I love watching the Travel Network, but I can never seem to find it on TV. It's always moving around the channels!

All I want is for them to smile,
A happy moment that lasts a while,
Even if it's because I gaffe,
Just so long as it makes them laugh.

English Lit teacher: The lesson for today...(on and on)
loud student: blah blah blah
English Lit teacher: Young man, silence please.
loud student: blah blah blah
English Lit teacher: I've asked nicely...
loud student: blah blah blah
English Lit teacher: (leaning over the young man) Who says nothing
is prepared for everything. A word of yours allowed to drop may be seized
in some unknown system of wheels, and your utter destruction
be compassed in its complex machinery.
loud student: What's that supposed to mean?
English Lit teacher: SHUT-UP!
loud student: (cricket noise in silence)
English Lit teacher: (to himself) Thanks, Victor.

Today Strummer...

I picked you up from school. You ran into my arms. You said goodbye to a friend. I offered you either of two kinds of gum. You chose the mint gum, but quickly it was stuck to the outside of car. You asked if we could go to the gas station so you could show me what kind of gum it was that you liked. You showed me. It was pretty much the same kind of gum I had given you. We saw Twinkies. We bought them. Then we went to go see if we could see some Iguanas. We saw one and thought that was going to be it, then, out of nowhere, somehow, you spotted one in a tree. That was neat, the iguana perched in the branches. I brought you to your Abuela's. You went to the front door and rang the bell, over and over and over. I pulled your hand down and laughed. I told you to stop, not to break the bell. Ms.Chief got her hold over you and you reached up again to ring the bell. I pulled it down and made a cup with one of my hands over the bell. You laughed heartily at the challenge I presented to you. You tried to pull my hand away from the bell. Then you flattened your hand and snuck it under my cup and rang the bell. Victory! Then we went inside. I watched you ride your tricycle around the back porch with more ferocious control than any professional could have done. My heart raced when I saw you head straight for the wall at such a speed, only to see you peel off in a turn at precisely the last moment before crash! I gave you a kiss and said I had to leave. You hugged me and said, "I love you." I said I love you too and told you to be careful. You told me to be carefuller. As I closed the door behind me, I heard the grinding pebble crunch of the plastic wheels on the tile and looked out to the back porch. I saw a flash of a red shirt go by, peddling with all its might. I'll never lose that image. The door closed. I trust you peeled off before crash!

I'm here to formulate the really important questions....like if you had a delicious piece of tasty sweet gum and chewed on it for a while until it had scarcely any flavour left in it's resin and you decided you wanted to enjoy another piece of that same gum, would you lose some of the flavour of that second peice if you left the first piece in your mouth and chewed on both peices at the same time? Would the first piece steal some of the flavour? Would the second piece's flavour be distributed to your taste buds in lesser degrees because of the presence of the first piece? This is all for some other person of science to study and determine and find out. Me, I just formulate the questions, that's why I'm here.

HOW TO LOSE WAIT

I work on the fifth floor of an office building. Recently, some of my fellow employees started up a fitness trend to take the stairs instead of the elevator.

I didn't bite.

Then about two weeks ago, as I was ready to leave work, I went to the elevators and noticed one of them was out of service and being worked on by a repairman. When I got downstairs and outside, I saw his repair vehicle in front of the building. On the side of the van was a sign that read, "Finist Elavater Repare."

So far I've lost 3 lbs. taking the stairs.

I never let black cats cross my path, but trains always, ALWAYS do.

That's gotta mean something.

Occasionally, I'll look for a 4-leaf clover.

I don't like learning....I like KNOWING.

isolation

There was a man who was newly in charge of preparations for the Meeting between the elders and the people. This was always the most important Meeting of the year, of it the Agreement would come. It was when the people could tell the elders they needed and when the elders could tell the people they would provide. It was a great tradition. Not only did it serve useful as a means for making sure both would be happy and secure for the time to come, but also as a ritual to bring the sides together and show they were different but one. Much was to be ready for the circumstance and celebration. The preparation man who was newly in charge was very much aware of this, having been witness to other men who were in charge of this doing. Now it was his turn and he should make it better than it ever was. He had an amount of time and he set forth to make use of it. He thought of the many options of how it could be done.

He researched all the preparations from Meetings before. He at whole became familiar and intimate with that all had ever been done for the preparations of every Meeting which at every historically took place. He scoured every document and record of the preparations that had been heretofore accepted with heart and beloved by sentient and conversly those that were shunned by scandal and repaired by shame. His was the work of no other preparation man before him and this was the Meeting of no other time hence. He was sure of it.

Secretly, ken to no one, he made commands for and from every known and unknown (not without some private and unannounced beguiling) maker of Meeting supplements. These commands were sent far and over. They came reposed and scattered and their replys were studied and piqued. Unheard word was sent for scourelous manufacturers to make their stock avail. Finally, at a time allowed by such magnanamous and thorough diligence, the preparations were scaled. This was indeed going to be the most magnificent Meeting that has ever to the world occured, thought the preparation man and he made his way to the place where the Meeting was to occur.

When he arrived he crumbled to the ground, crushed under the weight of what he rendered and what he bore. The Meeting was over. Since there were seemingly no preparations, there was confusions, since there was confusions, there was no harmony, no ritual, no Agreement. The peoples were scattered randomly on the field, cross at each other's throat, showing a broughten harm that threatened and ended. There were to be no more Meetings, no more Agreements. The congruity was finished. Multitudes of men were shown no preparations. They fell upon each other. It was over.

The preparation man was the only one left. He looked upon the end.

The preparation man knew they had to be buried. His mind went at once to work on how it should be done. He thought of the many options of how.....

TRUE
Ranger: We Have Our Missing Boy ScoutBy ESTES THOMPSON Associated Press Writer Posted March 20 2007, 12:25 PM EDT

McGRADY, N.C. -- Park rangers escorted a weak and dehydrated 12-year-old Boy Scout out of the rugged North Carolina mountains on Tuesday, four days after he wandered away from his troop's camp site.Michael Auberry was brought the final distance by SUV, then carried into a ranger station, where a medical team and his parents met him."We have our missing Boy Scout," said a jubilant National Park Service spokeswoman Tina White.White said she didn't have exact details about where or how Michael was found, but officials first received word shortly before 11 a.m. that he was spotted within a mile and a half of the camp site."Probably the most important thing we heard on the radio is A-1, which means he is in good condition," she said.The radio communication from the search team that found Michael set off a celebration among leaders of several Scout troops waiting for news about the boy. "A lot of tears, a lot of hugs," White said, and members of Michael's church joined hands to pray at the staging area."This shows that when everybody works together, good things happen," said associate minister Susan Norman Vickers of Christ United Methodist Church. "We just believed that he was going to be found."Michael vanished after lunch with his fellow Scouts and troop leaders on Saturday. His father said the adults and the other boys on the trip told him Michael had slept late but nothing appeared to have been wrong."He was in good spirits," Auberry said. "He ate lunch, chatting with the boys. He was walking around with I think some Pringles and a mess kit. The next moment, sounds like a blink of the eye, he was gone."Authorities said the boy probably wandered into the woods to explore.



WHAT SHOULD HAVE FOLLOWED....

Parents arrested for child abuse
By ESTES THOMPSON Associated Press Writer Posted March 20 2007, 12:51 PM EDT

McGRADY, N.C. -- The parents of a twelve year old boy who was found earlier today after wandering the woods for four days have been arrested for child abuse and taken for booking to the county police station.

The parents of Michael Auberry, Gene Auberry, 41, and Michelle Auberry, 38, were reunited with the lost boy shortly after noon today and were joyous and tearful. "I didn't know if we'd ever see our son alive again," Michelle commented, "we want to thank everyone here at the reconnaissance camp who helped find our boy!"

The happy and thankful mood turned for the worse a short while later however. After a brief onsite medical examination showed the boy needed nothing more than ample amounts of cold water, he was turned over to the custody of his awaiting parents. Once clear from the emcampment though, loud slapping sounds and screams were heard from the direction of the family's car.

Authorities rushed to the car and found Gene on one knee with the boy sprawled out over his other knee. The boy's pants had been pulled down and his father was beating his bare flesh with a stick. Simultaneously, the child's mother was pulling his hair and slapping his face.

Both parents could be heard mumbling and grunting unmentionable phrases, deriding the boy's excursion.

It took several police officers, some rescue workers and a number of onlookers to get the parents away from their son, "It was nearly impossible to get that switch away from Gene, he was pissed man," said Homer Jones, a neighbor and fellow father of a boy scout.

Susan Vickers of Christ United Methodist Church, on scene to offer moral support, took the parents point of view to heart, "I can't blame them actually, if I were in their shoes I'da beat the shit outta that kid too, who does he think he is...Daniel Boone?"

The parents will be arraigned in Barstow County Family Court later this week. The child is in the temporary custody of the county's family services division.

The difference between 99% and 100% is only 1% but far greater than the difference between 1% and 99%, even though that difference is 98%

I/E: diff: 99%/100% > diff: 1%/99%
1% > 98% ??? yes...

...why? Because the difference between 99% and 100% is the difference between imperfection and perfection, and is rarely, if ever, acheived.


THEREFORE: A filing tray with one contract looks far emptier than an empty filing tray.

It's not a fact, but it's the TRUTH.

And crawls on still.

....and the worm, at one moment ago thinking itself no more,
crawled on.

the RED LIGHT REVOLUTION is coming

Everything (he kept saying) is something it isn't. And everybody is always somewhere else. Maybe it was the city, being in the city, that made him feel how queer everything was and that it was something else. Maybe (he kept thinking) it was the names of the things. The names were tex and frequently koid. Or they were flex and oid or they were duroid (sand) or flexsan (duro), but everything was glass (but not quite glass) and the thing that you touched (the surface, washable, crease-resistant) was rubber, only it wasn't quite rubber and you didn't quite touch it but almost. The wall, which was glass but turned out on being approached not to be a wall, it was something else, it was an opening or doorway--and the doorway (through which he saw himself approaching) turned out to be something else, it was a wall. And what he had eaten not having agreed with him.He was in a washable house, but he wasn't sure. Now about those rats, he kept saying to himself. He meant the rats that the Professor had driven crazy by forcing them to deal with problems which were beyond the scope of rats, the insoluble problems. He meant the rats that had been trained to jump at the square card with the circle in the middle, and the card (because it was something it wasn't) would give way and let the rat into a place where the food was, but then one day it would be a trick played on the rat, and the card would be changed, and the rat would jump but the card wouldn't give way, and it was an impossible situation (for a rat) and the rat would go insane and into its eyes would come the unspeakably bright imploring look of the frustrated, and after the convulsions were over and the frantic racing around, then the passive stage would set in and the willingness to let anything be done to it, even if it was something else.He didn't know which door (or wall) or opening in the house to jump at, to get through, because one was an opening that wasn't a door (it was a void, or kid) and the other was a wall that wasn't an opening, it was a sanitary cupboard of the same color. He caught a glimpse of his eyes staring into his eyes, in the and in them was the expression he had seen in the picture of the rats--weary after convulsions and the frantic racing around, when they were willing and did not mind having anything done to them. More and more (he kept saying) I am confronted by a problem which is incapable of solution (for this time even if he chose the right door, there would be no food behind it) and that is what madness is, and things seeming different from what they are. He heard, in the house where he was, in the city to which he had gone (as toward a door which might, or might not, give way), a noise--not a loud noise but more of a low prefabricated humming. It came from a place in the base of the wall (or stat) where the flue carrying the filterable air was, and not far from the Minipiano, which was made of the same material nailbrushes are made of, and which was under the stairs. "This, too, has been tested," she said, pointing, but not at it, "and found viable." It wasn't a loud noise, he kept thinking, sorry that he had seen his eyes, even though it was through his own eyes that he had seen them.First will come the convulsions (he said), then the exhaustion, then the willingness to let anything be done. '`And you better believe it will be."All his life he had been confronted by situations which were incapable of being solved, and there was a deliberateness behind all this, behind this changing of the card (or door), because they would always wait until you had learned to jump at the certain card (or door)--the one with the circle--and then they would change it on you. There have been so many doors changed on me, he said, in the last twenty years, but it is now becoming clear that it is an impossible situation, and the question is whether to jump again, even though they ruffle you in the rump with a blast of air--to make you jump. He wished he wasn't standing by the Minipiano. First they would teach you the prayers and the Psalms, and that would be the right door(the one with the circle) and the long sweet words with the holy sound, and that would be the one to jump at to get where the food was. Then one day you jumped and it didn't give way, so that all you got was the bump on the nose, and the first bewilderment, the first young bewilderment.

I don't know whether to tell her about the door they substituted or not, he said, the one with the equation on it and the picture of the amoeba reproducing itself by division. Or the one with the photostatic copy of the check for thirty-two dollars and fifty cents. But the jumping was so long ago, although the bump is . . . how those old wounds hurt! Being crazy this way wouldn't be so bad if only, if only. If only when you put your foot forward to take a step, the ground wouldn't come up to meet your foot the way it does. And the same way in the street (only I may never get back to the street unless I jump at the right door), the curb coming up to meet your foot, anticipating ever so delicately the weight of the body, which is somewhere else. "We could take your name," she said, "and send it to you." And it wouldn't be so bad if only you could read a sentence all the way through without jumping (your eye) to something else on the same page; and then (he kept thinking) there was that man out in Jersey, the one who started to chop his trees down, one by one, the man who began talking about how he would take his house to pieces, brick by brick, because he faced a problem incapable of solution, probably, so he began to hack at the trees in the yard, began to pluck with trembling fingers at the bricks in the house. Even if a house is not washable, it is worth taking down. It is not till later that the exhaustion sets in.But it is inevitable that they will keep changing the doors on you, he said, because that is what they are for; and the thing is to get used to it and not let it unsettle the mind. But that would mean not jumping, and you can't. Nobody can not jump. There will be no not-jumping. Among rats, perhaps, but among people never. Everybody has to keep jumping at a door (the one with the circle on it) because that is the way everybody is, especially some people. You wouldn't want me, standing here, to tell you, would you, about my friend the poet (deceased) who said, "My heart has followed all my days something I cannot name"? (It had the circle on it.) And like many poets, although few so beloved, he is gone. It killed him, the jumping. First, of course, there were the preliminary bouts, the convulsions, and the calm and the willingness.

I remember the door with the picture of the girl on it (only it was spring), her arms outstretched in loveliness, her dress (it was the one with the circle on it) uncaught, beginning the slow, clear, blinding cascade-and I guess we would all like to try that door again, for it seemed like the way and for a while it was the way, the door would open and you would go through winged and exalted (like any rat) and the food would be there, the way the Professor had it arranged, everything O.K., and you had chosen the right door for the world was young. The time they changed that door on me, my nose bled for a hundred hours--how do you like that, Madam? Or would you prefer to show me further through this so strange house, or you could take my name and send it to me, for although my heart has followed all my days something I cannot name, I am tired of the jumping and I do not know which way to go, Madam, and I am not even sure that I am not tired beyond the endurance of man (rat, if you will) and have taken leave of sanity. What are you following these days, old friend, after your recovery from the last bump? What is the name, or is it something you cannot name? The rats have a name for it by this time, perhaps, but I don't know what they call it. I call it and it comes in sheets, something like insulating board, unattainable and ugli-proof.

And there was the man out in Jersey, because I keep thinking about his terrible necessity and the passion and trouble he had gone to all those years in the indescribable abundance of a householder's detail, building the estate and the planting of the trees and in spring the lawn-dressing and in fall the bulbs for the spring burgeoning, and the watering of the grass on the long light evenings in summer and the gravel for the driveway (all had to be thought out, planned) and the decorative borders, probably, the perennials and the bug spray, and the building of the house from plans of the architect, first the sills, then the studs, then the full corn in the ear, the floors laid on the floor timbers, smoothed, and then the carpets upon the smooth floors and the curtains and the rods therefor. And then, almost without warning, he would be jumping at the same old door and it wouldn't give: they had changed it on him, making life no longer supportable under the elms in the elm shade, under the maples in the maple shade."Here you have the maximum of openness in a small room."It was impossible to say (maybe it was the city) what made him feel the way he did, and I am not the only one either, he kept thinking--ask any doctor if I am. The doctors, they know how many there are, they even know where the trouble is only they don't like to tell you about the prefrontal lobe because that means making a hole in your skull and removing the work of centuries. It took so long coming, this lobe, so many, many years. (Is it something you read in the paper, perhaps?) And now, the strain being so great, the door having been changed by the Professor once too often . . . but it only means a whiff of ether, a few deft strokes, and the higher animal becomes a little easier in his mind and more like the lower one. From now on, you see, that's the way it will be, the ones with the small prefrontal lobes will win because the other ones are hurt too much by this incessant bumping. They can stand just so much, em, Doctor? (And what is that, pray, that you have in your hand?) Still, you never can tell, em, Madam?He crossed (carefully) the room, the thick carpet under him softly, and went toward the door carefully, which was glass and he could see himself in it, and which, at his approach, opened to allow him to pass through; and beyond he half expected to find one of the old doors that he had known, perhaps the one with the circle, the one with the girl her arms outstretched in loveliness and beauty before him. But he saw instead a moving stairway, and descended in light (he kept thinking) to the street below and to the other people. As he stepped off, the ground came up slightly, to meet his foot.

The Unobserved Observer

The Ungiven Secrets of the Observed

Ungiven

The Observer

Unobserved

(tremolo) It's time to play in the delightful kitchen.

The Meaning of Meaninglessness

"That sounds like a scream and nothing sounds like a scream but a scream"

- Boston Blackie