I Thimk

YMMV - Your Mileage May Vary - an expression meaning that opinions vary.

Also a disclaimer on EPA mileage estimates for cars.

Making a fresh batch of colloidal silver. I bought a timer for such projects. Turns out you have to be close to it to hear it ring. Mostly I glance at it from time to time. In the old days you could hear a timer all the way in the next room. There is an increasing cheapness in the things I buy, lately, it seems.

I finally got my computer. It is made like a laptop, but with a 19" screen. Acer brand. It wants to do lots of things, including talk to me, but I have not activated much of it. It insists I use Windows 10, but I stuck with Chrome. Instead of signing up for stuff provided on it I installed the word processor from a disc and ignored stuff like office. It makes doing a manuscript much easier, just because everything actually functions.

Old habits are comfortable and die hard, but new programs have improvements that makes them easier to use with more options.

I tried windows ten for a day, but I had to work too hard to get where I wanted.

The ramp is slowly shaping up. I have the two platforms built and the long sides in place. Just have to finish filling in support pieces here and there. Top rails can wait. I have close to a week to get the deck down, as my daughter has decided to give us a nice refrigerator. Our old one still works, but about once a month needs to be reminded to start. It's too old to be investing money in.

I took it easy today, aside from toting in more material. Making tuna sandwiches for dinner. Watched some TV. After all these years, I finally got to see the Hugh O'Brian Wyatt Earp episode of the gunfight at OK Corral. Read a few chapters in the book I wrote about a week or two back. Now I'm into it I want to see how it turns out. It deals with three devious people, who tell any number of lies to everybody concerned. This is our first day of ninety degree weather of the season.

Some folks convinced me my sci-fi story could not work. So, instead of scrapping it, I've incorporated it in a story about a man and his book store. A customer and would be author owns the sci fi story and has been peddling it nearly five years.

We avoided the bad weather that swept by last night. It's windy and slightly chilly now. I might have welcomed some rain, but I was happy to miss this one. A neighbor's house burned, about 9 PM. It was a modest single mobile home, but the firetrucks, rescue trucks, and cop cars filled the entire block and around the corner for parking. It started in the living room. There were no injuries.

I know we are "trailer trash," but, damn. The people on the other side of the water company pump tore apart a worn out wooden fence some place, and moved it all to their property. It took about a month for them to reconstruct it and in fact they still tinker with it. As soon as they had a modicum of privacy, they put an RV with a canopy in the front yard. They settled for a time, leaving debris outside their fence, along water company property.

Almost a week ago, they opened up the street side of the fence to move in what looks like a twelve foot by twelve foot two story house, all built and with windows and everything. They built some sort of wood framework beside it. Not house framework.

At street edge they pile trash all week long. Four or five cans of garbage, furniture, you-name-it. Oddly, the garbage men pick it all up.

I could write more, but I think you can already tell the neighbors wish they would go.

Sci-Fi Didn't Fly
I tested my premise on a few friends the other day. To a soul they didn't like it. No kind words, no sycophancy. It's crap. Ditch it. Well, I learned early on, from the Walt Disney Company example, everything can be recycled, whether good, bad or impossible. As it happens, my other in progress novel is EDGAR'S COFFEE AND BOOK STORE. One of Edgar's customers has been pushing his only novel for five years. Surprise. Turns out his story is my failed sci-fi attempt. In the course of EDGAR'S, the man not only sells his book, he nets a movie series and a theme park in Florida. He who laughs last . . .

Persig's classic novel 'Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' was rejected by 121 publishers.

Yezzir. That and Stephen King are classic examples. Of course, they both had a product the public actually wanted. It just took publishers who were ready to recognize their worth.

I write from the seat of my pants, mostly. That's why I can rarely give an in depth preview of anything I'm working on. In this new effort, Edgar Blythe owns a neighborhood store. He daily visits wife, Mary Blythe, who is an institutionalized Alzheimer's patient. The regulars who visit to share coffee and camaraderie provide much of the color and drama. I've already written of one cast member. He is Irving Bradbury, who is proud he shares the name of a famous author. There is no comparison. Irving has written just one book and has been five years peddling it. In the course of my novel, he sells the book and becomes an international celebrity, netting a movie and theme park in Florida. Anyway, I am still populating the book and there will be as varied a crowd as I can conjure. It took nearly two years to complete my last book.

I am going to park a few of my poems here for reference.

Build your walls around freedom;
Build them high and spooky;
And when they morph to prisons:
There's no key, smart cookie.

If the sky breaks cheese,
When you're on a windy street;
An ensuing explosion
Then rocks you off of your feet:
What do you bellow at the light:
Good Morning Viet Nam?
What do you cough up on the nurse:
We will get Saddam?
If the pork bellies explode
Will your poor world then implode?

The migrant must roam,
But in his mind's eye
Sees etherial home:
Note that secret sigh.

Ever strong and stoic,
With backs like granite;
Efforts heroic,
On Scarab's Planet.

Mauve her eye,
In the silver silicon morn.
Dons her bra,
One cup at a time; cosmos torn.

How green was my Nile
When Egyptian queens
Sailed slowly by
How green all the while
Their Egyptian jeans
Then caught my eye
They were on a roll
That year as I recall
Pharoh won his Super Bowl
Sphinx's nose had yet to fall

In ancient times
Across the land
Savage enzymes
Grew out of hand
Creating Republican
Men and gals
With rubber brains
And heavy jowls
Stamping in fundamental
Stamping out fun
Stalling time incremental
At the point of a gun
Building chromium towers
Upon cesspool lakes
Burning freedom's flowers
If that's what it takes

Adjectives by the great blue-green sea,
Its waves crashing on the rocks,
Its gulls clawing at the froth; swift beaks
Nick the waves; fishers on its docks:
It laps at the feet of boy and girl,
Who arm in arm race with crabs,
Then dance away with a splash and whirl,
Bear away sea dribbles and dabs.


When my knuckles start to drag along the ground
And it's not because I'm drunk and falling dowm
Just that I'm a fool and a moron
This clay cannot pull itself apart from the dirt
Not even when I put on my new Hawaiian shirt
Not even when I gaze with awe at Orion

Some deep mystery holds me away from the sun
Some random assassin kills me with his gun
Some crazy lady wants my soul for a laugh
Then you tell me Have faith and go for it all
Then you say Listen and heed the healer's call
Offering a band aide to a man broken in half

I wish that I could be like you inside
Childlike in faith even when you hurt and cry
Still believing salvation is in your hand
I want to eat innocent lunches in the park
I want exotic memories and refuge from the dark
Children to look to and trust this perfect human

My hand frees itself from the dirt at last
My car drives itself to the station for its gas
My novel finds itself a patron
The crisis in my soul gets lost in the void
The Power Ranger is granted the latest Zoid
Guess it's time take the A train


Slip among the flowers, tiny butterfly.
Pale yellow wings, lost among blossoms,
Won't betray until you skip and flutter by,
On your way to fresh flowers' bosoms.

Quail in the loom of autumn time dream;
Quilt of gold laced in the green;
Coolness: evening zephyr does stream
O'er the mirror lake; does seem
You dress with such grace, my Queen.

Traces of Texas


I debated whether or not this is an actual Trace of Texas, but it's too great of a photo not to post. This is Pancho Villa with an Indian Motorcycle that was stolen from Fort Bliss in El Paso. I don't know which side of the border this image was taken on, but I do know that it was taken by a photographer from El Paso. Villa, of course, would subsequently be the target of Gen. Black Jack Pershing's unsuccessful punitive expedition out of Fort Bliss but was eventually ambushed while brazenly riding in an open car in Parral, Mexico, in 1923.

But, yeah, Pancho Villa with an Indian motorcycle in 1914. Pretty cool.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/02/history-american-lynchings-170228114659211.html
A history of American lynchings
A soil collection project is commemorating the forgotten victims of lynching and helping to tell their stories.

Odd thing, this skeletal structure within us. A few weeks back, I wrote of how I gave myself whiplash. Not long after it got all better, I moved six or eight plastic storage boxes, from the front of the house to the back porch, which is totally closed in. The next morning, my hip was so sore I could barely walk. Could only sleep in one position. Today it finally began easing up. I won't detail the things I did in my efforts to heal it up. So, where old pile of bones, do you plan to act up next?

The mockingbird that intimidated Rocky, and even challenged me, abruptly quit coming. Likewise its mate. The odd thing, I sat at my table in the yard to have my coffee and scanned the trees and sky the whole time. Not a single bird of any description showed or sounded itself. Despite the fact we live among the big trees of a remnant of forest land. I began to notice throughout the day. Wtf are the birds? I plan to pay particular attention today. Maybe yesterday was an aberration.

My grandson the other day