round and round I go

I used to keep my mouth open a lot as a kid. I had tonsil and adenoid trouble until they were removed when I was 5. Until then, I was pretty much a mouth breather.

I remember one late summer evening, when I was four, I had the idea as I lay in my bed trying to sleep, that I would embark on an adventure the next day. I was always scheming up some advenure or another. They weren't really adventurous at all, but to me, they were excursions into the great unknown. I was Nancy Drew; I was a pirate; an early explorer; I was hunting for buried treasure.

I woke up the next day all set for my hike through the woods to find the buried treasure I just knew was waiting for me. Luckily, the woods were adjacent to our farm, and they weren't so much woods as they were overgrowth and pine trees, maybe an acre in all. To me, it was expansive and there was most certainly a rare find buried somewhere, beneath some tree, hidden by the previous owners whose farm had burned long ago.

My mom packed me a lunch, I put on a backpack, stuffed a planter's shovel inside, and set out to find the spot marked X.

I had hiked maybe 100 yards when the sky turned darker still. Soft rain began to fall. Under a giant pine I looked to the sky to see if I had any hope of sun.

That's when the mouth breather thing came into play. Half way up the pine, an inch worm decided to drop, down he came, landing in my mouth with a silent splat before I could close my lips. Damn sinuses!

I don't like bugs now that I'm older, but I really didn't like bugs then, and after spitting him out and screaming bloody murder, I ran all the way back to the house at full speed, backpack flailing behind me. My mother was on the porch, where I came to rest, out of breath. I informed her through my tears that I had eaten a poisonous worm.

I don't remember her reaction exactly. I do remember her asking me what color the worm was, and if I'd eaten it, and I remember telling her it fell in my mouth but I had spit it out. And I remember her smiling and trying to calm me down, telling me it wasn't poisonous because I had spit it out.

And I remember the rest of the day wondering if I had spit it ALL out, or if I would be dead by bedtime because of a stray leg or antenna. I might have eaten a little of it. I just couldn't remember. What if some had made its way down my troat? Certainly I'd be dead by bedtime.

Bedtime came and went and I survived. I'm not so afraid of worms anymore, but I am very glad I had my tonsils removed.

Being Dad / Being a Mom

I had a great talk with my stepsister today. She was very affirming of my progress, of the strength of my voice, which has changed in tenor and grace over the past year. That my style has evolved is evident to anyone who wanders into the archives and looks at how this blog began.

As I've begun stripping off the mask and costume I've worn for a very long time, things are changing, I'm changing. I once battled hourly with uncertainty. I fought it by imagining every possible scenario and angle, good and bad (heavy on the bad) until I was pretty well lathered up with panic. Mostly I battled it by thinking, what would my mother say/do/think/feel.

Today I'm feeling for myself, for the first time. Today I'm doing better at accepting that there's no such thing as certainty, that it is okay to accept the moment (maybe even enjoy it) without worrying about what's next. That it's okay NOT to panic over not knowing. Easier said than done, but I'm almost getting to believe all of what I just wrote.

Grief is key in my ongoing self discovery.

Grief is very real.

I don't think grief is accomplished in an instant. Sometimes, as it was for me, you find workarounds that keep you from going there for a very long time. For me at least, the process began at age 40, as I lay on the leather living room couch, and for the first time watched pieces of my childhood through my father's eyes. I saw me through his eyes, I saw my mother through my father's eyes--I distinctly felt that I was inside his skin, his skin then. He is in his grave for 34 years now. He has no skin now--he is bones and dust.

But that day, a few months ago, here in this living room, I slipped out of my mom-made body and into my father's body for what was probably five minutes. That was the day I looked out through his eyes. I was his height, I felt his flesh around me. I really was inside of him. I felt tremendous physical pain--pain that had me weeping and moaning and crying out loudly:

I feel her neck snap around, her eyes pierce me, I feel the venom land. [Do I remember this from my childhood?... maybe a dream... I'll never know.] I feel her words sting his skin/my skin. I am in that moment, the moment when my grief over my father and mother collides. I feel the sickness inside of me, I feel my middle buckle. And the wailing begins before I know it... "I'm so sorry for you Daddy... I'm so sorry for you Daddy... I'm so sorry... I'm so sorry for me..."

You should know that I never cried after my father's death. Not the day I was told at 6. Not the years that followed. Not ever.

I manufactured tears for kindergarten because I enjoyed lapping up the sympathy of concerned teachers and curious kids. I later felt guilty for this. Today I realize that I learned dramatics at a very young age.

Real grief had escaped me my whole life. I never knew what my father died of until 15 years after he died. All those years I'd been answering the question that everyone I met eventually asked (what did your dad die of?) with the last information I had (Um, a gallbladder operation). Yes, well, he did have one of those operations, in fact that's when they found the pancreatic cancer that no one ever bothered to tell me about. Not at 6. Not at 16.

I always wondered how he died from an operation six months after he had it. But then...

So as not to backtrack too far, this moment of grief wasn't an endpoint for me. It doesn't mean anything's "over with." Quite the contrary.

This is my beginning. And it is a gift.

And it is supremely important.

I've been grappling with how closely I let myself mesh--how fully I let myself engage--with my daughter. We had an amazing night tonight, she and I. We stopped for a burger on the way home. It's c-o-l-d in Atlanta tonight--must be in the 30s. We got home and got cleaned up for bed, snuggled together in our mommy/daddy bed, painted one another's nails, made funny noises with our throats and laughed until we were wheezing.

I see a hundred people when I look into her eyes. I see George, I see myself, and I see pieces of every other family member from both sides through the generations. She is so full of everyone that she is completely unique.

Let me stop the generational pain in this family now. For her.

I gazed at her a long time tonight, while we laughed and played and tried to stay warm. I'm beginning to connect with her in a new way. My own way. It's taking me a while to decipher what that is, but tonight at least, I moved a few inches closer.

onward......

Driving While Aroused

A Longview, Texas woman was arrested for having 17 sex toys in her car, according to this article. If convicted, she could face two years in jail. Notice, will you, that she was stopped for suspicion of DUI. And yet, what is the news angle of this story? The fact that the woman was allegedly driving drunk and could have killed someone's child is not discussed because it's not "news." It's America. What is news is that this woman works as a distributor for Slumber Parties, which is described as Tuperware meets Victoria Secret. Apparently, that just ain't lady like in Texas, ya'll.

all about horses

The last few days I've been thinking about horses. My horses. I grew up on a farm--well, until my father died at 37 with no life insurance and we had to move--which meant I spent a lot of time around animals as a kid. A german shepherd named King. Our cats Salt and Pepper. And a handful of horses for starters.

My older sister was the horse nut, and naturally I teetered along after her, she being nine years my senior and my hero with all her trophies and ribbons. Her horse was named Angel, an albino mare with the patience of job in equine form. All beauty and spirit, she was solid as a rock and 16 hands high, which, in non-horse language, means pretty darn tall.

We lived on a three-acre farm on Atlantic Avenue in Penfield, New York, where there are still lots of open spaces. We had trails to ride, and although it was a busy road for the country (which it still was in 1966), we could ride all the way down to the Penfield town hall, which for some reason I felt compelled to look up this evening. It looks just the same to me.



There are at least a hundred stories to tell about this farm, my life lessons of life and death there. I think I'll come back to some of those. Tonight is about the horses.

HELLO CHA-CHA

After pestering my parents long enough for everyone to believe I was actually interested in horses--I was four or five--they bought me my own Pony, which I named Cha-Cha. She was a Shetland and as rank as they come. If you find a good Shetland, they're usually your trusted companion for decades. Cha-Cha wasn't one of the good ones. She was ornery and spirited and down right mean. She looked a little like this:



I sure hope Paul had better luck with his pony than I did with "Cha."

I remember the last time my mother let me ride Cha-Cha, I took one of my many dives off of her back end, but this time she was kind enough to dump me into poison ivy. I was in oatmeal baths for days. No one could handle this cranky pony. Not my sister. Not her friends. My parents finally had to hire a female Jockey from the nearby racetrack to come exercise her every couple of weeks. She was the only one who could ride Cha-Cha into the pasture and come back in the saddle.

My sister probably could have worked with Cha-Cha long enough to turn her into a fair pony. But she had her horse and didn't have much time for my silly pony. I didn't much mind. I had Bessy the Cow to pester back then.

TAKEN FOR A RIDE

I didn't get to ride the big mare, Angel, very often. She was my sisters' pride and joy, but my sister did start giving me riding lessons on Angel when I was about 4. My feet didn't even reach the stirrups--I had to put them in the loop of the stirrup leathers instead. Amazing how fearless I was back then. Life breeds that fearlessness out of us. Maybe it's a good thing.

But by 5, I could get Angel to walk, trot, and once in a great while I was allowed to canter her. Jumps were strictly off limits though. I can't tell you how hard it was pounded into my head, "Do NOT, ever ever ever, take Angel near the jumps because she likes to jump and you won't be able to stop her." The jumps were taller than I was, and looking up at them didn't give me any huge urge to take Angel over the jumps.

And then there was he day when my sister was giving me a lesson, standing in the middle of the ring with her crop. Stop and think. How must it have felt for that 14-year-old teenage horse lover girl to have such power over her bratty little sister. The stunts she used to make me do. All in the name of learning to ride. Anyway...

This day I remember well. It was cold. The ground was hard, and in the cracks and hoofprints were circles of ice, left over from the snow that had melted and froze again. I can see myself trotting along in the ring, my breath visible in front of my face. My reins were down on Angel's neck. I was riding no-handed, one of the favorite teaching methods of horse terrorists everywhere. This day I was learning how to post. I was concentrating pretty hard on "Up, Down, Up, Down" when I felt Angel start to turn. I wondered what she was doing. But I keep my arms obediently out to either side of me and focused on "Up, Down, Up, Down."

It wasn't until Angel rounded the far corner that I could see where she was headed. The jumps. THE JUMPS!

She broke into a slow canter while I fumbled for the reins. Starting to cry, I yelled to my sister for help. The amazing thing is, I wasn't afraid of going over the jumps. I was afraid disobeying what my parents and sister had told me: Do NOT take Angel over the jumps. The terror of screwing up this direct order was far deeper than the fear of Angel taking me over the jumps. I was screwing up. Big time. I was in trouble.

Little did I know.

As Angel approached the first jump and her front legs left the ground, I swear to this day, and I will swear until I can't swear anymore, my sister said, "Let Go! I'll Catch You." These words have stayed with me for 35 years and I maintain each and every letter: LET GO! I'LL CATCH YOU!

And so I did.

My sister says, to this day, that she in fact yelled, "Hold On! Hold On!"

Two distinctly different versions of the event.

I remember leaving the saddle--literally pushing myself out into mid-air so that I would clear Angel's feet. Expecting my sister to catch me in her welcoming arms.

But no one caught me.

WHAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN--HARD

16 hands, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. smack. crack.

The smack was my face hitting and cracking the icy-hard ground. My wind gone, my head electric. I stayed there on the ground. I don't know how long. I remember hearing Angel stop after clearing the last jump. I remember wishing I would have stayed on. I remember thinking I wasn't that afraid, why did she tell me to let go? I remember thinking, "MAAAAAAMAAAA!" Oh wait, I actually screamed that. I remember thinking I would get in trouble for taking Angel near the jumps. I remember my lip hurting very badly.

My sister lugged me all the way up to the driveway, no small distance, and put me on the hood of the car while she yelled for my mother. She was asking, "Why did you let go?" But in her mind I'm sure was panic over the repercussions of letting this happen to sweet baby Jeneane.

Off to the doctor's we raced, and to not drag this out any longer than necessary, the grand tally of my injuries were two badly blackened eyes, a smashed and bloody (but not broken!) nose, and two fat purple lips. Four days off of school. And a face in the mirror I never forgot.

As for my sister, I'm not sure what punishment was dolled out if any.

But I do know that to this day she says, "I told you to hold on!"

And I tell her, "You told me to let go!"

Angel's the only one who knew for sure, and she took that secret to her grave.

consumer electronics dream

okay, I only have four minutes to write, so I'd better make it quick. In between client calls. Thinking about my dream last night. Don't you love dreaming about electronics? In my dreams, I usually invent useless devices. I wake up only to realize that no one would want a laptop that makes pizza. well, except me. The sadness of my inventive failure is palpable those mornings. I drag through the day with a big "L" on my forehead.

But last night's inventions weren't so bad. Here's what I came up with...

In the dream I had my cell phone with me. It was gold and a little wider than the Nokia I have. You know all the wasted space on the back of your cell phone where the battery pack is? Well in my dream, it wasn't wasted space; it was the face of a digital camera. Right? So you always have a digital camera with you. This combo digital camera/cell phone would be great for Atlanta, where the average Joe has a good wreck every so often. Climb out of the wreckage, call 911, flip the phone over and take a picture for your insurance company. Maybe have an automatic click capability where whenever you push 911 a flash goes off and a picture is taken. So if you're getting mugged and you call 911, the phone snaps a picture of your would-be aggressor. In this case, the cell phone becomes sort of a "black box" of the pedestrian crime scene...

enough about that one...

The next dream vignette featured, yet again, my cell phone. In my dream I was doing a client phone interview, and instead of having to use my stinking tape recorder, a little ticker tape transcription of my call was printing out from the bottom of my cell phone, like those ATM receipts. Okay, this is pretty far fetched, but why not have an easy way, when you're on the phone with some custome dis-service idiot, to capture the call on YOUR END for "training purposes"? In my dream I could, and I did it using the print out capability directly from my phone. Train on "t-h-i-s" PetSmart/PetDumb!

Gotta go back to work now. Have a phone interview to do the old-fashioned way.

Say cheese!

it has been asked and answered...

who invented weblogging?

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Well, it's good to see super blogger Al Gore on the list.

warped parenting

Elaine makes an interesting comment to my post below about Jenna landing on her head on our concrete garage floor. Elaine admits that parenting never ends, nor does the fear and hurt we feel over the welfare of our children--even once they're grown. While I've always "understood" this in my head, it's a weighty thing to understand it in your heart. It's something I grapple with--really.

I was talking on the phone to my friend the other day, who is also a mother of a young child, telling her I think that I often consciously avoid engaging in the moment with my daughter. I've recognized this in myself and have begun to think about why that is. She's my life, my world, yet I (more than I would like) try to avoid being completely present when I'm with her her. I think I do this to avoid completely engulfing her.

It is difficult for me to give completely to someone whose absoulte vulnerability and purity undoes me.

I told my friend, I think that if I engaged with her all the time--if I felt the presence in the moment that I only sometimes feel--I would never let her out the front door again. I can't reconcile it. I can't reconcile letting her out into the world, which I've had to do now that she's in Pre-K, with keeping her safe in my womb, metaphorically. I can't quite get to the grey area. I'm having trouble living in the space of improvisation, of life and love. The space that lets you love without the anticipation of, the fear of, disaster. The space where you can love in spite of the possibility of danger, of death.

The surprise of my father's death for me at 6 broke my innocence in that regard, set the tone for a life that anticipates shock in order to defend against it. One therapist called this catastrophising. I thought that word fit pretty well. And while I don't actively catastrophize as much as I used to, there's still a little lock in my heart that I wish I could spring for good, that when it does unlock is like no other feeling I have, like nothing I understand. And I wish I could remove that lock and accept (even enjoy) being present in the moment more often.

Well, I'm working on it anyway.

the sound

I mentioned here that the sound of Jenna's head hitting the concrete, the thwack, was a sound I remember from my younger days. In fact, confession be told, today stirred a trauma memory in me I had all but forgotten, or at least had forgotten the sound of. It's so real to me again tonight, I can't quite get it out of my head, so, I figure, I'll let it out my fingertips, here.

I was about 14, 15 maybe, at the barn where my friend kept her horse. I had been forced to give up my horse a couple months earlier when my parents decided not to pay the board for him. A whole other story. But don't let me hyperlink back too far. The farther I jump, the odder it gets. So anyway, my best friend and I were at the barn, doing what we'd done every day for years, riding and grooming, daring and laughing.

My friend decided to let her horse out in the paddock after we were done riding. He was an old thoroughbred. She'd had him for several years by then. A remarkably skitzy breed thanks to man, the thoroughbred can be a handful. Especially the ex-racehorse variety, which this gelding was. But he had age on him, and he was calm as thoroughbreds get. Mostly because he loved his owner. Very much.

I see the day so clearly now, sun shining, a cold western new york early winter day, and I see my breath in the air, I see the light rays breaking through the leaves of the trees all around us, I smell the hay, manure, wood chips, and I see her walking out into the padock with a lead line to get him.

I see him looking playful, breaking into a proud trot, she stops, hands on hips, and decides okay, boy, let's play, and the two begin a game of chase until he forgets she's not a horse and kicks up his back feet, and I see them come up and I see them thrust back and I hear them connect with her head, with her face, and I hear that thwack that echos then and doesn't stop echoing ever.

thwack. and the collapse, and the screams. those screams.

I'm closer to the main house than I am to her, so I fly to the door, but no one's home, so I fly to the long driveway, see a couple walking a dog, and scream like crazy, echoing my best friends' screams, someone help us please!

I can barely make my knees bend to take them quickly behind the barn to show them where she is. Why won't my legs work? And I take off my ski hat and do my best to keep up with them, but my legs aren't bending, they stiffen with each step, and I'm lagging behind them, but we reach her finally, and we lift her, me under one shoulder, the man of the couple under the other, and we walk her down the hilly driveway to a neighbor's house, and as we walk I see the bloody ruin that was her face, and I put my ski mask up to her face to try to stop the bleeding, and I tell her she'll be okay, just a few stitches, and she says no I don't think so, and I say it happens all the time, you'll see, the doctors will know how to fix this.

And I'm the one left to go see the horse, catch him, put him back in his stall, and take her dog home once the ambulance drives her off, and I'm the one standing inside her house when her father races in the front door after hearing there's been an accident, and I'm the one who says, "They took her to the hospital, sir," as I watch him begin to crumble and then gather himself in his race back out to the car.

She spent weeks in the hospital, with plastic surgeons rebuilding her eye sockets and nose out of new material, removing the mass of shattered bones from her nose, around her eyes, up to her forehead. They gave us the news that 1/2" difference in the landing of his kick would have meant certain blindness and perhaps death; if he'd have had his back shoes on, she would have been dead without a doubt.

I digested this.

I don't know how many surgeries she had over the next several years. A lot. Coming home from college on vacation meant going into the hospital for another surgery. I do know that when I got home from the barn the day of horror, when I told my mother what had happened, she gave me a drink. Of whiskey or something. To calm my nerves. I do know that I didn't ride for a dozen years after that. My friend did though. She loved that horse, knew it wasn't intentional, that he was playing, except that he had a 1000 pound and four hoof advantage. She has horses to this day.

The event left me with lots of emotions that never really found a home. Guilt over not running to her first; instead I ran for help. Guilt over not being able to warn her that his feet were coming. Fear of animals near my face. Wonder at how the alcohol made me feel so warm in a moment when I felt so cold inside.

the near miss

I had one of those moments today, where you wind up face to face with the potential for your life to be changed forever. You look that possibility in the eye, and wait for it to decide your fate.

Jenna and I were headed off to school. We have steps that lead from the basement to the garage. As usual, my assertive daughter opted not to listen to me and to push ahead of me and start down the steps on her own, leaving me with a handfull of items--purse and coffee among them--to fiddle with closing the door.

I saw her mis-step half way down. The proverbial slow motion began as she tumbled head first down the steps, smacking her head on the concrete garage floor, the sound of which you only know if you've heard it. And I'd heard it before, many years before. But that's for another post.

For a split second after the impact, as I dropped everything in my hands, I heard only silence. That's the moment I'm talking about. Where you come face to face with an instant that is extraordinary in every way. Sometimes they're good moments. Usually not. Seems like anyway.

The shrieking began "MAMA MAMA!" I told George I don't remember how I got from the basement two flights up to the kitchen. It feels like I flew. I don't remember my feet touching the ground at all. A hurt child is weightless. This is when parents develop super human powers. Lift cars. Fly. Things like that. Because I know I flew all the way up with 50 pounds in my arms. I touched down at the refridgerator, grabbed the ice pack from the freezer, flew again into the living room and put Jenna on the couch while I screamed GEORGE! at the top of my lungs. I think waking up to the cries of your daughter and beckoning of a traumatized wife ranks right up there with one of those traumatizing moments.

I thought that find her face crushed when I first looked at her, which I hadn't done until we landed by the couch. I expected blood. I feared the worst. It was the sound, you know? That thwack. You feel it all the way through your stomach and into your spine. But amazingly, her face was clear except for tears, and there wasn't a cut on her head! She landed more on the top of her head than anywhere else. We got ice on that spot right away.

Then George took over while I stepped outside and looked for my cool. Definitely lost it. When I got my cool back I went back inside. He was talking with Jenna, having her follow his finger and asking her about this and that. He was very soft and collected. I was so grateful. That's why it's good to have two adults to evey child. So one can always be in varying degrees of freaking out while the other keeps cool, and then you swap, and so on.

Anyway, we rushed her to the doctor, who pronounced her well, took some time to discuss the amazing resiliancy of children, and told us to take her to school and go home and enjoy the morning.

Collective sigh. Collective thanks. Aside from a headache, she seems unphased. But we'll be keeping our eyes on her.

So my instant of horror passed me by, this time. I feel blessed beyond all else for my daugther's health, her life, her laughter, her joy.

I love my sweet baby so.

ladies and gentlemen, meet Hunter John Willis

Finally, somebody asks about the kitten! I've been wanting to say more about him, but not give myself over to cat blogging completely. So let me indulge myself for a minute and say so far allergies are going okay and so far kitty has a home--with us. Jenna named him: Hunter John Willis. Don't ask me why. Never ask why. We're calling him Hunter. Which, as far as ankles, calves, and finger go, he is. He hunts us down and latches on until we scream.



Other times he's very tame.



Mostly he's nuts.



And awefully cute.



Wish us well with him. One day at a time.

my husband should stop surfing the web.

noise

this week i've been feeling the noise. coming at me from all directions. not really able to discern it, separate out into sounds, voices. just noise, a rush, a dark wind, blowing my hair back, makes it hard to keep my eyes open, makes me dry and scaley and wind worn. the weather, maybe. i don't know. there's a lot of effort in living, isn't there. a lot of effort in dying. no way to escape hard work, and for what. too tired to make initial caps. lower case looks just right. why bother with upper case. why did we ever bother. weren't periods enough. anything involving the shift key, even a question mark, is too much. an extra effort, and for what. you get my meaning. uninterrupted clickety-clack, like the noise coming at me from all directions. not able to discern it, separate out into sounds, voices. just noise.

National RageBoy Day, November 12th. Hang Yourself at Half Mast

It was seven months ago when RageBoy had his heart surgically removed by an accomplished surgeon. The operation was long. The cuts were deep. Rageboy mentioned the specific pains of this operation many times on his blog. It's not pretty to see a man's heart ripped from his chest.



Many thought RB was down for the count after his heart surgery. Not me. Not never. You see, Rochester winters breed a hardiness in you that makes you come back for seconds. I don't know what it is. The shoveling, the shivering, I don't know. I do know that it takes more than heartache to defeat the King of Pain.



And soon, he was reborn...



How, you ask? Well sure, there was this:



And don't forget this:



But, no, not really those. Only partly those. Old meets new, same head, same hand, new heart.

And finally there is this:



He gives all year long. Now it's my turn to say Happy Birthday, Chris.

I didn't know what to get you, so I started a new team blog in your honor.

For the man who has everything, one more blog never hurt.

WHO WANTS IN???

okay, no, I got it, I got it.

So Blog Yearbooks seem like a good idea to some who have commented on the posts below. I got another one. How about The Best of Blog Memes 2002. Right? How fun would that be--from Fucknozzle to Gary's Inquirer pages to... well.... heck, I don't remember them all. That's the point. Of having a "Best Of" book. Ooooh man, I'm thinking of all kinds of things... stop me now, before I end up reinventing hyperlinks. gotta sleep. ignore me. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

looping back...

Did you ever feel like you're at some wierd point in your life, like you've just crossed over the top arc of a circle and things are starting to loop around again? Kind of feeling like that, mostly about technology today. Back circuits or something. For instance:

I don't think to email my blog friends as much anymore as I think of calling them on the phone. Blogging gets personal fast. The natural urge for some of us is to speak with the people whose voices we hear but don't know the tenor of. Suddenly deeper friendships develop as we hyperlink out of blogs and onto the phone lines.

We don't have cable in our house anymore (hence no TV), but are seriously thinking of getting satellite radio. I just got a satellite-ready radio and CD player for the van, and all of the stations I care about from cable TV, PLUS all of the music I care about, can be in my car with me instantly for $9 a month. Just as easy to get it turned on for your house, I hear. Kids programs, comedy programs, world music, everything--and the bonus: it's mostly commercial free. I can just see the family sitting around the radio at night, all cozy, gazing into our warm monitors like the fireplace of days past, blogging, and wondering what the hell's a TV?

I'm starting to care about print again. Hard copy. You know, paper with words printed on it. 'member? Hence my post on blogger yearbooks below. I'm starting to want to sit in bed and turn pages, which you can't do so well with a monitor. I'm not wanting to do that all the time, but I'm wanting the OPTION of back circuiting my online world to paper.

I guess it's about that--options and channels.

When many of us first fell in love with the net, we started shopping there. Buying stuff. Real fast, companies began to move to the Internet as a viable channel to interact with us, ultimately to sell to us, and then to interact with us again. Many of the companies that aren't around anymore (that would be dot-coms) adopted and sold to us exclusively through the online channel.

The dot-bams (bricks and mortars) took the approach (we later learned the smart one) of offering us multiple channels for interacting with them, the Internet being one of them. Over the last year, we've gotten used to that--having options. I want to order my food online and have it brought to my house. I want to look up when a movie's showing but go to the theater to see it. I want to find out how much KMR kitty milk supplement is but pick it up at the pet store along with a flyer of cat rescue shelters.

It is nice to have options. It is just what we wanted. But does it end here?

I am left, somehow, wanting to do the backloop, to take my rotary dial phone off the hook, turn on a good radio comedy show, and curl up on a comfy chair with Tom Matrullo's blogger yearbook.

Nostalgia on fastforward. The past on Internet time.

see ya yesterday tomorrow,
The manglement.

george raps on rap

Detroit's own Eminem has a smash hit in his new film, which grossed $20 million its opening weekend. George has this to say about that. Meanwhile, a guy from nearby Flint, Michigan, has a new film out awarded the Special Jury Prize at Cannes. That movie grossed grossed $190K as reported last Tuesday.

If you go see Eminem's movie, that's great. If you don't go see Michael Moore's movie, please don't talk to me about Eminem's movie. I might blow a fuse. That's never pretty.

blogger year books

So allied is a year old now. And today I thought of my latest quandry and wondered about how to solve it. I have the images I'm linking to stored hither and yond. Some on george's web server at earthlink, some on mine. Thinking of closing down my old site and just making my home on my blog. Save the $20 a month. Put a my files and a link to my write resources stuff up on George's site for safe keeping. Wondering, basically, how to best consolidate our online homes and save some money. And how NOT to lose all the work I've done.

Then I'm thinking, I wish there were a way, say once a year, when we bloggers could press a button or two and have a year's worth of posts (pictures and all) generated into a pdf or some other printable format, an e-book maybe, with posts listed chronoligically (instead of reverse chronologically), a kind of blogger yearbook. And we could share them with one another. Maybe even personalize them.

Maybe they'd be free. Maybe I'd pay up to $10 a piece for my favorite bloggers' year books. I know, the linking thing would be hard--what to do with the links we reference within our blogs once it's in print. Perhaps the yearbooks could have margins on the outside 2" of the page and the http addresses of the links referenced in each post could be printed in the margin. This way we could go look them up if we couldn't remember what the blogger was referencing. I bet I'd remember half of the links from my favorite posts by the folks I read all the time. Kind of scary considering I can't remember my phone number sometimes.

Think of what it would be like, ten years from now, looking back at our 2001 yearbooks. Think about what it would be like to have these once some of us pass over to the other side. Think of what it would be like NOT to have them.

Yes, I would like this functionality.

And soon.

won't take no excuses

Everyone I know needs to go see this movie right now.

And while you're at it, don't delay. Watch this Brief History of America clip from the movie. The film is pure genius.

Staying with the recent theme, props to Michael Moore.

gold nigga

George gives RageBoy a lesson in ebonics. These and other tips for the melanin challenged coming soon to a post near you.

kittens shit an awfully lot.