Face Time With Your Feet

Feets, don't fail me now. Strong feet are feets of strength.

Diabetics need to show their feet to the doctor each visit. Old Sugarfoot.

I don't get the idea of the foot fetish. But that's why it's a fetish, right? Because not everyone gets it. If you do get it, you can barely believe no one gets it.

Women's feet, men's feet, anyone's feet ... to me they're just feet, nothing very appealing. Except to walk on or to soak in water.

High Speed Chase

I happened to catch a few minutes last night of one of those high speed freeway chases that California is notorious for. They had it on Fox News, and it was a woman in a U-Haul truck, leading the police on a chase for over two hours.

The news channel cut off the chase report before it was over with, but today, looking around on the internet, I was able to see how it ended. She ran out of gas. Then she jumped from the truck and ran up the street. It looks like she tried to get into a car parked there but the driver drove away. A police officer, running about twice her speed, jumped her, and it looked like a painful take down.

They cuffed her, of course, and lead her away. There was nothing in the back of the truck, so it appears she just wanted the truck, and to get away.

There has to be something wrong with you to get into one of these chase situations. You're not going to get away. The helicopter above should be your first clue. They're going to get you. Just pull over and maybe things will be easier for you.

American Idol

I didn't see it last night but we recorded it in case I ever want to.

I saw it tonight. I'm really tiring of the audition routine. It is getting a mind numbing sameness to it that is nearly putting me to sleep. But actually I'm a little tired anyway, since I only got seven hours sleep last night.

There was the usual array, the really nasty singers. The few who are pretty good. The cute, the quirky, the bizarre, like the guy sticking his tongue out and looking ... I hate to say because it's mean.

It's hard even to get up the energy to describe it. But thankfully they're going to get to Hollywood week next week. Hoping for some good drama, devastation, really. I have a real fondness for people's dreams being crushed and devastation. That's only half true, kind of jesting. But definitely drama is better than people cruising happily through. Look, only one actually wins, so that means a lot of people have to lose. (You can come in in the top eight or nine and still get a contract though.)

Tragedy

When tragedy strikes, it's a bad thing. But the bright side of most bad things is that there is a bright side.

Tragedy can be very satisfying, actually. Hard to believe but true.

One, you're immediately a victim. To tell your story of victimhood is satisfying. You're suddenly more interesting now that you're known for something. Beyond that, and I know this is the realm of alternate cliches, you can let it be known that you're put upon. To make others guilty and aware of your tragedy, if they had a hand in causing it, can be a very pleasant outcome.

Our favorite Shakespeare works are the tragedies. We like a fitting ending, and death as an ending is sometimes so much better than living, because it wraps up every loose end. They may not live happily ever really, but dead, they're definitely gone.

For myself, I don't like tragedy at all. But were it to happen, I would pose myself against the gray sky and look as heroic as possible. The act there is the stiff upper lip. And it'd help to have a scarf blowing randomly in the wind. That's a nice look.

Sweet Transvestite

I was looking at some of the Rocky Horror Picture Show videos at You Tube last night. I think some of the ones that are posted, actual clips from the movie, come and go, probably being removed periodically because of obvious copyright issues.

I don't really need to see the clips at You Tube, but maybe I just want to hear a song. I already have the film on DVD and on VHS, so it's right there if I want. Just lazy or not in the mood to haul it out and mess with the DVD. (One thing I hate about DVDs, all the garbage the film companies load them up with, including menus that take a while to get to, and how they freeze you out from advancing to the menu. I don't know that the RHPS DVD does this, it's just a general gripe.)

Well, there are plenty of videos on the subject at You Tube, including some that I discovered that are just people lip syncing to the songs, or dancing to the songs, or acting them out in some way. There was one of a guy at a function -- that's what I seem to recall -- doing "Sweet Transvestite," and you can hear all kinds of children laughing. Seriously, unless I'm seriously off. ... Yeah, here it is. His blurb says, "I performed this in front of like 200 kids, ranging in age from 10-21."

Then one of them was this kid, kind of cute and sullen looking, says he's bored, lip syncing to the song in a very lazy way. It could've been more interesting, but it was interesting. I watched the whole thing. Which leads me to think, how could you, the home producer, do that with your one camera and limited resources? You could surely do some fun things with little tiny props on the table.

Old Samsonite Logo

Here's an old logo for Samsonite that you don't see very often. Named for the Bible's Samson, it speaks to Samsonite's durability and strength.

Coffee

I drank a whole pot of coffee this morning. That's extremely rare for me. Lately I've been drinking one cup from the pot, then no more. I put it in a carafe and forget about it, is what usually happens. Or I don't want the extra trouble of going to the bathroom all day and so I purposely avoid it, especially after noon.

But this day, lazing around, the whole thing. Which is two and a half big cups.

I have a Bodum (I think it's called) French press coffee pot. (I hope the word "French" isn't bad, now that we are finally rid of that rubbish called George W. Bush. But just to be on the safe side, let me call it a Bodum Freedom press coffee pot.)

Anyway, the Freedom press method of making coffee is to put the coffee in the pot, then mix water in with it, and after it's swirled around for four minutes, to press down a filter, leaving the grounds at the bottom. It is the richest, darkest, most potent coffee I've ever had. And it's spoiled me about regular coffee, to the point that I can barely drink it.

But what to do with all the grounds. At least with a regular coffee pot you've got the grounds in a filter and can more neatly toss it in the trash. With loose grounds I don't know what to do with them, so I've been flinging them outside. But I hope it doesn't pollute the earth too much.

By the way, I'm grinding the coffee right before making it. Eight O'Clock Coffee, so it's powerful stuff, nothing missing. I would go on in my description, but it's time to go to the bathroom again.

My Animatronic Dog

I was looking under my dog's chin. It's funny, in a way, the way God has put animals together. You look at a stuffed animal and there are all the normal places that stitches have to be to hold together the assorted pieces making up the thing. You figure it'd be hard to put together a stuffed toy as one piece without stitches. Especially if you were trying to mass produce them. We're all impressed by those guys who carve a realistic boat inside a bottle, or the Chinese, who make boxes within boxes or carve wooden puzzles that somehow retract down into infinity as a single piece, kind of like a Slinky but whittled out.

When it comes to actual animals, though, somehow they're all of one piece, starting out small, yet being what they always will be, then growing in proportions up to their final form. They have fur, skin, bones, the usual array of intestines, a brain, their nature, their natural instincts, then on top of all that (and this seems to me where it'd get dicey) the stuff they're bred with from man's history, like what is particular to breeds, ability to hunt, to dig, to point, to rescue, etc. It's too much for my non-scientific mind.

I'm admiring my dog and always amazed at the combination of physical characteristics, psychological characteristics, instinctual characteristics, and all the things of her particular behavior, what we have taught and what has been conditioned because of our ongoing relationship. It's crazy in a way that all these things could make the dog that sits before me. It's like fiction. But it is obviously real, as real as anything else.

OK, I'm looking under the chin, where stitches might very normally be were she a stuffed animal. And there really is a kind of joining there, not stitches, but something movable and edging by nature into the upper chest. It's not totally smooth and non-distinct. So I tell her, I can see your stitches. And as to her behavior, it's animatronic.

Exercise

I went to my workout club tonight. They've been selling more memberships, that's obvious, because I'm continually seeing people there for the first time. Mostly no one I know. I figure, January, New Year's resolutions, that's going to happen every year. But the place is getting busy.

There was one other day I went there and all the main workout machines, the running machines, were busy. Then last night it happened again, so I sat and looked at a newspaper. I'm not in any big hurry. It only took a few minutes and someone vacated one.

Tonight there was an instructor there, a fitness guru, leading his students in their paces. And it looked especially strenuous, a lot of running, fast. They were sweating like crazy, but looking very fit. I was going at it on my own, but nothing quite the same pace. It did make me sweat though.

I like to get in a mile in eight minutes, then whatever else on top of that is gravy. But I guess I was taking it easy. I was getting close to the eight minutes, in the sixes somewhere, and I realized I probably wouldn't make it. I was listening to the soundtrack of Slumdog Millionaire and just loping along. In the sixes I decided to press it and figured I could do the eight minute mile afterall, but then I just missed it, and accomplished the mile at around 8:03.

Dan Quayle's Wife

Dan Quayle's wife was at the inauguration yesterday. I had not thought of her for years. She was one I couldn't think of the name of. (Also Walter Mondale's wife, but I don't believe I ever knew her.)

I didn't look it up, but I was stewing about it. Wondering. What was Dan Quayle's wife's name? Let me think!!

Then today it suddenly came to me, Marilyn.*


*P.S. I hope that's right!