Tues., June 22, 1999"All life is a concatenation of ephemeralities."
- Alfred KahnHad my first eye exam in almost 5 years today. Ordered my first new pair of glasses since 1992. My first trifocals.
This afternoon I wrote letters to the major TV networks, urging them to put a little extra effort into their fall line-ups so that I'll feel better about this $200 expense.I'd write Mother Nature urging her to clean up her act a bit, too, but the post office always returns those letters to me after stamping 'em "Undeliverable."
Just my luck that I live in a cosmos with an unlisted phone number and no forwarding address....Really wish I had that phone number today, quite apart from my need for a better looking universe. Then I could complain about the two new corpses I found in my back yard this morning.
The first was that of an ant that came tumbling out of my watering can as I filled the birdbath. It wasn't quite dead when I first saw it, but that soon changed. Was it murder? Suicide? An accident? I wish I knew....
The second body came later. It was that of a bee or yellow jacket which had either died at the bottom of my back steps or been killed elsewhere and dumped there. Was it meant as a warning? Had I interrupted the murderers as they were attempting to dispose of the remains - in the watering can that I keep nearby, perhaps?
Whatever the exact truth may be, the general truth clearly underlines my ongoing need to relocate to a safer reality....Which reminds me - the weekend death count on Ohio roadways actually came to 9 and not the 7 first reported. Despite this, the newscasts didn't mention it last night. No network anchor opened his show live from a bloody Ohio highway. No screaming headlines announcing these deaths could be found anywhere on the front page of my newspaper. Indeed, no mention could be found of the fact anywhere in its 46 pages. If my Yahoo news page hadn't told me of these tragic events, I never would have known about them. And even then, Yahoo didn't tell me much - just the raw facts, and I had to make a special effort to find those.
Amazing....
Guess I don't really have to feel bad, huh?On a brighter note, yesterday wasn't just the Summer Solstice. It was also my birdbath's 2nd birthday. Yay! And even though it didn't get a so much as a card from a Tivoli fountain, it seems to have had a day as good as any other.
Wish I could display such equanimity in the face of aging. All the same, I think I managed to hide from it my concern about its not having started to walk on its own by 18 months....On an even brighter note: I think I've now completely adjusted to the fact that the Sun is never directly overhead in Ohio - not even on the Summer Solstice. This has allowed me to move on to trying to come to grips with the fact that the Sun doesn't reach its zenith here at noon.
With a sunrise at 6:00 am and a sunset at 9:12 pm, it actually reaches its zenith no sooner than 1:36 in the afternoon. An hour of that delay is the result of our adoption of so-called daylight savings time, but still, 12:36 is not noon, as my teachers vehemently reminded me each and every time I was 36 minutes late for a mid-day class.
Maybe the cosmos needs a system of bells to help it along....Of greater concern to me today: The increasing prevalence of mass freeloading.
The latest incident occurred just last Saturday. I'm still more than a bit steamed about it, too, despite my attempt to shrug it off.
What happened was that I had just gotten to the mall and was heading to the automatic doors. The doors opened automatically, just as they're supposed to, as my body entered the Cone of Ultra-sonic Door Opening Rays emanating from the little black box mounted above the entrance. I successfully entered the mall and was just about to break into a big smile of accomplishment when, incredibly, a woman followed me in without waiting for the doors to close so that she could open them by bouncing these ultra-sonic rays off her own body mass.
I was stunned, my smile stillborn. I wanted to run up to her and ask if she really thought her own flesh and blood were too insubstantial to open the door without her having to, in effect, ride free thanks to the massive sacrifices of those who came before her.
I wanted to, but I was too flabbergasted to move before Security swatted my ass along.
The work ethic never seems so dead as when I encounter yet one more person too lazy to expend the little bit of time and effort required to bounce ultra-sonic rays for themselves.
How ever in the world would this woman have survived back in pioneer days when even the weakest were expected to handle the rigors of actual doorknobs??Damn, but I have to cut this short. I forgot to order screens and storm windows for my trifocals!
You'd think that my having had to already go back once in order to palm enough pupil dilation drops to feed my addiction for another few years would have taught me to write things down, but no - I'm too stupid stupid STUPID!
Bad enough that I had to resort to beer to blur my vision and make my eyes big in time for my lunch date. The prospect of having to cut and frame my own aluminum screening is simply more than a mind already inflamed by mass freeloading can take!
Back To A Simpler Past Home To Review All Those Other Entries
Which Prove Just How Desperate
My Need For New Glasses Really Is
(All Material ©1999 by Dan Birtcher simply because he has nothing better to do with his time)
Answer To Yesterday's Trivia Question
If the Sun exploded and the pieces came flying at the Earth at close to the speed of light, it would take about 8.5 minutes for the first naughty bits to make their way into Madonna's bed.
(Actual arrival time in your area may vary, depending upon the strictness with which your state's law officers enforce your local speed limits.)
Today's Trivia Question
Scientists recently declared that young children should NOT sleep in rooms with nightlights. Why?
