Typical (Im)Pious Crap

"Iffa gunna wahk de wahk, uhh dahk de dahk."

Awwwkk!!! Polly wanna cracker!

To the Dentist Again

Got two cavities filled yesterday, and I hope that completes my business with the dentist for the time being. Eh, I'm afraid I've inherited my father's bad teeth. Thank God I can afford the dental work, I know all too many older people around here, and some not so old, whose mouths are a study in gaps between their remaining teeth. And often by the time they arrive at old age, the gaps come to outnumber the teeth.

By the way, when will I get some sense in my head and switch to a local dentist? I had to take yesterday off from work, and make the long trek all the way to the city. Yes, at least I did get to see my folks, which is the only real incentive for this arrangement. But there are times, you know, when it would be nice to get an hour's dental work done without having to drive several hours there, and then several hours back after.

Cynicism as Mummery

cynic n One who impersonates a sophisticate by doggedly taking the worst view of everything.

Off Medication

Well, this past week and a half I've been off one of the several prescription medications I've been on now since last fall. Doctor's orders. And I'm doing better without it than with it. That was, you know, the medication which, as a side effect, was making me feel so dreadfully tired.

I'm not convinced I'll be able to stay off it long term. But even if the doctor puts me back on a lower dosage, it'll be an improvement.

Ah, the joys of growing older...

Self Reliance

I've been thinking lately about some of the differences between the USA now and the USA back in the 1930s. As in, you know, if our still wobbly economy, rather than staging a recovery, should turn south again? I mean, really head south?

It occurs to me that I'm not nearly as self-reliant as my father, to say nothing of my grandfather. And in this regard I resemble many people my age and younger. My father simply knows how to do things. Carpentry? He can do it himself, just about whatever needs to be done. I remember the time he threw a shed together in the back yard, over the course of a weekend, using whatever scrap lumber he had on hand, and carrying any design plans entirely in his head. I couldn't do anything like that to save my life.

My father grew up during the Depression. My grandfather worked his way through the Depression, and he was even more self-reliant. My grandfather could do everything from planting and harvesting corn to tanning deer hide to rebuilding an engine. He was a pragmatic rough-and-ready Renaissance man. I gather a lot of people in this country were like that back in the 1930s.

Just suppose next month or next year we found ourselves in another Depression? I really do wonder... because, you know, a lot of people these days are more like me. I'm good at what I'm good at, but all my life I've taken for granted that big intricate Rube Goldberg device which is our technological society. I can change a light bulb. I can pound a nail in the wall to hang a picture. Anything much more technical than that, I hire out.

Though I do live in a part of the country where many people are still fairly self-reliant. Out here in deep rural America there are still a lot of folks who've retained those skills which were common in past generations. Most of my neighbors can do their own carpentry, their own plumbing, their own electrical work, and believe me, when they do it they don't bother getting a permit. They just go ahead and do it. Many of my neighbors take tanning a deer hide or rebuilding an engine for granted, all in a day's work. If times get tough, these folks will do okay. Better than a lot of the people, as incapable as I am, who live in the city.

Hope Never Follows Doors

The other night I had a dream that I was staying, with family and friends, at some rustic motel/chalet/cabin place a few states away. I had my bags with me, and afterwards I was going to drive to a city not so far away. But first I would have to drive back to my parents' place, a few states away, to exchange my bags for some others. And then drive all the way back to the city.

Time came to leave, and everyone else had already left. I was about to go, but sat down in the lobby first to check things out on a big flat screen TV. I brought up one program on the screen, in another tab (as if in Firefox), and it was about an old rock band, its members now grey haired, and how some day after they retired they might bring out an album with some songs they had recorded years ago but never released. And one of these songs was playing:

Oh, hope never follows doors
And doors never follow sense

And it was silently understood that this song also had something to do with Obama. And then I got ready to leave the cabin and go out to my car, a real 60s car which was parked on the grass out on the other side.

Only as I ran toward my car, I suddenly realized that I was naked. And then the thought came to me, oh well, living far out in the countryside one gets used to the idea of having to go outside naked once in a while. And I got into my car, behind the steering wheel, and then I was trying to get clothes out of a bag to get dressed. And I thought I'd better hurry up, because I saw a police car going down the road past me turn off up on the far side of the cabin.

And it wasn't making it any easier to get dressed, crammed in there in the driver's seat, right behind the steering wheel.

Linux

Well, the Linux installation went smoothly, and here less than 48 hours later I have only a few loose ends left to clean up. Can't figure if that's a testimony to my many years of growing experience with Linux, or to the growing ease of installing Mandriva. I only know it was the smoothest and most snafu-free installation I've ever done.