Category: Oh shit Joe!

when you desperately publish something

Post #153

Path back up the mountain at Giant's Causeway, Northern Ireland.

I haven’t written a process post for a long time. Not since I had that spat of poor posts a few months back.

Today I’m writing about writing because I’m simply not feeling it. The writing, that is. I flipped through my notepad to see what I could work up today. There are twenty-four starts in that file. No finishes.

There are a few openings that are just a sentence or two. Just the beginning of an idea. In other cases, there’s a solid idea with no heft. Discounting those, there are still fifteen or sixteen with minimally a paragraph. Most of those are a paragraph with some change or a pair of paragraphs with some change. Then there’s four or five that have been worked to a couple hundred words.

Those are the sad ones. The entries that began to take shape, started to flow and then were writus interruptus.

Some starts were overtaken by a better, or a more timely, or a more immediately engaging (for me) finish. Others just lost juice. Some were jotted down in a fit of inspiration. They seemed to be a substantial concept, but dissolved like wisps of neurotransmitted-cotton candy on your tongue. With less of the stickiness of the sugary form. And less sweetness.

I don’t know that I’ll ever get back to these semi-baked items.

Or any of them for that matter.

These snippets of thoughts are captured but won’t be stretched and pulled along the path to semi-coherence. I won’t work on moving their sentences around like puzzle pieces, searching and finding the correct nub on a part of the piece that fits to the left, and then matches a piece on the right and finally snaps into pithy congruence from both above and below.

I won’t flip clauses from the end of a sentence to the beginning or from the beginning of the sentence to the end in an attempt to get it closer to clarity. There will be no speed backspacing to obliterate fraught word combos that briefly seemed poetic. There will be no annulment  of ridiculous over-adverbification.

These fragments won’t ever be pushed to the end of the literary line. Where I realize that it’s actually done as it sits. Another paragraph unnecessary. The writing at it’s natural end. This always surprises me. And it pleases me.

They’ll be no selection of an image to accompany these incomplete thoughts. Where sometimes an image comes early, but usually it is selected after the thoughts are decently formed. The thoughts won’t get far enough for a picture. The words only exist on the notepad, without form.

The sprouts of copy will never be copied and pasted into this forum. This forum that you, Loyal Reader, are consuming now.

Actually, that’s not accurate.  On a rare occasion, an embryonic post is moved here and festers. Not decomposing because it has no carbon, but not fully composed because it has no life. It doesn’t get the electrical jolt of the blue publish button. It’s not alive.

The prenatal posts in my notepad are accumulating. There weren’t always a generation of them. The group started with a few false starts. But as I read through them today, for inspiration, I only culled two. I was inspired by none.

None were used today. They were neither easy enough to finish nor inspiring enough to develop. I wrote this instead. I’m at peace with this. Not everything is good enough. At the same time, everything is good enough for practice.

So, the sad attempts remain sad. And I am moving on.

Posted on by docthink 1

Shoe In

A pair of worn out sandals. They were good while they lasted.

It’s summer today. Actually it became summer day before yesterday, but I was in the office that day. This is important because I don’t wear the same apparel during my off time.

I am not a fussy dresser. My working wardrobe palette consists of black, white, blue, red, green and a little khaki. These don’t represent a wide array of colors because there is a single shade of blue (sapphire), a single shade of green (emerald) and a single shade of red (ruby). Makes mixing and matching pretty much redundant. My working wardrobe style is classic. No frills. No lace. No prints. No stripes. I do have two items with polka dots, one black with white and one white with black.

I’m pretty simple on the shoe front, too. My shoes are black. My boots are black. I wear black shoes.

I’m no more fussy with my casual wardrobe, except I really don’t care much about what I wear. There may be a few more colors since there are t-shirts from shows and sweaters from the discount racks. I have a few pairs of jeans for fall and winter and some cropped pants and shorts for spring and summer. Cowboy boots for cold weather and sandals for warm.

This being my first day off of summer I rummaged around for hot weather wear. I had a coffee date at the farmer’s market and the temp was already in the red zone. I dug to the bottom of the other dresser to find a pair of shorts. I rifled through the back of the other drawer to find a tank. I was happy to skip the socks.

That’s when I realized that there were no longer any old summer shoes. You see, I wore them all out.

It’s a little odd that I have no well-worn shoes to start off the summer. I usually have an old pair of sandals and an older pair of sandals and some type of dilapidated slip on sneaker. Any given beginning of summer, I would have at least one of those at my feet.

Not this year, though. I remembered that the older pair of sandals got pitched last summer because I kept turning my ankle when I wore them. The Big Guy made a good case for my safety. This made the old pair of sandals the older pair. Turns out they were a wreck, too, as I discovered when I cleaned out the closet. I put them in the trash to extinguish any impulse to wear them this year. The sneakers had holes in the toes and no treads left. Also deep-sixed.

There were, however, a new pair of sandals. I bought them at the end of last year. I don’t really like them, to be honest. They aren’t very attractive, and they aren’t out of the box comfortable. I didn’t send them back in time so I was stuck with them. I put them in the back of the closet. There were also some new sneakers, purchased three weeks ago. They are attractive, and, I believe in my heart of hearts, they will be well worn and very comfy later this summer. Today, though, they are a bit stiff and rub on the joint of my big toe.

So, here I am, the beginning of summer with only shoes to break in. No old worn shoes to start my season. Poop.

I grabbed my big straw hat with the black ribbon that trails almost to my shoulder and started the work of transforming the new sandals into old sandals. They will be that way for two years before they become the older sandals. I’ll get a new pair to become the old sandals and then I’ll be back on schedule.

Posted on by docthink 0

Bone-weary and Bleary

A slinky (TM)

I am tired in my whole self. My whole, entire self.

My feet are so tired. I can feel every bone and bonelette in them. The bone along the outside, those fifth metatarsals, feels almost twisted. They aren’t. My toes are tired-sore in a way that they are almost sighing. My shoes were cute and comfortable today, but the feet could only take so much. The balls of my feet are piqued and a little numb on the outside.

My shins feel tired, too. I think it was from standing, but the thin coating on the outside of the bone, is it a skinny muscle? I don’t really know anatomy. Anyway the shin wants a massage and a nap.

My knees are pulled up on the couch so my legs can rest. Where my legs connect to my torso in the back, also known as my ass, is droopy and a bit haggard. I am slouched down on the couch and I don’t care. My shoulders are pressing into the back of the seat, their sharp angles cutting the slipcover to shreds.

The space between my shoulders, at the base of my neck, feels like a crooked slinky. You know how a metal slinky gets a crimp in it and then it’s not right? It will slink back and forth okay, but won’t flip down the stairs?  That.

My earlobes are tired. Seriously. They feel like they are almost pulling away from my head. They feel heavy and my left ear has given up on the day in total exhaustion. The skin around the outside of my face is done. It’s hard to smile, to pick up those corners of my mouth and pull the skin back from my eyes as they squinch up. Squinching is a huge effort.

My head, and that which is inside of it, is like I had two Pacificos to accompany the chicken with green mole. Those beers have accelerated the turn of the tilt wand, slowly and inexorably blocking out the day. My brain is so tired that when the atrocious word, inexorably, presented itself it allowed my lazy fingers to type it. We hate that word, but I have no energy to block it today. Apologies.

I am going to drag myself to the sink, forcing one foot in front of the next and, like the slinky, using that energy to pull the lagging foot up and ahead. I need to brush my teeth, even though my ivories are sapped of energy, too. There is only one cure for this tired of the whole. You know. I have to make it so and put this tired to rest.

Posted on by docthink 0

Orange Crush

Carrots. Baby carrots. Right size. Right color. WRONG!

It was so ridiculous. I ate a pretty big, and fairly late, breakfast this morning. I figured it would take me through the rest of the day. I was wrong.

It didn’t start until maybe 12:10 p.m. I was clicking through from Twitter when I was violently accosted by an awakening of sorts. Call it an urge, if you will. But by any name the results were the same. I suddenly and completely craved Cheetos®.

I immediately discarded this ridiculous thought. I checked my satiation scale. I wasn’t hungry. I returned to my computer screen. Only to be interrupted, again.

CHEETOS®! It was like I was the teenager that just had sex in the horror movie, and it was my turn to be lured out–to certain death–by the monster. It was just that dooming.

Nope. Nope. Nope. Not having it. In addition to not being hungry, if I had a bag at my desk, opened it and ate some, the orange Cheeto® dust would get on my keyboard. I wasn’t going to get started on that path. No Cheetos® everywhere. No Cheetos® anywhere.

I started back to work and my mind wandered to Baby Bear playing U-6 soccer. Some parents (okay, most) didn’t follow the guidelines requiring orange slices and water for games. They didn’t get that it was replenishment versus treats. So they’d bring salty snack bags and juice boxes. Bear would pick a bag of Doritos so I wouldn’t eat them. I hate Doritos. But he’d bring a bag of Cheetos® to me on the sideline so I would be happy. Stop! Out damn thought!

I pummeled the thought of salty-fatty-messy snack out of my thinking brain. But I couldn’t beat it out of my lizard brain. The part of me that imagined my chameleon-like tongue snapping a  Cheeto® out of the bag. Yeah. That. Couldn’t stop. Can I eat it now?

NO! I turned back to answering an email, still fighting through my consuming desire. I needed to check the possible dates for a meeting against my calendar. I switched between calendar and email and lost my place. Cheetos® were calling me, like a moth to the flame.

I looked at the clock. It was now 1:40 p.m., and I had been thinking about Cheetos® for 90 minutes. Literally thinking of nothing but Cheetos® for ninety minutes. Solid.

I grabbed my key fob and my wallet. I walked down the stairs to the lobby and turned into the little bodega. I knew that this wasn’t going to end until I ended it.

And, I did. Totally ridiculous.

Cheetos. Not carrots!
Cheetos. Not carrots. 
Posted on by docthink 0

Chop & Pop

tomatoes, avocado, scrunchions, secret cukes and lemon mint dressing.

I rummaged to the bottom of the vegetable bin. There were some of those cute Persian cucumbers. I don’t know why a recipe calls for English versus Persian cukes. They taste the same. They’re cucumbers. Especially from the grocery store.

There are six of seven left in the package. They are pretty skinny. I toss the one that is mushy and discolored in the center. I take three, trim the ends and quarter them before I run the knife up to the top, chopping into fairly even pieces. Kelly Clarkson is singing Since U Been Gone.

I stir the bastardized ropa vieja that I have on the stove.

Next up are the green onions. The recipe wanted red onions. I have them, but the scallions are more fragile, and anyway I like the crunch of the green parts. Same trim drill, but the tops of the onions are different lengths. It would barely waste anything if I cut them straight along the top, but I am in no hurry. I nip the bits of brown at the top. Before I chop, Pharrell and Daft Punk challenge me to Get Lucky. Dance steps ensue.

I’m interrupted by a friend who needs to go out. He really had to go so there was little time elapsed. I came back into the kitchen to a roaring Dave Grohl. He supposedly said Prince’s cover of Best of You at the SuperBowl was better than their original. I can’t help but think of Prince singing in the rain with that head scarf protecting his mane. I readjust my clip to keep my bangs out of my eyes.

The water comes out of the faucet fast. I am not sure why it sometimes comes out in an single stream and other times like a shower head. It’s shower head today. I soap up my hands to get back to my knife and wooden board. This playlist skips all the cursing in Gold Digger. I sing those words anyway.

I piled the onions next to the cucumbers in the white bowl. As I grab the plastic clamshell with the little tomatoes Shakira totally distracts me. I salsa back and forth through my kitchen galley, telling only lies with my hips. I wouldn’t even care if the neighbors saw, but they moved last week, so they can’t.

The first grape tomato gets sliced in half. They are very small, but I think that they look better if they are closer to the size of the other vegetables so I slice the rest in thirds. I pop one in my mouth. I pull out small handfuls, slice them and place them in the bowl. I keep going until it fills the space with enough red to break up the green. I eat two more and then slice two more.

I pulled out the large half-avocado. It was in better shape than I thought it would be. Sexy Back comes on. I cut around the pit. Someone said that it keeps better if you leave the pit in. It may have. I had a small whole-avocado, too. I didn’t think it was necessary.

My knife slid through the fruit. It was like a hot knife in butter yet still produced distinct squares that I piled between the tomatoes and the onions. The bowl was filled as Teenage Dream played. What a dumb song. I know it seems unfair to pick on this song versus the rest, but I don’t get Katy Perry. And, I get less why that cut allowed explicit lyrics. I woulda let Kanye finish.

There is a silly technique where you take a big pinch of kosher salt between your fingers and from a foot above the food “rain” it down. Somehow this distributes it better. I end up stirring the food anyway so it’s really unnecessary. I do it because it’s dramatic, and I feel like a celebrity chef. So I rained some salt and twisted some pepper.

I opened the cabinet literally above my head. I have to stand on the tips of my toes and really stretch to reach the mini-stainless bowl that sits on the top shelf. This prep bowl is well used, but in an inconvenient place because I don’t have anywhere else to put it in this barely functional kitchen. Taylor is whining about how We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together. I’m unconvinced. This was on her last country album, even though most of it was pop.

I take the EVOO–it always cracks me up when I see that on a menu. I want to find the pretentious menu author and punch them in their pretentious author neck.

I pour the exact amount, in that it’s exactly the amount I poured, if only measured by my squinted right eye. I don’t have fresh lemon but a fairly fresh bottle of lemon juice. I squeeze about the right proportion to join the oil. I pick up my super cute baby-whisk. I ordered this whisk from either Crate and Barrel or Sur la Table. They came in a pair, which is good because I wore one of them out. Speaking of worn out, that Lumineers joint comes on. Hey! Ho!

The recipe, that I am not really following in any meaningful manner, wanted me to add fresh cilantro. I don’t have that or the dill they suggested to swap. I go through the spice jars twice. I even go to the way back of the cupboard where I have the extra bottles of valencia orange peel and smoked paprika that I bought by mistake. Nope. No dill anywhere. So I go for some dried mint. Seems like a fresh substitute. After I added it I remembered that I have some actually fresh mint on the back porch. Went too fast there.

Here’s my favorite part. The whisking. I get oddly excited by how quickly that little whisk emulsifies the oil and lemon juice. It seemed exceptionally fast tonight–like only three or four turns and it was like melted caramel.

I’m not ready to dress the salad yet, but worry that the avocado will discolor before The Spouse gets home. I shake a few drops of lemon juice over the concoction. I take the cookie sheet lined with discs of polenta out of the oven and flip them. Whoa, that oven is a little hot.

Lil Jon comes on. Seriously. Right then. Turn Down for What? In this case, turnt down to keep dinner from burning.

Posted on by docthink 0

#FreeLarryOrluskie

We all did paintball that day. Including Larry and Elizabeth.

Dear Larry,

What the fcuk? Why did you insist on being “healthy” and do that working out crap? You KNOW that generationally we don’t do that. We grew up on canned peas salted so long they were gray, space food sticks and Tang®. Seriously, you should have known better.

It’s not like this new age exercise and artisanal food–in which onions and kale and blueberries run free–makes us healthier. It just costs more money. You know that, too.

Frankly, it’s bad enough you rejected our childhood staple, bologna, when you became a friggin vegetarian. Your Babcie would so not approve that you eschewed kielbasa for rice cakes. No dobrze.

There’s other ways to remain relevant. Ones that are more passive and include hamburgers. For example, remember we worked on music. You were a decent student. I hooked you up with those Kings of Leon tickets and introduced you to Queens of the Stone Age. Although you held stubbornly against my attempts to get you into hip hop. But there was hope. I had hope, anyway.

At least you got it right on raising kids. You loved them for them. You let them be them. You knew it wasn’t about you. They never had to seek your approval. Your daughters had your love. Period.

But you went on that fcuking treadmill. And you dropped dead.

I can say that to you. Because that’s what you would say. You were never full of bullshit. Even though you worked in a job that was full of bullshittery.

You did as good as anyone could, you stupid man. Your family was with you. I hope you knew that.

I guess that fcuking Union won. #FreeLarryOrluskie

It’s done. Goodbye friend.

Peace and love,
DocThink

Apologies, Loyal Reader, if you find this tribute cryptic or unfathomable.
I could write nothing else after I heard. Today, I wrote for me, not you.

Posted on by docthink 0

For Naught

A zero that has a WTF air.

I was trying too hard. I was getting nowhere. I was working on a grand metaphor and delivered a grand goose egg.

It was easier a few weeks ago, this writing thing. I’m still struggling. I’m think I’m having issues. When I write something that I think is good or worthy, I post with aplomb. But I feel like I just created a standard, and that I can’t publish something less worthy the following day. Sometimes I can pull it off–something good, that is–other times I take an idea and knead it and toss it and stomp on it and I write it and it’s more pedestrian and I have a hard time hitting the publish button.

So when I was trying to write the big thing, I got nothing. I didn’t even get to the actual writing part. I know that there is something there, but it has to sit a while.

And instead, I’ll write this. More of a confession than a post. But I’m going to publish it.

Posted on by docthink 0

Gimmick

A building with the sky behind it. There are clouds, too.

If a picture is worth one thousand words, I have completed today’s post successfully. Including these words, it’s one thousand and twenty three.

Posted on by docthink 0

Post #95

The top of a male lion's head with a really weak mane. Such bad hair day!

My hair kept sticking up in the back. It’s so not fair. I did more than smooth it this morning. Yet unruly it became.

There are many mornings when I wake up and am bed-head free. This occurs most mornings, as a matter of fact. On a rare morning that it folds funny on itself or presents as a fluff ball at the back of my head, it’s usually simply a brush or a dab of product away from being tamed.

When did we start calling hair stuff product, by the way? When did hairspray, hair cream, hair mousse, hair gel, hair oil or hair wax–for starters–become product? It’s one of those words that do not really add to the understanding of the thing.

Product. It used to be Dippity-do or Blue Magic or Brylcreem or Aquanet or Vitalis. It was sometime after those products morphed into Vidal Sassoon shampoos and styling products on the way to Paul Mitchell and now dozens and dozens of “salon” products. You know the ones, with the bottles printed with labels that say:

Guaranteed only when sold by a professional hairdresser, otherwise it may be counterfeit, black market, old or tampered with.

But you can buy the product at Target. Target seems pretty legit. I get that you might be worried at Marshall’s, but if the product is available at WalMart, just what do those warnings mean? I say, nothing.

Back to this morning.

I don’t wash my hair every day. It’s not that time consuming, but you are talking to a Doc who has argued with The Spouse over coffee beans. Spouse brings home whole beans, and I complain bitterly about having to grind them in the electronic grinder for fifteen seconds. Seriously, just get me to the Joe fast. I’ll scoop but not grind. The Spouse still tries to sneak beans in the house with the idea that I will grind. I see beans and go out to buy a bag of pre-ground at lunch.

Back to the hair.

I didn’t notice the hairs sticking out at the back of my head until I had already spread some Moroccan Oil through to the ends. You’d think that would have subdued any recalcitrant locks. But, when I moved my head to the left to check the time on the wall clock, I spied that wayward curl in the mirror.

I’m not an overly-groomed person, but the one portion of hair was sticking out from my head in a ninety-degree angle, AKA straight out. If it were just a few hairs, I could brush my teeth and move on. But it was ringlet sized plus pointing away from my head perpendicularly. Unavoidable to the eye. Unacceptable for the office.

I tried some product. The damn hairs bounced back up like a reflex.

I tried holding my hand over the product covered cowlick for a few minutes. BOING! Back up. Next up was some water. Since the hair was primed with various forms of product, the water must have activated some latent management properties. Sadly this reactivation only worked around my right ear. The sticking up part behind my head remained in that position.

Not to be defeated, I applied heat to the productized and wetted hair. Voila! Tame achieved.

In the office, I looked in the mirror in the restroom. I looked to the left and saw the hair sticking out, again! It was the damn wind. The damn wind that thinks it’s still winter and drives the windchill into the twenties. The damn wind that should be a welcome breeze but instead presents as a precursor to the nannies flying in on umbrellas from London. The damn wind that re-agitated my controlled hair and let that one piece go wild.

Wild.

I took my hand and placed it on the back of my head, over the sticking out part of my hair, and put my other hand on my hip and sashayed out of the toilet.

If you can’t beat ’em, act like you don’t care. “Fiddle-dee-dee!“

Posted on by docthink 0

Post #82

An "F" grade written in red pencil. Ugh! Scary!

There are two kinds of people. Those who get good grades and think grades are decent measures, and those who do not get good grades and think that grades are stupid.

Alright, maybe there’s more kinds of people, but I think that when we’re being judged, or graded, most people prefer to sit near the top end of the scale.

Think about grades. There’s USDA Prime beef. Given a choice, who would eat not-such-prime beef? Same with Grade AA eggs. When you get to C you’ve been through A’s and B’s. Cotton, another good that is graded. It’s judged on a scale from 1 (the most pima-est) to 7 which is inferior to Grade No. 6 cotton which is inferior to Grade No. 5 which is inferior to Grade No. 4, you get it. Also, after learning about cotton grades,  Grade No. 1 sounds as if it will be soft against your skin. Grade No. 7 sounds scratchy.

Greyhounds that are graded E are disqualified from racing–obviously a Grade A dog is a winner. Coins have grades, too. I think most people would prefer to be classified as “mint” condition rather than basal. The latter grade is given to lumps of metal that can be identified as having once been a coin. Booze is graded as well, call and top-shelf. Which do you think is the quality choice? The one you stretch to reach, Johnny Walker Blue. (Please note that JW nonsensically uses a color scheme to grade its whiskey. Grades are everywhere!)

When you grade your backyard prep to put in a new deck, it’s evened out. I don’t want to be “evened out.” Sounds a bit like what happened to Randle Patrick McMurphy near the end of Cuckoo’s Nest.

So, you can see why some people think good grades are better than not-so-good grades. It’s not too big a leap to see that some people might equate good grades with the quality of the grad-ee. And it’s easy to see that many people aren’t really happy about being graded at all, especially if a poor grade makes some people view them poorly.

That’s too bad. Grades as a tool to guide the evaluation of skills or knowledge are different than the grade of maple syrup. Maple syrup can’t improve itself into a better grade. It’s just stuck.

Evaluations can help identify where someone is on a road to mastery. Grades are a signal, albeit sometimes a clumsy one, to distinguish ability or grasp of a subject or competency. The grader has an obligation to explain the difference in the grades and, most importantly, what it will take to get from one grade to the next.

Grades are a shorthand. You know what you’re getting. And, in the case of assessing–or judging–a person’s attainment of a milestone or proficiency, it provides some type of measure against a standard of some type.

But nobody wants a big fat red F. Nobody.

Loyal Reader, I am sorry for this post. It’s definitely not my best, but I am nearly out of gas. I have a headache. So I’ll give myself, and dutifully accept, a low grade today.

Not every day is Grade A or even B. Not even for the Doc. Tomorrow is another day.

Posted on by docthink 0