You Shook Me

No, benighted pop music people. This isn’t about the AC/DC version that energizes guys in their roaring young buck days, but about that slow wailing Mississippi-English Midlands version that Led Zeppelin put out there in the late ‘60’s. A rumbling of sonic power, like a distant thunderstorm, as the song crunches along toward the depths of a despairing love. Fitting emoticon for this late October day? Tom me, it evokes feelings of sadness – check the song out sometime … Yes, I can play it loudly for you and we’ll walk down the street, like a New Orleans funeral procession, while we listen to it!

As you know, I’m a government wonk these days. What would I know of roaring young bucks and the thunderous days of AC/DC? A distant memory on a horizon littered with really cool memories, ambitions and odes to feelings never fully explored.

I’m wondering if Thoreau’s walks ever got him stuck in a writer’s spiderweb of paradoxes, one where you want to scribble a thousand things along a thousand tangents. It’s like yesterday’s blog, which in hindsight can make very little sense. Little sense comes out of it but what a helluva ride until you jump in despair off my weirdo train.

[Hmph] Back to my version of a short story. I could say this song describes Michele – she’s shook my life for almost thirty years. Helluva ride that never gets old, stale nor predictable. I mean, we have a drum set for our recreational use. Monopoly? TV? What a drag. Listen to You Shook Me and then grab your own drumsticks and get to it!

Stonehenge

Reminds me of Arkansawyer Excursions. Not a company, nay, though the esteemed Mssr. Arkansawyer ought to become a tour guide for society’s introspective elite. If you need to reflect in the wet pools of life, and can’t make it to the methane-laden melted permafrost of Siberia, try southern PA’s backroads. Hmmm, and he’s a disciple of Charles Kuralt. Do I sense a kinship here, a virtual meeting of like minds that, in the spirit of yesterday’s post, spans across the force field of life and death? My friend Anne collects rocks – they ‘speak’ to her as well, so there’s a continuum of mystical modes out there.

[break in the action: how can people be such…jerks?... in the morning commute? Do they really think getting a few car lengths ahead whilst passing on the right, is that really worth anyone’s time? I now use DNA Determinism^© to erase their pathetic and failed genetic branch from existence…]

Back to the matter at hand. JW and I see things differently but surely could wow you at a covered bridge or railroad crossing. Especially when silent, and preferably on a dreary day, these testaments to our legacy-building stand out as Supreme Points for Introspection. Also mystical, as I hear the lament of Howling Wolf, the Roberts (Plant and Johnson), and the simple silence of a misty morning as it works on your mood, your raison d’être and your sense of place in this vast barely charted expanse of ‘mood-place.’ Hence my reference to Stonehenge; centuries apart yet they call to us. (Blogs are great – you write any sort of drivel and your stream of consciousness goes unedited into the ether!)

Little Sir John has a long, long Beard

I have this wallpaper that speaks to me. [the background music says, do do doooooooo] No, not like something out of The Shining. It’s more of a feeling, the mysticism invoked when gazing into a sepia tone background at a tree and cemetery. I must be spooked; I’ve made three typos already! I hear strains of Blind Melon and Traffic as the tree sits there and tells me its story.

Too bad digital wallpapers normally aren’t animated, since a swaying tree, and an accompanying dirge, would truly set the mood on this most rainy commuter morn. Is this what the monsoons of India feel like? I can say that western MD in the autumn will make you wonder why we’re not more closely aligned to our oily beaver brethren. Just a few strands of DNA separate me from amphibian life or being basically waterproof. Good thing I believe in evolution; my descendants may prosper on some watery planet someday, one like Dune’s Calisto, if I just think my DNA stuff into morphing that way. DNA Determinism…coined here, folks.

Not the Troof

(Troof = Truth that way my really young daughter used to say the word. Still cracks me up because, no matter if you thought she was telling the truth, SHE thought she was. That’s usually all that mattered.)

What’s with those fancy overhead digital road bulletin boards needing a ‘nothing’s going on’ message? It’s not like my eyes, tired from watching the idiocy around me, couldn’t use a break. No, I get some notice about Report Suspicious Behavior. Hmm, eerie shades of 1984, which I re-read last year. What’s next?: Yesterday’s 3-vehicle Pileup did not Happen. Out Unrepaired PotCraters did not damage your axle. Have you had a Big Mac today? When I’m on the Washington Beltway at rush hour, trust me when I say I have many better, life-preserving things to do than ponder the suspicious activities that may be around me. Unless you consider a 90-mph motorcycle a tad suspicious (is he late meeting his girlfriend? Is she late and he’s skipping town? Is he just compulsively stupid?)

I’m crossing Kansas, unfortunately figuratively. Go figure that, of the many unfulfilled dreams in my life, touring the Midwest during tornado season would be one of them. I imagine a springtime Turin would impress, a fall Pyrenees would boggle and a summertime Antigua would simply titillate. But the Midwestern expanses sound nearly as bountiful to the body and mind as the captivating expanse of the Russian steppe or Ukrainian backcounty. Ahhh, throw in a great tornado and my thoughts fly about as nicely as an old barn’s contents…

What You Get is Not What You See

Which is why I toil in our nation’s capitol. There are so many good people at my new digs. Is it because they’re on average younger and less jaded? If so, I say, “Rock On, you Millenials!” I’m a cutting-edge Gen X’er, so can appreciate this vibrancy, the enervation and nerve to think you can do something with your life. The Boomers got hammered in the last couple decades and their own Pleasant Valley Sunday Suburban-topia was taken away by ill-begotten wars, a fake economy built on, well, lies, and a general malaise around the need to save for tomorrow. Not meant as a rant nor critique – heck, I’m just an upstate NY public college paper-carrier – but rather my own observations from the Window of the Commuter Bus.

I get so much from life each and EVERY day that I feel sometimes like a sponge, interacting with fascinating people and watching the rest in bemusement. Or disgust. INFJ’s of the world – unite! Well, since we’re INFJ’s, I bet putting lots of us dreamy folks in a single place would be useless silliness of the worst magnitude. We’d never get anything done except dream and draw pictures about it. Oh - an INFJ is Meyers-Briggs personality typing for: Introvert-Intuition-Feeling-Judgment. Here's a short profile:

"INFJs are gentle, caring, complex and highly intuitive individuals. Artistic and creative, they live in a world of hidden meanings and possibilities. Only one percent of the population has an INFJ Personality Type, making it the most rare of all the types. "

So I challenge you to revel in the day and add your own thread to the storylines of those around you.

Tomorrow's Dream

After yesterday’s bummer blog, you wonder if The Joser is off his meds, his rocker or needs to stick to Carole King. NOT! BTW, her Songs from my Living Room is almost better than Yes’ The Revealing Science of God. Today I awoke to hear REO Speedwagon’s Your Time is Gonna Come. Strangely enough, I was heartened by that event since just how many days can a middle-aged DroidWonk like me pretend I’m into perky music in the AM? People may then surmise that I dabble in the sinister warbling of Frankie Avalon or Dan Fogelberg in the evening. I’ll be glad to say I like those fellas but listening to the wind blow through the trees is far more exhilarating and calming.

Why are cars so boring? Just colors or those silly wrap-around ads. Where’s the spray painting that went on in the mid-20^th century? Can’t I affordably paint my car to match the theme of the movie 2012? Or scenes from the astounding Peter Pan? How about a Honda Odyssey tribute to Rivendell in Middle Earth? Or would I owe a princely royalty for even sketching it onto a vehicle?

I now have IE8. Software upgrades are so easy and seeing CMD’s black void is such a distant memory. I get off on typing IPCONFIG; my generation looks at those tones of home and reflects on how far we’ve come since the MS-DOS days. And how we miss the Green-ness of CRT Land. Speaking of which, time to go into my MS Publisher playground – yippee!

On a Better Day

Not an apt title since most days nowadays are good days. When you leave an employer of chaos (hear the tones of Black Sabbath?), the antithesis of choice, you then start waking up feeling good about life and this little country we grub around in. And you meet the Good People that make this grubstake worthwhile.

Decided I’m getting older. Happily! Grey hair I can handle, as long I don’t have to cut it often. Can do a 12-minute mile without killing myself, though I’d like to do a couple in a row without panting too much! Just realized that I’ve stopped looking at gas prices. I’ve know awhile that even a 30-cent swing is meaningless in my bus-fed lifestyle. Kinda nice, this revelation that frees my budget to wander in dreamy mountain pastures of autumnal savings. [gag-too lazy tho erase that drivel]

Time to eat oatmeal and chug coffee. We older people, we likes that...