Bob Marley and waiting...

My roommate in college at SIU was a Jamaican by the name of Carl McPherson. Since that time, long ago, he has become an MD, (and is so to this day). Carl instilled in me a love of his Nation, his race and his intellect. (You get to exchange much in a dorm room over a year's time). Dr. McPherson was, and remains a pivotal force in my life, even now! This song is a poorly made tribute to the man, his race and his kindness.. 'Carl, thank the forces of Nature that you got stuck with me as a roomie)!

Hey! Please watch the (2) scenes and contemplate places you haven't been.

Now, let's let the story go on...

When I arrived at Carbondale on my inaugural trip there, I was shaky, fearful and missing a girl I'd left behind. My paper, mailed to me from the college, told me I was assigned to Allen III, a three story dorm in a complex adjacent to Trueblood Hall. After driving for hours, I was tired and was trying to figure out a way out of the whole mess I'd found myself in.

I remember that the day I arrived on campus, it was God awful hot and so, with tears still in my eyes, I decided to at least get up to my dorm room. Lugging my suitcase to the front door, I was informed that my doom was on the third floor! Fuck! OK. So, up some steps, dragging a case, that was all that remained of my previous life was about all that was left in me. I arrived at my room praying and hoping that my roommate would at least be someone I could relate to. After no little effort, I finally made it to my room.  Looking around, I saw a really small space with two beds, a window between them and a very small chest of drawers on either side...

Exhausted from driving. Heartsick and incredulous at such primitive digs, I broke down and sat on the bed on the left. Now, my plans to escape this prison were foremost in my mind. The ONLY thing that prevented me from bolting that day was the shame of going home. So, I unpacked a few items and prayed for a white man to be my roommate... Of course, I got the blackest young man I'd ever seen... He appeared in the doorway and, guess what? My life got one hell of a lot better... It just so turned out that Carl, was not only black, but also an exchange student and an emerging track star! A very wonderful man that also happened to be a chick magnet - go figure... my life got much much better after that day... [Please forgive any errors here, just too tired to fix them].

Long after my youth's eager transgressions!
Views of times, now long forgotten.
Aged eyes, still with a spark of how,
Looking back, and not knowing how... the fuck I ever survived, to be writing this shit!!

Always Save mustard container. A poorly designed bottle?

The picture is of the top cap of a bottle of Always Save mustard. You might be able to detect that it is not exactly functioning as designed. I bought this bottle after experiencing a very similar problem with a similar contain from French's.

Now, I'm pretty sure that condiment dispenser apertures are pretty old news and not exactly cutting edge stuff anymore. That fact, however, seems to have escaped some folks. The truth is that the hinges often break even if the top section manages to hold itself together. I decided to switch to the more expensive Heinz bottle as its top is much more robust.

Update: I did get a response from AS asking for more info and a promise of some coupons. Swell! Days later I received a coupon and a letter thanking me for drawing their attention to the problem.

April 26, 2018 - I stopped at the same store and lo and behold, Always Save had changed the top design. It looked a lot more rugged, but time will tell.. [Note that both Always Save and Best Choice of subsidiaries of the same company, i.e. Associated Wholesale Grocers!]

Free Internet news on the way out?

If you're like me and have been cruising the Internet for many years, you've probably got into the habit of grabbing and then reading articles published by large media outlets for free. That seems to be something that won't be happening, in the days to come, as sites like the New Yorker and Washington Post have now set up paywalls that allow you to read just a couple of articles before they start demanding that you pay cash....

I'll assume that many people out there in 'cyberland' won't bat an eyelash and will pony up the dough. Me? I have zero intention of following this trend. If left alone pretty soon everything will cost, perhaps even your email, if trends like this are allowed to continue. And, yes, I do understand that some news needs to be funded, only I'm disappointed that more creative ways have not been put out there to try. For instance, Amazon's Kindle department offers a 'free sample' of a specific book that allows you the opportunity to see if a particular book is worth purchasing. Perhaps something like that could be arranged for large news outlets who do have bills to pay. Another option might be to offer potential viewers the ability to sign up and then pay a monthly fee based on the number of articles they actually read. That way if you never visit a site again... no money gets exchanged.

Now, I realize that very few individuals would want their credit cards spread around in such a fashion, so maybe a kind of readership clearing house could be created that would give us all one place to put in our sensitive credit information, from which all the media sites that do charge could draw from. A benefit of such a set up would be itemized listings that one could view to see all the stuff they've read about over a period of time. That was just a thought...

Alone again naturally!

Each of us has a talent in this life. I'm just hoping to find mine before too very long...

In a little while from now,
if I'm not feeling any less sour.
I promised myself to treat myself
and visit a nearby tower.

And, climbing to the top,
will throw myself off.

In an effort to
make it clear to who... ever
Wants to know what it's like, when you're shattered!

Left standing in the lurch, at a church
were people saying, 'My God, that's tough
she stood him up
no point in us remaining'.

We may might as well go home,
as I did on my own.
Alone again, naturally.
To think that only yesterday

I was cheerful, bright and gay!
Looking forward to who wouldn't do
the role I was about to play.

But, as if to knock me down.
Reality came around.
and But, without as much as a mere touch,
cut me into little pieces.

Leaving me to doubt.
Talk about, God in His mercy!

Oh If he really does exist,
why did he desert me?

In my hour of need

I truly am indeed alone naturally...

The dregs of January!

That line from a song by Gordon Lightfoot rattled around inside my brain at 3:30 AM on a brisk early morning in late January, 2018. I realized that I was so not living la vida loca and that the cold dregs of January were turning me every so slightly towards a more nihilistic approach to life and living.

That said, I still needed to contemplate all things basic, not the least of which was eating a decent breakfast. And even as that blessed event was still some hours away, I spent no little amount of time in bed planning such culinary and mundanely related matters... tic tock tic tock....

-----------------------------

At the 6AM hour I 'bounded' out of bed, in a manner only other old men could ever understand! It was 28 degrees outside, the sky was clear (as best I could make out) and the winds were nonexistent. Not a day to want to venture out, but rather one to stay in the kitchen, perhaps, and whittle away at what had been a promising diet. On this morning, I elected to throw together a cheese omelet and some biscuits covered in brown gravy. (My only effort towards eating healthy resided in a glass of low sodium tomato juice). The rest of it was pure and very enjoyable crap. 

Breakfast came and went all too quickly. Sort of like a dream that you forget all to quickly. I washed my dishes and put them away while contemplating all the chores that needed to be done, even while also scheming madly on how I could avoid doing them.  One of those chores involved taking out the trash. A task that required me to walk about a half a block to a dumpster... in the cold. I decided the trash was just fine where it was...

Walking over to the living room, I sank down into my easy chair, turned on the TV and then turned it off and took a nap. Heck, lunch was just a few hours away...

What's with the potatoes, bread and gravy!

What started out as an impulse buy at a local grocery store has quickly bloomed into an ongoing catastrophe as what had been a successful diet effort had turned way south!

I bought a single packet of brown gravy after it caught my eye in the herb isle of my local grocery store. I'd been primed for this as I'd also purchased some biscuits earlier in the the day. A quick nutritional look informed me that this was not a really bad idea. I mean 70 calories was no biggie. And for the first couple of breakfast encounters, I did faithfully adhere to just one biscuit and 6 grams of gravy... That was a few days ago...

On what was otherwise a really nice weekend morning, I arose a tad hung over after having gone out on the town the evening before. (Actually it was more like a night of utter debauchery which also involved some power drinking... but, I digress).

So, there I was in the kitchen that morning, in my robe with my fly away hair making breakfast. I made up a nice omelet as had been planned, but then I began to add some potatoes and shredded bread – I thought 'Why Not?', at the time. Yes, I think that was definitely the moment that things began to unravel for me...

Later that same day, it came to me that I would really enjoy ordering a Big Mac and fries from the McDonald's that stood not three miles from my door. (In the back of my mind I could hear the 'diet meter' clicking away. Truthfully, the food was all it could be and more)!

Way too late into the diet game, I realized that once you fill up a previously shrunk down stomach, it more than willingly expands. And with that expansion come intensified hunger pains. Swell.

So it was, as the evening fell, I found myself seated in front of a large plate of Penne pasta as viewed from over a rather large tummy......

All those ads!

It amazes me that as an otherwise intelligent citizen, I actually spend good money to a cable company, just so I can be assaulted with lots of advertising and very little real programming! I took a day, when I decided to watch a bit of Fox News where I began at a random time and then proceeded to grind on through a complete hour. It was eye-opening.

In that short span of time, I got the great privilege of watching 39 advertisements! Of those, I felt just 3 were OK or of some use. The rest of them ranged from mediocre to blatantly horrific (my opinion). The truth be told, I've rarely purchased anything as a result of seeing the product or service on the tube. Like most Americans, I go by word of mouth, seek local talent and visit my town's stores. Duh. I don't have thousands of dollars to take expensive vacations, I don't need people laying guilt trips on me and for God's sake. Good charities like the Red Cross don't advertise much - so think about that. And, if buying Gold or Silver were such great deal - how come companies like Augusta (I misspelled it in the graphic above) want to take my 'worthless American cash' for their precious metals. I just don't get that..... I also have decided that I more than likely could better spend my time in other pursuits. When my contract with Mediacom expires in a few months, I'm cancelling the TV portion....