Guess What? More Spam!

And once again, the cesspool of my spam folder runneth over, and once again, my knee jerketh in response. Here are a few more choice bits of the spammers's art, cut and pasted exactly as I got them.

"HELLO, - Hello Compliment of the day to you my name is Garry Loopy finance manager Bank of Scotland, i am..." (...aptly named. And I was always under the impression Scotland was an English-speaking country. Obviously, from your note, I was wrong.)

"Burn all the Statues and their shelves - Nor turn aside to Yarrow..." (Uh, most statues are made of stone or ceramic or metal and don't burn, and if they're small enough to stand on a shelf, they're statuettes. But I'm definitely with you when it comes to not turning aside to Yarrow, whatever that's supposed to mean.)

あなたは何を育てる？大人のみが集まる農園 (Now, that's funny! I'll take two!)

"Order what your doc wont give you for Pain-or-Anxiety." (Wow, man! This is, like, fantastic! I stubbed my toe the other day, 'ya know, and my doc refused to prescribe Oxycodon or Percocet or Valium or anything that would really help. Please send me 4 bottles of each.)

"Google is paying my bills! I can't believe how easy this is...." ('Ya know what? Neither can I or anyone with the I.Q. of a baked potato.)

"Make it large nad stone hard." ('Nad?' And what made you think I was taking orders for one of my famous souffles?)

"View pics of local Christian singles!" (Praise the Lord! Where do I go for pics of local godless, they'll-all-burn-in-hell heathen singles?)

"your not old" (My not old what?)

"DEAREST, I AM MRS CYNTHIA ABDUL. I AM A WIDOW BEING THAT I LOST MY HUSBAND..." (Well, yes, Cynthia...that's usually a requirement for being a widow.)

"Twice seven consenting years have shed - In a strange Land and far from home...." (Oh, yeah! Cutesy crap like this always guarantees I'll be just dying to buy whatever it is you're selling.)

"Catherine S. From Rhode Island just received $590 today from google!"(Suuuuuuure she did. Hey, you wanna buy a bridge?)

"Be like Davd M. and earn thousands of dollars a month with google!" (David, meet Catherine and the 14,000 other people I've gotten spam from in the past week with these google pitches.)

Arnita Arlinda "En1argerPenis 3" in 6 Weeks, see myPenis pictures as proof." (Uh, thanks, Arnita, but I think I'll pass. And isn't Arnita a woman's name? Women have penises now?)

"Millionaire wants you to cash in!" (Take out the word "you" and you have the reason behind all spam.)

heidi lowe "C4 Work for Google! 40 - Thought you might be interested in this news article...." (Well, "heidi", other than the fact that the coding clearly says this is one of 4,000 pre-packaged "messages" you've bought a franchise to pass on, the fact is that no, I would not be interested in this news article, or the next piece of recycled garbage you try to foist off on me.)

Sigh.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.

Chewing on Tinfoil

Only those who have been unfortunate enough to actually chew on tinfoil can fully appreciate the title of today's blog. My mind being what it is, I found myself this morning making a list of some of the things which induce a similar reaction in me.

The endless Subway commercials featuring "just plain folks,"singularly and in groups, singing "Five dol-lar foot-longs" excruciatingly off-key and obviously under the impression that what they're doing is really, really cute.

Those who think they are really, really "cool."

Baseball caps worn with the bill in any direction other than straight forward (reason same as above).

Al Roker, weatherman, solemnly intoning "It's FOOT-ball Night in A-MAIR-IK-A!!!!"

Football.

Plavix commercials' final warning: "Just because you're feeling better doesn't mean you're not still at risk."

Extreme Home Makeover's Ty Pennington's "Goooooooood Morning, Whoeverinhellyouarethisweek Family!" and "Well, I guess there's only one thing left to say."

"...for well qualified buyers."

"No reasonable offer refused!"

"Every application accepted!"

"Emerging science suggests..."

"May help reduce the appearance of..."

"Everyone's talking about..."

"Call within the next three minutes!"

"Not sold in stores!"

Any Infomercial.

Stupidity.

Bigotry.

Intolerance.

Cruelty.

Anyone who presumes to speak for God.

"But wait! There's more!" ....which I'll get to at another time.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.

Powerless

My friend Ursula raised sheep, sheared them, spun her own yarn, and had a simple loom on which she wove her own fabrics. The world used to work in much the same way. The distance between the start of something and the end was relatively short. People were never more than a few steps in either direction from the raw materials and the end product. But then the world began to move faster. And faster. And the faster it moved, the more things came between the start and the finish, and the further we were forced from one end of the process or the other until we all but lost track of where the start or the end was, or exactly where we stood between them.

And with not knowing exactly where we stood or stand we become increasingly confused. And with confusion comes frustration and with frustration comes anger. Our entire world has gone from Ursula's simple loom to one of those gigantic factories which spew out mile upon mile of a dizzying array of fabrics from machines than not one person in ten million can possible understand.

It is my sincere belief that the greatest single threat to humanity is the individual's increasing sense of powerlessness. As we become more and more dependent upon technology, our sense of control over our own destiny erodes. Every time we are put on interminable hold by some vast, faceless corporation, we are, despite their condescending and blatantly hypocritical assurances that we are very important to them, being clearly if wordlessly told that we do not matter. That we are human beings is utterly irrelevant to entities---ironically, entities which individual human beings have created---which think only in a language of bottom lines and market shares.

Is it, really, any wonder that people wander around with automatic weapons mowing down other individuals as faceless as themselves? We are dismayed by the violence rampant in our cities' ghettos and barrios and yet one of the things that defines them as such is the lack of opportunity or hope to escape them. And it is a regrettable aspect of human nature that it is far easier to simply spew out one's frustration in violence than to seriously apply one's self to doing something about it.

The old saying, "Those who cannot create, destroy" is tragically and increasingly true.

The growing gap between the rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated drives underprivileged young men into gangs which provide a sense of belonging they cannot find from the larger world. It's all a vast spiral moving faster and faster and sucking more and more people into a black hole of helplessness and hopelessness. Crime evolves from gangs comprised of frustrated, under-educated, under-employed young people who come together for some sense of belonging in a world they see as totally alien and alienating. They can find a pathetic sense of security and "superiority." Once in, it is nearly impossible to get out.

In an increasingly homogeneous culture, the more a group stands out from that culture, the more constrictive it is for the people within that group. Dress codes, sub-languages marking one as a member of a sub-group make acceptance by the larger culture harder. Large city gang members, with their swagger and their attitudes and their seemingly total disregard for the welfare of others, are an extreme example. We are desperate for the sense of belonging, of being special in a world more detached, remote, and aloof. We can reach out through our computers and our Twitters and Facebooks and My Spaces to contact faceless people we will never meet. "Networking" supposedly brings us together, yet it in actuality keeps us apart.

Children spend more and more time in structured, adult controlled "activities" than they do in simply being children. There's no time to go climb a tree when soccer practice is in ten minutes, or to sit on the grass and look up and find faces and castles in the clouds.

So are we doomed? I really hope not, but the scales are tipping, and not in our favor. There will always be games for children to play, and moments with friends and quiet, reflexive talk. But my sincere fear is that these things are luxuries available to fewer and fewer people, mainly because they don't realize such luxuries are available. One must think to be free, and why think when our entire world is increasingly willing to spare us the trouble?

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net

For We Are a Simple People

Just saw a news article on the foreclosure of yet another house built by the "reality" program, Extreme Makeover, Home Edition. Apparently there have been several foreclosures when the owners somehow manage to acquire a hefty mortgage as well as the keys to the house. Occasionally, the mortgage will be paid by the home's builder or some other philanthropic group or individual, in which much brouhaha is made; but apparently the family is saddled with the mortgage on an overly lavish mini-mansion.

This particular program is a perfect example of the subject line of this blog. We tend to believe whatever we are told, and almost never ask the most obvious of questions. Being simple can be a charming trait, but too often it is a very dangerous one. There is all too frequently too narrow a space between being simple and being gullible, and beyond gullible lies the predator-filled jungles of stupidity.

I think I've used Extreme Makeover, Home Edition as an example before, and I really don't mean to pick on it, but let's take a look at an average show, shall we?

The entire project, it is emphasized, takes place in the space of seven days, which is pretty good, since it took God six days to create the universe.

The show begins on a bus speeding toward the family to be featured on the show. The crew watches a video assumedly made spontaneously by the family, who are all included in the shot. Who took the picture? Does everyone have a video camera? Is it a requisite for being considered for the show? Someone in the bus is apparently kept busy peeling onions, for the entire crew, listening to the family's plight, have tears streaming down their cheeks by the end of the presentation. Ty Pennington, their leader, solemnly asks the rest of the crew if they think they can help the family out. I often wonder what would happen if anyone said "No"?

So the bus pulls up in front of the family's usually ramshackle and desperately in need of repair home.
The crew gets out and Ty, using a bullhorn I would love to shove down his throat, screams "Gooood Morning, Blefelenskewiczenhoffer Family!" and immediately the front door of the house bursts open and the family rushes out, jumping up and down and radiating utter surprise and stunned joy. Was no one upstairs asleep when the bus pulled up? Or in the bathroom? Or out in the back yard? Or at the grocery store? No, they had to have been clustered around the door so that by the last syllable of the word "family" they'd be rushing out to greet the crew.

After the unconfined joy settles down a bit, and everyone has hugged everyone else, Ty informs the family that they are going on vacation...immediately! No one had any plans for the day or the week? No one had to call the boss and tell them they weren't going to show up for work? On a couple of occasions, the family was told they were going to Paris--"Paris, France," lest anyone wonders what there is to do for a week in Paris, Illinois. Now, not only does the entire family have their bags packed, but they all have passports! (Well, doesn't every middle class family in Sheepdip, Nevada have passports? Several?)

So off the family....the family who half an hour before had absolutely no idea they had been selected for an Extreme Home Makeover....goes, and immediately, coming down the road, is an army of destruction/construction workers with bulldozers, cranes, and all sorts of heavy equipment. They immediately set to work demolishing the house. One might wonder, if one were prone to do so, and obviously no one ever does, what happens to the furniture. We know it must have been removed at some point because they like to put several cameras inside the house to film the demolition. But when? Did they just pitch it all out the window? The family's only been gone ten minutes.

What about house plans? What about permits? What about building materials and supplies? Obviously they just emerge out of a clamshell, like Athena.

And wham, bam, ziggity zoom, construction begins on a home for a simple family of five or seven or eleven that would make the Taj Mahal look like a squatters' shack. Fifteen foot vaulted ceilings! Domes! Towers! Minarets! Marble entry halls, elevators (in case one of the family has difficulty getting upstairs, which is almost always the case), walk-in wall-less showers, professional-chef kitchens!

And all the children are given designed-especially-for-them, utterly-impractical-within-three-years rooms: fairy castles and secret chambers and model railroad trestles.

And the construction is ruled over by a frenetic Ty Pennington, racing around like a madman while screaming into that damned bullhorn at every opportunity. Give that man a valium, for Pete's sake!

And the family returns and somehow the kids rush right to their own rooms (how did they know which room is theirs?) and euphoria reins. And after all the tears and expressions of joy, Ty Pennington says, with the deep, heartfelt sincerity which comes from having said exactly the same sixteen words at the end of every single show: "Well, I guess there's only one thing left to say. Welcome home, Blefelenskewiczenhoffer Family, welcome home!"

And then he hands them the keys. The mortgage, I assume, comes in the mail.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.

An Angel Blinks

...and fifty-four years come and go, and a much older--though not much wiser--Roger sits and looks over his own shoulder as he writes another letter to his parents, so very long ago.

2 December 1955
Nine-fifteen and another day shot (to paraphrase a quaint Navy colloquialism) in the posterior. I can’t get over the impression that every day spent in the Navy is a day lost. That isn’t fair, of course; without the Navy I wouldn’t be in Europe—which, surprisingly, has exactly the same type of air, land, water, and human beings as America. So let’s not say every day has been a total loss—just most of them.

An excellent example of the importance of each day may be gotten from the fact that I dated yesterday’s entry as the 30th of November. As a matter of fact, I even neglected to put down “November” and had to add it just now—after first writing December. Now you may see why my letters are addressed AN instead of N/C.

Replenishment today, and I got to watch none of it—instead stayed in the office and held a one-man field day. We were supposed to get aboard 218 tons—how many we actually got is a mystery. One full sling of provisions—about four tons, dropped off the transferring lines and into the sea, still neatly secured. Also lost were a group of movies we were sending to them, which will make them very happy, I’m sure.

Somehow, after the tallies were taken, we ended up with ten cases of rutabaga—you think my spelling is bad, you should see theirs. It took us a full five minutes to decipher it. Where it came from or where it went we don’t know, because no one had ordered it and no one has seen it since.

Always, during replenishment, there is the problem of a little fun-loving graft.. Usually most of the credit goes to the ship sending it over to us. They are supposed to give us, say, 10,000 lb. of steak. We only get 9,000. Where is the other thousand pounds? You guess. So we chalk it up as being lost over the side, or some such thing. Those replenishment ships are the best-fed vessels in the Navy.

And here on board the Mighty T last replenishment, the Engineering department managed to walk off with two cases of fruitcake, one case of assorted nuts, and several crates of oranges. They were caught—that’s the only way we knew about it. Otherwise it would go on our Lost at Sea report.

Today, though, we fooled them. Someone got away with three large crates—no one knew who it was. Later, the crates were found on the hanger deck behind one of the boats; it was three crates of vegetable oil.

Mail call today-one letter from Harry Harrison, the only NavCad buddy I still keep in touch with, one from Sandy Bonne, my cousin, and only one from home.

Payday is tomorrow, and will it ever be welcome! In my pocket at this moment I have 20 Francs and sixpence—a combination hard to beat, but for all general purposes worthless.

I’ve had a book of Shakespeare’s comedies on my desk now for weeks and just haven’t gotten around to reading it—not through lack of will, but lack of time.

Think I sold my small camera today. I hate to get rid of it. I get so childishly attached to this; hate to throw anything away. I’ve always been that way.

I, I, I, I, I—focus your eyes just right and that’s all you can see. Well, how else does one write an autobiography without them?

Taps, Taps—only 284 more times will I have to hear that.

And so (candle in hand) to bed….

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.

Soap Opera

Because I have never been able to fully dissuade myself from the belief that the sun and stars revolve around me, I have frequently been dismayed to think I may actually, like Jim Carrey in the movie "The Truman Show", be the star of some cosmic bad soap opera, but without the hunks. Everything that happens in my life, because it happens to me, is far more profound and significant than what happens to anyone else. (Your entire family was just wiped out by an axe murderer? You've been diagnosed with terminal Jungle Rot? Lava from an erupting volcano is within three feet of your front door? Sorry to hear it. But you think you've got problems? Let me tell you what happened to ME today....)

I live in a rent-subsidized building owned by the Chicago Housing Authority, which owns a hundred or more similar buildings throughout the city. While the city owns the buildings and sets the rules and regulations for occupancy which apply to all its properties, the actual day-to-day running of the individual buildings is farmed out to several different management companies.

I like the building I'm in. It is convenient to just about anywhere in the city, thanks to the Diversey elevated station half a block away. The thing I do not like about it is that the Diversey elevated station is half a block away, and elevated trains therefore roar within 500 feet of my window every three to five minutes, 24 hours a day. I don't know if they have ever measured decibel levels in my apartment while the trains are passing, but I would think they would be comparable to being located halfway down the in-use runway at O'Hare International Airport.

After three years, I don't even consciously hear the trains, unless I happen to be trying to watch TV with the windows open...or closed. I've become quite adept at lip-reading. But I am quite sure that the noise, even if unnoticed, cannot help but be deleterious to a really good night's sleep.

Recently, a CHA facility less than a mile from my current building, and only four blocks from Lake Michigan, reopened after having been closed for three years for a total renovation. Many of its residents were transferred to my current building when their building closed, and as soon as it reopened, they began moving the former residents back. I put in an application for transfer.

Bureaucracies are of course carefully designed to quadruple the amount of time one would consider the maximum anywhere else. The situation was compounded when my current building switched management companies and fired the entire staff that had worked here for umpteen years. So I waited. And I waited, checking every now and then on the progress of my application. They of course had never heard of me or my application for transfer at the new building, but I persevered, and things finally began to move. A week ago this past Saturday I had someone from the new building come over to "inspect" my living conditions. The fact that both buildings are owned by the CHA and run under exactly the same rules and regulations (which I believe prohibit keeping more than six farm animals in any one-bedroom apartment) meant nothing, since the management companies for the two buildings are different, and therefore each is its own mini-bureaucracy within the larger bureaucracy of the CHA.

But all, finally, seemed to be moving ahead. Then last week I heard rumors that this building has been placed "in quarantine" due to a serious cockroach and bedbug problem. Now, when I moved in here three years ago, cockroaches were indeed a problem, as they are in nearly every large apartment building in any large city. However, thanks to the diligent efforts of the health department, I have not seen a single cockroach in well over a year. And a year and a half ago, there was indeed a bedbug infestation which was not only embarrassing but involved an incredible amount of inconvenience in the process of eliminating them. But it has been over six months since I've heard of the problem.

Nonetheless, I was informed the new building would accept no further transfers until the quarantine was listed. When this might be or who might be doing the lifting was unspecified. Today I went over to the new building to see if this was indeed the case, and was told it was. The fact that they had already accepted several transfers of residents from this supposedly cockroach and bedbug infested hellhole before the new management company took over (and who assumedly brought all their bedbugs and cockroaches with them) of course meant nothing.

How long the "quarantine" will be in effect, I have no idea. But I will be willing to wager a kidney that the lifting of the quarantine will be timed to the very day when the new building has rented out its last apartment.

For thus are The Days of My Life.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.

Jingle Bells! Jingle Bells!

When I was a lad (oh, dear Lord, not another one of those stories!), in that magical time when human beings came before commerce and money became the end-all and be-all of our society, the Christmas season--and in that totally un-P.C. world it was the Christmas season rather than the Holiday season--began the day after Thanksgiving. Retail stores did not start putting up decorations and bombarding you with "Jingle Bells" on the first of August in order to entice you to "shop early."

And with the door just having closed on another Thanksgiving, the true meaning of the holidays--getting you to spend money--is in full swing.

Of course, Thanksgiving is not--yet--really a money-making holiday, except for turkey raisers and cranberry growers. I'm sure corporate headquarters around the country have research teams on overtime trying to figure out how to milk an extra nickel out of the public. ("Thanksgiving is for gift-giving. Get your beloved a sterling-silver turkey charm! Only $99.99!" "Collect the entire 224 piece 'The First Thanksgiving' figurine set. Each exquisitely-crafted ceramic piece sold separately!" "Life-sized Puritan lawn figures, just $199.99 each!")

Holiday traditions appear to be less and less about the original meaning of the holidays and more and more about ways to spend money. Any random hour spent watching television or reading a newspaper or magazine makes it clear that how much you care for your loved ones is directly proportional to how much money you spend on their gifts. Increasingly we are being relieved of the necessity of actually spending the time and effort to shop for specific present, and encouraged to simply give gift cards. (Though to be honest with you I really don't object to gift cards, and am happy to get them. If I'm not sure what someone would really like, or whether they don't already have ten of whatever I'm thinking of getting, a gift card enables them to get what they really want rather than something they'll seldom if ever use.)

Holidays change for each of us as we grow older. The self-centered wonder of childhood slowly fades with the realization that there are others in the world other than ourselves. The joy spreads out to the giving of gifts as well as the receiving them, and the pleasure of seeing others open their gifts nearly equals that of opening our own.

But despite the utterly cold commercialism of so much of the "holiday season," the true spirit of holidays lies now and always primarily in family and friends, and within ourselves. Those of us who were blessed with loving families know full well that their true value lies not in gifts received, but in the spirit in which the gifts, spiritual and emotionally as well as materially, are given.

I will always remember that one year when I was probably around 7 or 8, I wanted a doll house. I in no way related doll houses with girls...they were just another outlet for my imagination. But my dad did not believe boys should have doll houses and wouldn't allow my mom to buy me one. So she made me one out of an orange crate. I've never forgotten it, or her demonstration of love in giving me something I really wanted.

As the years pass, most of us start our own families and our own traditions. But for many of us who do not, holidays tend to lessen in importance as we lose the people we so strongly associate with them.

Depression during the holidays is very common, and very real, as memories of, and longing for, holidays gone from us forever rise to the surface. I deal with this problem by looking at a holiday as simply another day. I still appreciate their significance to others, and derive pleasure from spending them with friends. (While I still have cousins who mean the world to me and remain the cornerstones of my existence, I tend to decline their always-kind holiday invitations with thanks and real gratitude simply because I then would have to face all those memories and longings I choose not to acknowledge. Hey, it works for me.)

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.

A Bologna Sandwich

Shortly after I returned home from Mayo Clinic after my successful treatment for tongue cancer in 2003, I had the indescribably overpowering craving for a huge glass of orange juice, which lasted for days. I was at that point still taking all my nourishment through a stomach tube and was unable to swallow anything. I probably could have poured it into the stomach tube, but it was the taste I wanted.

And then when, months later, I was slowly able to resume eating and drink, I discovered that the acidity of that long-anticipated glass of orange juice burned my mouth.

Today, for some unexplained reason, I had an overpowering urge for a bologna sandwich...white bread, two thick slices of bologna, a slice of cheese, mayonnaise, a little catsup and mustard between the bologna slices, maybe a lettuce leaf. I fantasized about opening my mouth wide, taking a big bite, chewing, swallowing, then another big bite, chew, swallow until the sandwich is gone.

It has been six years now, and I still cannot believe that I will never again have a bologna sandwich...not a whole one, at any rate, and even then not even one single bite without having to take a sip of water to accompany the act of swallowing, to wash it down. And never with the ease and pleasure I associate with the thought of a bologna sandwich.

I know, I know, it sounds like I'm doing one of my Roger at the Pity Pool numbers. I never have been one to suffer in silence. But really, I'm not writing this to solicit sympathy. Sympathy is not called for in any event. I'm just trying to convey to everyone who takes such ordinary, simple actions for granted the incomprehensibility of suddenly being unable to do so.

I bitch a lot...a lot...about the things I have been deprived of, and how incredibly much I miss them. Yet I also realize how lucky I am compared to so very many people whose limitations are far greater than my own. Only people who have been deprived of things they have always taken for granted can fully appreciate what they no longer have or can do.

My "afflictions" are to a large extent limited to such simple things as swallowing and eating. I cannot imagine what so many other people endure without nearly so much complaint, and I know I should be ashamed of myself. I am truly in awe of what those countless numbers of people suffering fatal illness or severe physical limitations must go through every day.

But rightly or wrongly, I justify my eternal bitching in these blogs as being a cautionary tale of how quickly and how completely one's life can change, and how very important it is for each of us to realize it. I cannot urge you too strongly to take just a moment in the middle of any simple, un-thought-of daily action, like eating or running or turning one's head, and think of the myriads of tiny interactions of mind and body which are involved in and necessary to accomplish them. Of course you can't possibly stop to consciously think of every single action you perform; that's why they are for the most part totally automatic--so you don't have to. But to give an occasional moment to how utterly fascinating it is that we can do them at all can give a far greater appreciation to life.

And the next time you see a person with physical disabilities, resist the all-too-common reaction of pity, which too often is really just glorified condescension, and replace it with empathy by putting yourself, for just a moment, in their place.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.

Delusions

Over the years I have become something of an expert at self-delusion. I can honestly convince myself, short of defying the laws of physics, of almost anything. I hasten to add I am not so delusional that I am unaware that they are delusions, but they are harmless, and they give me a great degree of comfort.

My chief delusion is that I am ageless...well, actually I'm somewhere...anywhere...under the glass ceiling between youth and maturity. This delusion is quite easy to maintain except for when I am in the presence of reflective surfaces, and even then I can sometimes convince myself that I have absolutely no idea who that person is. I adopted this particular form of illusion from Don Quixote, whose ultimate enemy was a mirror.

Delusions are the armor many of us don to do battle with the world. The protect us...some to a greater degree than others...from the harshness of reality, and as long as they do no harm to ourselves or others, there is no real need to dissuade ourselves of them.

I've often used the example of one of the characters from the play The Madwoman of Chaillot who, every day, year after year, read the same newspaper--the same newspaper--because she liked the news in it. What was really happening in the world neither affected or concerned her. I empathize with her completely. I often choose to simply ignore those things which I know would make me unhappy if I were to acknowledge them. I may be deluding myself, but what does it matter, really?

Most delusions are restricted to the mind of the deluded, and it is only when they take physical manifestation do they normally call the attention of others. (The mental picture springs to mind of a 240 pound woman in a bikini, or the elderly man with a black toupee plopped atop the grey hair of his sideburns. And even then, they more often affect the viewer than the wearer.) We all see ourselves very differently than other people see us, but the more delusional we are, the greater the gap in perception.

Like most things, delusions can be positive or negative. I constantly berate and belittle myself for every perceived imperfection and flaw, and for falling far short of who I feel I should be. Yet this is as unfair as deluding myself into assuming the possession of sterling qualities not in fact in existence. I know I'm not...nor could I be...quite as worthless and stupid as I too frequently paint myself as being. But I do it partly out of disappointment that I am not living up to my own potential, or to what I perceive myself as being. And I have, as I've mentioned frequently, an odd compulsion to point out my failings as a first-strike defense against having other people do it for me. ("You don't have to tell me how bad I am: I already know.")

I honestly envy some people their delusions--specifically those which lead them to believe they can accomplish things which reality clearly says is far beyond their reach. Their delusions encourage them to get out there and at least try for something they really want, even though the odds are clearly or even overwhelmingly stacked against them. They are far better off than people like me, who don't try for something I am convinced I can never achieve.

The wondrous thing is that many of the major advances in science and technology throughout history have been achieved by people everyone assumed to be delusional.

I am really quite comfortable with my own delusions. They're like an old robe or favorite pair of slippers I wear constantly. And I truly believe the world would be a happier and less stressful place if more people allowed themselves to indulge their own.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.

From Spam to Eternity

I've been posting these cesspool scrapings for some time now, and still in all sincerity cannot comprehend how the sub-humans who turn out this crap can actually expect anyone...anyone, anywhere, any time...to open one of their messages, let alone be gullible enough to buy anything from them. That enough people apparently do fills me with despair for the future of our race.

So here, once again, are some random shoe-scrapings and my Lord-help-me-but-I-can't-help-but-react, knee-jerk responses.

"You can learn any language in 10 D" (Not enough to speak it, however.)

andrew - "Re: sending you what you wanted - yo mate, ok I'll give you my trick but if you give it someone else I'll fuckin kill you." (Yo, Andrew, this is the 15th time I've gotten this identical piece of cutsey-poo bilge from 15 different people. Enough, already.)

"Bessie will help you pack your things." (Bessie knew I was moving? That girl is a true psychic!! How can I possibly repay her?)

"Your order is ready to be shipped." (Great! May I suggest where you can put it while you're waiting for my check?)

"Congratulations! You have a $12,600 commission check waiting!" (I do? Really? That's wonderful! Thank you so much! Please send it right along! Shall I hold my breath until it gets here?)

"I waited to hear if I was going to school." (But your mommy shouldn't let you play with her computer while you wait.)

"Give her aggressive drilling! Make your banana huge...." (I'm sorry? What does being a dentist or working on an oil rig have to do with bananas? I'm afraid you're just too subtle for me.)

"Crazy Sale Prices - Your girl taken to the hospital..." (Excuse me? Can we say "non-sequitur," boys and girls? I would ask again just how stupid you think I am, but I already know the answer.)

"Never miss a touchdown again with Dish Network!" (Don't worry, I don't miss them now. Never watch them and sure as hell don't miss them.)

"(Unknown Sender) (No Subject)" (Oh, yeah, you can be sure I'm gonna open that one!)

"The $12,000 monthly Income Information You Have Requested--Hi~~NAME~~. This is unbelievable..." (That I would request anything at all from some hack spammer who can't even fill out his own form correctly? Well, yes, that is indeed unbelievable.)

"Though home or shelter he had none - When smitten by the morning ray...." (In other words "Concentrate only on the watch. You will hear only my voice. You are getting sleepy....")

"$120,000 per year working part-time. Click here." (Let's see, that would break down to $60 per hour for a regular 40-hour week, 50 weeks a year with two weeks for vacation. Since it's "part time," that would equate to considerably more than $60 per hour. And you have to send out spam to find someone willing to work for more than $60 per hour? Gee, should I Click Here? Let me think.)

"There is no doubt that, while the metalbearing lands fell into the opened mouths of the spaniards..."
(And there is equally no doubt that you are so full of s**t your eyes are brown.)

As they used to say, "Roll up your pantlegs...it's too late to save your shoes."

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.

No Time for Words

We each live, basically, in two worlds...the tangible,"real world" of day to day existence, and the intangible world of the mind...and the percentage of time and effort we spend in each world varies from person to person. Most people are so busy dealing with the countless details and demands of the real world--work, going to and from it, eating, errands and chores and tasks, face-to-face interactions with family, friends, and coworkers--they have relatively little time available for the intangibles of the mind.

The intangibility of thoughts--except for those which can be directly expressed physically (a kiss, a thumbs-up, a punch in the nose, or some other universally-recognized gesture)--is why language was invented. Without words, most thoughts would be limited to the brain of the thinker.

Though words can be conveyed either verbally or through writing, I rely almost entirely upon writing as my means of communication. I write because I do not communicate well when speaking. In conversation, I seldom say what I want to say in the way I want to say it. My mind races ahead of my tongue, or falls behind it, or trips over it. My head is always full of words...finding the specific ones and putting them together the way I want them within the framework of the time available is the problem. By the time I think of just what I want to say, I've usually missed the window of time in which to say it. So rather than wait, I tend to blurt out the first thing that pops into my head.

I'm not alone in this, of course. Have you ever read a verbatim transcript of anyone speaking spontaneously without some sort of prepared script? Broken sentences, trail-offs, whiplash changes of subject; that we ever manage to understand one another is amazing.

And when someone so dependent upon communicating via the written word is deprived of the chance to do so, the results are disconcerting at the very least.

In the past week or so, I've found myself in that position. I've been submerged in the real, non-verbal world by the process of helping my friend Norm, who is currently in a nursing home with severe emphysema, move into a one bedroom apartment in an assisted living facility. He's lived in his 2-bedroom + den condo for more than 30 years. Because he is physically unable to do anything for himself, or even return to the condo, I've assumed the responsibility of managing all aspects of his move...selecting what to take, packing, arranging for a mover, then figuring what to do with everything left behind, putting the condo up for sale, selling his car, etc. I don't mind; I know Norm would do the same for me, but it is time consuming.

All this coincides with my own plans to move to a newly renovated building about a mile from my current apartment and four blocks from Lake Michigan--and also far from the constant roar of elevated trains running 500 feet from my window 24 hours a day. While I'm not sure of the exact date of my move...I haven't even gotten final authorization from the new building yet...I've been collecting and packing boxes in anticipation.

None of the above activities involve much in the way of written communication. But it has, regrettably, sharply limited my time available for writing. When I do manage to squeeze out a few minutes to write, I find it difficult to concentrate on what I'm trying to say. I start off to write a blog (and this one is a perfect example), get about one sentence and three words into it, and suddenly wonder if the box I have to pack my statue of Hamlet will be big enough? Or I'll be trying to thing of a "words" analogy that will make any sense and find myself wondering if we should try to carry some of Norm's paintings over to his new apartment rather than trust them to the movers.

Well, I take some consolation in the thought that this is temporary, and that things will eventually settle down and I can get back to writing. Exactly when, I'm not sure. And in the meantime, please bear with me.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.

First Jobs

All my life I have considered work to be a necessary evil, and I was reflecting the other day on my earliest adventures in the working world. For me, that began in 1958, when I graduated from Northern Illinois University with a B.A. in English--one of the most economically worthless degrees known to man, unless one plans to teach. I did not plan to teach. I immediately moved to Chicago to take on the world.

My very first after-college job was with the Olson Rug Company, whose triple claim to fame was: 1) “Olson Rugs are reversible”; 2) “We use your own wool”...which meant if you sent in a sack of wool from your pet sheep, Olson would supposedly use it in making your new rug...a bit impractical, but people actually would send in hair from their beloved dog, and Olson would accept it; and 3) “Olson Rugs Do Not Burn”....but they did smolder.

The Olson Rug Factory was something of a Chicago landmark. It was huge, and it featured on one corner of its property, a really beautiful garden with waterfalls which was a great tourist attraction...a precursor of the much larger Bush Gardens which came later. It attracted people from all over the area, and my folks and I had come all the way from Rockford when I was a kid to see it.

I was assigned to a two man department devoted to responding to customer inquiries, some of which I’ll get to in a moment. This was in the days long before what we now recognize as computers, but we did have available to us an absolutely-state-of-the-art behemoth of a machine which could seat two people, as I recall and which was, in effect, a great-great-grand-uncle of a computer. It contained probably 25 “stock” paragraphs dealing with the most common questions sent in. So I would sit at there and type in: “Dear Mrs. Smith: #1, #14, #8, #4, Type” (yes, type, as on a built-in automatic typewriter). Very rarely I’d have to actually compose a paragraph for which there was no stock response.

Several things kept me amused. One was collecting the names of some of the people who wrote in. There was Peachy Poff, Mitzpah Frau, Quo Vadis Cone, and Placenta Palmer...and I swear I did not make those names up. Who could?

And the inquiry letters were often a delight. We received many along the lines of the following:

Dear Olson Rug Company:
My wife and I entertain a lot, and if you will provide rugs for our home, we will tell everyone they are Olson Rugs, and your company will benefit greatly from increased sales.

Uh huh.

But my favorite letter was from a woman also asking for free rugs, in exchange for which she would give us THE SECRET. She had, she explained, “tried to give it to the Sheriff, but he was sitting on two chairs.”

We passed, though I always did rather wonder what THE SECRET might have been.

I lasted at Olson for approximately a year, then found a job—probably because I could clearly read the “Dead End” signs with Olson—with an insurance company in the Loop where I was, inexplicably, some sort of insurance adjuster. I have absolutely no recollection now of what I did or why I even thought I might have any interest in being an insurance adjuster (which, as it turns out, I did not). But it did get me started as an editor, when I suggested that the company really needed an in-house monthly newsletter, and they agreed. It was called “Hear Ye” and was an incredibly amateurish affair with a hand-lettered title, and produced by mimeographing on regular 8 ½ x 11 paper...but at least it was white paper, and not the yellow lined notepaper. I did have my standards.

I was with the insurance company for probably a year and a half, then moved onward and upward to Duraclean International, a rug and upholstery cleaning organization which sold cleaning franchises in several countries, where I was associate editor for their house organ, the Duraclean Journal. (Probably my sterling service with Olson rugs may have influenced their decision to hire me.)

I really found a home there. Very nice people, and I had the opportunity to travel around the country to conduct seminars for groups of franchisees.

The only drawback was that I lived on Chicago’s near north side, and Duraclean was located in the suburb of Deerfield, which was quite a trek. Even that would not have been too bad, but I had to cross, as I neared my work, the Illinois Central’s commuter rail tracks. And every single morning, no matter if I was 10 minutes early or 13 minutes behind schedule, a commuter train would wait until it saw me coming, then race down the tracks just in time for the gates to lower before I reached them. (A coincidence, you say? I don’t think so.)

I was with Duraclean for six years…actually the longest time I ever spent on any single job…and I left only when my partner and I broke up and I decided to move to California. But that’s quite another story, which we shall get to anon.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.

Oh, Spam!

I don't want to look. Really, I don't. But every now and then something that is not spam ends up in my spam folder, necessitating an always-intended-to-be quick scan of the effluvia contained therein to be sure I'm not throwing away something I shouldn't. And try though I might, I cannot resist knee-jerk responding to the come-on phrases intended to get suckers to open the message (the equivalent of unwrapping a soiled baby diaper).

So here, yet again, are a few noble examples of the spammer's art, and my reaction to them.

"Re: sending you what you wanted" (Since there was neither a check nor a copy of your suicide note, you didn't.)

"Millionaire wants you to cash in!" (No, millionaire wants to make more money...from anyone stupid enough to open the message.)

"A miracle took place" (Oh? You mean someone actually did open your message?)

"I made a blog." (Good for you! Now if we can just get you potty-trained....)

"She loves it when I go this much deeper, she gets overwhelmed by her orgasm...." (Oh please, please TRY to imagine how little I care!)

"Just read your letter." (Suuuure you did. But I have no intention of reading yours.)

"My fingers fidget like ten idle brats..." (While mine race to find the "delete" key.)

"Vitaminize your desire! Recipe of hotter lust" (Yessirreee, I'm always looking for new ways to vitaminze my desire. Does the recipe include Tabasco sauce and jalepenos?)

ncortes: "Sea-gull - mevo. -- In 1560 mendoza was abruptly ordered by king philip ii. Hello, I am Allegra Henstridge...." (Whoa! I'm getting whiplash, here! What are you talking about? You're Alegra Henstridge? Then who the hell is "ncortes"? Who's mendoza? What's he got to do with King Philip II? Philip ordered Mendoza to do what? And you...whoever you are...actually expect anyone in their right mind to buy something from you? Good luck with that one, Charlie...or ncortes, or Alegra, or mendoza, or philip, or....Sigh. I think I'll go lie down for a bit.)

"Get an omnipotent porksword!" (What a lovely, lovely mental picture you conjure up. Please, let me have a dozen of whatever it is you're selling, you silver-tongued rascal, you.)

Flossie Cortez - "女性からのお願いを聞いてもらえませんか?" (Oh, Flossie! You're such a card! Of course 願いを聞いてもらえませんか!)

"Did you call me?" (Take a wild guess.)

"What does Bessie say I've done?" (Other than bug the crap out of me? I neither know nor care.)

"Cheap Fashion Accessories." (Ah, yes....sweets to the sweet, I always say.)

"Afraid of being caught sleeping?" (Uh, not between 10:30 p.m. and 6 a.m., no.)

"Did you suffer a Gallbladder injury while using Birth Control?" (My God! However did you know?)

"Get ready to tough day." (Ok, as soon as I figure out how "to tough day" became a verb.)

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.

Imprinting

There was a fascinating documentary a couple of years ago about a group of newly hatched geese which imprinted on a researcher--the first creature they saw upon hatching. To the hatchlings, the researcher was their parent. They followed him everywhere and he had to assume the role of an adult goose in order to show them how to be geese. When winter approached and the time came for them to migrate, the researcher learned to pilot an ultra-light aircraft in order to lead them south. Viewed from the ground, they formed the perfect V, with the researcher and his little open aircraft at the head of the V.

Though imprinting studies have mainly been done on birds, it is a factor in other species, Man included.

Imprinting is not always as instantaneous an event as bonding with one's parents. It continues slowly through early childhood and goes far beyond the usual imprinting between parents/children. Mine was a slower process, though the end result is still with me. Imagination is a very important tool in the imprinting process. It helps children learn, grow, make choices that will remain with them throughout life, and helps them understand the world as it really is. But having used the imagination to help in the imprinting process, most children make the transition between reality and make believe naturally. I never did. I imprinted early-on on make believe and on happily-ever-after and pretty much stopped there.

My imprinting on happily-ever-after is probably responsible for the fact that I spend so much of my time in frustration when things do not go the way they are supposed to go. (You'll note I did not say "the way I think they are supposed to go"--the way they are supposed to go is the way they are supposed to go. Period.) If I can do it in imagination, I damned well should be able to do it in reality.

I find it significant that even at a very young age, listening to and later reading fairy tales, it was never the princess I concentrated on (or ever, for one single moment, identified with), but the handsome prince. I never grew out of it, which I am convinced is a major reason I, sincerely, have such a hard time accepting reality.

I doubt one's sexual orientation is influenced by imprinting. I sincerely believe that being gay is no more a conscious choice than the decision to have brown eyes. However, if it were, the first person I ever set eyes on must have been the doctor or a male nurse.

And again imagination comes into play. I have always loved beauty, and grace, and charm, as I perceive them, just as I have always expected thoughtfulness and common civility as encompassed by the Golden Rule to be. I love the idea of romantic love, and yet relate it, for myself, only to beautiful (in my eyes) men because beautiful men embody everything I have always longed for. But I have never succeeded in believing myself to be beautiful--a fact verified by every reflexive surface.

There are many different types of love between humans--the love of family, the broader love of friends, and the very special love between just two humans, which is differentiated from the other forms by the element of sexual attraction. But my personal concept of romantic love and sexuality attraction includes only men. Women have always been, to me, a totally different species. But my love for women is and has always been strictly of the friends-and-family type, totally devoid of any romantic or sexual-attraction component. While I realize this is all but incomprehensible to most people--and I'm sorry to say may possibly be offensive to some--it is simply a statement of fact and has never been an issue for me.

The combination of my early imprinting on fantasy at the expense of reality, my totally unrealistic assumption that I am somehow separate and apart from everyone else, coupled with my expectations for myself being infinitely higher than could ever be realized...and the resultant self loathing that evolves from it, have produced the person writing this blog. I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad. It doesn't matter. It just is.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.

Listen Up!

Okay, people: listen up. I have had enough of this crap, and am planning a coup to take over the world. Once I do, here are a are a few of the changes that will be institutedmmediately.

As I understand it, the game of football is divided into four quarters of fifteen minutes each. Therefore, a football game should last exactly one hour, not six. Under my rule, each quarter will last exactly fifteen minutes. Once the clock is started, it will not be stopped every ten seconds for periods of up to ten minutes each. Fifteen minutes per quarter! There will be five minutes between the first and second quarters, twenty minutes for the ubiquitous halftime festivities between the second and third quarters, and another five minute break between the third quarter and the end of the game. That's it. Is that clear?

The words "under God" will be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance. They were not there in the original, they are not needed, they are exclusionary and divisive. They will be out!

Baseball hats will be worn with the bill facing forward. That is why they were created...to shield the eyes from the sun. Anyone wearing a baseball hat with the bill backwards will have the hat confiscated and be issued a warning. Two violations will result in a sizable fine. Anyone attempting to be "hip," "cool," "with it," etc. by wearing the bill pointing other than directly forward will have the hat yanked off their head, filled with Crazy Glue, put back on forceably, and be marched directly to jail where they will be placed in solitary confinement until the hat falls off on its own.

All rap songs will be submitted to a panel prior to release. Any lyrics containing words derogatory to women or other minorities ("ho," "bitch," "muthafukka," etc.) will be stricken--which will leave most with no lyrics at all. "Songs" consisting of only one or two words endlessly repeated will be banned; all will be required to have recognizable sentence structure, and be sung so as to be intelligible to the average listener.

Pants will be worn so that the top is within three inches of the belly button. Those worn around the knees will yanked down to the ankles and the wearer required to wear them in that position while completing 50 hours of community service.

English will be the official language of the United States. No one will ever have to "Press 1 for English". Our forefathers came here from around the world and they learned to speak English, and they did it. To be able to become a citizen of a country it will be mandatory to speak its language.

Any corporation, company, or organization with a phone number for customers to call will be required to hire enough people to answer every call received within twenty seconds. Severe fines will be imposed for every second a customer has to sit on hold beyond the fourth ring.

"Your call is very important to us" messages will be banned. Pressing a succession of 53 buttons before being able to speak to an actual human being will be a criminal offense.

No corporate executive will be paid more than ten times the wage of the average worker. Bonuses will be limited to a turkey at Thanksgiving and a maximum $100 cash bonus at Christmas.

Campaigning politicians will, under law, be limited to telling voters what they will do to benefit their constituents, and be forbidden to criticize their opponents' records or character.

Handguns will be banned. Period. No argument, no debate. The NRA will limit itself to issues involving sport hunting, and be forbidden to engage in any form of political activity. All defensive weapons will be required to be non-lethal in nature (tazers, pepper spray, mace).

Every email message sent will be required to include the correct return email address of the sender, and stringent penalties will be imposed for obvious spam messages.

Every claim made by an advertiser must be proven to be true before it can be made.

"Don't ask, don't tell" will be struck down immediately, and penalties for hate crimes increased.

Parents will be held legally accountable for the actions and be required to actively participate in the education of their children.

Littering within 100 feet of a waste receptacle will result in stiff fines, to be doubled with every succeeding offense.

These are only some of the changes I plan to implement. I may list more later. Don't say I didn't warn you.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.

Spamity-Spamity-Spam

I've noticed--perversely, almost to my regret, but not quite--that the number of spam messages, especially of the "Make her scream with pleasure" and "Add 14" to your manhood" variety have fallen off drastically of late. I'd like to think it is because my internet server is finally getting wise, but I doubt it.

Anyway, here is the latest culling from the cyberspace garbage, with the "come on" of the message exactly as received, and my Pavlov's dog response.

"What's this?" (Why, this is spam! I'm surprised you didn't notice it. I spotted it a mile away.)

mary LAST_NAME "are you bored lonely and wanting some spice? I'm cathy and I..." (You're cathy? You just told me you were mary LAST_NAME? It's so hard to know who to trust these days.)

"Still dislike me?" (Hey, you're pretty perceptive for a spammer!)

"You can joinUp with our dating community without a nickel-being spent!" (Or, I can not join up with your dating community without a nickel-being spent." I like that option better.)

"Will the 90 day Wealth Challenge bring you financial triumph?" (Gee, that's a tough one. Let me take a really wild guess...)

"Make her want it 24/7" ("It"? Can you be a bit more specific? You spammers are so subtle it's difficult to know what you mean.)

"and the long-eared own standing watchover a dark churchyard laughed..." (and the short-tempered writer wading through his spam messages thought this was clever, but not clever enough to make him open it.)

"Assistance..Needed. Dear Friend, I am Mr. Zhang tiejun, Foreign operations manager, Bank of China, Hong Kong...." (Do you suppose I might ask how, out of 6 billion people on the planet, you wrote to me?)

"Become a photographer from the convenience and comfort of your home!" (Uh, doesn't that sort of limit my range of things to photograph?)

"Shall Life Renew these bodies of a Truth?" (I don't know...shall it? But first, what the hell are you talking about? ...Never mind, I don't want to know.)

"You're a jerk!" (Why thank you, you silver-tongued rascal you. That's sure to get me to read your post! But we'll have to wait until hell freezes over.)

"Unable to understand you. --It Blighty praps he sees his plucks all gone...." (Whereas you are a beacon of clairty.)

"Unable to call you." (Thank God.)

"Fall asleep, fall asleep--As I walked along the hallway and down the stairs of Gateshead Hall..." (Wow! Just those few words and I'm halfway there.)

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.

Yesterdays and Today

If you've been following these blogs for any length of time, you know how I enjoy being able to travel back more than 50 years to my navy days, thanks to the letters I wrote to my parents at the time. I am infinitely grateful to my folks for keeping them. And as always, all I have to do is read one of those letters, and I am there.

Fifty-five years ago yesterday, I had been in the Naval Aviation Cadet program almost exactly two months, and was still in Pre-Flight training. Put today aside for the moment, and sit beside me in my barracks room in Pensacola, Florida, as I write.

Wednesday, October13, 1954

Today we saw a movie in P.T. on “How to Survive in the Tundra” (semi-arctic regions). It was one of those “how to survive on a broken compass & old fish heads” things. I thought it was terrifically funny (though it wasn’t supposed to be). Of course there were, among the six marooned men, several familiar characters. There was a George Washington Carver who could whip up a tasty dish out of a bunch of rock lichen; a Daniel Boone type, who could (and did) trap everything from a lemming (a glorified field mouse—they are delicious) to a caribou which, unfortunately, they missed—they had set up an ingenious device with two twigs and a 90-lb piece of sod, but the caribou outsmarted them (not a difficult task, I assure you); and, of course, there was the General-All-Around-Genius who could make more things out of one lousy parachute than are dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio. This latter genius also, in his spare time, made a dandy kite (out of the parachute, of course) for attracting airplanes—I expected at any moment to see him attach a key to it and discover electricity, but he never got around to it.

Now, to answer dad’s questions—I want just my one suitcase, so that when I come home Xmas I’ll have something larger than my duffle bag to pack my things in. Send them (or rather it) any time you want, just so it’s fairly soon. Yes, the band instruments are furnished, & I hope to stay on after moving to Corry Field or Whiting Field (which I’ll do on or about Nov. 26).

I surely am glad I joined the band! I told you, I think, all about what we may get to do. November 20 we are going to the Duke-South Carolina game (the Duke-Georgia Tech game would be too soon for us to be ready). We will all be flown to Durham, North Carolina for it. Last Saturday night we played for the Admiral at a football game, and he liked us so well he’s planned a “surprise” for us (which, it is rumored, may be a trip to the Army-Navy game!). Miami is still pending. Nov. 11 we’re to lead a parade in Pensacola. Four days before Xmas vacation, if all goes well, we will be flown to New York City to appear on “Toast of the Town”; then we’ll fly home from there if we want. God, I’d give my life’s blood to get to New York for four days!!

Haven’t been doing much of anything lately except study—haven’t even gone to a show in two weeks! Saturday morning we have band practice, but Saturday afternoon I hope to get downtown to pick up my picture. I hope you like it—it will have to be hung as it is too large to put atop the record cabinet.

Did the movies come? Have you looked at them yet? The large blank space at the beginning is where I had written “Welcome to Florida” in the white sand, but it was evidently too bright.

Well, I’d better close for now. I would appreciate your sending some money for new film. (Note—this is the first time I’ve ever written home for money! I’ve gotten $15 from you all the time I’ve been here, and that’s pretty inexpensive if you ask me).

I’ll try to write more this weekend. Till then I am
As Always
Roge

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.

Why Bother?

Here I am, again recovering from yet another Wagnerian storm of fury and self loathing. What puzzles me most is why I even bother to be surprised when something I do does not go the way it should go...or the way it would go--flawlessly--were you or any living creature with a modicum of motor skills and the I.Q. of a turnip doing it.

I suppose a bit of backstory is called for, here.

I related in an earlier blog my Friday from Hell--yet another in an endless string of examples of my cat-and-mouse game with life (I, of course, being the mouse)--in trying to get back to Chicago from my last trip to Rochester, MN after the return bus for which I held a ticket was cancelled without notice, thereby effectively stranding me 400+ miles from home with no other practical way to get back.

I had sent a letter to the bus company, Jefferson Bus Lines--remember that name--responsible for the problem, together with copies of the $226.00 in expenses I incurred as a result.

Got a reply yesterday telling me they were sorry, but it was clearly my responsibility to check to see if the bus might have been cancelled. (Excuse me?) But they magnanimously offered to refund a portion of my unused bus ticket (all of $36.00) if I sent them the unused ticket.

Now, these blogs are filled with ample evidence that I am not the brightest button in the jar, but I also am not totally stupid. So I should send them the original of the unused ticket and, when I write them after six months of not hearing from them again, I can get a letter saying "We never got it. Tough shit."

So I wrote them another letter this morning, and set about printing it out to send them.

Have you ever printed a letter using a computer? You select what you want to print. You turn on the printer. You go to "File" and select-and-press "Print" and the printer hums and whirs efficiently and dutifully produces a copy of what you requested.

YOU do that. I select what I want to print. I turn on the printer. I go to "File" and select-and-press "Print" and the printer hums and whirs and grabs six sheets of paper, wrinkles them up, and crams them just far enough inside itself for the "PAPER JAM" light to start flashing wildly. The printer's designers have carefully made the machine so that once something is caught within, it is almost impossible to remove. They did build in, however, a clever little digital display to assist the owner in resolving the problem in three easy steps.

Each of the three steps appears on the tiny screen for no longer than two seconds. Step one involves opening the door to provide an unhelpful front view of the printer's innards. Step two shows a hand pushing some sort of red lever to the left, and Step three involves closing the door. I caught on to Steps one and three fairly easily. The problem lay in Step two and pushing the red lever to the left. There is no red lever. There is no lever of any color. Just the exposed innards of the machine. I want very much to push the red lever to the left. Really, I do. I would be giddy with delight to be able to push it. If it were there, which it isn't.

I am of course by this point approaching apoplexy, exerting all my willpower to prevent myself from grabbing the printer and throwing it through the unopened window.

I eventually get the jammed paper out of the machine. Hoping for the best, I press the printer's "Off" button, planning to let it rest and consider the error of its ways, then restart it and hope it's learned its lesson. The machine stays on. I press "Off" again. Five times. It stays on. I clamor under the desk trying to figure out which one of the 247 plugs and wires under there is the one for the printer. One by one I pull out 246 of the plugs, checking to see if it is the one for the printer. It is not. The 247th one is.

I let everything rest for a minute, then plug it back in. I go to "File", select-and-press "Print" and the machine hums and whirs and politely takes one sheet of paper from the stack, ingests it, then spits it out, blank. Before I can do anything, it takes in and spits out four other blank sheets of paper in rapid succession, then stops halfway through the fifth sheet, leaving it half in and half out of the machine. The printer, both it and I know full well, is sticking its tongue out at me.

I yank it out and call my long-suffering friend Gary. He comes up to my apartment, sits at the computer, goes to "File," selects and hits "Print" and the machine hums and whirs and takes one sheet of paper from the stack and dutiful produces the letter I have been trying to print for the past hour and a half.

Gary, as always, looks at me with a sad little smile that so clearly says "poor, hopeless Roger," shakes his head, and leaves. And I sit down to write this blog and try not to cry.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.

"Thimk!"

I suppose that for someone whose mind operates like a runaway concrete mixer, it is not surprising that when it comes to my daily life, I so seldom actually stop to think before I do something. It has been one of the banes of my existence (and my existence is filled with banes of various shapes and sizes). I never allow myself to contemplate where I might have gotten in life had I not had to spend so much time constantly going back to retrace my steps in attempting to undo mistakes made through lack of thinking ahead.

I take some small comfort in the fact that I cannot claim a patent on this problem, and that--hard as it may be for me to realize--others actually make even more astoundingly stupid act-first-think-later mistakes than I. Today's paper, for example, had an article of a woman who was filling a gas can and, in order to see how much gas was already in the can, used a cigarette lighter to look inside. Hospital emergency rooms...and morgues...are filled with similar examples. The annual Darwin Awards are absolute gems of cases of people who, by not thinking ahead, to quote the awards, "improve the human gene pool by leaving it." I take great comfort in the Darwin Awards.

Assumptions are dangerous whenever they are used, as I so often use them, in lieu of thinking. When I set my keys down, I of course know exactly where I put them. I therefore automatically assume that three minutes later I will still remember where they are. Wrong. I can and do forget them within the time and space required to take three steps in any direction. Then begins the increasingly frenzied search accompanied by mounting self-fury for being so incredibly stupid as to have lost them in the first place. I find myself looking in places I know full well I'd not been near in days. I look in the cupboards. I look in the refrigerator. I look under every piece of furniture in the apartment. I look in the pockets of pants I've not worn all week. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They have vanished.

Until they show up. And then I have a "well of course that's where they were" moment and totally forget the incident until the next time it happens. (I've always admired the "Duh!" answer to the classic puzzle, "Why is something you're looking for always in the very last place you look?": "Because when you find it you stop looking." Truly profound.)

Untold fortunes have been made on the safe bet that people will act before they think. I read, not too long ago, that the internet is flooded with some 4 billion spam messages every day--though I think that's a very conservative estimate. Fully 99.9 percent of that number are predicated on the people receiving them not taking a single moment to use one iota of logic in thinking about what the message really says. Do none of them stop to wonder why out of the world's population of over 6 billion people, the General Operations Manager of the Hong Kong Bank of China is writing to them to offer untold millions of dollars in exchange for participation in a scheme so devoid of logic that it would give a cocker spaniel pause? The spammers know full well that greed trumps logic nine times out of ten.

And I think yet again of H.L. Mencken's classic observation that "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." Why? Because intelligence requires thinking.

What I find particularly sad and infinitely infuriating is that at the core, not thinking is linked to the basic decency of each human soul, which makes people want to believe what they're told, and an inherent resistance to believe that someone might be untruthful. There are no words adequate to describe those despicable individuals who willingly relinquish every link to humanity but their DNA, and who make it their life's work to destroy the very concept of trust among those who can least afford to lose it. (I am the perfect example of why handguns should be banned, for I sincerely believe that confronted with a room full of these creatures, I would have absolutely no compunction about shooting as many of them as I could.)

Well, again it goes back to a paraphrase of the old saw: "You can lead a man to logic, but you cannot make him think."

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.

Frustration

I do not handle frustration well. I do not handle many things well, but that's fuel for a future blog.

One would think that having spent a great portion of one's life being frustrated, one would become used to it. One would be wrong.

I'm sure 20 years or so on an analyst's couch, sorting though the myriads of colorful and sometimes odorous details which make up every minute of my life, would produce the conclusion that my problem rests with my absolute conviction that the universe revolves around me, and that therefore I should have complete control over everything at all times. Well, we can save the 20 years because I know that already.

The problem lies in recognizing something on an intellectual level and acknowledging it on an emotional level. My logic and my emotions are continually in a pitched battle over which will have control. Were I you, I would not place much money on logic.

Logic tells me I am a reasonably intelligent human being, and with that thought comes loud and raucous laughter from my emotions. The simple fact is that I have never, ever been in complete control of my emotions, which as I have often said never really got beyond the "terrible twos" stage of development. When I want something, I want it, and I want it now and can see no reason why I cannot have it.

That I have never understood life, my place in it, or how I am expected to react to also plays a large role in my own little civil war. I see the world, emotionally, pretty much as a toddler sees it. If it's pretty, I want it. And I do not take "no" for an answer. My logic, which spends a great deal of its time shaking its head sadly and sighing, does its very best to explain what it has learned of the world through reading and observing other people. My emotion totally disregards it. I'm the center of the universe, fer chrissakes! How can things not go the way I want them to?

How can everyone else on the planet with 1/10th my intelligence (ego, anyone?) do things with total, effortless ease, get it right the first time and, most insulting of all to my emotions, not think a thing of it. They wouldn't write instruction manuals, or give careful, full-color illustrated "Insert Tab A into Slot B" directions for assembling a cardboard box if anyone else but me could not understand them.

And once something...anything...triggers my frustration response, all bets are off. My mind totally shuts down to the point where I would be hard pressed to tell you my own name. All rational thought ceases.

I know full well that frustration is a part of life...I'd imagine even you experience it from time to time. But everyone else seems have a built in mental safety switch which I do not have, and which kicks in, allowing them, after perhaps a moment or two of distress, to recover, calm down, and get on with their lives. I can best describe my reaction to frustration by comparing it to pictures of the World Trade Center collapse. Total, utter, instantaneous destruction with no hope for anyone's survival.

I find it ironic that my totally disproportionate emotional reaction to things which trigger my frustration is directly related to my totally disproportionate sense of my own importance. Because I am the center of the universe, how can this be happening to me? How can I be so stupid? My frustration quickly, like the falling towers, dissolves into rage and self loathing so intense it often, and sincerely, frightens me.

It just struck me that this blog may be an attempt by my logical side to subtly convince my emotions not to over-react so strongly. Unfortunately, it's never worked before, and I wouldn't hold my breath on its working this time, either.

New entries are posted by 10 a.m. Central time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please come back...and bring a friend. Your comments are always welcome. And you're invited to stop by my website at http://www.doriengrey.com, or drop me a note at doriengrey@att.net.