Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Bone In
Where did I find that preposterous pair of words?
A local restaurant's menu.
Used outside the venue of a menu, however, it offers infinite promise.
I have been DULL lately. Baloney with mayo on white bread dull. Fifteen year old 4-door sedan dull. Masturbation from quarter-century old mental images dull. J.G. Wentworth TV commercial dull.
I can't apologize, it has been necessary. Changes are coming, and soon, and preparations must be made. Preparation, unless the impending events are life or death, is dull. Breaking a lifetime habit of packratting is dull, unless you're inside my head. I'm still nerdy as hell about it. Items I think some other ratter may delight in finding in my "take this" pile are wrapped in plastic to keep dew, rain and dust away. Though the items in the pile are replenished daily, the pile itself remains a constant size. One scrapper wants the metal junk I'm tossing. Another grabs boxes of books I don't want. Still another takes a box of old clothes. An old green computer monitor, working perfectly but unwanted and labeled, vanishes, along with a bag of old 5 1/4" floppy drives. I had some harebrained idea once of checking all the mysterious disks I've somehow acquired. Perhaps to seek out knowledge about to be tossed away. Perhaps out of boredom. Perhaps out of Nerdiness. Whatever the reason, they must go. I remember finally that I was going to salvage motors out of some of them. I have plenty more. What madness infected me that I thought I needed 25 tiny electric motors? Did you know you can attach axles and tiny wheels to a 3 1/2 inch floppy drive, rig up a battery, and it will run around your floor? I hope you don't care. If you do, send me the postage and I'll mail you ten drives. You can have your own demolition derby. You might want to hurry. They'll be in someone else's possession by the weekend.
I was going through a dresser in the room I'd given my father when I moved him into my house. Thew out his old, ratty wifebeaters, his faded boxer shorts, socks with holes in them. I opened a bottom drawer. Hard drives that won't even work in a modern computer. MORE 5 1/4 floppy drives, 3 1/2s mingled in with them. A monster box of floppy disks. I used to take old AOL disks, erase them, and store porn on them. One day I erased them all again, and threw them away. One hundred thirty-five floppy disks. I marked out what had been on them with a Sharpie, wrapped them in plastic, and put them in The Pile. They were gone within 3 hours.
The latest batch of disks was rescued from someone else's trash by another packratter and given to me to peruse. Old pirated video games, business software, things like that are on them. I'm not going to explore them. I'm not even going to erase these. They're in The Pile.
When word spread that I sometimes take older computers, salvage the best parts to make a decent computer and give it away to someone too poor to afford one, far too many people began donating their old ones to my cause. A very few are modern enough to restore. The majority are antiquated junk. I have quit disassembling them. Eight are gone, another eight await inspection to see exactly what's in them and how old it is. I think all those will go, too.
My Mother gave me a small pillow filled with buckwheat once. She was into natural things. I don't know if it was supposed to have theraputic qualities or what. It doesn't. It's uncomfortable. I'm going to cut it open, pour the wheat out in my side yard. Maybe it'll grow. Then perhaps I can get the government to pay me a subsidy not to grow more wheat. Otherwise I'm sure it will add nutritional value to the soil. I have been envisioning my house lately with almost nothing in it. It's a pleasing vision.
My legs are at long last healing at an accelerated rate. As I enhance my morning walks with karate stances and movements, I find old pains revisiting me. BigHominid's blog has a most excellent link to a guy who's also resuming his martial arts training after a layoff of over a decade. If you've ever done intense physical activity after a long period of sloth, you'll appreciate his story.
I'm dieting again. I hate it a lot. I hate being fat worse.
Maybe being dull and living dull for a while is helping me regain balance lost. Minimize, minimize, minimize. Simplify. But don't dare mention Feng Shuei to me. I'll take a dump on the hood of your car. Shuei THAT.
My friend Sperwer ("Sperwer" [sparrowhawk] is the name of a Dutch ship that ran aground on Korean shores a long, long time ago) invited me on a mountain hike which is to happen this coming Sunday. Ought to be interesting; he's estimating it'll be two to four hours. We'll be hiking a portion of Bukhan Mountain, ending up at the temple where we meditate.
We're gonna be some stanky-ass meditators in the temple this coming Sunday.
Kevin
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