Blip

I am sooooooooo stupid. A blogger of a blogger (friend of a friend?) showed up in a Google search and I clicked on it before I realized the link lead to a blog I swore I'd never read again. I'd already read the first line before I realized it. ...and then the sadomasochist in me took over and I read the rest. God save me from myself. Nothing's changed, except that I read a few lines, but I'm a little sad this morning. I was a mere blip.


"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end." Ecclesiastes 3:11.

And so it is the enternal, transcedent things we yearn for and, not finding them here on earth, it's easy to be sad sometimes. My sadness, I recognize, is less about a certain blogger than it is about that.

...and biology! (Or is that just the same thing by another name?)

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My long time good friend is throwing a huge birthday bash tomorrow--a "pimp and ho" party. I hate the theme, not because I'm a prude, but because.... well, the easy "Christian" answer is because it doesn't glorify God, etc. All well and true, but it has more to do with what I've written about above. I know they're just funnin' around and it's just fun and games, but look what it is they're having fun with: prostitution, abuse, meaningless and empty sex, a cynical attitude toward love and sex and women. I have eternity in my heart--a yearning for idealized love, a yearning for God's perfect love, really, though I think he gives us a hint of that by the love between man and woman. (Hence the power of the comparison of the church to the bride of Christ. Ephesians 5:22-33) So when my friend grumbles that I didn't show up to the party "pimped out," he'll assume it's a religious Christian thing. Screw religion. It's a matter of the heart, of eternity.

Blogger's block

I’ve just finished writing a friend, “Ya, [the blog’s] a little staid lately. There's plenty of stuff going on that I could write about only right now it tends to be either boring minutia or heart-felt intimacies, neither of which gives me a lot of incentive to post to the blog. Gosh, I sound like a drama queen, no?!”

Well, since I’ve nothing to write about I think I’ll make the next post after this one a pictures post.

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Machinists and the like use something called a “scribe” to lay out dimensions on metal marts. It is a sort of stylus that marks a part by scratching it with a hardened point. I visited my local cheapo Chinese tool import place a few days ago and found a blister pack with a pencil-like thing in it labeled a “Scratch Owl.” As best I can figure, they transmogrified a scribe into an "awl", which in turn became an "owl," and the action of scribing into "scratching". Oh those crazy Chinese will bumble anything! How cute. Remember when we used to say the same about Japanese cars and tooling? Now they dominate the car and machine tool industry.

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Someone mentioned to me that going to the gym can increase levels of testosterone and affect things like libedo. Maybe that explains the last post! Oh, I dunno...maybe there's a little truth there somewhere. I remember noticing a huge craving for meat when I started going. It's under control now. So is "springtime ennui!"

Hanging at the Costco

Pssst...a little secret: some of the best looking ladies shop at Costco. Somewhere I read about a study that showed a statistical correlation between being attractive and being wealthy. Then I also read that the average income for the Costso shopper is something like $74K. Not bad. Completing the syllogism it stands to reason, then, that pretty people shop at Costco and the empirical data bears it out.

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It seems this "springtime ennui" I wrote about a while back is sticking around for the summer. I've got no illusions about marriage, but it's tough being single. We have a subtle, but powerful force working against us: nature. It's the same force that explains why dogs that haven't been "fixed" tend to run away more often. Mind you, having had the chihuaha fixed hasn't slowed her down any, but at least in theory.... Maybe I'll try running away too. Or just howling at the moon.

Even the U.S. Mint is conspiring against me! Na, I don't play that victim card, but I have to admit, the picture does elicits some associations in my mind that don't help. That aside, I do think Nevada's is the best of the state quarters.

On the way home

On the way home I saw a giant sign on the front lawn of a house that read, "IMPEACH." Right next to it, on the adjacent lawn was a large flagpole with Old Glory flying proud. I wonder if the two neighbors see eye to eye or if the flagpole was in response and in protest of the sign. I wonder if they fight or if they have any pending lawsuits against each other. I think too much.

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On the way home my friend calls me up and starts her conversation with a description of two very fat, but adorable cats at her feet until the conversation meanders to the real reason for the call. I'm very sad for her and her boy problems. She's got a big heart and I hope it doesn't break.

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On the way home today I was meditating on a conversation I had yesterday with someone to whom I related my observation that it seems those who most often make use of free, well-intentioned help are those who could better learn to help themselves. I've noticed that since I've begun doing the car clinic at church. Then I got to thinking about why and if this bugged me and whether it should in the first place. I think too much.

One thing's for sure. Serving others is often its own reward. I looked at a '69 Mustang last night that made a metallic scraping sound when the engine was running. Could be anything, but it was coming from the back of the engine, maybe the flywheel. Turned out to be the starter gear was not retracting; it was just free-floating and occasionally impinging on the turning flywheel. I took the starter apart, bent a sheet metal part back into shape and the problem is now fixed. One hour's worth of work restored the owner's peace of mind and fixed a problem that would have cost her a pretty penny. Besides, from diagnosis to repair this was a nice, short, successful little problem solving exercise. Very satisfying.

From Russia with love

Like clockwork, today my latest issue of Russian Brides Weekly wormed its way through my spam filters. I wouldn't mind so much if I weren't afraid it was just a scheme to steal one of my kidneys. Olga...kidney...Olga...kidney...na, not worth it.

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I had the sneaky feeling that my two friends from the past with whom I've recently been reacquainted might know each other. It was a long shot, but I figured they're both in the San Francisco area and they're both finishing their residency. That's all they had in common as far as I knew and yet it turns out they do know each other. Wow, talk about the high likelihood of improbably coincidences!

Here's what I emailed one of them: "Do say hello! And do compare notes. I especially want to hear about the discrepancies: 'Really, are you sure we're
talking about the same guy? I dunno, he was a jerk
when I knew him.'"

Here's what I secretly wish they'll say to each other, "Ya, he's cute. You should go for him." "No, I insist, you go for him. You knew him first." "I know, I'll go for him first and if it doesn't work out you can go for him." "Oh gee, what a swell idea. You. You! (a la Robert De Niro in Meet the Fokers)" Ok, I'm kidding and one of them is engaged anyway. It's just the ego talkin'. Down boy!

Gummy

I imagine everyone's seen those T-shirts that have a stylized picture of the Mexican eagle (like on the flag) with the words "Hecho en Mexico" (Made in Mexico) on them. In keeping with the theme of the last post, I was going to make myself a T-shirt with the logo on the right. (Copyright Me, 2006. All rights reserved.) So I stick a blank iron-on transfer sheet into my printer---a laser printer. I don't know what I was thinking. I totally forgot about the fuser. Predictably, I spent the next half hour picking out specks of melted plastic from the gummed-up fuser rollers. No biggy, though. No harm done. It's just that I don't have an inkjet printer available to me right now. Anyone want to print my iron-on for me?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is due an apology

As much as this sort of thing roils me, I just don't have the energy to write much about it. Right now this stuff just makes me tired so forgive me if I make unsupported claims and unattributed quotes. On its way to becoming a national story, this morning a KABC radio reporter showed up to a scheduled interview of the principal of the Academia Semillas del Pueblo school. (UPDATE: In an apparent bid to stave off well deserved bad publicity, they've put their own website off-line. This link now directs you a defensive press release addressing the recent controversy.) The principal reneged and allegedly called in some goons who then roughed up the reporter for asking too many questions and took away the audio tape in his recorder. This, after an alleged telephone warning from the principal to the reporter to "watch your back."

The school is a publicly funded charter school of the Los Angeles Unified School District. It's also an openly racist, separatist, socialist, crazy leftist hole that's not only wasting tax payers' money, but doing irreparable harm to its students. (See quote at end of post.)

I've written elsewhere how I feel about these radical Mecha-type groups. (See also Aztlan.)

A quote from the founder and current principal:

If Brown [v. Board of Education] was just about letting Black people into a White school, well we don’t care about that anymore. We don’t necessarily want to go to White schools. What we want to do is teach ourselves, teach our children the way we have of teaching. We don’t want to drink from a White water fountain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of collecting rain in our aqueducts. We don’t need a White water fountain. So the whole issue of segregation and the whole issue of the Civil Rights Movement is all within the box of White culture and White supremacy. We should not still be fighting for what they have. We are not interested in what they have because we have so much more and because the world is so much larger. And ultimately the White way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction....

From a conversation with Marcos Aguilar, the founder and principal of La Academia Semillas del Pueblo.