The vice-presidential candidate of one party is six years older than I, and the presidential candidate of the other party only nine years older. Either I am getting old or our political system is overwhelmed by the fresh groovy waves of youth. Obviously the only thing to do is to declare my own intention to run for the supreme office of the land. My platform will be built on cedar planks of crank Constitutionalism, advocacy of a new Platinum Standard, the abolishment of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the banning of Big Pants on kids, legalization of all drugs except pot, the perversion of community norms and the normalization of relations with Canada.
But no, it is not to be. I have already promised to write in Mrs The Fyd’s name on my ballot. And never let it be said that my vote is lightly promised or foolishly cast.
I was just in a meeting that began with my observation that the rain outside was falling almost perfectly sideways. Perhaps that effect was exaggerated by us being on the eleventh floor, but whereas in December horizontal rain is not so welcome and would solicit suicidal groans from my co-workers, after the miserable heat of last weekend it is heavenly. The only problem with this relief, as Mrs The Fyd has pointed out, is the resulting wet dog phenomenon.
Speaking of dogs, yesterday on our evening walk as we went up Yamhill, past the Catholic church, a couple were bicycling down the street. The woman of the pair looked over Boris and Vinnie, and as if in answer to her companion said, “Not as pretty as ours.” Oh sister, oh no you di’nt.
Saturday late afternoon, boarding the line 15 bus at 34th and Belmont. I hear a woman ahead of me snarl at the bus driver, “Can you explain why you’re over an hour late?” The driver looks bewildered, says he is right on time. I follow this unpleasant woman down the aisle, giving the back of her head the stinkeye, because I know she is full of it. A half-hour before I had disembarked from the previous 15 that stopped at that intersection, went to run an errand nearby, than walked back to the busstop to get on this bus which arrived as scheduled, lo at half-hour intervals that time of day.
Four blocks and two stops later, she gets off the bus. So perhaps she was deranged by the excessive heat of the weekend and imagined she waited over an hour just to ride four blocks. I’m sure she complained all evening about the tardy driver. I don’t want to judge, since in all likelihood that she has physical and/or mental disabilities, but monkey-on-mercury crazy is what you get on the bus in the many hours of the day when taxpayers are not commuting to work.
Last night I dreamed that I was being interviewed by Clarence Page, man-on-the-street style, about Barack Obama. My only reply that I recall was that I thought Obama would like me more than McCain would. Also that a white reporter wanted to interview me but I had no time for him because he worked for USA Today.
The song “King” on the new Weezer album is the reason I proudly fly the Flying W on the back of my pickup truck.
Although the fact that that song (and three others) are bonus tracks on the deluxe version of the Red album, and it was just sheer chance that said version of the album was in stock when I was at the store, leaves me wondering why the band would risk depriving their fans of what is one of the best songs they ever recorded. It’s like the sheer donkey perversity of ignoring your fanbase that led the Melvins to put out the Prick album. Not that tweaking the fans is a bad thing, but don’t be a jerk about it.
I’ve been listening to the Vandals this morning, and so am reminded of some other names for the mullet:
Ape Drape
Hockey Hair
Forbidden Hair
Achey-Breaky Hair
For some reason this reminds me of a dream I had last night, where I was out doing some serious shopping for a pair of cowboy boots I needed for work. This doesn’t seem like the kind of dream one should ignore.
Recent books read:
We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin
The Warden, by Anthony Trollope
Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires, by Selwyn Raab
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II (Modern Library Edition), by Edward Gibbon
Today is muggy and I am logy but I still took the dogs (both the Resident Dogs and the Guest Dogs, in two shifts) for a walk earlier this afternoon. Seeing as how it is Sunday I attempted to keep them from urinating on church walls and landscaping. There are a lot of churches in the neighborhood, however, so one must be ever vigilant. The following is a sampling of houses of worship in the area.
In honor of my cultural and ethnic background, the local Catholic church:
Church, no steeple
This church, despite the Korean writing, is now used by a Romanian congregation:
A Coptic Church reminds one of how old the religion is:
There are far more churches we walk past, but I’ll save them for future posts, so as not to clutter up your browsers.
They say diversity is vital to cultural understanding, and it is true. Our Sunday walks have led me to understand that Russian and Ukrainian young women dress, when they are going to church, like really classy, high-class hookers.
I can’t roll up the sidewalk outside my house and take it indoors, and the city considers it part of the street system, and outside of my property. Yet I am legally responsible for its upkeep and repair. I suppose it’s a more direct form of taxation for infrastructure maintenance than we normally see, and I’m not opposed to it. The section at the base of our sidewalk is cracked and tilted and I certainly don’t want someone to trip there.
The city sidewalk inspectors have been all through our neighborhood and the result can be seen in the outbreak of sidewalk repair contractors following behind. In our case I think it’s the linden tree just over our property line that’s caused our damage, but that doesn’t seem to be a valid reason for appeal. I guess we’ll lose this particular memento of the earliest days of our neighborhood:
Thank you, S Card, for installing sidewalks that have lasted most of a century. It would be interesting to find a picture of our street from 1908, or better yet from 1915, when our house was built.
My neighborhood may not be a walker’s paradise, but it is at least rated very walkable. Which makes sense, given how many street walkers there are.
