Echoes in a Hollow Space

Random quote of the day:

“The most incomprehensible talk comes from people who have no other use for language than to make themselves understood.

—Karl Kraus, Half-Truths and One-and-a-Half Truths: Selected Aphorisms



Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

It's so odd writing again for characters I first created 5 novels ago (Jeremy, Susan, Carmina, Maff from Blood Geek). Kind of like meeting up with old friends you haven't talked to in 20 years. You kind of know them, but you kind of don't, and it's partially getting to know them all over again but with this strange deja vu.
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Oh, criminy! The December 19 Democratic debate is going to be held about two blocks from here, at Loyola Marymount instead of UCLA. Looks like I don't leave the house that day.
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The Lao Tzu quote I used for the November 8 random quote of the day is so ubiquitous that it appears on t-shirts and coffee mugs, but I couldn't verify that he actually said it. I don't normally like to use quotes I can't verify because there's already too much of that on the internet. And I try to avoid ubiquitous quotes altogether, because generally the more ubiquitous they are, the less likely they are to be an accurate attribution. But when I pulled this one out of my random quote file yesterday shortly after posting about learning to live with limitations on Twitter, I thought, "Okay, Universe, I get the message." I felt I had to use it. So, "attributed to Lao Tzu" and adding to its ubiquitousness. (Any time I use "attributed to" it means I couldn't verify the authenticity of the attribution but decided to use the quote anyway.)
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An interesting article on art and arthritis:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-07-26/art-arthritis-aging

We overcome what we must. I'm kind of in a place now where I've said to myself, "You can either limit yourself because of your legs [arthritis] or do what you are able to and not make excuses." This is almost a daily argument I have with myself.

I think I finally turned the corner there (and I really am so much better off than so many others). I'm still limited but trying not to limit myself. It's tough not to give in to despair and self-pity sometimes, though, when you can't do things like you used to do. But that accomplishes nothing. The lady in the arthritis article come through it, too, after a requisite period of mourning.

Losing my eyesight would be utter devastation. I think of what it did to my mom. Her stroke left her with severe vision impairment and she'd been a visual artist all her life. But she never gave up, not until maybe the last six months of her life when other things started to take their toll.

I fear sight loss, too. But that's a fear for another day, and not part of my current objective reality. We have to deal with what's on our plate right now, and keep digging deep to find the resources to continue in some way to be who we truly are.
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If I had an RV, I'd call my RV Maria.
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Yoiks. So many talking heads in the chapter I’ve been working on, and characters standing around frozen until it's their turn to talk. I look forward to the rewrites. A very long scene, and possibly told from the wrong POV, but talking heads are easy to write when you’re trying to get through a lot of information. Not so much interesting to read, though. I still look forward to the rewrites.
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People love to hate, and they love dancing around in their underwear feeling superior to everyone else.
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Here’s another interesting article: “Ancestor Worship with Mother Nature: How Indigenous Death Rituals Illuminate the Web of Life” by Maria Popova:
https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/08/27/david-abram-the-spell-of-the-sensuous-death/
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The worst earworms are ones that play in your sleep and every time you wake up the tune starts up. Or is that just me? For a week, every time I woke up “My Darling Clementine” started playing in my head. I finally had to unleash extreme countermeasures by singing "Brandy" to myself until that replaced it. Lately, they have improved considerably. “Brandy” was replaced by “Look At Me,” which is heavy rotation on a VW commercial right now, then “Ave Maria,” also in heavy commercial rotation (Amazon). But that has now been replaced by Leonard Cohen's “Anthem” which is not in a commercial but a gift from the gods. A much classier run of earworms.

Random quote of the day:

“The opposite of talking isn’t listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.”

—Fran Lebowitz, Social Studies



Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“Discussion in America means dissent.”

—James Thurber, “The Duchess and the Bugs,” Lanterns & Lances, 1961

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“Look out for the fellow who lets you do all the talking.”

—Kin Hubbard

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.”

—William Blake, “Proverbs of Hell,” The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

 

“There are always people who make big declarations.  These are always people of little consequence.”

—Issai Sato, Genshiroku

 

 

 

 

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

 

“I’m very wary of people who give us the lessons of history or the laws for the future of cultures.  But I do think one thing the historian can do is to warn us against the overgeneralizations of social scientists, politicians, preachers, all those who think they’re in on the secrets of the future.”

—Daniel J. Boorstin, interview, NewsHour

 

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

You know how you have to be careful what you say around little kids because you're likely to hear that same language coming out of their mouths at the most embarrassing times?

I'm here to tell you, the same applies to talking birds—and not just for words, but any sound you make on a regular basis or that they hear in nature and outside nature.

The roommate's starling, Baby, is a brilliant mime. His vocal effects include the whirling of the calculator when she's got the tape running, the barking of the little dog a few doors down, the cawing of the crows outside, and the chickens who used to live over the back fence. He whistles the opening bars of The Blue Danube, only he's replaced the pom-pom pom-pom at the end with the smooch-smooch smooch-smooch noise we taught him. (Although sometimes the notes of the Danube wander off into some strange territory. Mozart had the same problem with his pet starling.) Baby also wolf whistles. This has caused amusement on many occasions when unsuspecting humans have walked by him. His favorite words currently are "What?" said in a semi-startled tone, "okay," "ouch" (he's been known to bite), "kiss," and "bugs fresh"—that last a request for mealy worms, a staple of his diet (starlings are non-seed-eaters). We don't know why he reversed the word order since it was originally "fresh bugs," but that's another well-known characteristic of talking starlings, mixing the words up and sticking them together in different order. This has also been known to cause amusement.

Now we get to the little pitchers part of this post...

His latest sound effect is a, well, very natural sound. In the last few days he's started making the sound of a ripe, full, basso profundo fart.

I'm not pointing any figures, but I will say that the roommate is the one who spends the most time with him. Just sayin'. Be careful out there—and watch your sound effects in polite company.

I went to see Dr. Quacky McQuackenstein last night about my eye. I did have a minor abrasion, but I was able to put my lenses back in this morning and everything's been fine.

The thing is, that chip I thought I saw and felt on the left lens? It turned out to be a really bad case of protein build up, and that's why it looked and felt ridged. He polished them up and, boy howdy, I can see better than I've been able to in months. Heh. Heh heh.

Don't get me wrong: I'm glad that a) it's not chipped; b) I didn't have to buy a new lens; c) my eye wasn't seriously hurt (the same eye I poked earlier in the year to give myself a major abrasion, btw). It's just that I did rather a lot of carping to the receptionist about having two chipped lens in two years... and I didn't, actually. Heh. Heh heh.

Speaking of armpit farting monkeys: As kmkibble75 and I were...But no, maybe I'll put this behind a cut. Some people don't like reading about indecorous behavior, and I do have a reputation as a really classy broad to protect. ;-)

( Sanitized for your protection. )