Post  #2486.   My late night Zenny encounter with a very sickly bug.     First off, I don't really understand what Zen is, just know it when I see it. Second, it was very late at night when you're closer to God. By that I mean even if you've little or no religion, after you have said your prayers and fallen asleep, only God can protect you (and only if He wants to, keep that in mind.) What's gotten into you with all this God stuff?. Nothing out of the ordinary. It's just that at 1:59am in the bathroom and you see a Ladybug in very bad shape, you don't squash her just because she's in your space and because you can. There is no point in going to sleep having just committed a senseless murder. Earlier in the day when things were noisier and your thoughts and emotions were quite a bit more diffuse, you wouldn't have given it a second thought: splat, flush. Anyway, this is the third or fourth Ladybug-looking insect that I've seen in the house recently, and they've been all-black and moving at the tiniest creeping speed. They look like woeful survivors of some awful industrial or nuclear accident. I almost stepped on her, so I used a Kleenex to pick her up and set her on the edge of the bathtub. Well, that probably made the situation, whatever it was, worse. She wandered around aimlessly on what must have seemed like some weird cold porcelain desert, so I tried to put her back where she was to begin with. But I dropped her and was certain that I killed her since the fall had to be 200 feet in human scale. I watched for a few minutes until she finally began to move a bit. Good .. only stunned.

This whole episode had consumed about 10-25 minutes of potential sleep time and having done what I considered my best, I left the bug to work the rest of it out on her own. For readers who may have done something dorky like this themselves, no, I didn't supply a piece of lettuce. Doing so would have meant going all the way upstairs, turning on lights all the way and opening up a bag of prepared salad. I'm sure she'll be fine. Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 1:05 AM

Post  #2485.   I know this is blogdeath.      Boring people by relating dreams, that is, but this one was unusual. Yeah, yeah. They all are. No really. See, I was one of the Bug People, and we had landed on earth after learning there was a gathering of the enemy on this planet. Sure enough, our enormous force ran across an even larger army of enemy soldiers in a fortified encampment. Shelling and sporadic engagements ensued. Then, we discovered that the Rocks on this planet were made of materials which enhanced our weapons by orders of magnitude. Almost immediately, our stronger weapons began to cut down the enemy in huge numbers. Before long, the barrage stopped and we looked over a battlefield littered with the innumerable smoking corpses of our enemy.

As we drew closer, I realized what the dream was all about. All those bodies, ripped to pieces, smoking, burning, stinking .. They were Shrimp People! Yummm!!
Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 10:40 PM

Post  #2484.   True.     In the middle of an epic time-wasting session on the computer, I decided to take a look at the glossiest place on earth on Google Maps. Selecting at random 42nd Street in Manhattan, my cursor landed a block off, on 41st. No problem, I zoomed in with Street View. Here is my very first street view, the glossiest place on earth:


Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 10:14 PM

Post  #2483.   What should have been a lazy summer afternoon.      I've just been watching Bonfire of the Vanities, the part where Tom Hanks runs the gamut of our justice system. As they close the jail cell door behind him, the scene begins to glow red - is the Hell? I had that same thought today ..

Woke up from a below-average nap, below average because it was hot and my bed is uncomfortable. Also, there's my "growth," a non-metastasizing (I hope) cancerous thing on my back, the almost completely unreachable part. Lately, and this is why I have an appointment in three weeks to have it removed finally, it bleeds. Mainly within five minutes of taking aspirin or when my blood pressure rises upon leaving the bed. Somehow, I've gotten into a routine of managing this ghastly event, thanks to a huge supply of paper towels and some other contrivances. Oh, and by "bleed," I don't mean like your finger or an ordinary cut. I mean a gusher that only stops by applying steady pressure for a few minutes, not an easy feat with the most remote part of the body. Anyway, I had it at least contained enough to try and take a pee which I believe was what woke me up in the first place. That was going well enough, one hand crooked around to my back, applying pressure as much as was awkardly possible, the other hand, well, peeing, when suddenly the smoke detector went off.

No fire, not even smoke. Maybe the thing reacts to blood. The scene became totally Rainman at that point, I'm sorry to have to admit, because as it turned out this was a fucking TEN-YEAR SMOKE DETECTOR which is not designed to have the battery removed, as I discovered but not before completely demolishing my bedroom. It's still in there, beeping like mad under a huge stack of dirty clothes, sheets and blankets. About the time I got it covered up, the phone rang.

If this was a movie, I would have answered it and moved on to Scene Three: a friend, the sister-in-law, a boiler room? Any one of these people could have participated with me in an bizarre and manic telephone conversation which might have been interesting to relate later. But these days I rarely answer the phone at all after finally realizing that when you don't people just figure you're not home and move on to the next person to annoy. Big deal. Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 9:29 PM