December despair.
Dark, drizzly, dreary days.
Damned doubts.
Depression.
Doom.
Death.
That is my happy sestet for the day. A friend suggested that I write a sonnet about the word "Frowsy" without actually using the word, but I'm just not up for it. Bitching about December using only "D" words is much easier. I really need to come up with a decent topic to write about in this blog. Maybe I'll start taking the suggestions (lame as they are) from the "Post-A-Day" groups. To keep it interesting, I guess, I could also use a "Word-A-Day" system and try to work the daily words into the daily post topics.
Something to try in January.
What might be more interesting is to do both of the above exercises while also trying to keep a coherent narrative going.
Yeah. That was like an "Aha!" moment right there. Beginning next week, I shall endeavor to use strange words and boring topics to create a work of fictional genius.
Need some character names, though.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Saturday, December 24, 2011
a holiday poem
 |
| Man. I'm hungry. |
sitting in bed and composing a poem.
My bathrobe is hung by its hook on a door.
Underwear's strewn on the unvacuumed floor.
One cat is curled up at the foot of the bed.
With visions, no doubt, of dead bugs in her head.
The other cat's downstairs, most likely asleep.
No worries, no job, no appointments to keep.
And I, in my nakedness, type like a fiend
writing this verse on my laptop (wide-screened).
The TV is off, but the air cleaner hums.
What's chaffing my ass? Oh - some old cracker crumbs.
There's no tree in the house and no presents to wrap.
I'm an old single guy and I don't do that crap.
I don't leave out cookies and milk for the elf.
I don't even have any snacks for myself.
The crackers, you see, were from sometime last week.
Since then, I've had nothing but salads (all Greek).
There's canned food downstairs. Of that I am sure,
but, for me at least, kidney beans hold no allure.
That being the case, there's not much to say.
I guess I'll just starve for the rest of the day.
Tomorrow, however, I'm having lasagna.
I'd offer to share, but you might get some on ya.
So have a nice Christmas, alone or with friends,
and think of me starved, as this poem portends,
but do not get misty-eyed. Nay! Do not weep!
I'll surfeit tomorrow. Tonight, I shall sleep.
TWD
Monday, December 12, 2011
who am i?
I've been watching Breaking Bad for the last week or so (I've become completely addicted to it) and one of the scenes made me start to think hard enough that my mind wandered and I had to pause the program. In the scene, Jesse Pinkman is in a post-rehab meeting; and the meeting leader says something along the lines of, "You don't come here to be a better person. You come here to learn to accept the person that you are."
As I said, it sort of made me think. As far as I know, I accept the person that I am - but I'm not overly sure that I really know myself. I tried coming up with one-size-fits-all adjectives to describe me honestly, but none of them really fit. This exercise, of course, depressed the hell out of me and has caused me to wonder what the answer is to today's blog entry: Who am I?
More specifically, what defines me? What is it that I like doing? What don't I like doing? If money were no object, what would I do with myself? What talents, if any, do I possess and are any of them worth pursuing from an "I like this" point of view?
So I've been thinking about this on and off for the last few days and decided I'd try to figure it out - in bits an pieces - with this little FN blog. Not all at once, of course; and I'm not going to turn this thing into a tell-all (that's what my original blog was becoming, which is why it is no longer open to the public). As I think of it, though, I'll try to hash things out.
I really like photography. I do. I'm not that great at it (and I do wonder if getting my stupid eyes checked would help), but I honestly enjoy it. The feeling that I get when a really good photo comes straight out of my camera is one that I can't describe. I want to show it to the world, hang it on my wall, and - perhaps most importantly (and most maddeningly) - do it again. When I see a great picture taken by someone else, I get jealous. Not necessarily because I didn't take it, but because if I take the same picture - even if it's just as good or better - it still isn't mine. Somebody else did it first, and anything I get after that is just copying. Screwed up, huh? I might still love the shot that I get, but on some level I'm annoyed with myself because I didn't think of it first.
In other news, I saw a suggested topic from one of those "Post-A-Day" blogs today that went something like, "How do you decide on your New Year's resolutions?"
It's an interesting question in an odd sort of way. How do you decide which resolutions about which to be resolute? Is that the question? Or is it, "Why do you keep making the same promises to yourself, year after year, whether publicly or not, when you never succeed in keeping those promises?" I mean, if I wanted to set a goal for myself and be relatively assured that I'd make that goal, it'd be something along the lines of, "I resolve that I will not wear soiled underwear during the entire 2012 calendar year."
Now, this might be a no-brainer to some of you; but try keeping that goal when you're camping for a few days in the middle of nowhere. It's not a completely safe goal if that's the case - but I could keep it by just going commando. So there's that.
Those other goals, though (and I do make them - or at least think about them - every frigging year), have almost become pointless. I mean, if there's this "resolution" that you want to make (and keep), then why haven't you made it and kept it previously? Furthermore, most of the "big" resolutions are always negative. As in, "I will not smoke this year," or "I will not drink this year," or "I will not eat chocolate this year" (that last one, by the way, is one of those goals that I could fly through). And, with those negative goals, what does the person who makes them always do on December 31 - the day before those negative resolutions go into effect?
You got it. Mr. Resolve goes out of his way to binge like hell on the very thing(s) that he's determined to give up. And he wonders why he's already failed to live up to his expectations by about January 3rd.
Why not make some positive resolutions? "I will put $5 into a cookie jar every week." That of course, doesn't limit you from taking $3 out of the cookie jar every week...
Anyway, I don't know what makes me think I'll be able to do/not do something next year that I've been not doing/doing for long enough that I think I have to start/stop doing it; but I still make the damned resolutions every year, and I'm sure I'll do it again in a few weeks.
This time, though, I think I'll just make my resolutions on a weekly basis. Who knows? Maybe I can keep one going for 52 consecutive weeks.
TWD
As I said, it sort of made me think. As far as I know, I accept the person that I am - but I'm not overly sure that I really know myself. I tried coming up with one-size-fits-all adjectives to describe me honestly, but none of them really fit. This exercise, of course, depressed the hell out of me and has caused me to wonder what the answer is to today's blog entry: Who am I?
More specifically, what defines me? What is it that I like doing? What don't I like doing? If money were no object, what would I do with myself? What talents, if any, do I possess and are any of them worth pursuing from an "I like this" point of view?
So I've been thinking about this on and off for the last few days and decided I'd try to figure it out - in bits an pieces - with this little FN blog. Not all at once, of course; and I'm not going to turn this thing into a tell-all (that's what my original blog was becoming, which is why it is no longer open to the public). As I think of it, though, I'll try to hash things out.
I really like photography. I do. I'm not that great at it (and I do wonder if getting my stupid eyes checked would help), but I honestly enjoy it. The feeling that I get when a really good photo comes straight out of my camera is one that I can't describe. I want to show it to the world, hang it on my wall, and - perhaps most importantly (and most maddeningly) - do it again. When I see a great picture taken by someone else, I get jealous. Not necessarily because I didn't take it, but because if I take the same picture - even if it's just as good or better - it still isn't mine. Somebody else did it first, and anything I get after that is just copying. Screwed up, huh? I might still love the shot that I get, but on some level I'm annoyed with myself because I didn't think of it first.
In other news, I saw a suggested topic from one of those "Post-A-Day" blogs today that went something like, "How do you decide on your New Year's resolutions?"
It's an interesting question in an odd sort of way. How do you decide which resolutions about which to be resolute? Is that the question? Or is it, "Why do you keep making the same promises to yourself, year after year, whether publicly or not, when you never succeed in keeping those promises?" I mean, if I wanted to set a goal for myself and be relatively assured that I'd make that goal, it'd be something along the lines of, "I resolve that I will not wear soiled underwear during the entire 2012 calendar year."
Now, this might be a no-brainer to some of you; but try keeping that goal when you're camping for a few days in the middle of nowhere. It's not a completely safe goal if that's the case - but I could keep it by just going commando. So there's that.
Those other goals, though (and I do make them - or at least think about them - every frigging year), have almost become pointless. I mean, if there's this "resolution" that you want to make (and keep), then why haven't you made it and kept it previously? Furthermore, most of the "big" resolutions are always negative. As in, "I will not smoke this year," or "I will not drink this year," or "I will not eat chocolate this year" (that last one, by the way, is one of those goals that I could fly through). And, with those negative goals, what does the person who makes them always do on December 31 - the day before those negative resolutions go into effect?
You got it. Mr. Resolve goes out of his way to binge like hell on the very thing(s) that he's determined to give up. And he wonders why he's already failed to live up to his expectations by about January 3rd.
Why not make some positive resolutions? "I will put $5 into a cookie jar every week." That of course, doesn't limit you from taking $3 out of the cookie jar every week...
Anyway, I don't know what makes me think I'll be able to do/not do something next year that I've been not doing/doing for long enough that I think I have to start/stop doing it; but I still make the damned resolutions every year, and I'm sure I'll do it again in a few weeks.
This time, though, I think I'll just make my resolutions on a weekly basis. Who knows? Maybe I can keep one going for 52 consecutive weeks.
TWD
Thursday, December 8, 2011
yeah. i'm mr. fix-it
Got home this evening and decided to tackle the knocking noise in the automatic litter box that's in my bedroom. It's a pretty remarkable device as litter boxes go. I can see the lot of you rolling your eyes at me, but it's true. Basically, this is a large round bowl with a conveyor belt sticking into one side of it at an angle. A small electric motor spins the entire bowl about once every hour, and the poop and solidified chunks of pee are carried up the ramp and dropped into a plastic bag. No muss, no fuss. Really. See for yourself:
So the problem has been with the small motor that rotates the bowl. It's a tiny little thing about the diameter of a fifty-cent piece; and, for whatever reason, it has developed a very slight knocking. Unfortunately, that slight knocking is passed from the motor and amplified through a series of four gears (the last one being the bowl itself) and has become rather loud.
After spending 30 minutes ripping the entire setup apart, I managed to get to the motor, which was caked with litter dust (no surprise there), but otherwise seemed to be completely clean. I'd been hoping that a good cleaning would be all it needed, but after blowing it off and putting some magic oil on the gear, I was unable to stop the knocking completely. It's a bit better, but still annoying.
So I moved on to Plan B, which consists of putting the stupid thing on a timer so that it only comes on for 1 out of every 8 hours.
After solving that problem - at least at much as I'm going to solve it without buying a new motor - I turned my attention to my old laptop, which continues to irritate me because I'm easy to irritate and because it isn't perfect. So far I've tried to install about 5 different flavors of Linux on it (with limited success); but, since Linux can't play Netflix, I really need for it to be running Windows.
It's a fairly old laptop. I think I bought it in around 2004. For some reason, its wireless hardware is not recognized by Windows 7. Though I've managed to install Win7 on it twice, I have not yet been able to get the wireless up. To anyone smirking and feeling all superior, YES, I've looked for drivers all over the place. It's not the software, it's the hardware. Eventually, I may pull the wifi stuff out of a busted HP that's sitting on my desk and see if it'll work with the Dell.
At any rate, Win7 isn't going to work. So tonight I put Windows Vista (Ultimate) on it. Everything seems to work fine, but it may be a bit too much for the processor. When I tried watching Netflix at full-screen, the video was choppy. This may have been because AVG (anti-virus) was hogging all of the cpu cycles or it may not have been. Whatever. Tomorrow night, I'll put WinXP on it and see if it's happy with that.
Stupid Netflix. If they'd just come up with a player for Linux, I wouldn't have to deal with all this crap.
TWD
So the problem has been with the small motor that rotates the bowl. It's a tiny little thing about the diameter of a fifty-cent piece; and, for whatever reason, it has developed a very slight knocking. Unfortunately, that slight knocking is passed from the motor and amplified through a series of four gears (the last one being the bowl itself) and has become rather loud.
After spending 30 minutes ripping the entire setup apart, I managed to get to the motor, which was caked with litter dust (no surprise there), but otherwise seemed to be completely clean. I'd been hoping that a good cleaning would be all it needed, but after blowing it off and putting some magic oil on the gear, I was unable to stop the knocking completely. It's a bit better, but still annoying.
So I moved on to Plan B, which consists of putting the stupid thing on a timer so that it only comes on for 1 out of every 8 hours.
After solving that problem - at least at much as I'm going to solve it without buying a new motor - I turned my attention to my old laptop, which continues to irritate me because I'm easy to irritate and because it isn't perfect. So far I've tried to install about 5 different flavors of Linux on it (with limited success); but, since Linux can't play Netflix, I really need for it to be running Windows.
It's a fairly old laptop. I think I bought it in around 2004. For some reason, its wireless hardware is not recognized by Windows 7. Though I've managed to install Win7 on it twice, I have not yet been able to get the wireless up. To anyone smirking and feeling all superior, YES, I've looked for drivers all over the place. It's not the software, it's the hardware. Eventually, I may pull the wifi stuff out of a busted HP that's sitting on my desk and see if it'll work with the Dell.
At any rate, Win7 isn't going to work. So tonight I put Windows Vista (Ultimate) on it. Everything seems to work fine, but it may be a bit too much for the processor. When I tried watching Netflix at full-screen, the video was choppy. This may have been because AVG (anti-virus) was hogging all of the cpu cycles or it may not have been. Whatever. Tomorrow night, I'll put WinXP on it and see if it's happy with that.
Stupid Netflix. If they'd just come up with a player for Linux, I wouldn't have to deal with all this crap.
 |
| Took this at Chattanooga last season and have no place to use it. Might as well throw it in here. |
TWD
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
random thoughts
The cats are annoyed with each other again. I had to put an extra litter box downstairs because they've divided the house. Boo stays upstairs except to eat. Bo stays downstairs except to wake me up to eat. If history is any indication, this will last for about two weeks. It's really much more fun when both of them just follow me around.
The temperature was in the mid-60's when I went to work this morning. It's in the mid-30's now. There's just no way to dress for this weather, much less for success. I've got a space heater running in my room tonight. Can't bring myself to move the actual thermostat above 57, and I'm going to be asleep soon anyway.
I don't like Newt Gingrich. I mean, I really don't like Newt Gingrich. I liked him once in about 1993. It lasted about two days. Then I learned to despise him. It was not a difficult lesson.
The Animaniacs. Freakazoid. Pinky and the Brain. Earthworm Jim. Rescue Rovers. The Tick. Saturday morning cartoons were never as good when I was little as they were in the 1990's. And they've never gotten back to the level of the WB since then.
Playing tuba in a couple of caroling gigs on Friday and Sunday. Looking forward to it. Should probably polish the tuba before I take it out in public, though. Sounds like a good project for tomorrow night. I hope I still know how to play the thing - and how to read bass clef.
It's December 7th. Pearl Harbor Day. Also the day that my favorite cat died in 2001.
Got a new project at work today. It's a good thing, because I'll be able to put it on my year-end A&D (accomplishments and crap that must be discussed with the big boss). It's also good because it's one of those projects that looks really impressive and complex, but actually is rather mundane and simple. My favorite kind of project.
I went shopping at Target tonight because I needed some varied things. Mayonnaise. Bread. Graphite powder to lubricate a little box. Socks. While there, I decided to see if there were any old PS2 games that I could pick up for cheap. Hey, I don't have to have the latest games. Turns out that I'm a total antique. They don't even have any PS2 games. It's all PS3 and X-box now. Screw it. I'll just play NHL 2004 for a few more years.
The cost to register my car has decreased by $2.67 in the last year. I'm fairly certain that the resale value has taken a much bigger hit than that. Life isn't fair.
TWD
The temperature was in the mid-60's when I went to work this morning. It's in the mid-30's now. There's just no way to dress for this weather, much less for success. I've got a space heater running in my room tonight. Can't bring myself to move the actual thermostat above 57, and I'm going to be asleep soon anyway.
I don't like Newt Gingrich. I mean, I really don't like Newt Gingrich. I liked him once in about 1993. It lasted about two days. Then I learned to despise him. It was not a difficult lesson.
The Animaniacs. Freakazoid. Pinky and the Brain. Earthworm Jim. Rescue Rovers. The Tick. Saturday morning cartoons were never as good when I was little as they were in the 1990's. And they've never gotten back to the level of the WB since then.
Playing tuba in a couple of caroling gigs on Friday and Sunday. Looking forward to it. Should probably polish the tuba before I take it out in public, though. Sounds like a good project for tomorrow night. I hope I still know how to play the thing - and how to read bass clef.
It's December 7th. Pearl Harbor Day. Also the day that my favorite cat died in 2001.
Got a new project at work today. It's a good thing, because I'll be able to put it on my year-end A&D (accomplishments and crap that must be discussed with the big boss). It's also good because it's one of those projects that looks really impressive and complex, but actually is rather mundane and simple. My favorite kind of project.
I went shopping at Target tonight because I needed some varied things. Mayonnaise. Bread. Graphite powder to lubricate a little box. Socks. While there, I decided to see if there were any old PS2 games that I could pick up for cheap. Hey, I don't have to have the latest games. Turns out that I'm a total antique. They don't even have any PS2 games. It's all PS3 and X-box now. Screw it. I'll just play NHL 2004 for a few more years.
The cost to register my car has decreased by $2.67 in the last year. I'm fairly certain that the resale value has taken a much bigger hit than that. Life isn't fair.
TWD
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
moonshine
Whoa. Almost forgot to get an update in today.
I didn't realize it was the 6th today until I checked my bank balances (it's a habit) and noticed that I'd been paid. That was a nice surprise to start the day, particularly given the fact that I got my car registration renewal in the mail yesterday.
I know I've mentioned how much I hate December from a financial standpoint before....
Worked from home today - did a couple of ad hoc reports and a bit of directory shuffling (part of my group's December housekeeping project). Around 5:30, I headed down to the Salvation Army to catalog some more of the band's music before rehearsal. Slowly working my way through 5 file cabinets of the stuff. I've got three drawers left to catalog and then I can devote some serious time to building the online library that will help us keep track of everything. My hope is that I can use the week after Christmas to do that (I'm on vacation that week).
So. Moonshine.
I've been fascinated by the evil libation for a long time. Not sure if it started before or after we moved from Vermont to South Carolina in 1980, though I'm sure that the move added to whatever interest I had previously because the town that we moved to (Travelers Rest, SC) is right on the edge of SC's "Dark Corner" - a corner of the state that has a long (and continuing) history of moonshine. I know that I was a junior in high school (1982) the first time I actually tasted the stuff. My friend Jon Smith produced a couple of mason jars of it one evening when I was at his house - probably playing Pole Position on his Colecovision. We had Pole Position marathons that year, during which we'd play the game for about 6 hours at a time. I think that, were I to sit down at a game console that had Pole Position today, I'd still be able to roll the score about 12 times.
But back to the shine. Jon had two different types of it - both manufactured by someone in his extended family - and I quickly learned a very important fact about moonshine. It comes in (basically) two flavors. One tastes like kerosene and the other tastes like sugar water. Sure, you can add stuff to it to make it pretend to have other flavors. Some people that I know today add peaches to it. Some run it through burned wood chips to mellow it and give it a taste somewhat like bourbon (actually very good). I've been told that running it through charcoal is not uncommon. But - bottom line - it's either going to taste like kerosene or it's going to taste like sugar water. And the most important lesson I learned hanging out with Jon - a lesson that has been relearned a few times since then - it this: Stay the hell away from the sugar water moonshine. It might taste harmless, but it can wipe out a weekend really quickly. The kerosene stuff, by virtue of its taste, forces you to drink it in extreme moderation (not that it can't also wipe out a weekend if you're really determined).
The inebriation factor, however, is not what intrigues me about shine. Fact is, I can go to a liquor store and get whiskey or bourbon that tastes a lot better for a lot cheaper (and there's that whole "it's legal" argument, too). Moonshine, though, has so much history and adventure associated with it. It's been around since before the US was a country. It was the direct cause of one of the first major challenges to George Washington's presidency. It was/is one of the defining characteristics of an entire class of people (hillbillies, mountain men...call them what you will). It's distribution system gave rise to the most-watched sporting events in America today (NASCAR). It can be (and has been) argued that it is a symbol of the "true American spirit:" that attitude that says, "I am free and the government will not infringe upon my freedom."
So it's got all that going for it. The adventure. The mystique. The romance. It's also got chemistry, and that's the thing about it that really mesmerizes me. The idea that some illiterate hick in the middle of a forest can figure out the distillation process - coupled with the fact that I don't understand it at all - really draws me to the whole operation. How did somebody figure out that sugar, corn, water and yeast could be heated and cooled in such as way that the end result would be liquor? And how do those illiterate hicks in the woods manage to control the temperatures and timing to such an extent that they not only make liquor, but also make damned good liquor (in many cases)?
So I want to make some. Note that I didn't say, "I want to be a moonshiner." I don't want to run some illicit still out in the middle of the Cohutta Wilderness, distill 500 gallons of shine, lead the revenuers on a 100-mile chase at midnight, and sell mason jars of "Tom;s Tonsil Tickler" for $5 a pop. I just want to understand the distillation process by - hell, I don't know - by making a jar of the stuff in my bathtub.
I had a co-worker a few years ago who was licensed to do just that (apparently, you can pay a fee and legally make x-gallons per year for personal consumption), but I don't want to go to all that trouble (and probably end up on a terrorist watch list) just to experiment. Maybe I'll just google the process and see what I can come up with.
I'm obviously not the only person who is enchanted by the whole moonshine experience, by the way. The thing that made me think of it tonight was the occurrence of my stumbling upon a new series on The Discovery Channel: The Moonshiners.
TWD
I didn't realize it was the 6th today until I checked my bank balances (it's a habit) and noticed that I'd been paid. That was a nice surprise to start the day, particularly given the fact that I got my car registration renewal in the mail yesterday.
I know I've mentioned how much I hate December from a financial standpoint before....
Worked from home today - did a couple of ad hoc reports and a bit of directory shuffling (part of my group's December housekeeping project). Around 5:30, I headed down to the Salvation Army to catalog some more of the band's music before rehearsal. Slowly working my way through 5 file cabinets of the stuff. I've got three drawers left to catalog and then I can devote some serious time to building the online library that will help us keep track of everything. My hope is that I can use the week after Christmas to do that (I'm on vacation that week).
So. Moonshine.
I've been fascinated by the evil libation for a long time. Not sure if it started before or after we moved from Vermont to South Carolina in 1980, though I'm sure that the move added to whatever interest I had previously because the town that we moved to (Travelers Rest, SC) is right on the edge of SC's "Dark Corner" - a corner of the state that has a long (and continuing) history of moonshine. I know that I was a junior in high school (1982) the first time I actually tasted the stuff. My friend Jon Smith produced a couple of mason jars of it one evening when I was at his house - probably playing Pole Position on his Colecovision. We had Pole Position marathons that year, during which we'd play the game for about 6 hours at a time. I think that, were I to sit down at a game console that had Pole Position today, I'd still be able to roll the score about 12 times.
But back to the shine. Jon had two different types of it - both manufactured by someone in his extended family - and I quickly learned a very important fact about moonshine. It comes in (basically) two flavors. One tastes like kerosene and the other tastes like sugar water. Sure, you can add stuff to it to make it pretend to have other flavors. Some people that I know today add peaches to it. Some run it through burned wood chips to mellow it and give it a taste somewhat like bourbon (actually very good). I've been told that running it through charcoal is not uncommon. But - bottom line - it's either going to taste like kerosene or it's going to taste like sugar water. And the most important lesson I learned hanging out with Jon - a lesson that has been relearned a few times since then - it this: Stay the hell away from the sugar water moonshine. It might taste harmless, but it can wipe out a weekend really quickly. The kerosene stuff, by virtue of its taste, forces you to drink it in extreme moderation (not that it can't also wipe out a weekend if you're really determined).
The inebriation factor, however, is not what intrigues me about shine. Fact is, I can go to a liquor store and get whiskey or bourbon that tastes a lot better for a lot cheaper (and there's that whole "it's legal" argument, too). Moonshine, though, has so much history and adventure associated with it. It's been around since before the US was a country. It was the direct cause of one of the first major challenges to George Washington's presidency. It was/is one of the defining characteristics of an entire class of people (hillbillies, mountain men...call them what you will). It's distribution system gave rise to the most-watched sporting events in America today (NASCAR). It can be (and has been) argued that it is a symbol of the "true American spirit:" that attitude that says, "I am free and the government will not infringe upon my freedom."
So it's got all that going for it. The adventure. The mystique. The romance. It's also got chemistry, and that's the thing about it that really mesmerizes me. The idea that some illiterate hick in the middle of a forest can figure out the distillation process - coupled with the fact that I don't understand it at all - really draws me to the whole operation. How did somebody figure out that sugar, corn, water and yeast could be heated and cooled in such as way that the end result would be liquor? And how do those illiterate hicks in the woods manage to control the temperatures and timing to such an extent that they not only make liquor, but also make damned good liquor (in many cases)?
So I want to make some. Note that I didn't say, "I want to be a moonshiner." I don't want to run some illicit still out in the middle of the Cohutta Wilderness, distill 500 gallons of shine, lead the revenuers on a 100-mile chase at midnight, and sell mason jars of "Tom;s Tonsil Tickler" for $5 a pop. I just want to understand the distillation process by - hell, I don't know - by making a jar of the stuff in my bathtub.
I had a co-worker a few years ago who was licensed to do just that (apparently, you can pay a fee and legally make x-gallons per year for personal consumption), but I don't want to go to all that trouble (and probably end up on a terrorist watch list) just to experiment. Maybe I'll just google the process and see what I can come up with.
I'm obviously not the only person who is enchanted by the whole moonshine experience, by the way. The thing that made me think of it tonight was the occurrence of my stumbling upon a new series on The Discovery Channel: The Moonshiners.
TWD
Monday, December 5, 2011
well...that was interesting
I had a lucid dream last night.
I'm fairly certain that this was a first for me, though I've tried to have lucidity on and off for years. Basically, a lucid dream is one that, while you're having it, you know that you're dreaming. The theory goes that, if you're aware that you're dreaming while you're dreaming, then you can make just about anything happen in your dream. You can try to solve problems or experience things that you want to experience (like flying, etc)....or you can tell yourself to knock it off.
I was able to do the last two things on that list last night, and I've got to admit that it was pretty cool. Here's what happened:
I went to bed fairly early last night and woke up at about 1:00 this morning. Had a pee and watched a bit of television before attempting to go back to sleep around 2:00. At some point between then and 6:00, I began dreaming that I was house-sitting for Cy and "T" at their large Victorian house. I was also charged with taking care of their dog, a black lab named Snots.
Please note that Cy and "T" have neither a black lab nor a large Victorian house. Those two facts figure into things later.
In my dream, I awoke from napping at their house and realized that I had no idea where Snots was. I couldn't remember having seen him for a week, and Cy and "T" were due home the following day. Alarmed by this, I got out of bed (in my dream) and attempted to find my way from one end of the house to the other, but got hopelessly lost and kept winding up back in the bed where I had been sleeping. So I went back to sleep (in my dream) and - some time later - woke up (still in the dream) and once again tried to find my way to the other end of the house. This happened several times and I got more agitated each time, but I finally ended up outside the house and I began frantically to look for Snots. It was drizzly and cold outside and the ground was slick. This didn't feel good at all, as I was dressed only in a bathrobe - no shoes.
I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but I ended up standing on the top of a curved metal building (think of a knight's helmet the size of a conference center) and I was having a great deal of trouble getting down, which is not surprising because the only way down was along a curved strip of metal, much like a slide on a playground; and did I mention that I was now carrying a large silver sousaphone? Don't ask me where THAT came from - probably from the same place that the shirt, pants, and shoes that I was now wearing did. In the drizzle, all of the clothes were soaking wet.
But I had to find the dog, and I knew that I couldn't drop the sousaphone, and the only way off of this building was to slide down the slide (standing up), so I very carefully did so. And I made it all the way to the ground and started walking back towards the house. Unfortunately, there was a lot of water on the ground between the house and me, and footing was treacherous.
And at just about that point in the dream, I thought to myself, "Wait a minute. Where'd this sousaphone come from? And where'd these clothes come from? And since when do Cy and "T" live in a house like that and have a black lab named Snots? This has got to be a dream. I'm freaking dreaming here!"
Right on the heels of that thought, I came up with two more: If I were dreaming, I could change the color of the sousaphone from silver to red; and I should be able to just sort of water-ski back to the house if I wanted to.
Guess what? The formerly silver sousaphone turned into a red fiberglass one, and I managed to propel my way along the stream in front of me with no effort at all. It was fun.
I was still relatively frazzled, however. Sort of a dream-hangover from the previous attempts to find Snots and not knowing how to get out of the house and being stuck on the roof, I guess. So I told myself to wake up and determined that the best way to do that would be to shake my head - which I did, and which I was doing when I woke up in my own bed.
I took a few minutes for me to realize what had happened. Basically, I was in disbelief that I'd actually been consciously aware of my subconscious; but when I came to terms with it, I thought it was SO cool.
I still do.
Hope I can do it again soon.
TWD
I'm fairly certain that this was a first for me, though I've tried to have lucidity on and off for years. Basically, a lucid dream is one that, while you're having it, you know that you're dreaming. The theory goes that, if you're aware that you're dreaming while you're dreaming, then you can make just about anything happen in your dream. You can try to solve problems or experience things that you want to experience (like flying, etc)....or you can tell yourself to knock it off.
I was able to do the last two things on that list last night, and I've got to admit that it was pretty cool. Here's what happened:
I went to bed fairly early last night and woke up at about 1:00 this morning. Had a pee and watched a bit of television before attempting to go back to sleep around 2:00. At some point between then and 6:00, I began dreaming that I was house-sitting for Cy and "T" at their large Victorian house. I was also charged with taking care of their dog, a black lab named Snots.
Please note that Cy and "T" have neither a black lab nor a large Victorian house. Those two facts figure into things later.
In my dream, I awoke from napping at their house and realized that I had no idea where Snots was. I couldn't remember having seen him for a week, and Cy and "T" were due home the following day. Alarmed by this, I got out of bed (in my dream) and attempted to find my way from one end of the house to the other, but got hopelessly lost and kept winding up back in the bed where I had been sleeping. So I went back to sleep (in my dream) and - some time later - woke up (still in the dream) and once again tried to find my way to the other end of the house. This happened several times and I got more agitated each time, but I finally ended up outside the house and I began frantically to look for Snots. It was drizzly and cold outside and the ground was slick. This didn't feel good at all, as I was dressed only in a bathrobe - no shoes.
I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but I ended up standing on the top of a curved metal building (think of a knight's helmet the size of a conference center) and I was having a great deal of trouble getting down, which is not surprising because the only way down was along a curved strip of metal, much like a slide on a playground; and did I mention that I was now carrying a large silver sousaphone? Don't ask me where THAT came from - probably from the same place that the shirt, pants, and shoes that I was now wearing did. In the drizzle, all of the clothes were soaking wet.
But I had to find the dog, and I knew that I couldn't drop the sousaphone, and the only way off of this building was to slide down the slide (standing up), so I very carefully did so. And I made it all the way to the ground and started walking back towards the house. Unfortunately, there was a lot of water on the ground between the house and me, and footing was treacherous.
And at just about that point in the dream, I thought to myself, "Wait a minute. Where'd this sousaphone come from? And where'd these clothes come from? And since when do Cy and "T" live in a house like that and have a black lab named Snots? This has got to be a dream. I'm freaking dreaming here!"
Right on the heels of that thought, I came up with two more: If I were dreaming, I could change the color of the sousaphone from silver to red; and I should be able to just sort of water-ski back to the house if I wanted to.
Guess what? The formerly silver sousaphone turned into a red fiberglass one, and I managed to propel my way along the stream in front of me with no effort at all. It was fun.
I was still relatively frazzled, however. Sort of a dream-hangover from the previous attempts to find Snots and not knowing how to get out of the house and being stuck on the roof, I guess. So I told myself to wake up and determined that the best way to do that would be to shake my head - which I did, and which I was doing when I woke up in my own bed.
I took a few minutes for me to realize what had happened. Basically, I was in disbelief that I'd actually been consciously aware of my subconscious; but when I came to terms with it, I thought it was SO cool.
I still do.
Hope I can do it again soon.
TWD
Friday, December 2, 2011
first things first
The definition of FROWSY
2: having a slovenly or uncared-for appearance <a couple of frowsy stuffed chairs — R. M. Williams>
Had to get the definition out of the way right off the bat. Frowsy. It's an interesting word, that. Meaning both "bad smell" and "bad look." With that sort of adaptability, I thought it only right and proper that I should apply it to noise, which - as far as I know - has neither olfactory nor visual properties (short of looking at noise in an oscilloscope or whatever that noise-watching-scope is called, but let's not pick at that particular bundle of nits).
If you're reading this page on or around December 2, 2011, then there's a good chance that you were directed here from my other blog, which will be more-or-less locked down in the near future. It was never intended to be available to more than my family and a small circle of friends. I was somewhat off-put when I discovered that it had been indexed by various search engines and was being accessed by a handful of folks who visited my website (The Unofficial Furman Football Page). I was not, like, freaking out about it or anything; but, as I said, that blog was never intended to be public. I'll continue to update it (as always because - at least mainly because - it helps me remember what I was doing during a given year), but its public visibility will hopefully be coming to an abrupt end.
This little electronic scratch-pad, however, is open to whomever gets bored enough to look at it. I envision it as being a place for me to post photos, thoughts, rants, lectures, notes...generally any old smelly thing that drips out of my head. If you've been reading my other blog as a way to keep up with what I'm doing, then this blog - which I shall now refer to as "FN" - should fill that informational gap for you (for example, I'm currently at work, I'm bored, and the possible red-kettle caroling gig that I was scheduled to do this evening has been cancelled). If you've read the other blog more as a way to gauge my mental stability, well....FN won't be quite so personally revealing.
Another difference between this blog and that blog is that I'd love to get some feedback (in the form of comments) on FN. Sure, I accepted comments on the other blog, but I wouldn't say I encouraged them. FN is different. The more you comment (hey, tell your friends!), the more potential there will be for me to see something to write about - and, when you get right down to it, this is really all about writing. I like to do it. I just don't always know where to start.
So then. If you've been following my drivel for a while, welcome to the next phase. It will hopefully be a bit more diverse and a lot more frequently-updated than you've gotten used to. If you've never been subjected to my literary purges, then welcome aboard. I hope you enjoy yourself.
Just remember those two golden rules:
• The cats were here first. • If it's in the fridge, it's fair game.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)