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Silly Saturday
Saturday, 22 November 2008 at 2:15 PM | Author: bishop

It’s so freakin’ freezing! (Actually, it’s just low 40s, but still…)

It looks like we will be trying to hit five states in five months in 2009 plus one possible overseas venture (though this latter is the prenascent stages of planning so I can’t really say much). Some may wish to keep their hotel rooms to hide things, but we’re planning on trying to get around without hotel rooms to see if we can’t meet some old friends and make some new ones. Since Jenn made her final intentions clear on Friday, the push to figure out new job possibilities and living arrangements will begin soon[1]. I feel like breaking out into Motley Crue: My heart’s like an open book / For the whole world to read / Sometimes nothing—keeps me together / At the seams / I’m on my way / I’m on my way / Home sweet home. It’s been a tough ride thus far and I think I’m starting to see the light[2]. Life around here is about to take off not just for the better—since it’s already that—but to new and spectacular peaks and valleys.

But let’s talk about the fun stuff! As if travel isn’t fun! Puh-lease!

Jinx and I went to Half Price Books, Gamestop, and IKEA and had a blast. We had Swedish meatballs for a snack since we’re having early dinner with my dad, grandmother[3], and other son late afternoon. I did pick up some DVD racks that just rock cool. Granted, that means that I have to be Mr Fix-it Man and put them up. I’m still trying to get the hang of things that I didn’t used to do on a regular basis. Not really my forte. But I’ve become quite handy with a screwdriver.

[dramatic pause inserted here]

I might even have to start craving power tools for Yuletide.

[another dramatic pause inserted here]

So very few people will actually get the humor in that and, sadly, the one who will doesn’t give a rat’s ass[4]. But we did stop by Half Price Books. I found a collector’s set of the Beauty series by Anne Rice. I almost bought them since it would appear that our library is going to be torn asunder by the same selfishness as our lives. But I really wanted to buy them as a gift[5] and decided against it. I did, however, pick up three books that were on the clearance shelves:

  • The Plucker: An Illustrated Novel by Brom
  • The Ruins by Scott Smith
  • Poetry and Prose by Walt Whitman

Running around IKEA is just not the same withou…

Jinx and I had a blast running through IKEA. I so wanted to make some larger decisions than I did, but I needed a new set of flatware (since I just don’t have enough, believe it or not, for three since I try to minimize using the dishwasher every day) and a papertowel holder, and just some other small things. And I did pick up a bag of meatballs (minus the lingonberries this time) and the DVD racks. I probably shouldn’t have, but it’s just one more thing I can get out of my hall closet and out into the open.

Going to head off to finish cleaning the apartment our home and get all the laundry put up. Then it’s off to dad’s for a bit and see what the rest of the evening holds. We are working on planning next weekend out of town with some friends since we’re not doing Thanksgiving this year at all[6].

I gotta stop this bitter thing. Saturdays are supposed to be about the fun stuff. I guess I’ll work on getting these posts right starting next week. I mean, I stopped repressed everything else so that I can turn my life into a ticking emotional timebomb, but apparently this is the way I’m supposed to be since peace, love, and happiness is not allowed[7].

Okay. I’ll end with something goofy. While this is certainly a “home made” movie (and the creator admits it), it’s not the video but the song that struck me. LOL! It’s cute. And it’s one that will just go right over someone’s head. Of course, the video gives me heartburn for the simple reason that I can relate right now and it’s depressing to me to work so hard for so many years to have and give so much only to have it be tossed away for nothing more than a wet spot in the sheets.



I can’t help it, I’m just falling; I’ve learned from my mistakes and baby I’m not stalling
Sweet light pouring, sweet like cheesecake, porcelain skin, for heavens sake
Just gimme a break, just gimme some time, just gimme that look and I’ll make you mine, oh Valentine
What a pick-up line, butterflies and cloud nine, in decline all the time
You always do, you always do, you put me through this mess everyday

innervox

  1. I’m still living in a state of willing denial and need some time to process all this new information (and allow the fantasy in my head some time to change her mind). [↩]
  2. Maybe not, but it’s fun to think that one has finally reached a plateau of understanding. The loss is sharp, but the future is full of so much possibility and potential just waiting to be explored. Tough shit for those who aren’t interested in going with us. Their loss—and I’m beginning to feel no sympathy for demands that are highly unreasonable. Get on the tour bus or stick with the little bicycle you’ve picked up out of the gutter. Once the bus leaves, it ain’t coming back for any reason at all. But shut the fuck up either way and shove that attitude back in some unused hole. [↩]
  3. … whom I haven’t seen since my mother died last year [↩]
  4. I guess I just so really miss the humor, conversation, and connection we had that she claims (ironically, given the ability to joke about certain obvious things that only she would really get) never were real. It’s actually quite heartbreaking. I really don’t want to have to spend another 13 years trying to start over to just reach the point with someone where a single sentence can hold so may different layers of personal meaning that are filled with joy, laughter, love, and incredible memories. [↩]
  5. As I sat there are stared at them, though, I realized they would be taken as expected, never really appreciated for the gift (or the meaning behind the gift), and then such thoughts yet again turned to someone other than me. I’m dealing with some harsh realities here. Nothing I do is good enough at all for someone who claimed to have loved me so much. [↩]
  6. It’s all good. It’ll be fun for us both to get away from the uncertainty, chaos, and lack of presence that addiction has pissed all over us for the last couple of years. It’ll be really nice to be around people who care about us rather than just themselves. [↩]
  7. It’s just that getting out to “live life” makes me realize how much my experience of life itself was wrapped up totally in my experience of living my life with her. Obviously, the converse, for her, is not true. So many things are still fun but ultimately feel empty because I’m not enjoying them with her next to me smiling, laughing, playing, and enjoying the same things like we used to do—even though she still sits around claiming otherwise. And, quite frankly, nearly all of … well … everything is stuff I would just rather do with her than without her. Most of it was special because she was part of it not because of the experience itself. [↩]
Category: 6-Sacked Out Saturday, Books, Family, Home, Life, Love, Music  | Tags: , ,  | Leave a Comment
Cultural Studies: Alien Culture
Monday, 01 September 2008 at 4:01 PM | Author: bishop

["The Day the Cisco Kid Shot John Wayne"] did not stick out to me as much as the other. Maybe it’s because I grew up in south Texas and the Mexican population was most familiar to me already. Christmas at our house was never complete until my grandmother showed up with the homemade, handmade, tamales from the neighbors across the street. You can’t buy tamales like that from a store. A store will carry pork, chicken, and beef. Maybe. We had so many different kinds of tamales we didn’t know where to start. And that included the strange blueberry, strawberry, and brown sugar infused tamales they made which turned out to be amazing for breakfast—with a little whipped topping, of course. But I grew up around these groups of people—at least for my summers in Corpus Christi—and during my childhood I never saw them as different and I never was made to feel different in return. I had the same group of friends summer after summer until my mid teens when I became the stereotypical gringo and they, in turn, became the stereotypical spics and our friendships were left to quiet, almost covert, conversations on my aunt’s porch in the darkness of night over root beer and crackers. I guess, actually, it’s not that the story didn’t stick out to me as much as it felt familiar and a little bit like home.

Maybe it is the idea that children, more than any other group, are so influenced by the views and attitudes of their parents. This is evident, to a small degree, in the story as Junior listens to his parents argue over the “Okie” that has moved in next door. They are naive to think that the only child to be affected is the one with post-pubescent hormones on the rampage. Whether we can point it out specifically in the text or not, Junior is highly influenced by his parents approach to the neighbors as his mother finds their habits and dress insulting and their “kind” beneath them. It is little wonder that at the end, Junior is shocked when his mother negotiates the peace treaty and a movie for Junior and Denver. The contradiction in her actions was confusing and evident even in the text. We teach our children our own prejudices whether we can see that or not. They mirror our own views on so many things when young. Junior’s actions, especially in the vicious attack on Denver, only mirrors the expressions of his mother in regard to the neighbor who, in her prejudiced view, couldn’t have come from any other place than the gutters of Oklahoma City.

Junior’s distance from cultural assimilation during his school was punctuated by his involvement with the Los Indios, a way for his cultural identity not to be swallowed up by the alien culture that was threatening to take over his perspectives. It was a sense of ethnocentrism that bound this children together in a unity of identity. Even toward the end of the story, in order for Junior to fulfill his mother’s task of taking Denver to the movie, he had to arrange a lie of inclusion for Denver—the albino Indian—as a way of giving him a connection, an outsider appeal, a notion of “somebody different,” to the rest of the children in the gang. Of course, we see that this fusion of the identity into the culture image is precisely what happened anyway. He did not assimilate the new culture into himself as much as the new culture assimilated him into itself. He felt out of place but perceived himself paradoxically transformed from living in an alien land to becoming the alien himself.

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Personal Legend
Saturday, 12 April 2008 at 7:20 PM | Author: bishop

“Why would a king be talking with a shepherd?” the boy asked, awed and embarrassed.

“For several reasons. But let’s say that the most important is that you have succeeded in discovering your Personal Legend.”

The boy didn’t know what a person’s “Personal Legend” was.

“It’s what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everybody, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is.

“At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend.”

None of what the old man was saying made much sense to the boy. But he wanted to know what the “mysterious force” was; the merchant’s daughter would be impressed when he told her about that!

“It’s a force that appears to be negative, but actually shows you how to realize your Personal Legend. It prepares your spirit and your will, because there is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s your mission on earth.”

“Even when all you want to do is travel? Or marry the daughter of a textile merchant?”

“Yes, or search for treasure. The Soul of the World is nourished by people’s happiness. And also by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy.To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only real obligation. All things are one.

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

—Paulo Coelho. The Alchemist. 1998. p. 21-22

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All Tied Up In Knots
Wednesday, 05 March 2008 at 1:42 AM | Author: bishop

CATHERINE LAMB: You obviously watch over us. Tell me, what have you learned all these years?

THE DEVIL: (He ponders a moment. Then) I think you have certain inalienable rights which any civilized society must preserve. One, the right to delude yourselves. Two, the right to lose your sanity if and when these delusions fall apart. And three, most significantly, the right to defecate in private.

CATHERINE LAMB: Do you take nothing seriously?

THE DEVIL: Oh, Ms. Lamb, what a question. Of course. Knots, for instance, I take very seriously. Thank God, we’re all tied up in knots, bound up in a bundle, or we’d stray: wander off into the dark and lose ourselves completely.

—Barker, Clive. “The History of the Devil.” Incarnations, London: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1995. p.312

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Top 20 Books
Tuesday, 26 February 2008 at 4:43 PM | Author: bishop

Of course, no list is ever really set in stone, and especially not in a world such as mine where the quantity and quality of books is ever shifting. So this is merely the Top 20 Books that I recognize today. One might suggest that this list is—currently—really more a Top 20 Most Influential Books; that is, those books that have most influenced how I have reached my current spot in life. It is definitely a very diverse list of books and I don’t really think that limiting it to merely ten does it justice.

For the sake of fairness, this list is in alphabetical order. I have considered multiple books sets as one entry for the sake of simplicity.


  1. The Art of War—Sun Tzu
  2. Atlas Shrugged—Ayn Rand
  3. The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre—H.P. Lovecraft
  4. Book of the Law—(received by) Aleister Crowley
  5. Chaos: Making a New Science—James Gleick
  6. Dune—Frank Herbert
  7. Foucault’s Pendulum—Umberto Eco
  8. Imagica—Clive Barker
  9. Liber Null & Psychonaut: An Introduction to Chaos Magic—Peter J. Carroll
  10. Lord of the Rings (Trilogy)—J.R.R. Tolkien
  11. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius—(translated by) George Long
  12. Merlin: The Prophetic Vision and the Mystic Life—R.J. Stewart
  13. Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry—Albert Pike
  14. Parable of the Sower—Octavia E. Butler
  15. The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life—Thomas Moore
  16. The Satanic Bible—Anton LaVey
  17. Stranger in a Strange Land—Robert Heinlein
  18. Tao of Pooh—Benjamin Hoff
  19. Tough Times Never Last, but Tough People Do!—Robert Schuller
  20. Valis—Philip K. Dick


Three books deserve special mention. They don’t really belong in the above list, but they were considered closely and hold a particular fondness with me.


  1. The Crow—James O’Barr
  2. Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah—Richard Bach
  3. The Witching Hour—Anne Rice


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