I was wakened at 05:00 today by a brilliant thunderstorm. Not much rain, little wind but lotsa exciting thunder and lightning. Or lightning and thunder, I guess I should keep them in order to be scientifically correct...
Karen went to do some overtime work this morning, and I feel so refreshed that I decided to stay up. It seems that it's been quite a while since I woke up feeling this good, and I'm gonna stay up and enjoy the day.
Yesterday's fishing trip (OK, and probably the medication had something to do with it) pretty much cured my back problem. Every little once in a while, I'll make some movement that really grabs me, but nothing like it has been.
One of the really neat things about having Tyler up here with me... I'm finding all kinds of things about him that I didn't know before. For one, he has poetic aspirations! Here's an example:
brain purses lips, bound together..
Tyler Franklin
He is also interested in having a page of his own, which we will be setting up before he leaves, probably on Geocities, although there are other possibilities. This means that I'll have to jam him with HTML before he goes back to Texas; he hasn't mentioned leaving, yet, however...
I recently downloaded Paint Shop Pro 4 and found, to my dismay, that there is not a discount for users of PSP 3.12, which I paid for about a year ago. Normally, people have an upgrade price that is some fraction of the retail price; hell, even MicroSoft does that. I think that I'll write them a nasty letter and see if they will have pity on me... otherwise, I'll just put up with the nagging and not use (like I have a choice) the blocked extra features. Which is a bonus for the people viewing these pages, 'cause there's a lot of neat stuff blocked out, and I would be sorely tempted to put more graphics on these pages...
I'm on a mailing list where much of the discussion lately has been on Tarot and Ouiji boards and stuff like that. I have ignored most of it, because, like any good atheist, I believe in absolutely no superficial supernatural forces. And this reminds me of a story from a time long past.
Shortly after I got out of the army (1969, it was) the Kansas Radiologic Technologists had a convention here in Topeka. As part of the entertainment, I was asked to be a Fortune Teller as an adjunct to the Night Of Magic theme of the Saturday night festivities. So I bought me a Tarot deck and did some practicing. Made myself a turban and a cape, and got pretty drunk before even starting the evening. Then I spent two hours telling fortunes.
In the ensuing years, I have lost a lot of my bullshitting talent, due to the lack of alcohol in my system; that particular night, however, I shone. And for years afterward (in fact, just about ten days ago was the last time) people have commented on how accurate my foretelling was. In fact, in spite of all of the other activities that I participated in (in the KSRT) this seems to be the one thing that people remember.
And it was all bullshit, alcoholicly induced. And I have told people this, and they look at me and say, "You were taken over by a higher power without your knowledge; how else could you have been so accurate?" And all I can do is shake my head. Most of what I told them were things that could happen to anyone, and frequently happen in people's lives: they would be involved in an accident; they would inherit a large sum of money; they would lose a loved one; they would find the love of their life in a bar. Absolute bullshit. But they forgot the things that didn't apply to them. The fact that they inherited a large sum of money (something that happened) over-rode the fact that I told them that they would die young after they married their high-school teacher and had six kids (something that didn't happen).
15 JUNE 1997
rips apart with sounds a-yawning...
...seems everything that isn't always is
...screw the bolt that binds the bridge,
but which way is up to you...
trip and scrape, the blood oozes where...
...feet wet, muddy puddles, thanks...
philth page, print me more; wallow spice
to spruce my dishes...
...overdosed on placebos, sicker than dead
and exit from being...
pearls stain while filter's browning...
...infections rise to quell the extroversive
hiding in plain view; sulking with a smile,
overcome with bellows...
this unlike no other, except when with the few..
...if i was me, i'd leave, no doubt...
...now i begin to wonder...