The Ocho

Elder E knows how to make bread, and is a brilliantly violent, yet smooth dancer.

Pastor Bob makes good shelves and beans with rice, though I am not sure if he can do them concurrently (I suspect, yes), and he has a bike.

I am an extreme empathetic, and I like beards, and I like my kidneys just where they are, thank you all very much.

Sister Kiki (not to confuse Sister kiki with my sister kiki, as the two are distinct, irreproachable women) has green thumbs even when they are not, and her tomatoes are worth killing for, and I have, though it was only a bug, but I am willing to kill larger things for them, like snails or baby rats.

Sister Sammy likes unicorn play and knows many things about violent crime and she like very subtle jokes, including judiciary jokes, that often slip past me, being that I am an uncouth clot.

Deacon Stout renders solarly efficient, violent buildings and is a master of analogy, especially when referring to poison, and his shoes are well worn.

Youth Minister Deacon Clempant likes complex chord structures and once had really dirty hands and cream cheese on his shoes (or maybe it was just one shoe), and he likes violent songs.

Deaconess A. has fine taste in shoes and is a master of disguise and has rhythm and did I mention she has nice shoes, also her roundhouse kick is something worth paying to see.

Ho Hum

p.s., some of this information may not be completely accurate and may be used purely as propaganda.

My friend, let’s call her sammy, and I were discussing the difficulties of riding ones bike to work during bad weather or moderate heat. I of course have no compunction to look so, as my work is with computers and hardware, which induced the following conversation:
Sammy: “diodes don’t judge such beautiful beings”
Ulm.: “never hath truer words been spoke to me”
Sammy: “well… they do have On voltage requirements, but I suppose we all do too”
“but the capability of being modeled by an equation is that factor of elegance missing from humanoids, I suppose”

Any way, just though I would share the sentiment.

I often dream that I am the fraggle that eats the radish flavored Lincoln Block like towers. It is my duty, as there is no other that will attempt them more than once.

It is not much of a burden. Radishes are quite tasty.

The last three or four days have been beautiful and warm. Riding my bike the five miles to work and home is an enjoyable experience again (it doesn’t hurt that I took a wire brush and lubricant to the rust on my chain and cleaned the city off of the frame.) I noticed a bit of a spring in my step and a general good feeing in chest.

I know we are likely to experience at least one more cold spell, probably two or three, but it smells like spring. I cannot identify any particular smell. Maybe it is the moisture in the air, or the fact that it doesn’t hurt to breath, or that I am not wearing a jacket with a quilt sewn onto its innards. Regardless, the smell of the air, the feel of the city, hits me with a pleasant feeling, like a fond memory with with no regrets or pain or suffering attached to it, only a general pleasant feeling. Though, delve as I might, I cannot conjure any specific memory or time to which I might attach this feeling.

I started to wonder if the grand feeling that most of us have with the onset of spring is something we have learned, or if it is a deep seeded instinct. I suppose it doesn’t matter all that much. It feels good, and thats what I care about at the moment.

My older brother, Rambler, and I have a pact:

We are, at all costs, both to avoid being forcefully relocated to any correctional facility, holding tank, holding pen, paddy wagon, or back seat of the vehicle of any official government agent.

Even ten minutes in one of those tourist pens during the annual New Years celebration at time square, I think, would shatter the pack. I feel the anti-official detention pact quite strongly, and I suspect that he does as well. This pact is greater than a little extra reason to avoid such situation in a selfish manner. Neigh, it is the opposite. We do it to help each other.

You see, we are the only members of the family to not have spent some period of time in an officially sanctioned time out (save for my mother, who is above reproach, though I admit to being ignorant of his own mother’s history of incarceration). If one of us were to fall, then the other would be as the last leaf on a dying tree, braving the wind and rain and snow with no others to help hold back the forces of nature, which are ever pitted against it and it’s kin.

It is selfish in a sense. It is selfish, because I do not want to be that last one. If I were, might I do something, asinine, so I may too taste the families forbidden fruit? I would like to think not, but I prefer not to find out.

p.s., by the way, K, was Ralph Nader worth it?

I was disillusioned by America the week than Johny Cash died. He received some recognition, but it was another John’s death that captured the attention of America and the media here, John Ritter…There was an outcry of love and affection for a mediocre actor, and little enough reaction to the death of JC. It told me enough of the motives of the media and of the attitudes of the people, and I…

I don’t hate this country, but there is something wrong about it, and the focus on a mediocre actor’s death over that of a great songwriter and a man who’s voice moved many, even up until his death. See: HURT & Cut you Down. Maybe it is the same every where. Not to take anything from Mr. Ritter. Three’s company seems to have been enjoyed by folks for more than a year or two, but he was no king among men, and he was generally panned until his death.

I cannot shake the feeling that I changed after this. As if I had been through some horrid tragic mountain stranded, wintry hunger induced cannibalistic adventure. I am a worse person for having seen what is most important to the lot of you, though if you are reading this, then I can only assume you more lamented (or at least equally) the loss of a great songwriter and musician than the loss of a poor to fair thespian.

And again, we preach to the choir merely to sooth our own souls.

To continue with the river theme-

On the days I skip the bike ride and opt for the subway, I feel as if I am trapped in an unpredictable stream: sometimes, smooth and swift; sometimes a combination of rapids and dead swirly eddies, running from jerky, rough to dead still; other times it seems to push me down the srong side stream because I didn’t see fork in time (or at all); once in a great while, I let the current take me where it will.

On those days of ‘going with flow’ as it were, I feel as a leaf in a stream, or better yet as if I am on a leisurely canoe trip…pushed hear and there by the current…Queens is the base of a damn, a diverse pool, both wide and deep; Bay Ridge is that dead end pool, with only old dying trees, dipping their heads in the water to cool off; Park Slope is the gravel bar where I pull out of the river for some food and a beer, the place where I swim in the sun for too long and get that burn that I always seem to get during those excursions; Harlem is my take out point, where I wait for the ride back to my car in the dusty old reconstituted school bus come over-sized life vest/oar/cushion repository, hardly enough room to sit, leaving wet butt prints on the dusty green seats.

Yah…kinda like that. Back to the point at hand. Yesterday morning I saw a man who really was almost caught in the current of the Metro Transit river, but he fought it off.

As the train came by, speeding up as it entered the station, as if to fool everyone into thinking that it had been moving quickly all along (we all knew better, because we had been careening our necks out over the track watching it’s progress down the tunnel…this is why we do that, so the train cannot fool us by implying that it was hurrying to meet us.) A man passed by me in a bobble headed wobbly sort of way, and he and the train passed each other about five feet after that. Mr. Wobbles instantly became study and strong and surefooted, but his gait slowed as he leaned forward at an impossible angle. He struggled forward for a few steps until he was pushed back by the current…back and away from the train for two steps. Regaining his foothold on the bed, presumably against an invisible under water rock (which, incidentally, is what I would have done), he surged forward three or four steps. The push and pull of the current continued for minutes, and maybe hours. How he didn’t collapse from the effort, I do not know. As the train slowed to a stop, his forward angle increased from about thirty degrees to about eighty (from the imaginary line running from under his feet, straight out in front of him) inversely proportional to the acceleration of the train, which was negative that point. When it completely stopped he started forward suddenly for a step, then returned to his previously state, rather uncontrolled but free from any encumbrances real or imagined. Mr. Wobbles again.
The woman beside me laughed lightly to herself at the scene. I don’t think she saw what happened, or maybe she did and understood better than I. Of course, she started talking to herself, as the train was not our train.

“Where is the D train, I wonder?” “I need the D train.”

…

“Where is it at?” “I need the D train!”

I cannot decide if I should ride the train more or less often now.

I have been fiddling around with Second Life (popular 3-D virtual world) of and on for a few months, and I canot really get into it. Not only am I having trouble enjoying it, I struggle seeing what it is that other people enjoy about it.

You can buy a piece of land and plop a house down on it. Then, you can restrict access to your “property”, allowing those selected by you alone to enter!! It all seems like one shouldn’t need a second life in which to be a recluse, but what do I know.

There is a thriving virtual economy, though. They even have a currency exchange.
Actually, I do find the virtual (yet somehow real) economy to be interesting, as well the demographic information that Linden Labs (LL), the folks what own 2nd life, provide. I especially like this one:

Monthly Spending by Amount (2007 December)
Transaction Size	Residents
1 - 500 L$	137,030
501 - 2,000 L$	57,205
2001 - 5,000 L$	44,686
5,001 - 10,000 L$	31,005
10,001 - 50,000 L$	52,012
50,001 - 100,000 L$	10,953
100,001 - 500,000 L$	7,830
500,001 - 1,000,000 L$	657
Over 1,000,000 L$	413
Total Customers Spending Money In-World	341,791

There are nearly twenty thousand people spending more than 50,000 L$ per month on this site. The exchange rate is something on the order of 250 L$ to every 1$US. That’s a lot of money exchanging hands. Clearly there must be something to do. Perhaps it all goes to high class virtual hookers (they exist, I have seen the youTube videos) and some sa’weet virtual coke for exclusive virtual high-rise penthouse parties. WOO!!! and here, you cannot accidentally kill the hookers. Perhaps I can get into this.

In glorifying my early twentieth century street urchin garb, most of which was donated by the late father of my good friend Tyson [as an aside, I don’t think she will appreciate this moniker. Hence, it will likely change in future posts], I made a paperboy joke. You know, “extree! extree! Read all ‘boudit!!” and all that. I happened to be in the presence of Mr. Turly (on the elevator of course…I’ll explain the ‘of course’ at a later date).

Turly wondered aloud whether that was what street children did for money. My response was that they only sold papers if less honest work could not be found. I expounded further. They would only do honest work when there was no dishonest work to do. Further, honest work only makes you too tired to think about, plan, and carry out dishonest work. I said this in reference to street urchin of the early twentieth century, but Turly knew I meant it for everyone.

Turly was less than confident that I was: a. correct in my theory & b. being completely forthright with him. The latter is quite understandable, as I often am not within the Mississippi’s width of being completely factual in espousing my…ehm…let us call them theories.

As this discussion progress, it was decided that based on anecdotal evidence (i.e., what I see in people), it is not at all an unfounded observation that the folks that are dishonest are more likely to get ahead. Look at A.G. Bell. He made a windfall by stealing (sort of, but kind of not really) his the ideas of one Elisha Gray. Actually, it seems that Bell simply had better lawyers, which I find intellectually dishonest. People always seem to be pushing the government enforced restrictions on dishonesty to the limit, simply to get ahead of the rest of us honest folk, whom would, given the option, stay far from those boundaries of honesty. And that was that.

Ohh…we also decided that I might be a tad cynical.

Any one disagree?

I sometimes have argument with people in my mind.

I create a confrontational scenario (one which is is likely to happen at some point in the near future) and list of the facts in a completely calm and collected manner (which is how I always present arguments…just don’t ask my ex, lady luck, about this), while the other party is completely irrational and quickly becomes angered at being proven wrong in so thorough a manner.

Occasionally, these arguments result is an late eighteenth century style fisticuffs, or broken bottle fights with lots of slashing and smashing. I develop very detailed and miraculously executed dueling maneuvers, sometimes taking us across varied landscapes and across great distances. These…erm…scenarios are always incredibly elaborate and can occupy my mind for twenty minutes at a time, often to be revisited several times over the course of a day. I, of course, usually win.

Strangely enough, these things never play out like I imagine them (unfortunately), but then again samurai swords and laser cannon are not often laying about…Well, except at Elder Edwards’ home.