when the world is your toilet

Today as I was walking out the door I noticed a large black dog making in the neighbor's yard across the street. I am pretty sure that neighbor doesn't have a dog, so I walked out to my car suspiciously.

As I approached my car the dog, which had started walking slowly down the road, turned and bayed at me while he was about ten to fifteen feet away from me. I wasn't really scared, but I was trying to be realistically alert because I figured the dog might consider me someone who is invading its personal space. At that moment a woman standing in front of a house two houses down from my across-the-street neighbor and talking to another woman called to the dog and he came running.

Am I the only person who sees something wrong with this picture? A large dog which may be domesticated but is still a large dog is consciously allowed to romp around the neighborhood and take a dump wherever it feels. I guess I am just not an animal person.

autum

Mrs Dust has a cat. Her name is Autum. Why she is named Autum and not Autumn we do not know. When we first got the cat two and a half years ago she was already three, had already given birth to a litter of kittens, and had already lived with whatever shame she could have from a misspelled name. We decided against renaming a cat that was so old, though I am sure Autum could care less.

Autum is a skiddish cat. She loves to be around Mrs Dust but she has never trusted me. If I so much as take a step in her direction she heads to the other room. She will only stay within arm-reach of me if she is closer to Mrs Dust. Even then she frequently darts away from me if I move to pet her.

Autum now has one more reason to hate me. She has had an infection in her ear canals on and off for the past few months. When it flares up we are supposed to squirt a drop of medicine in her ears every day to get rid of the infection. Have you ever held down a well-adjusted cat and shoved something in her ears? How about a neurotic cat who believes you have it in for her? Needless to say, when she goes through those treatments we are not on speaking terms. She does forgive Mrs Dust for her role in the squirtings, though. Stupid cat.

potayto, potahto

This is one of those posts that you'll have had to have read my previous posts to understand.

I had one of those experiences in Sunday School today where I started to talk about something then realized that I would have to explain a lot of foundational information for most anyone to understand what I was saying. I ignored that because I didn't want to hog much class time, said what I wanted to say anyway, and let everyone think I was a confusing person.

This afternoon, after discussing this with Mrs Dust, I concluded that I am often a literalist (not the same as a realist), but moreso I am unwilling to stay on the surface level of a topic if I am truly involved in a discussion about it. I will often regale Mrs Dust with detailed (and typically irrelevant) information about a topic that we are discussing because I view conversation as a time to solve issues or learn rather than relay feelings. I'm working on that.

Anyway, I have a short song that I think illustrates this quite well. I hope Louis Armstrong won't mind the edits.

You say either and I say either
You say neither and I say neither
Either, either
Neither, neither
Let's call the whole thing off

You like potato and I like an edible tuber native to South America
You like tomato and I like a widely cultivated South American plant having edible, fleshy, usually red fruit
Potato, an edible tuber native to South America
Tomato, a widely cultivated South American plant having edible, fleshy, usually red fruit
Let's call the whole thing off

But oh, if we call the whole thing off
Then we must part
And oh, if we ever part
Then that might break my chambered muscular organ that pumps blood received from the veins into the arteries

express myself

For those who haven't noticed yet, I am not someone who does a good job of fully expressing myself with a few short and guarded words. Since most of my interaction in my life is short and guarded, that means I really don't express myself much. Actually, now that I am in a job where I am more comfortable with my coworkers, I do express myself quite a bit more than I used to.

I have determined that I cannot really relay many cogent thoughts in single, contextless posts without my audience having some understanding of the warped mind behind the posts. I have to lay down a foundation bit by bit of how I think in order for most of what I really want to say to make sense. To borrow an example from literature, I feel I need to establish my character before what I say has proper context. This is the reason you will see posts about worlds colliding and the difference between an optimist and a pessimist. It gives context into how I think so that when I say something that might otherwise sound stupid on this site it will make some sense.

I have already passed on a few posts because I couldn't fully explain what I wanted to explain in a short amount of space. What I would have had to write for the paragraph I cared about to make sense would amount to an epistle.

Why do I care? That isn't a rhetorical question. I'm asking because I don't know. Maybe I'll figure it out sometime.

the pianist

This past weekend while we were at Mrs Dust's family's house we watched The Pianist, in part because there are those who believe I need to be more in tune with my emotional side. I say cynicism can be an emotion, but I digress.

I can summarize the movie in the following bullets. There are minor spoilers.

• The Nazis take Warsaw.
• Horrible things happen to Warsaw Jews.
• More horrible things happen to Warsaw Jews.
• Majority of Warsaw Jews are killed.
• Horrible things happen to those remaining Warsaw Jews.
• The main character escapes to a hideout where horrible things happen.
• One Nazi shows mercy.
• The merciful Nazi goes to a concentration camp along with the scumbuckets that did horrible things to Warsaw Jews.

I certainly do not mean to belittle the Holocaust or those who went through it, but I do have a difficulty with the movie. My complaint is that there only seem to be three relatively simple points that were made.

1. All Nazis were horrible people who arbitrarily and happily killed or tortured any Jew that happened to be within eyesight.
2. Warsaw Jews endured horrible hardships.
3. Did I mention the Nazis were horrible?

These are not necessarily ignoble points, but they were fully made within 15 minutes of the start of the movie. I didn't need the full two hours to understand them. When I am watching a movie like this I feel like I am either the dunce of the class who is bored because everything is over his head or the genius who is bored because he is not learning anything new.

I think part of the point of the movie was the experience. I don't fully understand that, though, because the experience completely consists in either hating the Nazis or feeling empathy for the Jews. Again, fine for the film, but two hours of nothing but hate and empathy is draining.

Is there something more to this movie (or movies like this in general) that I am not getting? Is there some emotional or artistic intricacy that I am unable to comprehend? If so, I certainly need to be enlightened because I must be missing out. If not, does the movie need to be quite so long?

Note: For fear that this comes across as all negative, the cinematography, storytelling, acting, and entire atmosphere of the movie is spectacular.

weekend update

There was a cute woman from KC
With family so yonder it's crazy
She hopped in the car
And went really far
And brought her husband along though he's lazy

The entertainment that night was bloody
It was a movie starring the actor Brody
Mrs Dust cried a tear
With her distracted hubby near
But cry he would not cause he's moody

The next day they all piled in a boat
They were thankful to find it did float
They fished through the day
And caught a couple strays
But did not keep any fish in tote

Now the weekend is all but gone
But the memory and smells live on
I'll wash till I'm red
Before and after bed
But the fish and I have a bond

acting serious

Things are never gonna be the way you want.
Where's it gonna get you acting serious?
Things are never gonna be quite what you want.
Or even at 25, you gotta start sometime.

Again with the Jimmy Eat World lyrics.

I have a bad habbit of making snide, sarcastic, or otherwise dry wisecracks that don't always get noticed or acknowledged as jokes and sometimes are believed as honest opinion. This problem is magnified when I try to relay them online. I think I need some help to improve this. I have come up with a few ideas.

Idea #1 is to use smileys a lot. For example:

So, Citi has at least 3.9 million customers? :) :) :) :) You'll never guess how I know that! ;)

Idea #2 is to use shortened AOL-speak a lot. For example:

O Mi Ga, the posterior regions of these jeans are real tight. ROTFLOL!

Idea #3 is to point out the sarcasm and punchlines. For example:

Pessimists are the biggest risk-takers around (this is sarcasm).

Or I could just combine them all.

O Mi Ga, have you heard the difference between Dust and God? :) :) :) God doesn't think He is Dust (this is the punchline)! ROTFL

Let me know what you think. Will my ideas above work? Do you have any other ideas?