The Great Thing About Being A Pessimist

The great thing about being a pessimist is that when things go right, you're always surprised.

Anyone who read my post yesterday may have surmised that I didn't exactly have a good day by any stretch of the imagination. While it was a 100% accurate representation of how many wildly different thoughts run through my head throughout the course of a day, yesterday was not typical. Thankfully.

First, I was lamenting the fact – over and over again, actually – that I was possibly one person short for the drama, and that fear/worry/apprehension doubled once I got to church and realized that not only was I one person short, I was now two people short, as someone who had previously signed up had crossed their name out.

(Apparently, my unease took on a physical manifestation, as one of my church friends, upon seeing me remarked, "Wow! Your face is really RED!" I remarked that it also felt as though it were really red, and that I felt flushed, and my face was somewhat warm to the touch. This flushed feeling – and look too, I'm sure – continued throughout the evening, but went away sometime during my sleep.)

So, I was now two people short heading into the final audition, and panicking more than was reasonable. But then the most curious thing happened last night and this morning – the guy who couldn't do it before, and the lady who had crossed her name off last night both decided that they could, wanted to, and would participate after all. Wow! Problem solved. Didn't see that coming.

Second, there was the apprehension about the plumbing situation. The guy never did call yesterday, and I didn't call him. Until this morning, that is. I was headed out the door, when my phone rang, and it was the plumber. "We're coming this morning to start the job, if that's all right with you," he says to me. "Absolutely, it's all right with me!" I said. "Of course it's all right with me!" After checking that I didn't need to stay and wait to let them in the house, I left for work, marveling at the unexpected excellent timing of the plumber. Didn't expect that either.

I hadn't been at work more than 30 minutes when the plumber called me back. Bad news already? Nope, they just needed to get in the house after all. So back home I headed.

While I was securing the scared-of-jackhammers kitties in our bedroom upstairs so that they were out of the way of the plumbers doing any work they may have to do inside, I heard a sound outside the second-floor window.

Errant birds smacking into the window panes? Nope. A ladder being set up against the house. What in the world?

Turns out it was the roofing guy, returning unexpectedly to fix the flashing around the dormers in the front of the house so rainstorms would stop ruining our bedroom ceiling (the same guy had fixed our skylight flashing for the third-floor ceiling leak a couple of weeks ago). Wow! Didn't see that coming either.

Don't get me wrong – not everything has achieved hunkydorydom in one day.

I still haven't called the Honda guy about picking up the keys.

I still didn't make it to the gym at lunch today (I had to pick up some cat food – our fat cat, Winnie, is an emotional eater, and he'll need to have plenty of food after today's trauma).

The "check engine" light is still on in the van, and I still don't know why.

Mary and I ran out of time this morning to make the marinade for the chicken, so it's just gonna be plain, and we'll make a dipping sauce.

I still don't know any more about Scotland than I did yesterday. But Wikipedia isn't blacked out anymore, so that knowledge is at my fingertips, should I choose to acquire it.

But things are looking up. Or down, in the case of the maybe-it-needs-batteries-and-maybe-it-doesn't scale. I weighed two pounds less this morning, if you can believe that. (Maybe I worried it off?)

And best of all, I finished writing about that stupid flannel shirt. And a few more after that. I've moved on to pants and hoodies and t-shirts. Plugging away quite nicely, in fact...

Maybe I should pessimistically whine about everything else that's wrong with the world. I just might wake up tomorrow and say, "Wow! Didn't see that coming either!"

You never know...

This Is How My Mind Works...

Okay, as soon as I finish writing about these Marmot shirts, jackets, and pants, I can move on to the Carhartt stuff that I've been putting off.

What am I going to do if we really are one guy short for the Easter drama? I can't play the part myself. I mean, I could. But who has the time? I don't. Maybe I can talk to someone at church tonight.

I probably should call the plumber back to see if he's definitely coming tomorrow (doubtful – he said he'd call me) or if he'll throw another lame promise at me that they'll get started first thing next week – the same thing he said last Thursday when I called him. It's always me calling them. They never call. Why is that?

I really hope the "check engine" light that came on in the van this morning is just a faulty gas cap, at best, or a busted hose, at worst. We really can't afford for the transmission to go out a second time in a year and a half, especially now, with all the other money we're going to have to shell out for the plumbing job. I'll deal with it on Friday, or maybe next week.

You know, I'm pretty sure that water noise you can hear in the downstairs bathroom is getting louder. Either that, or I'm just more aware of it the more time that passes without the stupid thing getting fixed. I hope they do come tomorrow.

Okay, back to this flannel shirt. I wonder where the word "flannel" originates anyway? Probably Scotland. Most plaid flannel patterns resemble the tartan family crests you see at Busch Gardens or on the covers of smarmy romance novels about Highlanders. Or maybe I'm just thinking that they look the same because I don't know much about Scotland.

Wikipedia. "Scotland". Are you kidding me? Wikipedia has shut down for 24 hours to show that they won't support the passing of SOPA? What is SOPA anyway? Wikipedia. What do you know? That article isn't shut down. Coincidence? Not likely. "Stop Online Piracy Act", blah blah blah, whole websites could be shut down because of one errant blog post? I don't like this. Not like I can do anything about it anyway.

I keep forgetting to call the Honda guy back, the guy who sold us the new Honda who left a message around Christmas to let us know the second key had been brought in by the previous owners. I hope he still kept it for us. I'll call him tomorrow. If I'm not home waiting for the plumbers to arrive, that is. Or at the auto body shop getting the van checked out. I've got too much on my plate.

I gotta get mentally prepared for the second round of auditions tonight. Is it really auditions if most of the parts have already been picked, at least in my head? Well, there's the gaping hole in the leading male role, now that we're a man short. I should probably email him to see if he's definitely out. Maybe he can still do it.

No, you can't think like that. You have to prepare for the worst. Because the worst usually happens anyway. That's a fatalistic thought. But realistic. Hey, those two words rhyme. Maybe I could form some kind of macabre poetry out of this mess.

No, I need to get back to writing the flannel shirt. Sometimes my job can be so tedious. How many different things can you say about a shirt? It has sleeves, either long or short, it has a collar or it doesn't, maybe it has a pocket at the chest, does it button or snap closed, what's it made of, and is that material soft or durable, or soft and durable. What does it matter anyway? The picture sells the shirt. But if that's true, then I've just become superfluous.

That book that I finished listening to yesterday "The Diary of a Superfluous Man," that was pretty good. Kinda morbid, though. Actually, really quite bleak. But well-written. I chuckled at the main character's frequent misfortunes. (Is that horrible?) Probably because I could relate. Sort of. Kinda mostly, in fact. That was a good book. I should look for more books by Ivan Turgenev. The man may have been gloomy, but he sure could write. I wonder how long ago he died? Wikipedia. Dang it, I forgot about the blackout!

Okay, so it's a flannel shirt. Long-sleeve, of course – what flannel shirt isn't? That would be pretty weird, a short-sleeve flannel shirt. "Keeps you warm and cool at the same time." That's pretty stupid. But consider the source. I'm a little punchy. I need to get more sleep tonight.

I really wish I could've gotten to the gym at lunch, but after getting the guy at Advanced Auto to check the code, then dropping by Big Lots to pick up those trash cans we've been needing, half of my lunch period was gone. Well, there's always tomorrow. And at least I drank my protein shake, so it wasn't a completely off-the-diet lunch.

The scale this morning indicated that I had lost eight pounds since the first of the year. I find that hard to believe, but maybe it's right. Stupid scale probably needs batteries. I don't feel like I've lost eight pounds. When I look down, I still can't see my feet. My stupid belly is still in the stupid way. But tying my shoes has been a little less strenuous of late. Probably just my imagination.

I should really get this shirt finished up so I can move on to the next item, which is, let's see – oh, another flannel shirt. How exciting!

I wonder if I could convince one of the guys who hasn't signed up for the drama to be in it anyway, since we're short one guy. I know they're busy, but they love drama, right? Maybe they can still squeeze it in. But most of the guys I'm thinking of have demanding full-time jobs, families with young kids, and all that. It's doubtful that they'd be able to do it. If they could've, they would've signed up already. I hate asking people to do things they don't want to do. Just the thought of approaching someone to ask them to do me a favor makes me sick to my stomach. I don't ever want to be annoying.

Tomorrow night I'm cooking the chicken. Mary said she would help me with the marinade in the morning. I've never made it Asian-style before. I hope I don't screw it up. Oh well, if I do, Hibachi Xpress is still only two minutes from the house. Don't think like that. You're doing good on the diet. At Hibachi, you know you'll want to get fried rice instead of steamed and you'll use way too much white sauce, and you know that's probably mayo-based which isn't healthy in the least. (Why am I thinking in second person?)

Okay, back to the flannel shirt...

Poems For Your Perusal: "Start Again"

Okay, yes, so I'm cheating again by not offering original thoughts, and posting stuff I wrote a long time ago. So sue me! It's my blog, and I'll be unoriginal if I want to! This little ditty was from back in my college days, if I remember correctly. The emotions may be a bit outdated for me today, but it flows nicely, I think. Enjoy it if you want to...


"Start Again"

Through with the me I used to be
Tired of losing while others win
Game called love is playing me
Wishing I could start again

Wouldn't it be easier to live
If I didn't care, if I didn't give?
But how can I? Guess I could try
But something's sure to catch my eye

It always does, I can't escape
Suppose that this will be my fate
Trying hard, but choosing bad
Lust for life has made me sad

At least I haven't lost my edge
And I still have my arms and legs
I can wave goodbye and run
Set out for the setting sun

If I fall short of journey's end
I'll raise my head and start again.

Still Dreaming

So, I'm sitting here watching a special on the Oprah Winfrey Network (of all things!) about the Freedom Riders specifically, and the Civil Rights Movement in general, and I'm getting angry.

Not because of Oprah herself, mind you. Not this time, at least.

But because of the countless numbers of narrow-minded people, many of them unfortunately from the South, who devoted their lives to destroying the rights and, yes, even the lives of other human beings for no other reason than that their skin was a darker shade.

And that supposedly made these people less human, somehow inferior beings. It infuriates me!

Injustice always infuriates me, whether it affects me personally or not. But racial prejudice just gets under my skin more than anything else.

I wasn't raised to think of people of other races as anything less than I am. I don't even know what thinking that way feels like. So, it's hard for me to put myself in the shoes of the oppressors. I can only identify with the oppressed.

I have never had to deal with prejudice from a personal standpoint, i.e. having someone discriminate against me because of the way I look, or where my ancestors came from. But I have often had to hear hurtful, hateful words used to describe African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics, and other minorities from acquaintances, friends, and family members. And almost without exception I have challenged the speaker to use a different word, at least in my presence, to describe the people they are talking about, because I won't accept the derogatory term they've used.

I scolded my own grandmother for doing this more times than I can count. She was a genuinely good person, but she was raised in a different era when racial prejudice was the norm, in the South in particular. But even that is no excuse.

Anyone can transcend what they've been taught. Hatred is not congenital. Prejudice doesn't have to be either.

Maybe someday the dream that Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned, and fought for, and even died for, will come true. But we're not there yet...

Trying

I'd like to lose a lot of weight. I've let myself go for far too long. I'm working out, and eating better. It will take awhile to reach my weight goal. I'm not there yet. But I'm trying.

I'd like to learn to cook a variety of different foods. I've recently perfected (I use that term very loosely) the art of sautéing chicken. I now cook supper for my wife and I at least once a week. I'm not there yet. But I'm trying.

I'd like to become a man after God's own heart. To be the man that God wants me to be. To live a life that's pleasing to Him. I make mistakes. I fail Him every day. I'm not there yet. But I'm trying.

Poems For Your Perusal: "Too Risky"

This is an old "prose poem" (tells a story, doesn't have to rhyme, etc.) that I wrote a few years back. A good way to get a decent post in on the weekends, when I struggle to write anyway. Enjoy!     "Too Risky"     You told me not to pick it up It might be dirty, might have rust on it Might give me Tetanus But it looked interesting So I reached down and retrieved it It was about the size of a quarter But it wasn't a coin It was about the weight of a pocketwatch But it didn't tell time It was about the same texture as a cookie But it didn't taste very good I wasn't sure what it was So I stuck it in my pocket You said I shouldn't have Said I didn't know where it had been Might've come off some leper I might catch Tuberculosis I shrugged it off What did you know? You're just my older brother A little kid yourself I wouldn't listen When we got home I didn't tell Dad He's just like you In too many ways He would've said I shouldn't have taken it Maybe God had it there For a reason Maybe it had been there For hundreds of years In that very spot Maybe it had on it The dust of long-dead civilizations Maybe it might give me the Black Plague No, I didn't show it to Dad Or ever tell him But Mom, she found it in my pants When she took them to the wash And I had forgotten about it Because when we got in The soup was ready And the bread was hot And Mom, she said If we didn't eat the food While it was still warm Perhaps the ants would come And they would take the food away And we would have no food And then we would get gaunt And infected and might die We might even become Anorexic So I ate the soup and the bread And drank my milk Because if you don't drink your milk Then you don't have strong bones And you develop a Calcium Deficiency And then your arms fall off Least that's what my teacher said And she's pretty smart about things So when Mom found The whatever-it-was in my pants pocket And asked me about it I told her it was something That I picked up by the road And she said I was a smart boy For being so curious But she also warned me That curiosity has this tendency To kill cats And when the cats are dead And they start to decay and all If you touch the carcass You might get Gangrene So now when I see something Shiny and metal by the road I don't pick it up anymore It's just too risky to fool with.

My Ten Favorite Horror Movies Of All Time

Happy Friday the 13th!

As I've mentioned here before, I've always enjoyed reading horror stories and watching horror movies. Why? I don't really know. There's probably some deep, dark psychological reason for it, but I don't really want to delve that deep. So, for now, let's just say "for some reason" I like them. A lot.

So, in honor of Friday the 13th, I'm going to go the well-traveled route of bloggers across the world and give you a list of my 10 favorite horror movies of all time.

WARNING: There will be video links. While they're not too graphic, they may be a little disturbing, especially if you don't normally like these types of movies.

So, here you have them, more or less in no particular order – although the last two listed here are my top two favorites:



10)  Misery (1990) – Being holed up in an office all day, having to write descriptions for things that I could sometimes care less about, seems like child's play compared to being holed up in a cabin in the middle of nowhere and forced to write a novel by a crazy lady with an axe who claims to be "your number one fan."

9)  The Birds (1963) – Of all the things to be scared of, who would have thought we, as a viewing public, would ever buy into the idea of attacking birds. But after one viewing of this Hitchcock classic, you'll never go into an attic alone, or a phone booth for that matter, without looking around cautiously, and listening for the flutter of beating wings.

8)  The Exorcist (1973) – This controversial film has sparked plenty of criticism and support over the years, and for good reason. Its frank portrayal of a demon-possessed girl and the people around her whom this affects is equally fascinating and horrifying. And while it's all done up for Hollywood, the fact that demon possession is actually possible makes this fictionalized depiction of it all the more disturbing.

7)  A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) – I never saw this movie as a kid, which is probably a good thing, because I've always been a vivid dreamer, and I might have taken it too much to heart. The idea of dreams – well, nightmares – being more than just dreams and being able to affect your real life, and even kill you is truly disturbing. Not to mention the guy who makes all this possible, Freddy Krueger.

6)  The Ring (2002) – The concept of watching a videotape that causes you to die within 7 days of viewing it is, admittedly, far-fetched. But then you watch the movie, and the videotape itself within the context of the film, and well, there's just something unbearably creepy about it. The Japanese movie that this version was based on, entitled Ringu, is apparently even better, but I've never seen it. Incidentally, this was the first scary movie that I ever convinced Mary to see with me while we were dating. It was also the last. She's not a scary movies kind of girl at all. Not. One. Bit.

5)  Night Of The Living Dead (1968) – The sheer fact that this movie is in black-and-white (at least originally – there is at least one "colorized" version out there somewhere) lends an overall creepier feel to the whole thing. It's the ultimate, and maybe even the original zombie movie. What makes it so horrifying is that the whole thing seems so real. These are normal people being terrorized by undead creatures who were also once normal people. Most of them still wear the clothes and general appearance of their former lives. But they're coming for you. And you're locked up in a spooky old farmhouse with a bunch of strangers, just trying to survive. You're in the moment with these people, and you want out. Like, now!

4)  Stephen King's IT (1990) – Now this one, I did see as a kid. I was 12 when it was first broadcast on ABC as a two-part miniseries. I was already reading Stephen King books by that time, and so I taped it. The first time I saw it, I was just as scared as the ninth or tenth time I watched it. It was horrible, it was wonderful, it was fascinating, and it was terrifying. One of the main characters from the film, a young boy about my age, has a stuttering problem. After watching this movie several times in a short period of time, I also developed a stuttering problem. It was, fortunately, short-lived, but it just goes to show you how deeply I was affected by it. That being said, it was then and still is one of my favorites. Incidentally, I still don't care for clowns, and this movie is also responsible for that.

3)  The Amityville Horror (1979) – There's nothing like a good haunted house story. And this is one of the best. The very architecture of the house (the attic windows look like glowing eyes) tells you something very bad has happened and will continue to happen here. The actors play their parts so well, you almost believe that it's based on a true story, which is how it was portrayed at the time. It's fiction, but it's very good fiction. And I'm never moving to Amityville, New York. For any reason.

 The Amityville Horror (1979) Trailer

2)  Poltergeist (1982) – This is another horror movie that I did see as a kid, and remember being fascinated and terrified. I loved it! Like Amityville, it's, at the core, a haunted house movie. But in this one, we see some truly bizarre and disturbing things happening to a basically nice family. It also offers a warning to prospective real estate developers:  Don't build over a cemetery. The dead might not like it, and might have some unfinished business with you. "They're here...."

Poltergeist (1982) – TV Scene

1)  Psycho (1960) – Ah yes, the innocent young innkeeper who "wouldn't harm a fly" and his unwitting victims, who only wanted to stop in at the Bates Motel for the night to get some shut-eye before starting back on their journey to wherever. But his "guests", like Marion Crane for example, they never leave. And are never heard from again. What's that all about? Better ask Norman's mother if you want the real story. This is Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece, and my all-time favorite horror movie. They don't make them any better than this one!

 Psycho (1960) - Shower Scene

NOTE: For some reason, the blog site stopped letting me add the videos with thumbnails after the seventh one. Hopefully, they'll still show up. If not, I'll try again later.