Author: halfcnote

My Friend Phat

The American holiday of Thanksgiving — the perfect day to introduce my friend Phat.  Phat and I go way back.  We’ve been close friends since childhood.  Oh, we lose touch every now and then, but we always hook back up at some point.

Phat has seen me through some pretty thick and thin times.  Sometimes we have belly laughs to rival those giggling babies on You Tube.  Other times we sit in the dark contemplating our belly buttons, wondering how life got this way.

I remember once, due to some unfortunate circumstances, I lived in a house with no central heat.  Phat was there to help keep me warm that winter.  Phat made a gradual exit that year after we chopped many a tree for the wood stove.  By spring Phat was gone and my really illusive friend Phit came to visit for a short while.  (Phat and Phit rarely visit together – they tend to get under each other’s skin.)

Sometimes, Phat sneaks up on me, that devilish prankster.  Now is a perfect example, seems like I turned around and bam! there’s Phat hanging around in places I’ve never seen before.

As I’ve grown older, I find that Phat has grown more obnoxious.  Or maybe Phat has always been that way and I’ve never taken the time to really notice.

Oh, people have told me Phat is really no good for me, that I’m being led down a path that leads to ill being.  I suppose they are right.  The times I’ve lived without Phat do tend to be more enjoyable all around.  And if I think of it hard enough, I see that Phat does have a rather abusive personality with lots of boundary issues.

It is a classic cycle.  Phat gets me all out of shape, I pull away and try to find a healthier lifestyle then Phat returns bearing sweet gifts in order to wiggle back into my life.  Why even this morning I’m being plied with sweet rolls with Cinnabun icing.

Ye gads, they are right!

I am going to call Phit this very day and see if we can go for a walk and do some talking.  We need to get better acquainted again.  I have the number around here somewhere.

Just let me clean up these rolls and I’ll get right on it.

Art Snob

I am an art snob.

So what am I snobbish about?  Signatures.  Yep, signing of one’s name in a large and can’t helped to be noticed spot in an otherwise perfectly fine piece of work.

Being part of the Post a Week Photo Challenge has been fun.  I’ve seen some amazing photographic images and had the opportunity to exchange comments with people from all over the world.  The interpretations of the conceptual themes being thrown to us have been inventive, creative and exciting.  There is but one thing that grinds on me though.  Those dang signatures.

Signatures that distract from the beauty and design of the images.  There have been many photos I would loved to have “liked” or commented on, but held back because the creator had splattered their signature or logo so conspicuously that the whole of the work was compromised.

A photograph is a delicate thing even when it shows harsh subjects.  It’s a balancing act of light and emotion. There’s nothing like trying to sink into an image that portrays comfort and having your eye jarred by a contradiction of an inelegant copy write symbol.

I understand the want to make sure that intellectual property is protected.  There are thieves in every walk of life and with all the photoshop programs out there it really doesn’t matter.  They will take what they want.  It doesn’t matter that Olin Mills is stamped in every corner.

A wise professor and accomplished painter once told her students that we, as artists, have a decision to make. Do you want it to be about your art or your name?

Join me.  Become an art snob.  Let your work speak for itself.  It says volumes.

Gotta go, gotta go right now!

~Further, there shall be an area for you outside the camp, where you may relieve yourself. With your gear you shall have a spike, and when you have squat you shall dig a hole with it and cover up your excrement.~ The Torah, Deuteronomy, 23:13-14.

Said to have been invented over 4,000 years ago in Greece, the toilet is basic to Western civilization , as are other specialized areas in other cultures/civilizations.  Sir John Harrington invented the first flush toilet for his godmother, Queen Elizabeth I in 1596- had it installed in the Queen’s Palace, he did. The first patent went to Alexander Cummings two hundred years later in 1775. (Good ol’ Tom Crapper did hold three patents for improvements on the flush toilet, but didn’t invent the thing – just gave his name as a lasting legacy.)

By a certain age, usually no later than three, most of us are “potty” trained, that is we relieve ourselves in the places designed by our culture for such activity.  So ingrained is this training that we can hardly force ourselves to do our “business” elsewhere.  When I was in college during the dark ages of long ago, my psychology professor told us that there had been a study, whereby students were told they could have as many glasses of beer they wanted, the catch being they couldn’t leave to use the restroom.  They would have to urinate where they sat.  The study showed that the majority of students passed out before letting go (and not from consuming too much beer).

So why am I regaling the mighty toilet? the can? the dunny? the lavatory, the porcelain throne?  Well, Chameleon has a son, who at one time was my nephew by marriage and this young man is a sailor out to sea serving in the Navy.  Seems that there are some serious issues going on with the heads aboard his ship the USS George W. Bush.  Chameleon is trying to get her voice heard by as many people as possible to see that this shameful situation is corrected – NOW.

Please see her blogs: www.marybrotherton.com  & need2go.blogspot.com.

My pseudo-nephew is lucky that he has Chameleon as an advocate, but our service people should not have to write home to Mom to get something accomplished.  Military funding should at the very least make sure that our service people get the basics of what they need – and working toilets out to sea doesn’t seem like that much to ask for.  Go, Mary.

Mondays with Yoda

On Mondays, well most Mondays, since I don’t work Sunday night I take Yoda to school.  It’s a great opportunity to catch up on our conversations.  This morning we started with a discussion about chemistry then we turned toward a more anthropological slant.  Here is but a snippet of the 30 minutes before we left for school:

Biscuits and Chocolate Milk:

Me: Ah, the wonder of chemistry. (Said while taking the biscuits out of the oven.)

Yoda: What’s chemistry?

Me: The mixing of things to make new or different things.  Like your chocolate milk, the chocolate and the milk mix to make a solution, but the milk stays milk and the chocolate stays chocolate.  But with the biscuits, we mix flour, salt, sugar, yeast, baking soda and water together then add heat to create something new.

Yoda: So its the baking soda that makes it rise?

Me: Partly.

Yoda: I love science.

Kittens:

Yoda: Why is Ruthie so wild?

Me: Kittens play wild and bite stuff to prepare them for hunting their food.

Yoda: You mean like rams and sheep and stuff?

Me: Well, I was thinking more of mice and rabbits, but okay.

Prehistoric Animals:

Yoda: You know they’ve found thousands of bones in the tar pits.

Me: Yep.  Big ones and little tiny ones.

Yoda: Even the mask of a short-faced bear.

Me: Yes, it’s really amazing what they have found in that asphalt.

Yoda: Sabertooth Cats (not Tigers), got stuck in the La Brea tar pits because they thought the buffalo and mammoths stuck in there would be easy prey.  Same goes for the grey wolf.  The gooey stuff isn’t like quicksand, you don’t sink, but you get stuck.

Me: (I’m thinking Tar Baby effect.)

Yoda: Sabertooth Cats hunted in packs so that they could take down large prey.  After all, they only weighed about 60-70 lbs so it took several of them to bring down a gigantic mammoth.  Their long teeth were only used to deliver the killing bite, you know to get all the blood and stuff.

Me: Yuck.

Modern Animals:

Yoda: A lion might could take an elephant, but an elephant’s trunk is hard and could knock the lion out with one swipe.  Lions like to hunt sheep and rams, but will take them away from the cheetahs in the area.

Me: Really?

Mummies:

Yoda: I know a lot about Egypt.

Me: You do?

Yoda: Yes, they make mummies.

Me: Like me and Momma?

Yoda: (Giggles) No, like the dead guys. They are covered in oil, salt and sugar then wrapped in toilet paper and they put them in a giant box. They even take their eyes out, but they still rot. If you left them in the giant box for say, oh, 18 years and then opened it up you would see that their eyes are taken out and that they may have a cut open head and stuff like that.  Sometimes the toilet paper gets all mushy and tears up and you see parts of them sticking out.  It just freaks me out.

Me: Does sound kind of freaky.

Yoda:Yeah, it just freaks me out.

Monday conversations, gotta love ‘em.

Poetry Corner II

Drittland

(Third Country)

There is just one life for each of us: our own. ~ Euripides

A question is asked again and again:

Boy or girl?  They have a bet.

Crushing

Derision

Explicit contempt

Forget not the question

Girl or boy?  They have a bet.

Heartbreak matters not

In queries such as these.

Judgments are finite

Kept measured and clean.

License to question

Mercenary manifest

Naive, noxious and nasty.

Oh, boy, oh, girl what a bet.

Pomposity perpetuates the pain.

Quell the

Rising recreant need

Safeguard the system

To which they are married.

Unabridged umbrage is taken.

Vituperate the void!

When no answer is shaken.

Xenophobia demands an explanation.

You must answer.

Zealots command. They have a bet.

Poetry Corner I

Edge

There is a precipice at the edge of sanity.

Cold, hard and sharp

it stretches out a panoramic view

of a brilliant abyss.

Dragons dance and demons whisper

sweet and warm.

Strings, then threads are cut

with a witless edge.

Weaving time without a hem.

The silence calls, beckoning,

inviting the comfort of

oblivion.

So simple to take the step-

a leap of bounds,

letting

go.