The Sunday Morning Muse, July 13, 2008

Low attention voters. That's my muse today. You see these people all day, everyday. They are out there working. Not reading every political site on the internet, not a CNN junkie, certainly not paying attention to what is going on outside of their own immediate set of problems.

This is a very attractive group of people to the political operatives. This week I purposely was a low attention voter. I gave myself a news vacation of sorts. Stayed off my usual political blog sites, didn't watch the evening news or listen to the radio intentionally. Just scanned the local paper for obits... not much more. (Heaven forbid someone die I know and I miss it.) Very little information got into my brain... but here is how it looks from the inside:

Jesse Jackson wants to cut Obama's nuts off. It has something to do with speaking down to black people.

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John McCain either doesn't know the difference between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers or else he lied when he said he named the Steelers lineup to his captors when asked the names of his crew back in the late 1960s. I don't know which is worse. I'm just glad it wasn't Hillary who said it. (fair and balanced.... right.)

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Oh yeah, McCain didn't vote to give the doctor's money in a bill that was so important that Ted Kennedy actually made it to the floor for the vote. But I don't understand how the bill did this.

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One more thing... The Attorney General of Alabama is Gay.

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Now, if a pollster right now said who are you going to vote for, and I had to base it on all this, you can see why America get's the government it deserves.

Wake Up People.

I'm Okay, I'm With Gandhi and Nicole Kidman

Remember back in high school when you took those personality tests in the Guidance Counselor's Office to see what profession you should go into? Well, you can relive that experience all over again and see if you took the right path by taking one of these Personality Tests. It's a Jungian thing.
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If you take this one... you get a list of well known people who line up with you in the categories tested. I've got some interesting company...

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Suki turned me on to these tests. There are other ones, this one and this one that you can compare to see if they agree with each other...mine came up the same every time, so three independent surveys agree: I'm an INFJ!!

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(Just like the Toothpaste commercials... 3 out of 4 dentists agree.... okay. Corny. But I always wondered about that 4th Dentist...)

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If you out there reading this take these tests and find them revealing or helpful, let me know. I enjoyed taking them, and I'd love to get your comments on this and see how close of match the test was to your true self. Comments can be anonymous, (just check the box) and you don't have to be a member of the blog to make a comment.

Standoff with a Groundhog, Part I

Original post here was accidentally deleted.
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I'm sure it is the curse of the damn ground hog.
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It was an interesting tale about the Mexican standoff I had with her on the path.
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Brazen thing, she is. Lived to see another day.
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For Now.

Stray Cat Strut

This one's for Boom-Boom, the Stray Cat out there in Chi-Town.

The Sunday Morning Muse, July 6, 2008

Staycation. It's the new Buzz word. Stay-ing home... or at least nearby, in lieu of the big summer V-A-C-A-T-I-0-N. Turn on any TV news cast this week, and it's the replacement story for the tired old 'Pain at the Pump' stories I complained here about before. The new twist at least gives the news reporter a change of scenery from the highway and the gas pump complainers. (my particular favorite gas story was about the station owner who put up a carnival "dunk tank" so customers can take out their frustrations in a healthy way by throwing soft balls at employees dressed in Exxon shirts.)


Staycation stories are pretty much what you expect: The young couple walking hand in hand on the Mall in Washington, DC. They plan to visit free museums and just enjoy the sights at the Nation's Capitol. The family with their 2.5 children at a local amusement park. Interviews with people saying they don't have the money to travel because of the high cost of plane tickets, and they can't drive too far because of the gas prices.
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Even Las Vegas.... always a bargain when it comes to vacation dollars, is in a slump. 99 Cent shrimp cocktails are double in price! Yikes. Buffet prices are high. I even heard that the legal brothels in Nevada are offering gas coupons to try to get more customers. $50 dollars in free gas for every $300 you spend on their 'services.' Hmmmm. That'll rev your engine.

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This one is even better... a double your stimulus promotion, whereas if you use your government stimulus check you get twice the service for the price! Wow... can you handle it? It may be just the thing to keep your mind off the fact you couldn't afford a "real" vacation this year.

The Laziest Cat in the World

Another Saturday Night. . . .

Happy Independence Day!

Celebrate. Celebrate everything you can. Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple pie, fireworks, your friends, your family.... and hug your cat, too. It's true, this country has serious problems right now with the price of gas, the price of food, bad housing and job markets, etc. but it's still a pretty good place to be. Hopefully next election we'll get this big old ship turned around and start heading in a better direction.

We Can't Make It Here Anymore

Live Acoustic performance at KFOG. James McMurtry

Wake Up People

"We have found the weapon of mass destruction in Iraq. It is oil. As long as the oil companies control our government Americans will continue to pay and pay, with our lives, our fortunes our sacred honor."

Dennis Kucinich

Can We Really Rid Ourselves of Attachments?

You are what you have chosen today, not what you have chosen before. Wayne Dyer introduced me to this concept years ago, and I still come back to it. I struggle sometimes with letting go of who I was before, to become what I am meant to be. It's all about letting go of attachments, some say. I would agree with that. Attachments have a way of dragging you down, holding you back. It was true when I learned to paint, it was true when I played music, and it was especially true whenever I've made attempts to write.

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My Painting teacher made me get beyond pretty little Amish paintings and experience the freedom of abstract expression. The only painting he ever really liked enough of mine to keep was a painting of garbage that was lying on the floor, painted with house paint on cardboard, in Green, Orange and Black. (He made me wipe down the Amish painting.) You'd have to see both to really understand. Trust me. The Amish painting was BAD.

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In music, it was getting beyond three chords and a rhyme, and going for something that mattered to me, instead of trying to please someone else. There was a breakthrough when I went beyond my comfort zone and picked music that just felt right for me, not because I felt I could sing it JUST LIKE THE RECORD. I recorded some nice stuff, I think, and I stretched myself when I did it, to make the song my own.

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Writing is the ongoing thing. I'm still learning. But I know for sure I can rely on advice Stephen

King gave in his book "On Writing." It's hard to kill your babies. When you write something you certainly have an attachment to it...and it is HARD to delete pages, paragraphs, sentences....You have to just walk away from it and pick it up three months from now, and then, only then do you see the blemishes, the problems, the STUFF THAT NEEDS TAKEN OUT. And then you re-write.

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It occurs to me that I am the sum of my experiences and to a degree a product of the people around me. Perhaps, a re-invention of self is simply a reshuffling of aspects of that. Yes, I like that. It's not like getting rid of your "old"self at all. Just different choices. Different intent.
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Getting rid of attachments seems harsh, but acknowledging them as attachments, and letting them go back into the deck for a reshuffle sounds nicer. Or am I really trying to justify my attachment to attachments? Hmmm.