ROW 80 POST 39 – IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER SOME CHRISTMAS CHEER

This seemed like a good title today, because that’s kind of the way I’m feeling. Do not misconstrue. I do not feel bad; I feel quite well actually. As absolutely boring as this is, so I’ll make it short, I’ve been eating well, exercising (if walking is an exercise) and sleeping. A lot of sleeping. Like 10 to 11 hours at night.

We’ve kind of been doing the Christmas thing, à la watching gobs and gobs of ABC Family Christmas movies on HuluPlus, which are pretty good. Lots of laughs and plenty of tears. But the holidays do that to people, don’t they? Times remembered, or mourned because they never were, tend to bring out the hankies. It’s okay, though. It’s genuine, and again, JC and I are scheming on how to get some Christmas to folks around here, who won’t have a Happy this year.

Turns out Señor and Sra Chupacabra like chocolate and we like Mango juice, so they’ve been renamed Señor and Sra Neighboress. She also cooks a mean picadillo. Mama runs in and out of the house and Neighboress pays her no mind, so the curse has been lifted. For those who were out in the lobby getting snacks during that part of the show, Viola put a curse on Sra Chupacabra when Sra C complained about the cat’s non-existent fleas to Señor Landlord. Viola put a Scottish Erse curse on Sra C for that. The fact that no one speaks one another’s language in this scenario may have led to a wee misunderstanding.

Anyway, we’ve been trying to spread our brand of Christmas cheer, but sometimes it’s hard going. JC and I were walking back from the little market on the corner with a Sunday paper. Some sour old guy was sitting in front of the market when we came out. JC greeted the man. “Hi, how are you?” …. “Not so good, eh?” Of course, I burst out laughing. A lot of it is just JC’s deadpan delivery. Great. Now, this sour old guy thinks I’m laughing at him.

JC hustles me along. I had been to the grocery store, earlier and I had JC meet me at the bus stop to help me carry the cat food. Yes, cat food. This is the most spoiled-rotten cat in the history of. I had too much other crap to stuff in my back pack, so I called him and he met me to help carry. So, I start telling him about the sour clerk I had at the store. She never did crack a smile. And I used all my best jokes, too! I know! Usually, I’m laying them in the aisles. So, I said something inane and she just looked at me. Everyone else was laughing and I just said to her, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to ruin your day.” Asperger strikes again. I couldn’t get my shit and get out of there fast enough.

I almost left 2/3 of it sitting in the store. If the bagging guy hadn’t stopped me, I would have left it behind. I’m so socially inept, it’s painful. JC thought it was funny, and it actually is (everyone else, sans target laughed.) We stopped at the little market to get our Sunday paper and Maria and Rick and people we actually know are there. I had broken my sunglasses, which JC repaired, but I really need dark glasses, so was trying on new ones, being ridiculous. Some lady looked at me aghast, like “act your age,” but who knows what she was really thinking. I found another pair. JC was down the counter, talking to Rick. I looked at JC and pointed to the glasses, and he said “We ain’t left the store yet.” That garnered a laugh from Maria and Rick.

I’m trying to pay for the paper and glasses, and as usual, my mouth is running 190 miles per. I do this when I’m trying to get stuff and pay for stuff. I hate, hate, hate to put anyone out and make them wait for me. Yes, I’m that insecure, or nervous, or whatever. Echoes from my childhood. So, I just spew whatever is bouncing around in my head.

I’m trying to hoist this stupid back pack full of cat food off my back and up onto the counter to get my money. I tell Maria, “This is nothing, you should have seen when I had 300 lbs of crap in my shopping cart and I almost took out the wine aisle in Sweet Bay. That poor couple I was bearing down on saw their lives flash by before their eyes. I could see it in their doomed souls. When I zoomed by, I said, ‘This is why Mary don’t drive.’”

I had 24 cans of this crap in my back pack. She will ONLY eat the Shreds. No Paté, no Gravy Dinners. Just Shreds. Dammit. *Stamps her little foot* 

I thought we were going to have to pick Maria up off the floor. I didn’t think it was THAT funny. Okay, maybe a little bit. At least we got to spread a bit of our Christmas “cheer.”

ROW 80 4th QUARTER POST 9 – NEURON CENTRAL AND TV

Well, I had a thought, but it got lonely and left. It’s been that sort of morning. Fuzzy, unfocused. Interesting dreams. In one of them, Governor Moldemort, was on the television bellowing about how all the fine citizens of Florida needed to quit running over, killing and eating all the squirrels. JC, in his usual forthrightness, hollered at the TV, “What a dumbass!” I screeched out, “That’s telling him!” and woke up. Every limb is zinging. I look at my toes. My right batch of toes look like crushed up peanuts. My left ones look like the cat’s toes when you tickle them, all spread out. WTF??

I lay back down and RIGHT then my brain decides I need to be treated to a variety images of shoe racks for the next, oh, hour it seems like, every time I close my eyes. Of course, this comes with an interestingly frantic sound track of that horrible 50s music that we were all treated to in some class or other, when the teacher had no lesson plan, an extra projector and a spare reel of “Cavalcade of Road Graders Through The Ages.”

The giant screechy thing is exciting; the film was not. On the plus side, I think the music was written by the last of the great "Amphetamine" school of composers, who sadly died at the age of 13, after staying up for 72 months. He wrote 948 symphonies. They all sucked. His name was Benny Something-or-other. We studied him in Roger Muti's Music Boredom class 102. Next week, I transferred schools and my sanity to somewhere else.

Even as an 8-year old, I found this selection of music hysterical. Some serious voice would intone, “The road grader is a magnificent feat of the highest in mechanical technology… blah, blah, blah,” and the string sections would be playing some frantic, frenetic, pretend-happy Leroy Anderson-style scale thing, complete with xylophone and 64^th notes…beedle-beedle-beedle-beedle-beedle-beedle-beedle. Ad infinitum, ad nauseam, up and down the fingerboard, for the entire film.

Yes, I've played in this; I've also played in it's more horrible cousin "Cascading Strings," or "Castrating Strings," as I called it; I have my standards. I am an artiste. 

So, this is not making for a restful time. The hours are ticking by. At least I know why I can’t sleep now and don’t feel so crazily out of control as I did, when this all started happening. Still, I am unable to fall into slumber. I notice something kind of cool. With my eyes closed, my brain remembers how to “track.” My eyes don’t do this when they’re open. So, I’ve figured out how to scan from right to left, with my eyes closed. Now, I can “see” a “panorama” of the shoe rack that my brain is treating me to by scanning from right to left! Now, I’m all excited. I wonder why this doesn’t work when my eyes are open; why my eyes don’t work in tandem. It’s not just that; my brain “sees” one image; it sees 2 and it has for years, even before I went blind; sadly, I have “slacker” brain.

Well, still getting the Leroy Anderson track. Brahms would be nice. I keep seeing shoe racks, then a scramble like a bunch of ions on a TV tube. Channel changing? More shoe racks. Shit. No cable here. This would be a nice time to mention that we have no television. We huddle around my computer monitor, like cavemen around a fire at the Dawn of Man. Being Old Crocks is a primeval business. While we char roasted beast or squirrel, in spite of Governor Crowbar’s abjurements, we watch the very best shows that Crackle, HuluPlus, or Amazon Prime have on tap. Lately, it’s been “Lost” Season 2, so we’re going tribal right now. We’ve been to visit Jack Bauer and Angel.

I find now that I’m writing I pay much more attention to the structure of these stories and how the characters themselves react. I find Angel to be fascinating. The idea of grace through redemption is so oddly comforting and beautiful and pure to me, after decades and years of evil. He truly understands that he has a mission to fulfill at huge cost to himself. Even Spike, though his motivations, towards the end of the series seem a bit less pure, deserves his chance at redemption. He wanted a soul. As people, as men, they are fleshed out; they bicker, fret over trivial stuff and when they have to, they step up. They try not to fail. Their characters work. Maybe because the series  itself is only 5 seasons long. Still, I wanted more of “Angel.”

Jack Bauer I also love; however, by Season 8 of “24,” his only redemption, as a character comes in what he does at the very end. I am not spoiling this for anyone, especially those people named, ahem, Andi-Roo, but up until that last, through seasons 5 through 8, though entertaining as all hell, he gets, well, predictable. As all hellz and kickass as he is, alas, it got old for me. I found myself saying, “Ah yes, the old Jack (fill in the blank) move.” As wonderful as the show and as complicated and, unfortunately, dead-on as I think some of the geo-political nightmares depicted truly are in that series are, it went on  too long. What Jack did at the end made all of the same-old, same-old okay. Chloe flat-out rocked.

We are only into the 2^nd season of “Lost,” and frankly, I already have about 47 million questions, but I’m not familiar enough with the landscape right now to ask. I like how the characters are seemingly connected prior to the plane crash. Whether or not, J. J. Abrams and David Fury can really pull it together with subtlety remains to be seen. David Fury is the one constant with the 2 prior shows and I admire his work. If his name is on a show, I want to watch it. The same for Josh Whedon and several others. As I stated earlier, I never really started paying close attention to writers, directors and show runners before my own attempts at writing and I’m learning from this; it’s amazing. I may be an infant when it comes to celluloid, but I do understand enough about thematic structure and literature to know when I am in the company of some people with pretty solid writing chops. These are a few of them, to say the least. And of course, that also includes my dear AR. She writes the hell out of her bloggy-blog.

Well, this was not where I was going with this post, but my brain wanted to go here and so here we are. SDBN, Now With Added Moms tomorrow (link) and Sunday check in here on “Homeless.” No riots or stabbings scheduled here on Nebraska Ave,33605, but you never know. There’s a BBQ later. We may have some unscheduled muggings.

OH SHIT! We're all dead now! Governor Crowbar told Florida to quit eating vermin. We'll be extinct by sunset!