It’s Later, and I Don’t Hate Myself
The spam message I dared to delete:
IF YOU DON’T READ THIS NOW YOU’LL HATE YOURSELF LATER
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Every year, we forget they are there. And every year, usually in late June but earlier this year, two yellow roses pop up seemingly overnight, nestled amongst our patch of Hood strawberries.
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Three Cheers for Neti
That’s Neti, as in Neti pot – not Nessie, as per the one strange person who claimed they once overheard me extolling the values of a “Nessie pot.”
“So what am, I chopped liver?”
Sorry, Nessie. No cheers for you…although in this, The Season of Blooming Things, ® it does often seem as though a Loch Ness Monster of snot [1] is sloshing through my sinuses. And indeed, ’tis the season.
Curse you, pollen. Curses upon you, you son of a fish who does not even know his own father — if I could only get at you, I would do the same to you! I would drape your innards over your arms! [2]
Curse you, ubiquitous and meddlesome wind-blown plant sperm, which will not be content with fertilizing the fauna but which also delights in infesting my nasal cavities and giving me what I can only describe as razor blade throat.
Some seasons, some days, it’s hardly noticeable. Either way, on most days, half of an OTC allergy pill usually helps, as does the use of the Neti pot.
Twice last week, after engaging in a breezy, early evening berry picking session, I thought I would achoo my brains out. As I was stuck in full tilt, machine gun-sneeze mode, I marveled at the unstoppability of the reaction and contemplated the sad fact that if I had one of those attacks during Inconvenient Times ©, the terrorists would win.
What if I had such an attack and I was on a bus with doctors and Korean refugees, all of us hiding from the nearby North Korean patrol that would surely kill us if they found us, and I couldn’t stop sneezing and Alan Alda would have to strangle me to keep me quiet so as not betray our position?
Am I the only person in the world who thinks of the MASH series finale when I have an epic sneeze fit?
Don’t answer that.
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Good News That’s Nothing to Sneeze About
For once I have cause to be politically and socially proud of the actions of the country of (50% of) my ancestors’ birth. Ireland became the first country to legalize gay marriage by popular national vote [3]. Sure and begorrah, ’twas a popular vote, indeed, as more than 62% of Irish voters said aye to changing Ireland’s constitution to define marriage as a union between two people, regardless of gender.
The Roman Catholic church has had a stranglehold on Irish politics and culture, dating from when the RCs ruled every aspect of Irish life and the priests sodomized the courts and the laws before they discovered altar boys and Magdalene laundry girls.
The RC church is rapidly and consistently losing ground in Ireland, a briskly changing, modernizing society which now polls as one of the more secular European nations. However, the majority of the county’s laws were enacted when the RC church had a theocratic stranglehold on the land.
Michael Nugent, Dublin writer and chair of the advocacy group Atheist Ireland, noted in an interview with Freethought Radio that Ireland is a “pluralistic society governed by Catholic laws.” Nugent said that Ireland’s openly a-religious, atheist and freethinking politicians [4] are taking this vote to heart and plan on working to amend and repeal a plethora of Church-inspired laws – from abortion prohibitions to statutes requiring public officials to swear religious oaths.
More than one political commentator has referred to the gay marriage vote as a “reality check” and a “slap in the face to the Roman Catholic church.” I heartily applaud the latter, and look forward to more church-face slapping – preferably with the biggest, coldest fish voters can wield – as the interests of humanity and rationality overturn the legal vestiges of dogma and superstition.
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NO NO NO NO NO.
Not that vowel.
I’d like to buy an i.
i is my favorite vowel, in part because two of my favorite words begin with it [5].
There is the word I itself, the personal pronoun. Although I am not fond of the first person narrative in fiction and rarely employ it in my stories, I am fond of I for more personal reasons, having to do with action and momentum. I is an indicator of agency and responsibility (I will do ___; I think that ___).
My other favorite i-word is if. I love that word. For me, it is the key to answering the question non-writers of fiction often ask of writers of fiction; specifically, How do you get your story ideas? The closest I can come to answering that question truthfully [6] is to say that the What if question is always involved.
Story ideas, from the mundane to the profound, center around possible answers to the question, What if…
* a couple used their argument over whose turn it was to bring in the garbage can as a distraction from their crumbling relationship, mental health issues and employment insecurity…
* a husband betrayed his wife by posting bail for her sister who was in jail for abetting a cult leader’s assault upon…
* a bereaved mother enlisted the help of a sympathetic stranger she met in a university library to avenge her daughter’s death…
* a teen-aged/elderly/mentally challenged skate boarder/retired cracker salter quality assurance manager/grocery bagger stumbled upon the body of a former teacher/complete stranger/notorious serial flasher in the hall closet/supermarket parking lot/Grand Canyon gift shop restroom…
Also, if can be used to denote the hope of things to come and the rationalization of things that fail in the here and now (“If ___, then ___”). It is a word of both promise and regret (“If only…”). A mere two letters, a thousand possibilities. I like that.
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Disc Down, Antlers Up [7]
I saw my first professional Ultimate Frisbee game last Saturday. It might have also have been my last professional UF game.
On a sweltering afternoon in the Hillsboro Stadium (the home of Hillsboro’s minor league baseball team), my family and I watched the Portland Stags defeat the San Francisco Dogfish. [8] That is, MH and Belle stuck around to watch the entire game. A bored and disappointed K and I left at halftime.
UF is an interesting, fast-paced game…or so I thought when I watched college and other teams play it. The teams self-referee, there are no time outs and no dallying between quarters and halves – the action is almost non-stop. The professional UF game I saw had been turned into a version of…frankly, of something I also used to love to watch: professional baseball.
It had the same bloated time frame, with time outs being called every other play and with the announcers and team owners or whomever not trusting the audience to be still with their thoughts and reflections – the cocaine/Ritalin/ADD generation has a short attention span and must be distracted/entertained every second! Thus, we were tortured provided with mind-numbingly, butt-scratchingly, tedious, juvenile and game-prolonging mascot dances and cheers and come-out-onto-the-field-kids-for-some-relay-games “entertainment” at every opportunity.
Oh, now this makes it interesting.
Over one and one half hours later, and it was only halftime? Thanks, but, nooooooo.
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Shave Every Day and You’ll Always Look Keen
I’ve posted before re my brain’s penchant for earworms. Apropos of nothing (conscious), yesterday morning I awoke with the charming ditty Shaving Cream, a novelty song featured on the Dr. Demento show, oompah-ing through my cranium.
There are worse ways to start a day.
All together now, join with me on the last verse:
♫ And now folks my story is ended
I think it is time I should quit
If any of you feel offended
Stick your head in a barrel of…. ♫
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May you always look keen (and I trust that you do),
and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
[1] Apologies to BO’M and those of you who’ve told me you enjoy reading this blog during breakfast.
[2] From the Epic of Gilgamesh, arguably the first great work of literature, which tells the tale of a Mesopotamian king’s adventures which include angry deities causing a worldwide flood and other tales which later sources borrowed (e.g. the biblical Flood story). Quite entertaining, the EOG also has some really epic curses.
[3] Other countries have legalized same sex unions, via acts of their legislatures and/or the courts.
[4] Imagine, a country where a religion-free politician can be elected! Don’t need to imagine – that’s most Western Europe and the “developed” world, except for the USA, which is in the company of the Islamic theocracies when it comes to electing out-of-the-closet atheists.
[5] Uh, that is, they begin with the letter “i,” not “it.”
[6] Yep, I’ve lied or mislead on many occasions. “How do I get my ideas? Well, there’s this guy in a trench coat who hangs around NE Burnside, and if you slip him a twenty he’ll flash you a plot and character outline….”
[7] That is the Portland Stags’ fan cheer or unofficial anthem, from what I gathered.
[8] Or, Dgfsh, as the scoreboard read.
