ON KISSING

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just the word kissing smacks of sweetness (or of something I can’t quite describe).

*

We all have done some kissing.

Some kissing was better than other kissing.

Sometimes the taste was good, sometimes bad, and sometimes terrible.

Sometimes when we kissed it felt awkward.

*

We have to learn to kiss.

Babies don’t automatically start kissing.

Of course, we don’t learn how to kiss in school.

We learn in the school of life.

*

Sometimes we speak to dogs as though they can kiss.

We say: “Come here rover, give me a kiss.”

But all we get is rover’s slobbery lick.

*

Eskimos use their noses to kiss.

Do they get fewer colds?

*

My memories of kissing are quite good.

I remember when I first kissed Kathy Marker.

We were in second grade.

We were inside a little dog house when we kissed.

It felt scary, wonderful, mysterious…and forbidden.

*

When I was in third grade I remember when large Mrs. Blackman picked me up and gave me a big, slobbery kiss. 

It was gross.

She was wearing some very dark lipstick.

The taste was the grossest part.

I still remember that taste.

*

My mom wasn’t a big kisser, and I’m grateful for that.

But my aunt Marilyn, boy, did she like to kiss.

 

*

 

Martha Doris and I kissed on a train all the way through the tunnel at Denver’s Lakeside Amusement park.

I think Martha wanted to go one more time, but I said that I was out of breath.

*

I kissed Mary Ann Meyers one time on Prom night.

The theme for the prom was noli me tangere:

 Touch me not.

Boy was I a puritan back then, and a Catholic to boot.

*

I wasn’t afraid of germs when I kissed.

The germs would just have to take a back seat, so to speak.

The kissing is what counted.

*

I kissed my first cousin Linda when we sat in the back seat behind her mom and mine at the outdoor drive-in theater.

The movie took a back seat to our kissing.

I think both moms knew, but they didn’t say anything to us.

*

Well, I’ll just kiss and say goodbye.

 

IT’S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES!

 

 

 

 

 

 

AN EYE FOR AN EYE

“Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”

 

Groucho Marx

"The Obama administration isn't dirty...the air is."

Bill Maher

May 17, 2013


P.S., After further reflection---and staring at the eyes of Nixon and Obama---I realize that I have an eye problem, and what I wrote is hogwash.


But here’s why you should care — and why this case, along with the administration’s broad snooping into Associated Press phone records, is more serious than the other supposed Obama administration scandals regarding Benghazi and the Internal Revenue Service. The Rosen affair is as flagrant an assault on civil liberties as anything done by George W. Bush’s administration, and it uses technology to silence critics in a way Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of.
To treat a reporter as a criminal for doing his job — seeking out information the government doesn’t want made public — deprives Americans of the First Amendment freedom on which all other constitutional rights are based. Guns? Privacy? Due process? Equal protection? If you can’t speak out, you can’t defend those rights, either.
To treat a reporter as a criminal for doing his job — seeking out information the government doesn’t want made public — deprives Americans of the First Amendment freedom on which all other constitutional rights are based. Guns? Privacy? Due process? Equal protection? If you can’t speak out, you can’t defend those rights, either.
From " In AP, Rosen investigations, government makes criminals of reporters"
May 21, 2013
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-in-ap-rosen-investigations-government-makes-criminals-of-reporters/2013/05/21/377af392-c24e-11e2-914f-a7aba60512a7_story.html?hpid=z2



 

 

I’ve done this a few times.

I’ve covered the entire face of Barack Obama except for his eyes, and I’ve seen the eyes of Tricky Dick…

Yes, the “I am not a crook” Richard Milhous Nixon.

*

At first, it was one of those things where I thought that I was just seeing things, but now, after events of this past week, the eyes not only have it, but possibly even Mr. Obama himself.

*

How many of us really believe that President Obama only learned about the snoopings of the IRS and reporters from news reports?

Great balls of fire and holy smoke…

This is quite a dubious assertion.

*

But back to the eyes of Nixon and Obama.

 Actions speak bigger than words or eyeballs.

Nixon said that he wasn’t aware of Watergate, and he lied.

Bill Clinton didn’t exactly lie, but just said that what he did (or was done to him) wasn’t sex.

Barack Obama is also throwing his own dubious curve balls, and this time he can’t just slam dunk them away (forgive the mixing of metaphors).

As Commander-in-Chief, we expect the President of the United States to know about almost everything (except UFOS and aliens), and when he doesn’t we smell a rat, or at least a cover-up.

*

Now, let’s be fair, and point out that for beadiness, Nixon’s eyes win the prize.

Barack Obama’s eyes aren’t so beady, but they still look similar to Nixon’s.

 

*

We now know that Barack Obama isn’t a messiah or a Manchurian candidate, but the jury is still out about whether he’s Mr. Mabus.

 

*

This theory about orbs is itself a shady and dubious business.

But it doesn’t hurt to wonder.

IT’S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES!
 

 

 

 

TERMITES CICADAS AND PREHENSILE MESSIAHS

 

 

 

 

 

The news hasn’t been too bizarre lately.

Our insatiable palates must be fed.

Since I don’t drink or take drugs (except for my heart medicine), my mind must rely on inner resources, and outer sources.

The world, however, can be quite a (or an) hallucination.

*

One news source constantly informs its readers of side-boob sightings and pregnancies, and how those women with their pregnancies look from moment to moment.

*

I don’t watch “reality” shows, and I ignore most of the primetime menu of cop shows, etc.

So I read and write…and pay bills.

My age is a little less than the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan (but I’m the same age as Bryan Adams and Jackson Browne).

And I don’t know why I mention this, but I thought that I would.

*

The neighbor tomcat, Gary “Micky Mouse”, visited a couple times last week for the first time in months.

He used to visit our Siamese cat, but she was killed by a neighbor’s dog a couple years ago, so Gary didn’t come by much after she was gone.

He used to lounge around with our cat, and sometimes even sleep in her bed.

Gary died two days ago.

*

The fig tree in the backyard is green once again, and figging out.

The apple tree won’t have any apples again this year, but there will be more pears on the pear tree growing right next to Mr. or Miss Apple tree.

I still would like to grow tomatoes again this year.

What’s going on?

This is beginning to sound like a diary.

It shows just how little there is in the news to talk about.

But here are a few things:

Benghazi

Ariel Castro

Cicadas

NBA playoffs

Lindsey Lohan

Justin Bieber

Tiger Woods

The 2016 Presidential election will soon begin, and then news will become more engrossing.

Until then, I’ll just read and write more.

 

IT’S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES!

 

 

DON’T BUG ME

 

 

“A new United Nations report say the health benefits of consuming nutritious insects could help fight obesity and world hunger.”

http://news.yahoo.com/un-says-eating-insects-could-fight-hunger-200137381.html

 

 

Yes, we’ve heard this before, that bugs are nutritional, and that they are in fact filled with more protein per weight than are our hoofed brethren, or the flightless fowl.

Squash the creepy crawlies, add spices and sauté or fry them, then put the scrumptious insect gallimaufry between buns or in a tortilla, and enjoy!

Don’t ask what is in your hot dog, hamburger or taco.

Just eat it, dammit.

You’re too fat, and you know it.

What you know would hurt you if you knew it.

Better to not know and just enjoy it.

It, here, means of course, your food.

As long as my food is not moving and I don’t see any eyeballs, I’m happy.

Good music also helps.

There will be new restaurants with names like The Anteater and Taco Cucaracha, without any pictures of ants or cockroaches.

Let the names do the talking.

Let the customers do the munching.

 

IT’S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES…AND BUGS!

 

AN ANCIENT CONVERSATION

 

 

 

LIZ:

Bark!  Bark!  You hear me!

LUKE:

I hear you.  But I’m not a dog or tree!

LIZ:

Spit!  You hear me!

LUKE:

I hear you.  But there are no ashes.

LIZ:

Then give the black worm to mother.

LUKE:

O.K.

LIZ:

And give this fire to the old man.

LUKE:

O.K.

LIZ:

Mother will give the worm fire!

LUKE:

Then we eat!

LIZ:

I hear you!

 

 

 

IT’S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES!

 

 

A research team led by Mark Pagel at the University of Reading in England has identified 23 “ultraconserved words” that have remained largely unchanged for 15,000 years. Words that sound and mean the same thing in different languages are called “cognates”. These are five words that have cognates in at least four of the seven Eurasiatic language families. Those languages, about 700 in all, are spoken in an area extending from the British Isles to western China and from the Arctic to southern India. Only one word, “thou” (the singular form of “you”), has a cognate in all seven families.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/words-that-last/

 

You, hear me! Give this fire to that old man. Pull the black worm off the bark and give it to the mother. And no spitting in the ashes!

It’s an odd little speech. But if you went back 15,000 years and spoke these words to hunter-gatherers in Asia in any one of hundreds of modern languages, there is a chance they would understand at least some of what you were saying.

That’s because all of the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in the four sentences are words that have descended largely unchanged from a language that died out as the glaciers retreated at the end of the last Ice Age. Those few words mean the same thing, and sound almost the same, as they did then.

The existence of the long-lived words suggests there was a “proto-Eurasiatic” language that was the common ancestor to about 700 contemporary languages that are the native tongues of more than half the world’s people.

“We’ve never heard this language, and it’s not written down anywhere,” said Mark Pagel, an evolutionary theorist at the University of Reading in England who headed the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “But this ancestral language was spoken and heard. People sitting around campfires used it to talk to each other.”

In all, “proto-Eurasiatic” gave birth to seven language families. Several of the world’s important language families, however, fall outside that lineage, such as the one that includes Chinese and Tibetan; several African language families, and those of American Indians and Australian aborigines.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/linguists-identify-15000-year-old-ultraconserved-words/2013/05/06/a02e3a14-b427-11e2-9a98-4be1688d7d84_story.html

 

 

 

 

 

THAT CHIP OFF THE OLD BLOCK MAY SOON BE INSIDE YOUR BRAIN AND WATCH OUT FOR ATTACKING ROBOTS

 

 

 

 

I enjoy reading science fiction, but I wouldn’t want to see most of its fantasies become reality.

Heinlein and Bradbury wrote very interesting science fiction, and so did Orwell, Huxley, and Wells.

But that doesn’t mean that I approve of, or like all of their imaginative creations.

I didn’t like Big Brother or telescreens.

I didn’t like cloning.

And I certainly didn’t like the burning of books!

The following caught my eye.

 In fact, my eyeballs nearly flew out of their sockets!

Draft U.N. paper says machines should not have power of life or death over human beings

Moratorium on killer robots sought

AP

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/05/04/world/moratorium-on-killer-robots-sought/#.UYUq9qXnZ2N

 

Fasten your seatbelt and hold on to your underwear!

Is this where we have arrived?

“Honey, I think I've caught a cold…and some killer robots are trying to kill me!”

O.K. 

We watched The Terminator and enjoyed it.

After all, it was only a movie, and we sat safely in front of the movie screen.

But here we are now.

It’s not a movie.

And we might have to deal with these damn machines…

These damn, intelligent machines.

And they are from the Earth,

 Not from somewhere else in the galaxy or universe.

Has it been Progress or Decay going from Kitty Hawk to today?

We’ve become prisoners of an Xbox world.

James Joyce was right:

 History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

 

*

 

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/disruptions-no-words-no-gestures-just-your-brain-as-a-control-pad/

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/science/a-remote-controlled-robot-the-size-of-a-fly.html?src=rechp

 

 

IT’S ABOUT RENEWABLE RESOURCES!