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Wanda and I were discussing how "St. Valentine's Day" has now been secularly shortened to merely "Valentine's Day" and I posed the question: "How long before they just start calling those dogs 'Bernards'?"(01/28/07 - 10:30 AM)
The new Rainer Maria album "Catastrophe Keeps Us Together" is absolutely their best to date, and I highly recommend it. For those of you who have never even heard of them, I think this is a great introduction to one of the most interesting groups today.(01/27/07 - 11:35 PM)
"Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends. We're so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside."
- Karn Evil 9 - Emerson, Lake & PalmerSo, for those scattered few who wondered if I fell off the face of the Earth, the short answer is "NO". If you haven't heard, we've spent the last two and a half months flipping a house in south Rockford which has efficiently obliterated and any all spare time that we may have had (and there's never a whole lot to begin with.)
Also, my Grandfather passed away recently which was easy and hard for me all at the same time. It was easy, because I had grown to respect and him less and to hold him in less awe over the years - especially when I was made aware of his marital indiscretions (I'm real big on marital fidelity.) In some ways, I wanted to remember him for the good things, but the bad things always seemed to rise to the top to eclipse them.
To his credit, he was a profound influence in my life. He is arguably the reason that I now have such a passion for reading, and he is certainly the reason that I watch nearly nothing but educational television (and usually not more than once.) I also blame him for the epiphanic expectations I now have for movies. He instilled in me (by accident or on purpose, I will probably never know) a desire to learn and know things - everything about everything. To understand how things work and to not fear taking them apart piece by piece if it wasn't readily apparent.
I've learned to feel guilty about this in later years, as he seemed so woefully out of touch with his own children - how was it that I got to know the good side of him and they did not? It seems wholly unfair, and so the irrational guilt will probably always remain.
But, all of that is done now, so I'm back.
Yay!
I had so many stories in my head that I meant to impart here - all of which, over time, have disintegrated into individual axons and neurons in my 'lil brain - all except one...
We were at a birthday party for my niece or nephew (I forget whose day it was.) Somehow, my brother-in-law Gary and I got on the topic of baldness (an affliction that both he and I are cursed with.) I'm not sure how it happened now, but for some reason I thought it would be funny to sing a portion of a verse from "Amazing Grace" with new, improved lyrics. They were as follows:
"It once was blond, but now it's gone...".
This was in chiding reference to my brother-in-law's now predominantly absent hair. He chuckled and we began moving on with the conversation when, from the other room, we heard his son, my nephew Gideon, take up the verse and loudly sing it - as I had just revised it. Gary and I were both struck dumb for a moment. How had he even heard that? And it didn't die there. He came prancing into the living room, singing the verse over and over again. And when he saw that his father and I were nearly in tears, he kept it up. Now it was worse, because he realized that something about it made Uncle Heath and Dad laugh - and throughout the course of the rest of the day, wherever he was in the house, he took up the verse again and again at random - something he is still doing to this day.
Yep - I've created a monster.
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