Jeremiah's School of Levitation

New show, new day, new watch. What happened on the old watch is clearly documented. You can smell it if you get close enough to the smoldering foreign streets, the institutions of finance, the empty, foreclosed houses. You can especially whiff the stench of the skin and breath of the treacherous, lecherous, unnameable people who perpetrated it all. For their troubles, they should be rewarded with a taste of bread and water for a few dozen years. But, as justice must apparently wait, we then put all this is behind us, and I mean it literally. We now move on forward, with a host of lessons learned, hopefully, and we can salute the old watch (remember, some salutes only require one finger), and we can turn our eyes to the new watch. What will happen on the new watch? How much are you willing to invest in making sure that nothing evil happens this time? Are you willing to work as hard as you did (those, that is, who worked for Obama) to craft this new watch and make this into something you can be proud of? Something of which you can say: "Yes, that DID happen on my watch!" Because, it's not just the new guy's watch. It's yours too. Stay vigilant, keep all three eyes open, and let's not miss this opportunity to play "citizen helping citizen" for a while.

I just want to warn the public that I'm likely to begin the propagation of yet another annoying phrase. I just read the Lake Superior State University's list of the most annoying phrases of the year, some of which, I must admit, I hadn't heard before, until I started listening a little more carefully. One of the phrases, "not so much" (as in "Ben Stiller's movies make me laugh; Adam Sandler's, not so much") was transparent to me, up until I read the list and, then, I heard "not so much" less than a few hours later, coming from who I consider to be one of the most original conversationalist friends that I have, one who would rarely utter anything trite. Yikes!

Another one, "iconic" I have actually thought of using a few times, but never really heard it. We'll, I'll be a monkey's uncle, I heard it come out of the mouth of one of my favorite progressive talk show hosts just a day later, as he described the admiration he felt about the Unknown Rebel guy who stood in front of the tanks at Tiananmen Square. Double yikes! So, people do use those phrases! And, since the people who do are some of my favorite, it's high time (jeez, the cliches) I started doing it myself. In fact, I think I'll just get one rolling, one that I've heard a few times and one which, I think, is appropriate in a lot of cases. And, that's what I'm here to warn you about.

The phrase I plan to slog around is: "slippery slope."

That's it. I plan to use it, frequently. I will use it, most often, to refer to a plan, suggestion, action, or opinion that, in my judgement, might be a little difficult to accomplish or to make clear to everyone concerned.

"You can try to lose weight by eating nothing but cupcakes, but that's a slippery slope."

"Well, covincing her that vegetables are as traumatized by sudden death as cows are is a slippery slope argument since, well, carrots don't wail in pain. At least, not audibly."

I'll also most use it in cases where it may not even metaphorically fit (or, in other words, I'll employ it as "slippery slope usage"). And, I definitely won't use it in a case where it is most appropriate, as in, where someone is actually physically trying to ascend an icy incline. Oh no, not then!

Anyway, I've been warning my friends. I am on a quest to get a phrase on the most annoying list, and, when you read that list next year, I want you to say "Oh, yeah. 'Slippery slope' IS annoying. I know this guy that says it all the friggin' time! I no longer talk to him, nor allow my children to!"

I'm guessing that, if nothing else, my quest will inspire others to out-annoy me just for the sake of drowning me out. However, will it inspire them to admire me? Not so much.

Labels: words

Yesterday, a cashier asked me if I had made any new year's resolutions. Before I learned that I was just part of her experiment, I went ahead and answered her. I told her that, yeah, I had one thing I was going to work on, but that it was a slippery slope sort of thing. I was going to work on being more honest this year. Not that I go around telling lies, but that I do go around hiding how I really feel or what I really think, just so the conversation won't turn into wet cats or bad weather. I tend to just either keep my mouth shut, or agree, or go along, just to keep the peace. If someone disturbs me at my work, I tend to flow with the disturbance, because, who wants to offend? I told the cashier that this is a slippery slope, however, because the line between "I'm just being honest" and "I'm a real a*hole" is very thin. You gotta watch that or, by Jan. '10, you may find that your list of friends has dwindled down to radio talk show hosts and pets.

But, really, I do plan to be more honest, not to detriment of anyone, but rather, to benefit of myself. As I grow older, and admittedly more cynical, I have to be aware of what I decide to involve my time in. I got an upturned nose from a coworker when I told him that my iPod does not contain a single song that I can't listen to, which seems like a no-brainer, but he was arguing that I should just fill it with albums and, later, comb through the diamonds and the dross. I say, don't let the dross on there. In my youth, I could have wasted three or four minutes listening to a song that I really didn't like because, well, the one after it was great. Now, with my time running out, I don't have three or four minutes to waste on a passable tune. iPods eliminate the requirement to slog through filler, unlike cassettes or lp's, so, why not invoke the power of "delete" and leave the filler on the floor, to be vacuumed up later? Oh, how that elicited a gasp.

Anyway, that being a weak, but representative example, this year I do plan to eliminate the dross from my days. The dross interruptions, the dross music, the dross moments, the dross pleasantries, the dross sentimentalities, and the dross agreements. By the end of the year, I may only be able to clutch the voice of Randi Rhodes and the puffiness of my teddy bear as my "only real friends" OR I may, myself, become somebody else's "only REAL friend." Who knows?

By the way, after my speech, the cashier informed me that she'd asked everyone that day what their new year's resolutions would be and an overwhelming majority said that they don't do resolutions. I was one of only three people who said they did. So, I was just, in the end, proof of her theory that resolutions are passe and useless. So, I begin 2009 already in the distinct, chronic minority!

Labels: revelations

My dreams are starting to scare me. Not in the nightmare sense of, say, the Joker coming to get me to show me that pencil disappearing act again. Except, he's going to use one of those fat pencils I used to use in 1st grade. No, not a dream like that. This set of dreams I'm having are disturbing on a different level. Last night, I dreamed of an old friend of mine, a girl, who we'll call Scarlet. Scarlet lived across the hall from me in the dorms way back in college and, though nothing incredibly significant passed between us, here I was dreaming about her (well, ok, there was one MINOR thing that passed between us: she was my girlfriend's roommate and, one night, my girlfriend and I decided it was business time and we went about our business with Scarlet asleep, or, so we thought--we later found out, from "friends", that Scarlet actually wasn't asleep and, didn't even have her eyes closed! Ha! Ha! Crap!).

Anyhow, Scarlet appeared in my dream not a day older than when we last spoke, roughly 18 years ago. But, in my dream, she now had a sister, who looked a lot like her, and who was, in the dream, extremely interested in me. She hugged me, gazed at me as I spoke to Scarlet, and grinned whenever I looked at her. Now, Scarlet didn't have a sister, as far as I knew, and I never had reason to wonder if she did. And, if I did, why, 18 years later, does my mind decide to ponder on it? And, married as I am, what's the deal with the imaginary sister of a marginal friend courting me in a dream? Didn't she check my marital status at the door of my imagination before she entered this dream? Do I need to hire someone else to guard my dreamgate because, apparently, some strange folks are getting in. Not that it hasn't happened before, but usually, even that three-faced ferret with the British accent that got in last week can be traced back to a couple of credible thoughts that got run together somewhere in my head. But, Scarlet's sister? From whence did she come and, even more importantly, what does she mean?

We got a bunch of snow here in the metropolitain area of the Pacific Great Northwest Region. At my place, about 8 inches total fell over a few days and that effectively crippled the entire city. Side streets in my hood never got plowed, many cars languished sideways in ditches and against rails, the trash collectors never came (two weeks and counting--the crows are having a party--this is the Great Garbage Event that has been written about in crow lore), and even mall parking lots never got fully plowed so that Christmas shoppers were constantly kept from Christmas shopping (all the while, retailers cry about a downturn in business--hey, I've got 100 bucks I'd love to spend if I can just get my car into your lot!).

Anyway, that's no excuse for me being gone for a year, but it does offer up a metaphor for my absence. I've been snowed in by life itself. Nothing tragic, thank (insert deity of your choice), but certainly weighty. And, I know there have been folks wanting to read, if I would only write, by golly, and I apologize. But, I'm struggling back awake here and I realize, somehow, that part of the therapy I need is actually not to stop writing, but to write more, dang it! There's plenty to say. So, let me brush off the slush and get back to it, albeit slowly. Yea, soon the cold drifts of my absence will be warmed away by the sunshine of my presence and soon, green patches of my words will sprout the flowers of brief, but levitating, coherence. Or, something like that.

Okay. Um. This place looks familiar. Like I've been here before. Like I've squatted here afore. Pretty comfortable! Who kept the bed warm? Nice! Okay, I'll stay a bit. I just need to know two things. Where's the fridge? Where's the bathroom? And, who's got the remote? Okay, I need to know three things.

Well, I'm doing the NaNoWriMo thing this year. It starts on Nov. 1 and I'm going to owe myself 1600 words a day for 30 days. As my regular readers who are left are probably thinking, "Yeah, it's more like Na-NO WAY for him." Yeah, I know that I've been amiss in the writing, which is exactly why I'm signing myself up for some serious novelling for the next month, so that I will be forced to produce syllables and sentences.

So, the result next month this time should be a book of some sort, but, likely, a little less than an active blog, though I will try to update as frequently as I can. In fact, the exact opposite of what I fear may happen -- I may end up writing like a damn fool, throwing words around like they're mere exhalations. I did come to some sort of revelation today after I had my head scalped by my barber -- it's possible that the only way I'm ever going to retain anything about my life is if I record it somehow. My brain is just too damn scattered to be counted on to serve me as an effective tool for conversation, recollection, and realization. I'm going to ultimately need to read what I'm thinking. That may explain my unnatural love for note-taking applications and pens and recording myself. I'm simply going to need to write everything down, or recite it into a microphone, in order for any word or work that graces my flighty brain to actually survive.

So, a de-levitating I go. And, it's likely some of you may go down with me because I'll be reporting from the depths. I promise I won't disappear. I'll just get real dark.

Down umbrella!