Posts in the “personal” category

I took this photo of the Badlands in South Dakota on my drive up to Alaska in May, 2007. It’s still one of the most unique things I have seen.

Growing up, I remember that Dick Allen was considered a controversial figure, but I had no idea why, I was too young to comprehend those things. He passed away today, December 7, 2020, and the following text is from a story he tells in this video. The background is that the story takes place in 1963, in Little Rock, Arkansas, and he was a minor league baseball player:

They send me to Little Rock on a 24-hour recall, and left me there by myself. And when I say “myself,” I mean the only black player. Me being from Pennsylvania, I thought there was no racial tension, but geez, going to the soda machine to get a Pepsi out of the soda machine, and a cop car pulled in with the lights and there he is with a gun in my face. Hell, they’re trying to kill me right here. In America.

I come home, I think it was only a nickel or dime, and I put it in the pay phone. “Mama, I want to come home.”

You listen to me, boy, you hear me?

Back in May, 2007, on my drive up to Alaska, I stopped at Mt. Rushmore. One of my former co-workers found this little genie figurine that I/we started referring to as Little Buddha. When I held it up to take this photo, some guy that was also visiting there got really upset with me, and his wife had to calm him down.

At some point over the last few months I realized that nobody in the fitness center wears a mask, so I haven’t exercised significantly since September. So I was pleasantly surprised to see my heart rate get down into the low 50s, even without that exercise.

I woke up at 3am and made some notes about a long dream sequence, which seems to correspond to the low in my little dipper there.

In a related note, if I die from a lack of exercise, this is a result of Covid-19: People don’t wear masks, so I don’t go to exercise in the fitness center. I can walk outside, but that’s nowhere near the level of exertion I can get on an elliptical trainer. (And you can’t really bike-ride safely in this area.)

Season 2, Episode 8 of Fringe, titled, August, has to be one of the Top 10 episodes of that series.

“She seduced me with baked goods.”

~ Walter talking about Fauxlivia (alternate universe Olivia) on Fringe

Back in 2018 I couldn’t find any decals I liked, so I bought some black chalkboard paint and painted the old computer I use as a Linux laptop. With a piece of chalk, I can now have a different logo on it whenever I want a new one. :)

If someday the Moon calls you by your name don’t be surprised, because every night I tell her about you.

~ Shahrazad al-Khalij

As I wrote about in this Facebook post, two nights ago I dreamed about a man dying and gently singing a song as he was dying, which led me to listen to The Impossible Dream, from Man of La Mancha, by Brian Stokes Mitchell. Here’s another terrific performance of that same song, as he sings with an orchestra and choir.

A friend’s young child has been having some serious health problems recently, which led me to this song titled, I Won’t Let Go, by Rascal Flatts:

I will stand by you
I will help you through
When you’ve done all you can do
If you can’t cope
I will dry your eyes
I will fight your fight
I will hold you tight
And I won’t let go

I had forgotten about Rascal Flatts. The last time I thought about them was probably 2010 or earlier. I was sitting at the bar area of a Tumbleweed restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, and the bartender was trying to tell me how good they were.

[In a Season 1 episode of Fringe, Olivia has been thinking that she’s losing her mind because she’s having dreams where she sees people being murdered, and when she later wakes up and goes to her job as an FBI agent, she finds that they have been murdered. But now they’ve found a potential suspect named Nick Lane, which leads to Olivia and Peter sitting in the lobby of a mental hospital, waiting to meet a doctor there.]

PETER: You know, until this year I’d never actually been to a mental hospital.

OLIVIA: [Bent over, her head in her hands, looking at the floor] Learn to like new things.

PETER: Maybe I never gave it enough thought ... what Walter went through. I only ever saw it through my own perspective. His being crazy was something that he did to us. To my mother and me. It wasn’t something that happened to him.

OLIVIA: Well, you were young.

PETER: Well I’m not young any more. [long pause, looking off into the distance] It must be a terrible thing to not be able to trust your own mind. [sighs]

OLIVIA: Yeah ... [rubs her hands together, then puts her head in her hands again]

Wow, how embarrassing. It has taken me *years* to realize that when I run on all fours in a dream that I’m actually a dog (or maybe some other four-legged animal).

I finally realized it this morning when I was running like that and came up to a group of human friends, and one said something like, “Hey, look over there, it’s your new friend.”

When I looked in the direction he was pointing I saw a group of people who didn’t look familiar, and a black dog. Just then the dog came running at me. When it got to me it started licking and biting me and I thought, “This dog is crazy, why doesn’t someone get it off of me,” when everything suddenly made sense.

(A Facebook post from November 14, 2014)

Johnny Cash reads the Gettysburg Address.

This speech on SNL last night by Dave Chappelle was very good, very inspiring.

One on one to talk to you
Like film stars they get close to you

You’ve mirrored his appeal

He wants you so
He wants to be beside you

Then you pass by
Giving him the other side of you
Like the mystics do
So that every time he moves
He moves for you

Soul light can always see
The meeting of true love and she
This silent night and I
I guess a lonely mind might see
I’ve seen love on the screen
I’ve seen a screen goddess and me
Oh ...

How often this
How often this power of you

And so
I must confess
Whatever I see
I’m meant to be there with you
With you

I heard portions of this song while watching a Fringe episode last night, and thought it sounded really beautiful. From The Friends of Mr. Cairo, by Jon & Vangelis.

Here’s a photo of the building I grew up in, in Chicago, Illinois. (Thanks, Google Maps.)

Here’s a side view of the building I grew up in, in Chicago, Illinois. (Thanks, Google Maps.) I used to throw rubber baseballs and tennis balls against that garage for hours, which is probably one reason my shoulder was screwed up before I left high school.

Something in your eyes, makes me want to lose myself,
Makes me want to lose myself, in your arms.

There’s something in your voice, makes my heart beat fast.
Hope this feeling lasts, the rest of my life.

If you knew how lonely my life has been,
And how low I’ve felt so long.

If you knew how I wanted someone to come along,
And change my life the way you’ve done.

Feels like home to me,
Feels like home to me,
Feels like I’m all the way back where I come from.

Feels like home to me,
Feels like home to me,
Feels like I’m all the way back where I belong.

A song named, Feels Like Home, sung by Bonnie Raitt. A good Valentine’s Day song. :)

A crazy thing about mast cell disease is that you can be doing perfectly fine, all systems normal, and then you eat something wrong and two hours later you wish you were dead, or at least not conscious.

Every day I take a little blue pill.

Two of them, actually.

And they’re extremely helpful.

Later this week I’ll be giving birth to septuplets. Kidney stones, that is. Seven of them.

They’re going to be surgically removed, and whatever chemicals are in these little blue pills they gave me helps to reduce the spasms caused by the stones being stuck in places where they shouldn’t be.