-So the Jackson family was going to charge admission, but has now decided to make it a ‘free’ memorial service for Michael.
Such sensitivity on their part. Such a benevolent gesture. Imagine that, not having to buy a ticket to worship (I mean honor) somebody that has died.
I would like to have been present to see the shoving match between Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to see who gets to conduct the celebrity studded carnival. My money’s on Sharpton, since he’s already proposed an official Michael Jackson National Day of Mourning. Are you Fu***ing kidding me?
And I wouldn’t mind having the concession rights to that event.
That family is going to make off of Michael in one day, more money than they’ve made, collectively, in their own careers. And the eventual windfall from future exploitation of him will make them all wealthy enough to buy their own adulation.
I’ve already left instructions for my family that when I die, they are to offer five dollars to anyone willing to come and mourn at my funeral, and ten to whoever can make themselves cry.
-You’ve seen the benches installed in parks, on overlooks, and in town squares, with the plaque’s indicating the bench was placed there in honor of an individual who passed on. It usually denotes the person’s date of birth and death, and implies that the person was particularly fond of that special place. It always makes me smile when I see them, and I usually stop and sit on them for at least a few minutes to experience what that person might have felt in that place.
When I move on from this life I’d like for benches to be placed along the byways, and back-roads, benches for the loner, for the underdog, for the disabled, for the misbegotten, the abandoned, the forsaken, and forlorn. Places for the restless traveler to pause.
Not that I am that person, but that there are so very many of them.
Unknown, and un-recognized,
for even being alive.
-I think that, generally, everybody’s doing the best they can. And I think everybody’s best ebbs and flows like the tide.
But just because people might be AT their best during the flow, and not quite UP TO their best during the ebb, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not still DOING their best during the ebb. It’s just that the ebb pulls us back, while the flow carries us along.
We need both. Worth remembering.
No need to get so down on ourselves.
Question: But what’s an Ebb?
-Every new situation comes with a new set of challenges and obligations.
It is why some people avoid new situations.
-Brought home a fully re-conditioned, gray and red 1952 Ford 8N tractor the other day. It has one of those ‘floating’ seats.
The tractor looks pretty good under my skinny butt.
And even I look pretty good riding that old dinosaur.
-What if everyone dressed for comfort, and for the weather, rather than for the
attention that one’s style garners from friends and strangers?
Should practicality ever win out over superficiality, we might just discover that
we’re all basically the same.
Scary thought, huh?
-When the rains come we all get wet together, whether we be privileged, on the
fringes of life, or caught somewhere in the middle. The rain brings a certain
equality to us all.
-Was channel surfing the other night and passed by an ET promo for a segment on Mary Kate Olson (of the Olson twins). Didn’t stick around to watch it, but the emphasis of the tease for the segment was that Mary Kate had survived a bad hair day. I thought, as I went past the program, that in her world that was comparable to a young woman in Darfur surviving another day of brutality, thirst, starvation, homelessness, and separation from family. It’s a tough life for the Olson’s. Those spoiled, and privileged Darfurians should have it so bad.
- Is anybody tired yet of people constantly interviewing themselves, usurping the job from the actual interviewer in order to ask (themselves) only the questions they want to answer? And have you noticed how conversations in real, everyday life have taken on that same dynamic? Does every utterance have to be a question and answer? Have people become incapable of making statements, and letting those statements stand on their own?
I mean, “Am I tired of people constantly interviewing themselves?” You bet I am. “Have I had enough of all the self-importance?” Yes, I have.
“Do I wish everybody would stop all this self-aggrandizement?” Well, yes, I wish they would stop, but do I think they will?” Of course not.
- That ancient western philosopher, Coyocious says,
“Don't let them sell you that strait and narrow,
they'd like to suck your bones down to the marrow.
But if the road doesn't fork, my friend, and the road doesn't turn,
You will never even know what you might have learned.”
-Was working in the forest on my property the other day. Had some tools with me that I’d bungee-chorded to the tractor. I’d set the bungee chord down on a tree stump, and later, when I picked it up it started moving.
Freaked me out. My bungee chord had suddenly become a snake. It was about the same color as the chord, and had intertwined itself with the bungee. In any event, my first thought was “That’s how some disingenuous people gain access to other people. They blend in with them and pretend they’re one of them, the worst kind of opportunists.”
Sorry, but I just think about those things.
-There’s no place like home.
And there’s no home like the place where you feel loved.
-Love is like a warm memory. You can’t embrace it, but it fills you from the inside out.
Un-mistakenly.
