Category: off the cuff

The Power to Help.

Posted on by D. L. Keur

I have two ants safely harbored in a peanut butter jar, a piece of screen keeping them inside.  They came here inside my husband’s lunchbox from the construction site.  Of course, they didn’t come on purpose.  They weren’t particularly interested in visiting places far, far away.  They were after goodies and got hijacked by the lid being closed and zippered shut.  So home they came…surviving what had to be a very dangerous and uncomfortable trip, jostled between empty lunch containers, locked inside a plastic and nylon environment in 100 degree heat. 

So hubs opens lunch box to dump his containers into the sink and does the old, “Ants! Oh, great.”

Now, I have a “thing” about ants.  It’s the one creature…en masse…which will send me screaming off in a frothing panic. (I was bitten by red ants when I was a child and have never quite recovered from the experience.)  But I also have a “thing” about life and its being precious.  I have a “thing” which demands me respect all life…and non-life.  And, me, a human, has the power to help.  And that’s what it comes down to, doesn’t it?  If I have the power to help, doesn’t that obligate me to help where I can, when I can?  I think so.  Caring matters.  If one doesn’t care, if things don’t matter, what’s the point?

So back to the story.

So, lid open, one of the two ants trapped inside started perambulating around in a bit of a frenzy.  One got outside the box and disappeared.  The other was just doing laps inside. 

I see all manner of containers, but everything is plastic or styrofoam — death to insects put inside because they are saturated with things like pesticides or made using formaldehyde. (Nice to think that our food comes in these things, right?) Quickly, I grab the clean, empty, glass peanut butter jar, wondering where the “outside” ant went off to, and how I would be able to find her to get her safely inside the jar for the return trip home tomorrow.  Ah!  There she is!  I manage to get her to walk inside the jar.  Now for the other one.  She’s not so easy, but, with the help of a piece of paper towel, she’s induced to take a ride inside safety.

Screen lid anchored in place, and they are ready to roll, no longer “lost ants,” but simply on an adventure and ready for the return trip home.

I used my power to help. 

BELATED ANT UPDATE:

Yes, they made it safely back to their ant homes.  Hubs was very conscientious about getting them back to exactly where he ate lunch the day before.  And he watched them as they made tracks out of the jar and onto “familiar ground.”  They immediately ran into more ants, did the “feeler thing,” as he called it, then made tracks, following other ants headed to a “known ant home.” 

I really like the construction crew.  They are very conscientious.  All of them.  And that’s as it should be since the two owners, Hubs and partner, are both eco-minded.  If the crew wasn’t, I guess they wouldn’t be crew very long, right?

Oh, and, I failed to mention, I put a bit of water on aforementioned paper towel the morning of transport back home, and both ants made quite an elaborate show of drinking.  Those were some thirsty ants.  They must have snacked on some of hubby’s favorite Triscuits! 

The Wind in the Trees. The Light.

Posted on by D. L. Keur

Today was beautiful.  It still is. And it promises to be a very wonderful evening.  I’m going for a walk.  You should, too.  Life is wonderful…except for the Stirrers.  What are they?  Those are cretins passing themselves off as alive who actually died a long, long time ago.  But we won’t get into that right now.  It’s much too nice outside to discuss foibled peebles.

See the Light.  Be the Wind.  Sing with Trees.

Joy.

A Bright & Antiseptic World

Posted on by D. L. Keur

Once again, I’m saturated with people who desire, above all,

  • BRIGHT VIVID COLORS,
  • CLEAN, STERILE SURFACES,
  • SHINING PLASTIC FACADES,
  • SMOOTHNESS WITH NO RIPPLES, NO MOUNDS,
  • STRAIGHT LINES, SQUARES, RECTANGLES,
  • ORDERLY ROWS UPON ROWS,
  • FEATURELESS FLATNESS,
  • LIGHTED TO BLIGHTED,
  • MERCILESSLY MUNDANE,
  • HERMETICALLY ANTISEPTIC.

This, of course, is Hell they are describing — human designed and engineered — brought to you compliments of primal terrors, encouraged by suburbanized American Protestant Fundamentalist Christian dogma.  Not only is this utterly boring, it’s killing us all. Sorry, folks, even your own body requires bacteria and other microorganisms for healthy survival.  Love mold, love fungi, too.  Life depends on it…and a lot of other things you’re trying to eradicate with your clean, light, antiseptically bright fetishes.

Sir Isaac Newton’s 2060 End of the World Predication

Posted on by D. L. Keur

Around the Internet is a story about Isaac Newton, discoverer of calculus, among other things…and, no, I won’t go into why I say discover rather than invent, is a story about him predicting that the “end of the world” would occur in 2060 A.D.. Most of the articles are blips simply stating that he did.  It took going to the isaacnewton.org website to find the “Rest of the Story.”  For those interested,
here’s the link: http://www.isaac-newton.org/update.html

A Sony Friday; a Sony Saturday, too.  *Sigh*

Posted on by D. L. Keur

Husband gets wild hair.  Let’s put all the CDs inside a stereo unit.  In fact, let’s get two or three of these things and put the stuff we mostly listen to on them.

Ah, honey?  Let’s try one.  First.  If it works, we’ll think about running them in series.  Okay?

Awwwww.   Yeah.  Okay.  You’re probably right.

I roll eyes.  He gets so enthusiastic, then, when you suggest just a tad bit of self-restraint, it’s like you dashed cold water on him.  But he dries off fast.  Good thing.

But.  This is going to be a P-R-O-J-E-C-T.  With a super capital P.

Hubs BUYS Sony CDP-CX445.  It arrives, 2nd day air UPS.  I groan when I see, then HEFT, the box.

Okaaaaaay, I think, brace yourself, knowing that means that I’m going to spend all night, all day, all night, all day again, and probably another all day, helping.  There goes the weekend!

He’s so excited when he hears it actually got here.  On time.  In Podunk, Idaho, no less.  He races home.  He unpacks it.  He pulls 400 CD’s, stashing the jewel cases in a box. He dumps the Styrofoam packing into the garbage.  He hasn’t yet broken the box down, though, and I have to keep walking around it to help him when he smartly commands, “Hand me that wire.  Hand me that flashlight.  Hold this.”

P-R-O-J-E-C-T.

He’s in bliss.

So I finally crash.  He stays up till 4AM loading the CD’s into it.  Morning comes.  He’s out of bed in a flash, four hours earlier than usual. 

P-R-O-J-E-C-T.

“Will you type the artists, album names, and slot numbers for me into an Excel spreadsheet?”

Right.  “Okay,” I say, hoping it will only take maybe an hour to do.  I mean 400 slots is a piece of cake to type.  Should only take a little bit of time, right?  Because how bad can a piece of electronics slow something down. 

HINT: It takes almost a full minute for the machine to read the Artist and Album label because it first has to laboriously load the CD, taste it, think about it, then decide if it wants to show you the answer.  (I start twitching after the first five.  I’ll be a basket case after fifty, never mind you might as well call the men in white coats after the full four-hundred.)

We start doing a comedy show to ease the pain as he presses next and I wait patiently like dutiful wife, fingers hovering over keys.

…We get through 200 of them…in two hours.  I’m about buggy.  And…and…and…we’re halfway through.  He does a rah-rah arm pump.  I just want to GET DONE.  “And 201?” I ask.

“It’s not reading it,” says he, which means he has to hit play so we can listen to it to identify artist/album.  And….

THE MACHINE IS SKIPPING.

We check again.  Nope, disc is fine.  Change the CD to somewhere else.  Nope, disc is fine.  Load something else into slot 201.  Skips.  Ummmm.  Go backwards and forwards from 200.  Skip.  Stops skipping when it is at 189.  Everything back of 189 is fine.  Everything forward of 189 skips.

Now what?

Call electronic stores.

Call everybody.

And….

I-Pod. 

No. Not. Never.

And….

…And he’s still researching “another solution.”

So, what are we going to be doing?  Tearing this entire house apart again, laboriously loading CD’s back into their jewel cases, and….

And…I don’t know.

I think I’ll put on some Dokken on the five CD changer and try to ease my migraine.

…I HATE Sony.  Have since they started that proprietary nonsense.  Then they started that invasive crap.  Sony = contemptible.  And their electronics SUX a bad egg.