"No comment at this time..."

Well. If we weren't before, we are now firmly ensconced in our 50-ton anchor. we're getting ready to go to the store and buy another $120,000 worth of accoutrements to make it feel like "home." Based on a quick market analysis, Heaven is gonna be crazy expensive. In fact, i'm thinking the only ones who'll be able to afford real-estate there will be investors from California. That's a li'l depressing-- i've met so few people from Cali that i can stand to be around. But then, i couldn't afford the property taxes in the Cityfoursquare, let alone the initial down-payment; so it seems i'm safe.

i guess i've been a modicum depressed about being in Nuevo Mexico. It's hot, dry, windy and the people are usually just a little less friendly than Californians and they're way worse drivers ("Push the other pedal... then you'll go forward and not nowhere.") But this whole electronic communication thing is kind'a nice--- it seems like there's fellowship out there even if i can't touch you or look into your not-yet-digitized eyeball. That's encouraging; the analogy of our desert here extends into some planes of life that i'd very much like it to stop extending into.

And then there's the kiddoes. i was playing around with Aeon last night and he gave me the suggestion above regarding how i might shoot his pic. i laughed pretty hard at that. That made me significantly less down and mopey than i generally like to be. Not a bad feeling, laughing. i'm gonna try it again one of these days, just have to get those li'l muscles strong enough. If you haven't tried laughing at something in a non-cynical fashion lately, i'd encourage you to give it a go.

Happy Sunday

To the padres out there, i'd like to wish you as merry a

Father's Day as it's possible

for you to have;

and to the mere laity, pew-packers and those of you who

just sit around in one another's houses

contemplating the Kingdom,

may you get cute cards

and presents

from your offspring,

may they make you smile and

may you be allowed to produce some kind of fruit

for GOD

encouraging you and

letting you know that you belong to HIM.

Purgatory I

i have some reservations about using a blog as an acceptable venue for a catharsis. i mean, who really wants to hear it? But then i think, who cares? There are things i'd love to get to talk to another human about, but that don't fit cleanly into any conversation; things i forget to bring up or don't know how to bring up, but that haunt my closed eyes and tear me down. And nobody actually reads this stuff, yet it feels like they do; there's at least a potential and that could only be warmer and fuzzier than my stoic journal. Enough poesy... on with the sackcloth and ashes.

Yesterday evening it was demonstrated to me what a jaded, cynical hateful creature i have become. i was driving to work as usual and, as usual, was trajecting for a time of arrival that would really require me to be driving a time-machine or an invisible ferrari instead of my low-geared four-banger in order to make it on time. The parking structure and the entrance thereto have for me a conch-like configuration beginning with a left at a light off of the main street followed closely by another irritatingly long series of lefts until one is parked. There's a 5 mph speed limit through the whole affair and, since it's a hospital, a conservative 90% of the people wishing to populate the garage haven't even a muddy suspicion of where they're going.

On this particular Monday evening i fell in behind the quintessential blue-hair-mobile: some sort of old-school amorphous, ill-maintained Town-Car looking ride. First, the cat looks to be taking a right isntead of a left and i sigh out some relief. Only he corrects at the last moment and cuts me off. Next it's time to turn into the garage proper and he overshoots; the huge sign and arrow aren't-- as it turns out-- huge enough. Again i find my happy place and cut in short thinking he's going straight, but he turns wide and, rather than T-bone him, i back off; problem is there's a car coming in the other lane and i find a preference within me to not die at that moment. As he musters the reserves to accelerate his pokey arse into the entrance bottleneck, i become his bumper sticker in an effort to forego having my life flash before my eyes (there are some things i'd prefer not to have replayed). Then he stops. This burly, fat chollo gets out of his car and starts cursing at me. "You wanna ride my ass you ---------censor-----------You want me to come kick your--------blah, blah, etc."

So i'm having a you-gotta-be-kiddin'-me moment. i am, in general, very poor at handling those sorts of things. i'm never prepared. Don't even know how to be prepared; i'm pretty non-confrontational even when i'm practicing in front of the mirror. Anyway, i stared at him with a squinty confused look on until it sank in. Then i put my hands over my mouth and got wide-eyed in my best mock-up of terror and finally broke out in a big grin. Here's where the confessional part of the story starts. i leaned out the window smiling at him 'till he shut it off for a breath and i said something like, "Would you just go." And he did. Slowly. That's not to say that i intimidated him whatsoever, nor even that i gave it a good try. Only, i very much wanted him to keep it up. i wanted him to get in my face. All but the nicest fibers of my being wanted to break him and to keep breaking him 'till there was nothing interestingly chunky enough left to bother about breaking. For that moment i loathed the flabby braying donkey spewing before me. i hated him.

He drove 2 for as long as he could manage it, until i could slice through some unoccupied spaces and cut him off. i actually got to work a few minutes early and began trying to get a grip on why he would have been so venomous and what a correct reaction might have been under the circumstances by summoning the scene for some of my co-workers. Most (i.e. the other two) reacted largely as i had. Then i told the girl i would work with for the rest of the shift. She said something like, "You know... it sounds like he has a deep spiritual sickness. He really needs prayer." That weighed something in the ballpark of my house (ca. 50 tons) and had very much the same effect on me that my house would have if it fell out of a tornado and landed on me, minus the bloody mess and foundation damage. That i could be nice to a bullying creature like that--- that his own hatefulness might just be a symptom of a darker disease--- didn't manage to occur; i was numb to that possibility. It's just that that possibility--- that it is a possibilty, that i might pray in the middle of the battle, "Father, forgive him because he doesn't know what he's doing," and then turn my eyes down--- is the flesh and blood of the Christianity i pretend to be trying to live.

i guess it wouldn't fit in with a quasi-humerous posting to go into how empty i felt and feel. It just wasn't very funny.

Our New Island

we bought a house a few days ago. i'm trying to decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing. i can say at the very least that we worked hard enough on getting to this point whereat i am able to question the integrity (i.e. sanity) of our "accomplishment". i find me doing that a lot more often than i'd like to (or even, in fact, would) admit. "Woohoo baby! Yeah! No more shopping. No more haggling. No more poring over fine print. we are owners! Yeah! Now where, do you suppose, are we gonna store a quarter ton of W.W.I epoch armored tank rear-view-mirror adjustment-cable housings?"

It's not that i'm against owning a house across the board. i'm just not at all unassailable with regards to this particular house's accidental location: It sits static--island-like-- on an irritatingly large ocean of no fellowship whatever. In that sense, it's a lot like an anchor; and we have firmly secured ourselves to it with approximately 120,000 obligations.

The thing is about 1,000 sq. feet. It has a pitched roof, but i'll assign it, for the sake of the conversation, a mean height of 10 feet. That gives us 10,000 cu.ft. Now, naturally a lot of that is just air space, but if each of those cubes averages out to only ten pounds (which is probably fairly conservative) then the house comes out weighing around 100,000 lbs. That's 50 tons-- 200 times the weight of my pile of adjustment-cable housings.

Although i realize it's a purely conceptual attachment, i can't seem to shake free of the angst that washes over me when i consider dragging a 50 ton anchor to where i'd really rather be.

Yesterday's Brain Washing

Couple of days ago i had an MRI done on my noggin. Neurosurgeon wants to compare it to an older one to see if there is a pressing need to drill a hole in my forehead. In a happy scenario he'll be able to leave the tumor in my head confident that i'll collide with my fate armed with a different, wholly-unrelated raison de mort: "Ha ha ha! But you didn't get me with that!" i'll spray as i point my finger and taunt the paler Horseman.

On a happier note, the MRI itself was fun. i kinda' dig being in the tube. i imagine that that's what it will feel like being in a coffin-- sans mood-lighting and music. Indeed, that is just what went through my head while i lay there. They do offer music though.
"Would you like to listen to music sir?"
"Sure... Whaddaya have?"
"Satellite radio, sir. Pretty much anything you like."
"Umm, some techno then."
"Techno sir?"
"Techno."
i got the distinct impression that my docent didn't approve of my choice of mellowing, forget-that-you're-in-a-tube tunes, but in fact it homogenizes with the jackhammer magnets in the machine like peanut butter with cream cheese. i sloped off to sleep in maybe five minutes-- something that happens to me nowhere outside of an MRI tube. A few minutes in, they exhumed me to inject me with i.v. gadopentetate, a paramagnetic contrast agent. (i really like that word "paramagnetic;" something akin to "not quite magnetic.") i murmered something having to do with how having a fully foreign metallite on board could only be healthy and she replied with a perky comment that precisely failed to make me want to be her friend. Then i knocked off again. All in all it was a terribly recommendable experience. The $100 copay is a little pricey for a 20 minute nap, but the room service was impeccable.