September | 2007 | bharrington's Xanga Site

Month: September 2007

The Daily News
1 Has television really been around for 59 years?
2   I'm convinced mine has. I'm convinced mine has been ON for 59 years.
3   Once again I attempted to avoid yet another Emmy Awards show. Once again I sort of watched, and once again I see why I just don't like awards shows.
4 I'm always hoping that one day they'll give awards to average Joe's. I'd love to see national recognition for my mechanic, for example. I'd love to see my mechanic walk up there all greasy, wrench clenched in his hand, bloody knuckles and a missing tooth, and start thanking his mom and his wife, kids, dog, beers, and all the guys at the shop for all their support.  And then I'd like to see him get caught up, having a moment, and then declaring all of them geniuses.
5 Let's drink to the hard working people.
6 Let's drink to the salt of the Earth.
7 Moving on: Speaking of Joe's, I'm pleased to announce that Original Joe's will re-open this Thursday, September 20. It's been a long time. I'm dying to see what they've done to the old place. But good news for long time locals.
8 Moving on, Part 2: If you are a local, then you'll also be pleased to see that the fountains downtown are once again on, splashing kids and adults alike and adding an amazing dimension to the Plaza de Cesar Chavez. Now if we could only somehow acquire a gianormous pooper scooper...
9 Lord give me strength.
10 Anyway it's clearly becoming Autumn. There was that little bit of a chill in the air, and a coolness that mingled perfectly with football and laundry.
11 Q. Who does the Dallas Cowboys' wash?
12  A. Tom Laundry.
13   <thud>
14   Some fun. Clearly only people over 100 would understand the reference, but somehow that had to be done.
15   Tom Laundry.
16   Mind you, it was Sunday night when this was being written. The NIners stumbled to a win, and the Raiders stumbled to a loss. Fall is in the air.
17   Sunday night's are always ruined early because we all start trippin' on what we have to do this week.
18 I get HELLA crabby at everyone and anyone all day Sunday, and by Sunday night I've finally realized that I just need to wake up and start moving and taking care of stuff, and that things usually take on a pretty steady rhythm as the week begins to roll.
19 Still I somehow get irritated every single Sunday.
20 Don't get old. Everything they say about losing patience and getting crotchety is true. I'm gonna wind up being one of those old bastards who walks out to get his paper, picks it up, and then wags it at kids in the neighborhood just to keep them in check.
21 I'm actually going through a personal Renaissance, and I've never been stronger or better.
22 Of course I had to say that.
23 Okay, I need to put this all behind me and move to a new place.
24 You guys bring in the Fall by having a glorious Monday. Look at an Autumn leaf. Fly somewhere on a bicycle. Make soup. Raise a glass. Celebrate life. Splash through a fountain.
25 Eat at Joe's.
26 Peace.
~H~

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Friday, September 14, 2007

The Daily News

1 Whew!

2 Yesterday afternoon I got TOSed by AOL. My crime? Bulk mail. The DN. Guilty until proven innocent. A grave miscarriage of justice undoubtedly.

3 Remember the fear of being "TOSed" in the early days of the Internet?

4 TOS stands for "Terms of Service" and if people used to go into chat rooms and act obnoxiously, other people would tattle-tale on them, and they would get TOSed out.

5 Something like that.

6 It was sort of like playing four-square when you were a kid. If you got way obnoxious and acted like a buffoon, you would get "benched" at recess, which when you are playing with a bunch of people with big ol' heads and tiny bodies, meant banishment, stocks, public humiliation, and a somewhat surreal subjection to cooties.

7 Nobody ever wanted that, especially when you were just trying to be the guy who DIDN'T become the blacktop monster.

8 Every kid's fear.

9 A lot of adults' fear.

10 You can learn an awful lot about people by just watching kids interact.

11 Two days in a row we have a four-square reference, so this must be some serious stuff.

12 Anyway, I tried getting on AOL and had this thing come up saying it couldn't verify my password, and if I had questions to go on their Help line.

13 I knew immediately that this was going to take a billion kajillion years. It was at the end of a long day and I just decided to relax and check e-mails and all. I don't do business on AOL; it's really for friends and alumni. In some ways AOL, for all its faults is like a part of that.

14 That might sound ridiculous, but I guess that's the way things are. I associate it with e-mails, the DN, friends, family, dogs, and even the occasional circus clown.

15 I learned how to go online from AOL a long time ago, when it was an expensive toy that only professionals could afford to use. Of course I met teachers online who taught me how to beat that system, and I just thought it was amazing that you could type and the paper would talk back.

16 And AOL made all these cosmic noises when it would connect, as though everything was traveling through time and space, and that you could reach people in the Yemens if you wanted.

17 Anyway, I went to this Help desk thingy and they had a cyber robot gal talk with me, like AIM or something.

18 I asked why on God's good Earth that a swell guy like me would have been TOSed. I felt like I was in a police interrogation room and that at any moment the Closer was gonna come in and get the Truth outta me.

19 She said that I had sent over 50 e-mails out on one send, and they thought I had stolen somebody's identification.

20 I explained that I just send the DN out to a buncha people so they could goof off, read my stupid stuff, have a nice cup of coffee, and then out the door to battle the day.

21 She understood, and then proceeded to ask where I was born and what my mother's maiden name was and stuff.

22 After around a half hour of this, they put me back on once they realized I was a regular guy. Ironically yesterday morning I took all the DN names and put them into a new group because a lot of people have switched e-mail names and all, so I just updated.

23 That's the last time I do anything THAT stupid.

24 So I dunno. I'm gonna try mailing the DN again, because when I asked if would do that again, the answer was that AOL had no rhyme nor reason for who they flag down; it's sort of like being audited.

25 So I'm gonna give it the old college try. I'm hoping the DN isn't in any sort of jeopardy. I may need to experiment with dividing the send list. There doesn't appear to be any set amount of e-mails you can mail out, but I sure as heck don't want to be the town cootie.

26 Cooties.

27 Haha, well if you recall, writing CP (Cootie Protection) on your hand stopped you from having Cooties.

28 So I've done that. If other students at the school delare that I have Cooties, I know darned well that I'm protected. When I was a kid, writing CP on your hand automatically protected you from public declarations of Cooties, the Witch Trials of childhood.

29 Wish me luck. I'm completely innocent, I tellya.

30 I just hope they don't grab torches and run me out of the village.

31 Meanwhile have a great weekend. Get out to Sanborn Park and watch The Tempest or The Scottish Play at Shady Shakes. Angie's in 'em. Go to Shadyshakes.org for details or call 408.298.0649. Free. Parking is $6. Go a bit early and bring a low-back folding chair and food and bevs.

33 It starts at 7 p.m.

34 I hope to get out; it's the last weekend. I really hope to enjoy the show, that is if I'm not banish-ed.

35 And have a wonderful weekend everybody. Sure hope ya get this!

36 Have fun.

37 Peace.

~H~

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The Daily News

1 Man.
2   I made the mistake of turning on the 11 o'clock news last night.
3   Just not a fun thing at all.
4   So I'm going to bypass all that depressing stuff for right now, not because I think it isn't important, but because my mind just didn't want to channel any of it.
5 Besides, I worked on my own laptop last night. Turns out that the school just gave me a laptop to use and at first I was hesitant but it's actually a pretty user-friendly little job.
6 I had to drag it to a meeting yesterday, one about statistics, my absolute favorite.

7 It was intimidating because at YB we never were told to bring laptops to meetings. Sometimes they would request an abacus if you had one, but that was about it.
8 So there I was in the nerve center at the Chill looking over the top of this little laptop that I had never even used. Had to hook it up by crawling around under the table, but I actually did it swiftly and almost gracefully. I pushed the power button. All sorts of little green lights began blinking on and off.
9 Took the thing about four years to load in. I just pretended I was following the demonstration but really it just kept loading. By the time I threw a password out there, the meeting was adjourned.
10 But last night at home all laptops in my house vanished with over-demand, so I had to fly the TOOOOOONDRA up to the Chill and grab my laptop.
11 After tearing out plugs and cussing for around five minutes, I turned the thing on. To my utter surprise, it fired right up.
12 As I combed around on the contraption, it read something my fingers glanced over, and suddenly this little box appeared out of seemingly nowhere and said something like, "You're a good speller!"
13 Like a little kid opening a present, I broke into a surprised smile. There it was, to my utter delight. Something completely unexpected, and I broke into a huge smile, my eyes got as big as saucers and I said to myself, "I AM! I AM a good speller!"
14 For the record, I won my sixth grade spelling bee. I wrote a great little story about it, but like most things we write I stuck it in some yellowing box years ago and I think it's gone.
15 It was all about winning that thing, and about what a hero I was for a day.
16 And in classic Kevin Arnold fashion, how I thought I'd still be a hero the next day only to find that most people are impressed with you for around twelve seconds, and then get on with living.
17 I remember that I couldn't wait to get back to school the next day, only to find I was pretty much the fifth square in a game of four square.
18 Wonder years.
19 As long as I'm just rambling here, I might add that I literally lived the Wonder Years, which is on each night at 10 p.m. these days. My dad WORKED for Wonder Bread, which had a commercial a million kajillion years ago that began, "These are the wonder years, the growth years..." and there you have your title. Our childhood was blessed with super fresh white bread, and if that isn't symbolic I don't know what the heck is.
20 Anyway I thought it was nice of this computer to meet me at last and then tell me immediately that I was a good speller, even though it's clearly never read the DN after a night of groveling with insomnia and coffee hangovers.
21 So here I am really flying on this little number. The teevee is blaring, a radio is blaring, and it's like old times.
22 The news on teevee just said, "And when we come back, a teacher who dresses too sexy..."
23 Wasn't me.
24 No really.
25 But I am a snappy speller.
26 At least my computer tells me that.
27 So that's it. A new/old laptop that just works. Nothin' fancy. And it gives you compliments.
28 If it said, "You are one sexy dresser" I woulda shitcanned it in about one second.
29 I much prefer, "You're a good speller, feller."
30 God I better get outta here.
31 Chase down your coffee and have a smile. You have things to do, so go out and do them with a nice feeling. You might be good at something too. You KNOW you are, so just gather your things this morning and tell yourself what you're good at. Then go out the door.
32 Your whole day will be sunnier.
33 That's it.
34 Have a lovely day.
35 Peace.
~H~



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The Daily News

1
Somebody told me that Alex Smith stopped in at Mission Ale House last
night for the sole purpose of picking up chicks, but collapsed when
someone told him that to do that required being able to make a forward
pass.

2 M' bad.

3 I think the Niners should have put the hippy guy with the banjo in
at the end of the game. At least he could play. Ah, Alex did okay at
the very end. Still...

4 The best part about the Niners this weekend is they weren't the Raiders.

5 Ah, and I have to give it to their defense.

6 So I meant nothing by it.

7 No offense.

8 Moving on: Ah,
football. It's definitely Fall. I was pretty much born a Niner fan. My
dad has had season tix since there were actual REAL 49ers here, like
back in the 1800's and stuff.

9 Just kidding.

10
Truly he did and when I was just a little guy he used to take me up to
Kezar stadium where I would sit with a bunch of kids in the end zone.

11
In those days (it wasn't REALLY the 1800's folks!) you could go down on
the field after the game and slap those big lugs on the shoulder pads,
and you could smell the mud and grass all around you. If the Niners
would get a bad call late in the game you could be absolutely certain
that it would rain beer cans, most unopened.

12 What you didn't want was to be standing anywhere near a referee.

13 The beer of choice back then was this horrible tasting stuff called Pabst Blue Ribbon.

14 Just some nasty stuff.

15
But that was back-in-the-day. Nobody drinks it now. I don't THINK
anyone does. Ah, who cares? It's all about the good ol' days, the early
days of being a kid and loving your team.

16 So...Kezar, Stanyon Street, all of it. You used to pay people to park in their garages.

17 Football.

18 I imagine if you never got into football you'd think it was the most barbaric, idiotic thing ever dropped on mankind.

19 And you'd be right.

20 And as a kid, I loved it, every bit of it.

21 Great way to spend a Sunday, or even a Monday night.

22
Somehow this past Monday night, the Niners won the game. After
an entire season of Lucy pulling the football out from under Charlie
Brown, he finally brushed himself off and wound up having a peanut
butter and jelly sandwich with the Little Red- Haired girl.

23 Peanuts and football analogy.

24 Today is Wednesday.

25 I sort of made Tuesday disappear for myself yesterday.

26
But I figured, "Since it's Tuesday, why not do a bit about football?
The day doesn't count anyway." Well, I actually wrote this on Monday
night but it seemed not quite right to put out there yesterday.

27
So now you know. It feels fine to put out there on a Wednesday. So this
DN is just about football, maybe, and being a kid in the Fall.

28 Football.

29 It's back, and so is the Fall. And maybe even remembering what it's like to be a carefree kid on a blustery autumn day.

30 Have a great day everybody.

32 Be a kid, just for today.

33 Peace.

~H~



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The Daily News

A simple note: Last year I wrote a DN that reflected the tenor of 9/11, and of
all that it encompassed, at least in my heart. I decided against re-writing
anything as this re-print from last year probably says more than
anything I could ponder today.

Give it all a bit of a thought today.

Peace.

~H~

Monday, September 11, 2006

The Daily News

1
Today is the anniversary of the tragic bombing of the World Trade
Center, an event so tragic, and so unforgettable that it emblazons
itself in our minds every 11th of September. I always feel rather
solemn and pondering each time this painful anniversary rolls around,
as do many of you. I'm guessing that a great many of you remember
exactly where you were that terrible morning in 2001. I was in the
shower with water pouring over my head, getting ready for another go of
it at YB.

2 I recall a massive cleansing going on as the word
came to me, and closing my eyes hoping what was coming over the radio
was some sort of hoax. As the morning moved on, it was clearly a day
like no other in our nation's history. Shadows of Pearl Harbor and JFK
flew past, but this was happening now, today, 9/11, 2001.

3 The
day moved on with horror after horror unfolding with terrible
regularity. I pulled a television into my classroom and the students
were left to watch, as stunned as everyone else. I recall silence. I
recall disbelief.

4 And I remembered how much I really loved my country.

5
A few weeks ago, George Bush declared 9/11 Patriot's Day, or Patriot
Day. I'm not sure which, but it just didn't seem to have the same
feeling as anyone who went through those agonizing hours might reflect.
We all felt patriotic, but in a different fashion. For many of us, it
was our childhoods, our safety, our families, our friends, and our
country that had been ravaged.

6 Several weeks ago I was given
a memo from my principal mentioning Bush's declaration of 9/11 as
Patriot's Day, or Patriot Day. The whole thing sort of put me off,
because I have always kept my own personal thoughts and prayers rather
personal, and while I do understand various memorials taking place all
over, I felt the late notice and the jingoistic and almost
opportunistic request for some formal form of declaration smacked a bit
of political jingoism. A small ceremony unrelated to the Bush
administration seemed appropriate to me. At my school, organizing
anything beyond perhaps a flag ceremony and a moment of silence seemed
enough, given the time factor, and given the solemnity of the moments
that simply wouldn't go away.

7 Each year in my English and drama classes, I would show the CBS documentary 9/11,
one of the best ever done. It is the film taken by the NYFD cameraman
who happened to have his camera on that day. His documentary is over
four hours, and is simply his camera following the entire day. It is
riveting and more than anyone should have to bear.

8 And
each year, I would also read a piece I wrote a year later. It was
almost one year to the day when I had finished writing it, and I've
shared it with not only my students, but with readers of the DN ever
since.

9 It never was very Xanga friendly, which is a shame,
because it was written completely from the heart. As I am writing this
this morning, I am listening to a moment of silence, followed by a
reading of the names of the people who were lost to us that day, and
the list is being read in New York. It is exactly what this day is
really about.

10 With that, I'll throw Patriot's Day over my
shoulder. New York, and my own feelings for family and friends, and for
my beautiful country, I shall keep.

11 Here is the piece. It
isn't much, but I always will feel that 9/11 should always be something
silent and meaningful. With that, I leave you with this piece. It
doesn't even display beautifully, but it is everything it should be.
This is my memorial to what we all lost on September 11, 2001:

http://www.ybdrama.com/911tribute3.html

Peace.

~H~

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The Daily News

The immortal Charles Chaplin in Modern Times (1936)

1 Do you ever sometimes just laugh when the world decides to turn your life into a silent comedy?

2 The first play I ever directed at YB was a quaint little piece called Silents. It was a tribute to the days when we had movies without talking. I was always charmed at the amazing ways the actors had to depend on instincts and visuals to get large points across to people. I'm always charmed by simpler times.

3 I also gained tremendous respect for Charlie Chaplin, and how with a shrug of the shoulders and a turn on a cane, he would simply sidestep all the goofy things that could happen to people, dust himself off, and walk crookedly into a black-and-white sunset to greet his next adventure.

4 I always loved when he would be at war with an inanimate object, whether it would be a mop, or a pair of roller skates, or a machine that would pull him right through its gears when he tried repairing it.

5 The entire concept of inanimate objects grabbing us randomly out of our lives and wishing to wrestle with our day is a fun concept, because it happens all the time.

6 Yesterday was a perfect example. I wanted like crazy to get a jump on the day, got up early and got through the morning pretty quicky, despite the toilet paper roll coming completely unwound on one pull.

7 I watched. It kept going. I have this relatively new holder that is free standing, but also well spun. I tried rolling it all back on neatly, but it looked like a guy who tried to tuck a huge shirt into his normal pants.

8 I picked it up and was ready to throw it away when I thought, "THAT'S not very resourceful."

9 But then what do you DO with a bulky toilet paper roll? Well, you do with it what you do with anything that you're suddenly holding and don't know what to do with. You pick it up. Set it down. Think. Pick it back up. Start to put it one place, and then think twice. You stuff it in your front pocket. You think about it and then put it in your back pocket. You take it back out and ponder...

10 I wound up throwing it out. I went into this tremendous guilt about global warming, starving people, felled redwoods, and all the rest. I rescued it from the trash and set it on a counter that had lots of other junk on it so that it joined the ranks of "stuff I don't know what to do with". It sits now a trophy, and a tissue shrine to the art of indecision.

11 But STILL I was in a hurry, who isn't? So I dashed into the closet and grabbed this large shirt, knowing it might be hot outside, turned and tried to speed out of the room to do whatever it was that was so important.

12 I took one step and got clotheslined. The shirt had caught on one of those little blouse hooks on some random hanger, and literally pulled me backwards, like a lineman grabbing a running back's collar from behind.

13 Now I'm not a little guy, but there I was headed forward out of the room and this shirt stretched to the hanger, forming a huge "V" behind me, and I couldn't move until I unhitched myself, which meant finding the hanger and THEN unfastening myself.

14 I turned and swung at the hanger, which snapped into the air and made tremendous noise, but finally fell to the ground, releasing me from my ridiculous shackle. I was finally on my way.

15 Midway through the hall I just thought of how funny it is that things that small and seemingly insignificant can come at you on a daily basis.

16 I chuckled as I considered how Chaplin never considered such nonsense as "little things that just do that to us in life", but as life's humbling of our own busy-ness and self- importance. To Chaplin, that WAS what happens to all of us, all the time.

17 Computers that suddenly go wonky. The gate that will never close on one try. The doorknob that turns round and round but never catches. The shopping cart with the revolvingly noisy and clacky wheel. The spices that fall on our heads every time we open a cupboard. The shoelace that comes undone.

18 We will make our meek adjustments.

19 The story unfolds. Each day is a new adventure. Things will come at us incessantly, and we will learn to pirhouette and let them slip by.

20 In the long run, our story will be made up of lots of encounters with things that try to control us. Sometimes they'll emerge victorious. Other times we will adjust meekly, and stroll back down the road.

21 With any luck, we'll walk into a glorious sunset.

22 Enjoy your own story, and don't forget to laugh today.

23 Peace.

~H~

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The Daily News

1 Man dude I wanna hit somebody.

2 And the funny thing is I don't even know why.

3 Just...blammo.

4   I went out last night for my every-five-years' purchase of new shoes.

5 Your shoes just look up at you one day and say, "Uh...dude?"

6 So I just got irritated by everything. The shoes had collapsed on themselves, you know the way they do. I tried polishing them but I wound up with shoe polish outlining my shoe on the sink, as though it had been murdered.

7 Really it began with the shoelaces sometime last year. I got annoyed because shoelaces don't work anymore. Minor peeve, but a peeve nonetheless.

8 It's like, "DUDE, all you DO is make shoelaces, and every time I get new shoes the laces unravel incessantly. It's two-thousand and fookin' seven man! INVENT A SHOELACE THAT FOOKIN' LACES SHOES AND STAYS ON A SINGLE TIE."

9 I'm got SO irritated.

10 Anyway not only did the shoe polish get on the sink, but a cop coulda easily traced it back to my hands.

11 I eventually broke down and went to Targggey for new shoes.

12 You know how everyone nowadays calls Target "Targggey", like it's funny or something? Even I do it and I don't know why. Pisses me off.

13 But as I said at the top of the show here, I just wanna hit somebody and I blame it all on that muggy weather.

14 I could just see me being interrogated by the shoe police.

15 "I hadda do it! IT WAS ANNOYINGLY MUGGY last night!!!! I CONFESSSSSS!!!"

16 I don't do muggy.

17 It was muggy out, that's all I know. My night started out something like this: some morons drove past me with some idiotic beat blasting out of their car, which was obnoxiously low to the ground. It was decked out with all kinds of strange lights and odd jewelry, dark windows. Total gangsta wannabes.

18 There was only one window you could see in, and that's only because it was the one that was open, and had morons everywhere you could look. To top it all off, some guy's voice kept yelling some stupid saying over and over, some repetitive beat, and he seemed to be shouting something that sounded remotely like "bitchgonnacome an' do it, bitchgonnacome an' do it" like around six thousand times. Irritating on a muggy night, like bad craziness.

10 Had I been at King and Story I woulda had some respect, but these guys were spinning through a Targggey in Milpitas. I mean, dude.

11 I then moved swiftly into Targggey and got inside. It was close to closing time but the guy in there greeted me like I was King Farouk.

12 "Good evening, sir."

13 Let me ask you this.

14 Is there a guy walking around who wants to be called "sir"?

15 Don't answer that or I'll hit you.

16 For that matter, is there a woman out there who wants to be called "ma'am"?

17 Isn't that short for "Madam"?

18 I really don't do muggy very well, as I said.

19 I don't really wanna hit anybody.

20 I'm STILL a pacifist.

21 If someone came into my house and put a knife up to my grandmother's throat, I'm quite likely to say, "Ah, go ahead." That's how pacifistic I am.

22 Pisses people off.

23 They always wanna kick my ass.

24 I'm always, "Go ahead. Knock yourself out."

25 They never do.

26 I remember when I used to tell people I was a pacifist when I was younger. They'd ALWAYS bring up that grandmother scenario. "And you wouldn't kick the guy's ass..." they would chime.

27 I'd just get smug.

28 "Nope."

29 Then THREE people would start all sorts of scenarios involving my parents, my family, my pets. And they'd ALWAYS say, "And you wouldn't kick the guy's ass!"

30 "Nope."

31 I always loved it. I was truly a man of peace. Still am.

32 Pisses EVERYONE off.

33 What I never tell anyone is that the reason I wouldn't kick the guy's ass is because he could probably kick my ass.

34 So I no longer wanna hit anybody.

35 I've calmed my shit down.

36 Hey, that's not even considered wrong anymore.

37 People always tell other people to "calm their shit down".

38 Anyway I calmed my shit down.

39 After all, I don't want anybody to kick my ass.

40 Especially those imbecile wannabes. Besides, I'm a pacifist.

41 And now that I'm calm, and have achieved Nirvana and all for the evening, I believe I'll go meditate on Gandhi and Lennon and Twain, and Thoreau, the Dalai Lama, Huxley, Einstein, and Jesus.

42 Peace.

43 Don't hit anybody.

44 This'll blow.

45 Have a great day.

~H~

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Thursday, September 06, 2007

The Daily News

Luciano Pavarotti 1935-2007

1 So...Luciano Pavarotti walks into a bar...

2 So it goes, so it goes...

3 Heaven just got another voice.

4 Truly, all a friend can say is ain't it a shame.

5 Moving on: One
of the wonderful parts about throwing your stuff out there each morning
is that the editing process can be brutal. I always hesitate whenever
I use the word "ain't". I don't mind using it at all, it's just that I
will never understand the apostrophe. What is it abbreviating? Hmmmm.

6
Anyway, normally the DN takes a few hours to put together, not because
it's so hard to write but because it just takes time to gather some of
those priceless pictures that I steal on a regular basis.

7 When the right one comes along, I almost fall off my chair.

8
I usually write stuff up first, check it for moronic mistakes, and then
search for the pictures. Inevitably I find some idiotic mistake the
minute I've sent the thing into space.

9 Sometimes I don't
even notice what I did. I run it for grammar errors a hundred bajillion
times only to find some screwball misplaced modifier or some horrendous
error in structure. In general, it's such a rarity that not just me,
but the entire world goes into a form of shock.

10 I also have the Corrections Officers ready to pounce.

11
Yesterday, for example, a few people wrote and said they loved
yesterday's DN, which I did too, but mainly because of that dandy
picture of the Queen.

12 But as I re-read, I began twitching on a few grammar concerns.

13 I then got to number 33 and saw that I had written, "I may have wounded up whack."

14
For those of you who don't know, the correct past participle of "wind"
is "wound". I knew this, but when you are going fast on a computer,
your fingers sometimes travel faster than your thoughts. My FINGERS
knew the past participle of "wound" is "wounded" so they just flew with
that.

15 I stood disgraced. How many other harrible errors
had I made in the past week? Month? Or...it's just too harrible to even
think about.

16 Even to think about.

17 It's just too harrible about which even to think.

18 Oy.

19 I thought that perhaps it would slip past everyone.

20 After having gone through a hundred tons of fan mail, I realized that NOBODY had spotted it. Dun dun DUUUUUUUUNN!!!!!

21 I went back to new mail.

22
Now the embarrassing thing is that Sparky had just visited me, so the
speakers on my computer were turned up loud. I was just trying to sneak
in a quick goof at work when suddenly, reverberating off six walls was the famous
AOL voice:

YOU'VE GOT MAIL!

23 I just kept staring at the screen like the guys in those commercials that say, "Need to get away?"

24 I looked around swiftly, and then glanced back.

25 I had an e-mail from the immortal Goof. Geoff is one of the best, and eagle eye and a hankerin' for only the best.

26
I KNEW I couldn't throw that one past him. I just laughed, opened the
mail and his e-mail said, "...that would be a ton of rot..." referring
to yesterday's DN, item 28, which read, "It turned your teeth rotton, your eyes blue..." etc.

27 AH!

28 There it was, big as the world. I had misspelled the word "rotten"!

29
Again, that was just an effort in haste making waste. I originally had
it worded, "It originally turned your teeth red..." and switched at the
last moment, thought twice, then looked a third time and just galloped
with it, my fingers totally not spelling the word "rotten" even
remotely correct.

30 AH!

31 I stood astonished. I
stared at the error, which Geoff, in a brilliant twist of irony,
painted a sweet red for me. Would this have ever happened to Keats,
Byron
or Shelly?

32 Get off me. I KNOW it's "Shelley". I wasn't sure if the middle guy was Bryon, Byson, or Biron though.

33 Yeah I did. Now I'm paranoid.

34 My only peace came when I realized that NOBODY had caught the "wounded" one, which really jumped out at me.

35 Well, that's a Day in the Life of a DN guy.

36 Like I used to tell my actors, a pie in the face comes with the job.

37 I laughed, and enjoyed the fact that we have people out there who wounded up pretty edumacated.

38 I like to think I had a part in that.

39 Anyway, thanks for all the cards and letters. Keep vigilant. I screw up at least three times a week, so happy motoring.

40 And Geoff, lookin' forward to twenty-five man.

41 Let's jam.

42 Peace.

~H~

http://www.xanga.com/bharrington

1:12 am
Comments Off

The Daily News

1 Well!

2 Some scientists from somewhere have discovered that some ungodly amount of children are bi-polar.

3 What are the odds?

4 I know when I was two that I was stable and staunch as Lincoln.

5 These kids today.

6 The study claims that a significant amount of children can be hyper one second and completely dazed the next.

7 How much are they PAYIN' these guys?

8 My mom used to just give me a lithium cocktail and put me to bed with a hammer.

9 These kids today, I tellya.

10 I wonder how much they pay these scientists and doctors and all to discover that an extraordinary amount of children can go up and down, can scream and then can be gentle as lambs, can threaten and then ask earnestly, can be the Three Stooges one second and display the manners of the Queen of England the next.

11 The solution, they say, is to give them large quantities of pills.

12 Makes perfect sense to me.

13 In some strange way, it also sort of explains the Queen of England.

14 I don't know about many of you, but I'm thoroughly convinced I was the first TRI-polar kid ever. I used to try to plug my cat's tail into the lamp socket, soaking wet.

15 He never lit up, but my mom sure did every time I'd try it.

16 I remember once accusing her of being bi-polar. Four seconds earlier she had made me a grilled cheese. After she screamed at me about the cat and all, I just turned to her and said, "Mom, don't you think you're being a just a wee bit bi-polar?"

17 When she said, "Don't get smart!" I followed her advice.

18 I never did. I was a very obedient kid.

19 Actually that's a made up story, I'll be honest with you.

20 They didn't even have bi-polar when I was a lad. Wasn't even invented yet. Adults weren't that concerned about kids being kids.

21 When I'd be seeing if I could twist the cat's head all the way around, they would say, "Ah, he's just being a boy."

22 The cat never appreciated that I was trying to make him fit better.

23 I just assumed he was being crazy when he'd react inappropriately to my efforts.

24 Little guy.

25 I can see now that he was probably just being bi-polar and in need of pills.

26 Kool-Aid used to do that. Make me bi-polar, I mean. I'm thoroughly convinced.

27 Because when I was a kid, you opened a pack of Kool-Aid and dumped it into a pitcher with the Kool-Aid guy on it. Then you'd add about eight tons of granulated sugar and a couple of pounds of ice.

28 It turned your teeth rotten, your eyes blue, and your entire psyche insane but DAY-UM it was good on a hot, sticky day. You'd go from hot and whiny to cool and zippy within milliseconds,

29 And after zinging and bouncing off walls and rooms for about an hour you'd crash land on your head and start screaming and wailing.

30 Bi-polar bi-schmoler.

31 Anyway, I thought those researchers were pretty amazing coming to those conclusions about children. REALLY amazing for the pharmaceutical industry.

32 Good thing we live in 2007 where the majority of children running around now have something with a name.

33 It's refreshing to know that there was probably something wrong with me that pills could have taken care of. I may have wound up "whack".

34 That's what the new bi-polar generation uses whenever it refers to someone who is a bit off. Like, "That guy is whack." "This test is whack." "Bush is whack."

35 Hey. Maybe he just never received the benefit of having been diagnosed properly, and was therefore bereft of a Candyland of expensive pills that may have left him less whack.

36 Truth is, we owe a lot to science, and especially to people who can make some ready cash off our children.

37 Personally I think the entire thing is whack.

38 Peace and pills.

39 Have a great day.

~H~



http://www.xanga.com/bharrington



Hope your day isn't too whack.
- 11:43 pm
- Comments Off
The Daily News

1 Hot enough for ya?

2 I swear.

3 I told you about my neighbor who always says that every time it hits 100.

4 The guy is a scream. If you're in your driveway washing your car, he'll come up and say, "When you're finished washing your car, you wanna come over and wash mine?"

5 Hardy har har.

6 Right after I wrote about the guy the other day, I walked out in front.

7 "Hot enough for ya?"

8 Oy. I left out the quip about his wife though. For one thing, it's fun to think about, but to say, nah.

9 Plus she isn't too far from looking dead-on like a nanny goat.

10 Not much news these lazy days. They call them the dawg days.

11 Moving on: I've been working on my daughter's laptop for awhile now. Like most computers it has its little annoyances.

12 For example, you'll be typing along typing along when you'll notice that the cursor has jumped up somewhere else on the page. Often you have to look around for it.

13 If you've ever been to Vegas or Reno/Tahoe you might be familiar with a slot machine called Haywire. I've written of it before.

14 What happens is that if you hit a jackpot it holds for a second, and then the machine starts spinning again and again, out of control. You don't know if you're going to make a billion dollars or walk away with nothing. It's as if a ghost is pulling the slot machine's handle and seems to be gambling with your money.

15 This computer does that. Plus it will suddenly jump some entire new page right in your path, blocking any work you might do. Sometimes it's horrifying: one page had to do with warts, the other hemorrhoids. Yoiks.

16 Maybe it senses that there's a troll working here on this end.

17 Just a minute ago it has some dame in a towel. Okay, so it wasn't the stuff of trolls but it was a bit annoying. Ah, she was pretty and all, but I like to attempt some semblance of a train of thought when I write, and that wasn't really playing very fair.

18 So yeah, doing the DN is no walk in the park.

19 Or maybe sometimes it's a little too much a walk in the park.

20 Yeesh.

21 They just shouldn't give you three-day weekends, especially this early in the school year. Or late in the summer. Or whatevuh.

22 People get that "pretend' thing. You know the one. They want to kick it by a pool, or have one last huge barbecue, or throw down one final sno-cone before giving in to the falling leaves and Halloween decor that accompanies the Fall.

23 Somehow it just doesn't quite work. When you really look around, the air mattresses are flat and dirty; the lawn has leaves all over it; the flowers are turning rusty and the heat wants to kill ya.

24 It's a right of passage. Fall is football, back-to-school sales, summer stuff on tables in front of stores, all gone, price tags ripped and torn, and the stuff just not looking as fun anymore.

25 It's always an interesting transition, whether you work around education or not.

26 It's an annual ritual, beginning with the resumption of school followed immediately by scorchingly irritating weather.

27 The best thing to do is to find shade. And if you DO find shade, and then you happen to glance over and see a neighbor, just ask him this question:

"Hot enough for ya?"

28 Stay cool.

29 Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington
- 1:20 am
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Month: September 2007

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