee, it was I who would help with the lights. We had the most obnoxious, the most brightly lit house in the neighborhood. Most people exclaimed over the palm tree, striped like a candy cane with bands of red twinkle lights, and bands of clear twinkle lights. Ostentatious, cheery, and something that gave us joy. As the kids grew older, we conscripted them, and one day it was our son who climbed the extension ladder handing up the strand to his father, rather than me. The Girl and I would be planning the way we would decorate the tree. And there would be a chicken in the oven, the scent of its cooking sending fingers into each room.

I am happier now; there is peace in my house, although it is not lit up like Santa's Village, nor is there a tree. I would rather have the peace, but oh!

I do miss those days.

I don't know how to stop the melancholy.

For an introduction, I will mention something that has nothing to do with the topic of this post: I credit The Hip One for inspiring me to blog. I check his blog semi-irregularly (on the more "ir" side of regularly than merely "irregularly", rather than the opposite of "irregularly" which would be, well, "regularly"), and when he yatters so interestingly about "stuff" I feel, "well, hell! I can do 'stuff', too!" 'course he makes his 'stuff' interesting and I just, well, I do go on. 'nuf a that.

I go to the right park. It is exactly the right park because it is within walking distance and is spacious. There is grass, and there are trees. It has hillocks. It has wildlife: prairie dogs, interesting varieties of dinosaurs, coyote, and soccer parents. It is pleasant. I like it. My dogs like it. So it is the right park.

Sometimes, though, the wrong people go to my park.

I'm going to back up slightly and mention that this park is popular with dog owners. We're all fairly courteous -- we pick up after our dogs, we keep them on leashes unless they are so well behaved that they don't need to be, and when other people approach with other dogs, the leash-free folk are guarded and wary enough to leash their dogs if need be to avoid causing trouble.

I am going to take one more step back and mention that my son's dog, Lily, is a somewhat hyper-aggressive dog. She views pretty much every other dog as a possible threat, and she reacts by yipping and snarling. If she's off-leash, she'll charge at the other dog, nipping at them. If they react by fighting back, it can get fairly ugly. My own pair of dogs get excited by Lily and try to join the fray. It can be very challenging handling three dogs at once when they're all frenzied. You can imagine, then, that I am cautious when there are other dogs about in the park.

It's not difficult to avoid people with dogs. I stay alert. I plan my route through the park. I change direction readily when someone pops up on the horizon in my path.

One particular morning not long ago I entered the park and paused to untangle the leashes and survey the situation. I could see a cluster of people with dogs ahead of me, and some of them were leaving the group to head out. One woman with a large German Shepherd started coming toward me. I saw to my left a man with two small yippy dogs on leashes also coming toward me. I was trying to figure out the best route to take to avoid them all when, unbeknown to me, a man with a dog turned a corner behind me. Lily, already in an excitable mood from the sight of the other dogs, heard them and started charging, jumping, yipping. All three of my hooligans were soon tangling me up in the leashes, snarling at one another in their excitement and frustration and fear.

The man behind me moved away. He was not a dummy.

The man with the two small dogs veered away. He, too, was not a dummy.

The cluster of folk with all the dogs up ahead stared, but did not come closer. Also not dummies.

German Shepherd Woman, however, continued walking directly toward me. As she approached the Shepherd strained at his leash, barking. All I could do was brace, muscles straining, leashes cutting into my hands as my trio of combined 140 lb of fur and teeth and frenzy whirled about me.

I called out to the woman, "Please move away. They don't like other dogs."

She stopped, about 10 feet away from me now, her dog agitated. As she finally started to move away from me, tugging at her dog, she looked back and smiled and she said, "Well, honey, then you came to the wrong park."

Stupid woman. Stupid, stupid woman. I wanted to tell her she was a stupid woman, but all I could do was say, "No. It's the right park. I usually can avoid people like you."

I don't do NaNoWriMo.

For those who do not know NaNo, what it is is National Novel Writing Month: write a novel of 50,000 words starting Nov 1, and finishing Nov 30. So many of my writerly friends attempt it, and many even succeed. I am not aware of any of these novels being published, but the point is not to get them published, but, rather, to write.

I am, or was, a writer. Let me emphasis the past tense. I really do not consider myself a writer any more, simply because I do not write. Where once I'd crank out articles, short stories, the beginnings of books, now I can't even muster sufficient words to comprise a blog entry on a regular basis.

Why the literary ennui?

I'll take the tack Don does: too filled with the stuff that clogs my day-to-day living. I permit myself the luxury of holding the back of my hand to my forehead and sigh about how little "me" time I have, and how my brain craves cessation at the end of the work day, rather than stay active trying to populate a fictional world.

So, no NaNo for gekko. Not never, no. But not now.

This is directed to a number of you who do not seem to have grasped the basics of blending courtesy with parking lots. I am sorry to be so cross with you, but, really, something needs to be said to you. I suppose I have little choice but to be the one. It pains me, truly it does.

You. The young lady who shoots out of one driving aisle into a cross driving aisle. In particular, the cross aisle down which I happen to be driving:

As you pull your vehicle halfway out into the traffic, look to the left!. Caveat: if in one of those backward nations that insist on driving on the incorrect side of the road, such as the UK, obvii you'd look to the right.

I would dearly love to not have to maneuver wildly to avoid you, although I do get a small guilty bit of pleasure from the sudden expression of terror on your face when you eventually do look in the proper direction in time to see me narrowly missing your engine block.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Now, as for you ... no, dear. Not you. Him. Yes sir. I am speaking to you:

I totally get that your self image is a bit puny -- I have so been there. I understand that you derive great satisfaction from your massive, glinting, three-quarter ton extended King Kab pick-up truck with the pristine bed that has never, not once, hauled even so much as the family pet and those tires one ordinarily sees on the Caterpillar 797. I also get your critical need for the 20 lb, foot long trailer hitch -- it's so very shiny -- that has never had anything actually hitched to it! I wish you all the ego boost that you crave.

But, please. When you park your leviathan in our work parking lot? Do not pull it all the way back! Other people would like to be able to park behind you, see. In the parking spot your hitch is now occupying.

Here's an alternative. Just an idea. Park in the furthest spot out where no one else parks. You'll benefit your truck (no door dings, hey!) and yourself (toned calves and heart-health, yay!), and you can take over three spots, if it pleases you!

Thanks, dearies. Again, I am so sorry to have to have been so stern, but, really. It's for your own good.

This flower is from a shrub somewhere in Sacramento -- either Midtown or heading toward Old Sac.

Clues, anyone?

I'm lazy. What more can I say? I have not yet fully devolved to encapsulating my thoughts in 140 characters or fewer -- in fact when I do Twitter, I have to find ways to abbreviate my more normal inclinations. Yet I find it simpler to pop out a quick update or a comment on Facebook than to blog. Expository writing takes more effort. I need to think about it a bit. Chew on it in my mind. Research it a bit. My days of simply blatting out whatever thought percolates to the top of the swamp of my mind and letting it spill onto the screen are, well, not precisely over, but they have been reduced.

Nevertheless, I do have a collection of random thoughts I could sort of collect here, for the one or two of you who bother to visit this abandoned forum.

1. Starbucks is getting some competition. McDonalds started offering sugary coffee drinks for less a few months ago. In response, Starbucks has announced a scheme to reduce the prices of some of its beverages in some of its markets. Obvii, those markets would be the ones where Mickey-D's is beating them out. I'm sure. Still, a strategy I have not seen, but which would help Starbucks with their "We Are So Too Not Overpriced" image is to sell refills. Bring in your <environmentally friendly> mug and get a refill of their best burnt brew for only 99 cents! Here's the upside -- Apple and iTunes have proven that peeps generally don't think 99 cents is too much to pay for something. Heck, the Dollar stores proved that out, right? Starbucks also gets to promote itself as being "green." Yes, they're doing their part to reduce the waste from all those plastic lids, cardboard snuggies and plastic-coated cardboard cups. Cool, or wot?

2. Seriously. Chad has to go. He just must. I mean, he seems like a nice boy, but his oozy friendliness and bland charm has been suffered long enough. I was hoping, once Verizon took over Alltel, they'd have their geek chew Chad to pieces and I was way looking forward to the blood match but it just hasn't materialized. Now I'm simply hoping for a little quiet disappearing, you know what I mean? One day, Chad's there advising some kid not to put a used orthodontics retainer into his mouth, and the next, we're all not noticing he's even gone.

3. Let's go back to the 99 cent price tag for a moment, there. There are actually people -- tightwads, curmudgeons, grumps, or practical, however you want to name them -- there are people who think that 99 cents for a single song is too much to pay. Really, they're right but it's been shown to be what the market will bear. So grind your teeth if you must, and even vow to never spend that one-penny-below-a-buck on a song, but think for a moment about this: your kid, someone's kid has shelled out maybe up to $2 for only 30 seconds of that same song. Not even a hi-fidelity clip, that kid paid actual money AND air-time for download to get a fuzzy sounding snippet of the most annoying tune imaginable and you get to hear it repeat as that kid stands behind you in line and ignores his ringing cellphone. So you think 99 cents is a rip off? I've been caught between amused and outraged that the cellphone companies and the ringtone "providers" have been getting away with worse!

4. Which brings me to ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, which asserts that that 30 seconds out of 3 to 4 minutes of a song constitutes a public performance of the copyrighted piece and they wants their royalties. So. You may have grudgingly paid 99 cents for the full song and you may play it on your boombox out at the park. Your kid, however, just might end up having to pay royalties every time someone calls him -- not sure yet if they're going to go for a percentage per ringy-dingy, or what. Sure, sure, they're going after the big guys -- Verizon, AT&T and you're probably all "yay! They're getting those rat-bastards who charge me too much!" but think it through first. If Verizon is going to have to pony up royalties for ringtones, they're going to pass that particular buck right on to you.

'nuf for now. Back to Facebook.

I haven't blogged in, like, forever for a number of reasons.

1. Lazy-butt. I haven't really felt like blogging. I've gotten lazy.
2. Employed. New job. Very busy. Brain occupied with trying to wrap itself around a bunch of new stuff.
3. Faffing about. Been spending loads of time on Facebook, doing Facebooky things. When I'm not trying to learn my new job or being too lazy, that is.
4. Netflix. Took advantage of a free month's subscription to Netflix, and watching every episode of Heroes that I can stream.

and, finally:

5. Have not gotten passionate enough about anything to want to write about it. Sick and tired of politics. Peeps around me are all screeching about how evil Obama is, but that really bores me about as much as the peeps who screeched about the evil Bush.