Eating Donuts and Fighting with the Girlfriend - and Oh Yes, I Got Laid Off Today

Damn dog has taken to chewing on my pens when it gets pissed having had to wait for me to take it for a walk. I am sitting at a table, the best table in the house. I am thinking that if I’m going to be sitting here, I ought to get out my computer to demonstrate to the other customers that I’m making good use of this space that I am denying to them. I go to reach for my pack in which I carry my computer and then realize that I am typing on the computer keyboard right now ( I had just entered the Delany quote  about scrambled eggs and oatmeal). Gee, am I getting to be senile myself. And why do I worry that I may be making less productive use of the space when the guys next to be are playing cribbage.

Only that year you'd become a fifty-five year old man who'd gone from never following scrambled eggs with scrambled eggs or oatmeal with oatmeal for supper, to never following scrambled eggs with scrambled eggs or oatmeal with oatmeal more than three nights in a row - Samuel R Delany - Dark Reflections, 2007 p29

AT THE KABUKI


Done incorrectly a ritual is destroyed
Done correctly a ritual is authentic
     Love consecrated
     New life blessed
     The dead laid to rest
A missed cue, the wrong word
     An error in the arithmetic
And then it ain’t shit


For Li Po, it’s a hundred poems per gallon of wine, / then sleep in the wine houses of Ch’ang-an market – Tu Fu

The mobile phone is a device for mutual grooming at a distance – a means of building social relationships and only secondarily a communications device

I sight a few deer, then the creek, / hear nothing of midday temple bells – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p3

Schizophrenics rarely kill strangers

Language is fixed. Morning is certain. Santa Claus comes down the chimney – Robin Lakoff – Language Wars

Factoid – the streets of Tokyo are 2°C warmer when the city’s air conditioning is in full operation

“The question is”, said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is”, said Humpty Dumpy, “Which is the master - that’s all” - Lewis Carroll

11AM and I’m all caught up at the office. Brian is not yet in. I’m out walking the streets. Half an hour spent browsing at Stacey’s. Half an hour wandering the neighborhood and finally I settle down at Epper’s Café & Bakery at Second and Mission. Its almost noon. A man is talking on his mobile loudly about the little chiseler who wants five million. I suspect that he is probably no better. A young man is berating his girlfriend on the street corner about her problem with alcohol. In another half hour I will walk down Mission St to St Patrick’s for a concert by the St Gregory Choir. Then I will head back to the office and hopefully find out what kind of separation package I will receive. Meanwhile I have a French Roast Coffee with brown sugar and half & half and a chocolate covered buttermilk donut. I sit and read the SF Weekly and the Guardian while I eat.

Judas must have been a born conformist, a naturally common-sense, rubber-stamp sort of fellow who rose far above himself when he became involved with a group of people who were hardly in society, let along in a profitable business – Kenneth Fearing – The Big Clock, 1946

I didn’t think that they were still capable of shocking me - but they have. Michael and I both got laid off this afternoon. For me it was like wining the lottery. For Michael it was devastating. The San Francisco Administrative Staff were told three people had been laid off today (I never found out who the third one was) and that the San Francisco IPC (research – that’s me) was being closed, but it would not affect them. Few ever believe these reassurances (if not this time, probably next time). They were cynical and rightfully so. They had already heard such reassurances many times before.

The guy in front of me is telling about how they are kidnapping children with artistic talent.

“I don’t know what you are talking about?”

“Hah, I wrote the mayors office about it.”

“Who did you write too? Someone in the neighborhood services office? Was it Daniel? Yeah I know him. If he is the one on the case it will be taken care of.”

“Good. I didn’t know that that many people knew about this, but you being an artist yourself, you are probably more aware of these kinds of thing.. It amazes me that more people don’t know about the kidnappings.”

It is just an unbearable to be God as it is to remain an utter slave – Otto Rank – Beyond Psychology, 1941 p196

Wherever information is a byporduct it is probably being shared. Seven states will share their E-Z Pass information with litigants in civil cases (for example divorces)

Central heating and electrical lighting slowly tended to disperse such family circles. Centrifugal privacy replaced centripetal intimacy – Thomas J Schlereth – American Home Live, 1880-1930, 1992 p231