Everybody Blogs....Sometimes

A long time ago, I wrote an entry about my great aunt. She's 85. At the age of 79, she decided she wanted a computer and wanted to learn how to email.
She got a book on Windows 98 and computer basics and read it cover to cover.
Then her son showed her how to operate her computer and before long, she was emailing, web-surfing and shopping online.
Now, 6 years later, the internet has become her world. Her congestive heart failure has made it difficult for her to get around. but she doesn't miss a thing because she's got her computer and her internet.

Lately, she's been hearing about and reading blogs and has decided she would like to start her own blog.
My mother knows that I have a blog but she knows I don't want her reading it and she figures there is probably a good reason for that.
She told my aunt that I could help her and so I will.

I think she is amazing; 85 yrs old and she wants to dive into the world of blogging.
She grew up on a farm with no electricity and no running water. They had an outhouse and they did their homework by kerosene lamps. They picked cotton and shucked corn.
Now, she surfs the web and talks on her cell phone.

The world has moved so fast and she's kept right up with it.

I can only hope to be as savvy as she.

Mid-day Haiku

Yummy it's lunchtime
Soba miso with chicken
and buckwheat noodles

It's in the bag

I think I'm in need of an intervention.
I am a purse freak and have ALWAYS been since I was a tiny little girl and cherished my big sisters' cast-offs.

I have a gazillion purses and they spill out of my closet and into large storage bags in the corners of my bedroom.

I thought I was out of hand when I coveted Dooney & Bourke. A boyfriend happily fed my addiction and bought me purses for Christmases and birthdays.

Now, I'm moving on to bigger and better (more expensive) things:

Fendi
Kooba
Balenciaga
Chloe
Chanel
Dior
Zac Posen
Marc Jacobs

All brands of purses that I have no business desiring.

What is this crazy need to have quality leather and deep rich colors adorn my arm?
A $10 purse from Wal-mart holds the same crap that a $1500 designed by Zac Posen will hold.

Am I compensating for some shortcoming? Do I need therapy?
But who wouldn't go just a little insane for this:


or this:

Artistic Impressions

I love art mostly because I want so desperately to be able to express myself using some form of art. I have tried and I found myself sitting before a blank page or a blank canvas wondering what in the hell I'm doing.
So, instead, I collect.
I'm not like Steve Wynn who collect priceless works of art by oh..say...PICASSO but I enjoy owning things I find beautiful.

I don't always love those realistic paintings of landscapes or still life. I want to see what the artist sees inside his head.
Sometimes that's pretty damn scary but sometimes it can be breathtakingly beautiful.

I wrote a small blurb a year or two ago about an artist I really love named Walter Falk. My boyfriend at the time and I discovered him back in 97 or 98. We bought a couple of pieces and then looked for him every year at the Bayou City Art Festival and would purchase one or two pieces.
When said boyfriend and I broke up, we split our collection and went our separate ways.

Falk disappeared from the art festival after a couple of years and we never found him again.

A few months ago, his son found my blog by (I'm assuming) doing a search for his father's name.
He emailed me to let me know his dad was still painting and would be in my area this weekend at the Artoberfest.

I was worried when the day started out with pouring rains and strong winds but luckily the weather cleared and it turned into a decent day for art.

I found Falk right away. He spoke to me as soon as I entered his booth but there was no way he would remember me, he must see thousands of people a year.
He spoke to me as I was looking at his paintings and I explained to him that his son sent me an email to let me know he would be there and suddenly he knew who I was and knew about my blog. He was able to repeat to me things I had written.
It was such a strange sensation.
When I wrote that small entry about this man, I never in a million years thought that he or anyone who knew him would read it.
The fact that he did and acknowledged it was surreal.

Each piece I picked up, Falk had a story about the inspiration behind it. He told me why he used certain colors and encouraged me to take them out into the sunlight to really see the differences in shades and textures.
He told me stories of being drunk in the Swiss Alps, going from brewery to brewery until he found his reason for being in Switzerland.
(He also let me know that he wasn't drunk yet that day and he'd been nursing a warm Lone Star beer for a while. No man should drink a warm beer on a hot day so I bought him a cold Shiner.)
To be able to discuss the actually painting with the artist and to know what was going through their mind when they put brush to canvas is amazing. I couldn't believe how lucky I was to be standing there talking to the man that creates such beauty.
He's a huge man, towering over me (with me at nearly 5'10" that's hard for someone to do!) but when he described something he witnessed that inspired him to paint a certain piece, the beer in his hand and his rough exterior disappeared and he became almost child-like in his awe of the world.

Falk uses acrylics and watercolors and ink; sometimes in the same pieces. I love that. I love the complexity and the use of color and the mixture of mediums.

I couldn't make up my mind. There were several paintings that I loved so he put them all side by side and that really helped me make my decision. I purchased two completely different pieces and although I love both, one of them really spoke to me. I stared at it all weekend, marveling at the unbelievable colors and the hidden details.

I don't know a whole lot about art and I certainly can't write with any great knowledge but I know what I like and I know what is beautiful to me.

Art and beauty are truly in the eye of the beholder.

PS: By the time I got to the art show, all paintings and the artist were dry.

It's All About Obeying De

A few months ago, I started dating this guy. We'll call him "Old Balls". I'm not going to go into detail but it was just a casual thing. I had no intention of getting serious with him and I knew he felt the same. We were just having a good time.

Anyone who knows me well understands that I'd rather you be honest with me more than anything. I don't care what you tell me, if you're honest, more often than not I can deal with it.
I'm not an idiot. Old Balls has been unfaithful to EVERYONE he has ever dated or married so I wasn't expecting a monogamous relationship but he is hot as hell so I just wanted to have a little fun.
Then I found out that he was seeing someone else and lying to me about it. Again, I didn't expect him to see only me but I hate being lied to. And the fact that it was stupid lies made me even MORE angry.
It wasn't that he was seeing someone else, it was that he was treating me like a moron. It was an insult to my intelligence and I stopped seeing him.

Ok, cut to this weekend at the Artoberfest. My ex-boyfriend-turned-best-friend went with me and as we are walking around, perusing the artist's booths, I spotted Old Balls walking with a woman, holding hands.
I wasn't jealous but suddenly I felt evil. I wanted him to see me because I KNEW it would freak him out a little. I can pretty much assume he's unfaithful to this chick so seeing someone he use to sleep with while out with said chick would make him uncomfortable.
Plus, I am SO much cuter than this person he was holding hands with. Please girls, don't act like you haven't felt this way before!

Anyway, I alert ex-boyfriend-turned-best-friend whom we'll call Dipshit for this post.
When Old Balls passed by, we made eye contact but that was it, he didn't acknowledge my presence at all (which I expected).
I turned around and watched them walk on and suddenly I wanted to follow them. I was being mischeivious, I know, but I just wanted to make him a little uncomfortable. C'mon! It's fun!
But Dipshit wanted no part of it. He kept trying to walk over on the other side of the street so I found myself screaming things like, "Come on you fucking GIRL! Just walk with me!" or things like "God, you're such a fucking pussy! Be a man!" (Can you believe that we ever broke up?)
He informed me that he could easily be a man on the opposite side of the street.

Later, I thought about my behavior. No, not about yelling at Dipshit. He deserved it. But about why I wanted to make Old Balls flip out.
I wasn't jealous at all but I guess I still harbored some resentment about his treatment of me. I have had guys cheat on me before (haven't we all?) but I was more angry about how stupid he must have thought I was.
People who treat me like an idiot really piss me off. I can forgive the cheating but I can't forgive that!

What does this say about me?

The Weird World of Sports

I don't know why I haven't been able to bring myself to blog lately.
I know I haven't been around much but I do think about you often.

I've been watching baseball and a little football.

In football, I'm sure you've all seen the huge footbrawl that happened between Miami and FIU. Did you also know that the thug announcer that was calling the game got fired?
The whole thing proves my point about football become a thug sport. It's now starting in college and moving right up to the NFL.
It was a gang fight on the field this weekend but they used helmets and cleats instead of guns.....this time.

In baseball, another announcer is fired. This time for making racially insensitive comments. I was watching that game and I didn't get it. At no time did Lyons say "Hey you spic, I'm missing my wallet!" He simply commented on the things Pinella said.
I think that whole thing is ridiculous. I'm hablaing English over here, though, what the hell do I know?

And in other sports news, I found this over at Synergy of Sports.
I don't know if this is real or not but apparently, Mickey Mantle got more than an MVP at Yankee Stadium.

Autumnal Meanderings

So, the time of year begins when the weather changes almost daily.
Autumn on the Gulf Coast is bizarre. Sometimes the weather is lovely and warm with a cool, dry breeze and other times it's humid and suffocatingly hot.
I can remember a many a Halloween when it was too hot to wear a plastic mask or your carefully applied vampire make-up went streaming down your face along with the sweat...AT NIGHT.

We don't have those spectacular changes of colors like other regions do. Some of our leaves turn a dull brown and then quickly fall to the ground.
Our grass usually stays nice and green and a lot of trees retain their foliage.

We rarely have freezing weather and when we do, it's fun and exciting.
When it snowed -ACTUALLY SNOWED- two years ago, people ran around praising God and building snowmen.
It was an incredible sight; something I'll probably never see again here.

With the ever changing weather comes allergies and boy am I suffering.
I don't know where all this mucus comes from but I am SHOCKED that a human body can produce so much.
My head hurts from sinus pressure and from the persistant cough that annoys me and everyone around me.

I would go buy more medicine but the government has decided that we're all to be treated like fucking junkies and we have to go through a strip search, a background check and give up our first born for some allergy relief.
I would take the medication the doctor prescribed me last year but as I swallowed one, I was informed that this particular drug was taken off the market because it apparently causes hearts to blow up or stop or something.

So, I'm just going to sit here and enjoy Fall while I sniffle, cough and wait for my heart to explode.

For Colin: The Fat Lady

She's been singing for a while.

Yes...this past weekend saw the demise of the Astros hopes for a postseason.
It would have taken a miracle to have risen up from the deep pit of despair they had dug themselves but it was exciting to dream....to hope.
Now, what the hell am I going to do until April?

Oh, well there is postseason play and I'm keeping up with that.
I watched the Yankees and Tigers last night.
I just have to say that it must be terrifying to be a struggling Yankee team member.
Look at poor Alex Rodriguez. The guy goes through some rough times and the fans and media are ready to lynch him, behead him and stick his head on a spike on the Brooklyn bridge.
A pitcher who doesn't do well gets booed by his OWN fans when walking off the mound! How about a little support when a guy is down?
It's brutal out there.

Ban This

The idea of banning books is something that infuriates the hell out of me especially in these modern times.

In the days when religious freedoms were threatened, books that allowed people to explore new ideas and beliefs were banned lest someone actually think for themselves.
Now, I would hope that thinking for yourself would be encouraged and celebrated.
Of course, a lot of people rely on the media to tell them what to think but for those of us with half a brain we love those books that challenge our beliefs and ideas.

There was a man, Anthony Comstock, who felt it was his duty to rid the world of lewd, indecent and obscene materials from the hands of impressionable Americans in 1872.
His slogan was "Morals, not art and literature" as if you couldn't have all.
This was nearly 150 years ago. Shouldn't we be beyond banning arts and literature? Shouldn't we embrace ideas?

There are two debates going on right now that have caught my attention.
First, there is a father in Conroe, Texas that wants Fahrenheit 451 to be removed from the high school reading list.
His daughter complained about the book to her father because it contained "cussin" and a scene about "the burnin of the Bible". (Imagine all of that in a very hick accent because that's how I heard it in my head)

In the complaint filed against the school by Alton Verm, he listed each objected item line by line, complete with individual page numbers. Besides bad language and violence, Verm lists "downgrading Christians" and "talking about our firemen" as reasons the book should be banned.

It's obvious that this man went through the book, but did he read it? Is reading comprehension a part of the equation here?
Yeah, he saw the curse words and the Lord's name being taken in vain but did he actually GET the purpose of the story?

This is like all the people who are out to ban the Harry Potter books. Why? Because it talks about magic and witchcraft.
Apparently, the theme of the book being that Harry and his friends make the choice to work on the side of good instead of evil when evil SURE looks tempting completely slides past people like Laura Mallory, who is complaining that Harry Potter is attempting to lure children into the Wiccan religion.

Did these people actually read the Harry Potter books? I'm thinking not.
I have a feeling if they actually read it with an open mind (that's a lot to ask for, I know) they would see that the books actually teach children to shun "evil" and always pick the side of good.

Book banning stems from fear. The fear of ideas different from their own. The fear that someone or something more intelligent just MIGHT be influencing their children.

But ideas are scary. Hopes and dreams of something bigger, something MORE in life are simply frightening.