ahh...the holidaze

well, christmas is upon us once again. i've finished what shopping i can do and hope there's nothing i forgot. this holiday season finds us, um, in a weird place. first meira was sick with the berry thing, then i got sick for a couple of days. i got home saturday night and felt fine. i ate some crackers and cheese and went to bed. an hour later i was up, hurting. i continued to hurt for the rest of the night and through the next day. i hurt at work.

i fortunately have quite a bit of flex time so i took 4 hours of flex and went home early (you cannot miss a day without an occurance...7 occurances and you are shown the door...you can't use more than 4 hrs of flextime without being issued an occurance....i have 5 occurances this year because of sickness....i can't get another for i'm up for promotion and if i have a 6th occurance i'll have to wait until another opening comes up in that department again...stupid rules).

i went to bed early. got up at 6am to take my mother-in-law to the airport. she is flying out to wichita to meet up with her brother, john. they are going to be with their sister, jane, whose husband, stan, just died of cancer.

i decided to start taking my medicine again. all this year i have had intermittent bouts of indigestion...bad indigestion. the kind that at first made me think i was having a heart attack. this went on for 6 months before i went to the doctor. he gave me reglan and prilosec. i took them a couple of times but i hate taking medicine. i just don't want that crap running around in my system. so i altered what i eat and when i eat. things were going great. until saturday night. so monday morning i took the medicine. after dropping june off (yes...june, john, jane are the siblings...there was another brother gene-hey! no 'j'!-but he died a couple of years ago) at the airport, the family and i went to the flying buiscuit in little five points to eat breakfast. i ate with reluctance and waited for the inevitable. it didn't come. so maybe the medicine does help.

today i called my mom while i was out shopping. she had been to the doctor, she said, about her lungs. we talked a while and then we hung up. i then got a call that wasn't a number i recognized so i ignored it. when i got home amy said that "gloria" had called and said my mother may have congestive heart failure. great. i had to hear it from someone else. my own mother won't burden me with her problems. serious ones. what has the world come to.

she'll probably have to be hospitalized. we had planned on getting together with her, my brother and his wife, my niece and her husband, and who knows who else, the day after christmas. looks like we'll be spending christmas at the hospital. who scripts this stuff for this time of year anyhow?

i'll not let it get me down though. all things being impermanent means that we're not stuck this way. but mom is old. she's tough, but old...86. hope she can pull through this one. time to meditate on it.

work sucks and i'm close to doomed

work-the evil necissity. even now i feel a dreaded prescence come over me as i think about what may be in store tonight. winter storms, delayed flights, passengers wanting compensation because of the weather. my talk time this month is already high. my hold time this month is already high. my not ready time is already high. and all about to go higher. failure is upon me.

all agents (yes i'm an agent, don't fuck with me!) are judged each month by several factors. one is talk time. the amount of time you spend on one call cannot go over three minutes, forty-five seconds without affecting your job performance review (JPR). the problem here is, you cannot force people off the phone. you can control the call with various techniques but if someone wants to have you wait while they muddle through booking online or rummage through their purse or shuffle papers on their desk-all things they could have done BEFORE calling-you can do nothing about that.

hold time cannot exceed a factor of 11 (i think that is percent). hold time is the time you have someone on hold. duh.

not ready (NR) is the amount of time spent not on a call. this includes break and "discretionary minutes" not to exceed 8% of total time on calls. you can control not ready by coming back from breaks early but with the new compliance standards management put into place controlling NR becomes difficult. you cannot come back from a break early without falling out of compliance. you are expected to take the break on time and use the entire break. here another problem lies. you can't take your break on time if you are on a call. if you go over your break by say 3 minutes, you only have 12 minutes left on you break. if your call goes over 15 minutes, too bad! no break for you!

quality assurance (QA) counts each month on the jpr. you usually get QA'd twice a month. acing the first QA means you can coast the rest of the month. normally i ace the QA but this month on my first QA i forgot to verify the dates on a reservation before cancelling, so i was counted off. dang.

now a bit about shrinkage. it's not just what happens to guys when they get out of the pool. shrinkage at work is about taking your lunch and not going over. at all. period. if you go over your scheduled lunch by one minute you get a zero for the month on shrinkage. shrinkage has no forgiverage (my word). i don't have shrinkage. either kind.

so what's my worry? none, really. if i fail this month's jpr i will be at three failures for the year. my first two months on the job i failed the jpr each month by a fraction of a percent because my talk time was so high. if you fail four jpr's in a calendar year, you are toast. my first two months of failure were for january and febuary. if i can hold on until then, the failed jpr's will drop off.

and if i do fail twice more? i will have achieved my goal of becoming a househusband! i keep wheedling amy about letting me stay home all of the time. she's not gone for it yet. even when i use my best beguiling ways. mind you, i'm not trying to fail just to stay home, but if, forbid, it happens i won't be fretting about it. being a househusband was not what i had in mind years ago when i was trying to become a rock star. when that didn't pan out i settled on professional musician (PM). when i needed to change jobs to stay home during the day even the PM had to take a back seat. it all works out in the end. if i do become a househusband, i'll be free to become the PM again. see! now, to convince amy.

red berries and puke

well, we had a scare here last night...

i had planned on coming home, working on my bid for days off this next year, then going to bed. instead i get home and amy is sitting in the recliner with meira, in the semi-dark, lit only by the solstice branch lights (more on the solstice branch later). "what's up?", i ask. meira had been throwing up, that's what. she had eaten some red berries in the backyard.

amy had spoken to an insurance on-call nurse, the doctor and erika. i didn't understand the erika connection until amy told me that perry had eaten some, too. but perry wasn't throwing up. erika was also able to positively identify the berry since her husband geoff is majoring in a very obscure botanical field...i don't remember what, but it's something like anthropological botany.

anyway, the doctor said meira didn't need to go to the emergency room unless she threw up again. he said they wouldn't treat the cause, only the symptoms. of course the danger was dehydration. meira had thrown four times already. but in between one of those times she had managed to nurse and keep down the milk. she was asleep, the doctor had said no need to keep her awake, but woke up and vomited bile...then fell instantly asleep again. while i changed the sheets on the bed (she had thrown up there earlier) amy and i talked about what to do.

we both felt that meira was not in danger of dehydrating and that a trip to the emergency room would only be traumatic. we agreed to see what happened the next time she woke up. i sat down with meira in the recliner while amy went to change (she had been thrown up on) and do some research on the web. meira was sleeping like the little sleeping angel she is, not like the little troublemaker she can be while awake. her breathing was deep and steady. she was getting good rest. after a while amy came back in the room and began pinching meira's fingers and toes. she was searching for signs of dehydration. apparently, if you pinch one of the extremeties and the color comes right back, plenty hydrated. meira seemed fine.

amy decided to stay up with meira. i went to bed. eowyn woke up and got in bed with me. that meant i was perched precariously on the edge of the king size bed with eowyn shoving against me. i slept fitfully. at sometime during the night the door burst open and meira came in squealing and laughing. she blew right back out just as quickly. i figured she must be ok. i fell asleep again.

a few minutes before six am, amy came to bed with meira. meira had thrown up once more, just as amy had gotten meira's pajamas on her. all seemed well and they went to sleep. i got amy up at 7:30, she called work and said she'd be in a little later. eowyn and i got up and went to my work so i could turn in my vacation bid before 8:30. we came back home and went to the kitchen. eowyn wanted to watch a movie so i put in alladin. i went to get her some water, came back, and there stands meira staring at the television, smiling. i gathered her up, changed her diaper, got some water for her, made oatmeal (which eowyn calls apano...more on that later) and fed her as much as she would eat (about what a bird would eat). she was smiling and laughing and playing with, for want of a better description, a male barbie. she started calling out "mermaid, mermaid?". she wanted the ariel barbie!

we got amy up at 10:00 and she went to work. as i write this meira keeps coming up asking for "bapo". that means "apple". so i feed her some apple and she plays happily. crisis diverted. red berries lose.

wordless wednesday...i like it. here's my contribution:

this is what happens when nature trys to take on the greatest force of evil on earth.

i'm awake and many things are in my head, part 2

can't have a part 1 without a part 2:

on the way over to erika's, meira and i stop to get a bite to eat. we take a little drive and meira falls asleep. the navigator in me decides to take a different route.

i have an innate sense of direction, always have. except on the city streets of atlanta, never will. the map in my head shows that we can go this road, this road and this road and arrive from the opposite direction. it's a good system and a good thing, too. when one comes to the end of one road or a crossroads there is always one road not marked on the sign. i follow my internal map until i see a house that looks like erika's would if coming from the direction we are going...and i drive right past. the instinct said yes, the infuriating know-it-all, butt-in-at-the-wrong-time brain said no. then i saw the yellow bus. the first time we went to erika and geoff's, erika's directions included, "when you see the yellow schoolbus, next drive on the right". so i turn around. stupid brain.

the sleepover party included sylvia, maddie, eowyn, caitlin and joplin. five girls from three years to almost six (sylvia, the birthday girl) and perry who is erika's almost two year old son. so, as you see erika is brave. crazy. nuts. devoted. and she's pregnant with number four! when i walked in with meira, who had awoken the moment the van stopped, the girls and perry were painting magic capes that they were later going to wear outside. each one's cape would confer a super power. sylvia's cape would give her the power to make it snow. caitlin's the power to make it rain. eowyn didn't tell me her power. they had a bubble machine that was a big hit. everyone had to dance around and pop bubbles. perry stood on a chair, that took him what seemed like half an hour of laborious lugging from the kitchen to the living room, and poked his fingers in the machine. then it was time for music.

on the way over i was listening to joni mitchell's "hejira" on my ipod. over the years i kept hearing about "hejira" from various people but never had checked it out. one day i was at an "entertainment" store that sold used cd's, lo and behold they had a copy of "hejira". i couldn't figure out all the fuss at first. sure, jaco patorius is playing bass, but not on every cut, only four. but he does his best jaco performance on the first song "coyote", my favorite. his bell-like use of harmonics on the bass rings out the very first thing. other than jaco i still couldn't understand the hoopla. until i realized that joni paints with words. as she sings and sometimes talks, the words definite images appear one by one in my mind until, at last, there is a complete portrait of the song. brilliant! i went from this sonic high-brow, succulent music to "the little white duck
and other children's favorites" by burl ives. on vinyl, no less!

most of you will remember burl ives from his narration as sam the snowman in "rudolph the red-nosed reindeer". others may remember him for ratting out fellow folksingers, and other's with supposed communist ties, to the house unamerican activities committee. now i'll be the first to say that burl ives has a robust yet velvety voice and can deliver a song like no one else. but "the little white duck" with fooba wooba john included was a bit too much in the opposite direction. the cover of the album was priceless, though. with his ham fists and huge sausage fingers, it looks like wherever he would put his fingers on the fretboard would sound the same. and that right hand raking across the strings would most likely rend the strings from the guitar.

after some more playing outside, sans capes as they hadn't dried from the acrylic onslaught, it was time to go. lot's of yelling about not wanting go yet came out of eowyn but i finally convinced her. all the goodbyes said we headed for home...in a roundabout fashion.

eowyn wanted me to tell her a story about "ariel and santa claus". so i began the story i told her a few nights ago. she fell asleep before i finished that night. this time she managed to hand on. the moment i said the word "end", as in "the end" her little eyes slowly shut. meira was already out. i hit play on the ipod and resumed my commiseration with joni and "hejira".

i'm awake and many things are in my head, part 1

awww, man. the things i think about at 2:30 in the morning...



eowyn went to her friend sylvia's house on sunday for sylvia's birthday party. it's a sleepover party! sylvia's actual birthday is on christmas so her parents wisely have the party earlier. i missed the party due to work but i was to check to see if i had a text message from erika, sylvia's mom, saying that eowyn wanted to come home. i plugged in my phone before leaving for work to make sure there would be enough power. at 11:30 that night, when i got off the phones to clean, i realized my cell phone was still plugged up....at home.



i was off at midnight so i went home and checked the messages. yep, two texts, although both from amy. the first was "pickup eowyn", the second, "never mind, she went to sleep". after checking the messages i walked in the kitchen. amy was working at her computer. i repeated aloud the messages she had sent. then i told her the phone had been here all along. she said, "duh, i could have brained that because i saw it sitting on the dresser earlier!" so at least i was the only dummy in this situation.



meira was asleep in the bedroom so i regaled my lovely wife with readings from david bodanis' "the secret house". if you've never read the secret house, it's probably best. not that it isn't a great book, it is. the subject matter is what makes it most frightening. "the secret house" takes the reader through an entire day in the life of a house and it's occupants by using the scariest of all literary tactics...reality.



every thing from waking up in the morning to the sound waves of the alarm bouncing off the curtains (making the curtains move and heat up) to brushing one's teeth (using chalk, water, paint, seaweed, anti-freeze, paraffin oil, detergent, peppermint, formaldehyde and fluoride: the ingredients in toothpaste...yes, anti-freeze is in there to keep everything from drying out and formaldehyde kills any bacteria that try to invade the paste) to mites that live everywhere, on everything, including in our eyelashes and in particular, the follicles of the lashes. fascinating reading.



around 2 am we went to bed. then we had a fight about finances. i simply asked if she thought she might get paid early, like at thanksgiving, instead of the usual end of the month. "why?", she asks. "it would just be good if you did", i say. "it worries me to get paid early...it's then another month and a half before getting paid again". "it works out the same", i say, meaning the money goes in the same account and sits there waiting to be used at the appropriate time. she senses my underlying meaning, though. "what are you saying?". uh-oh. "i get paid tomorrow but we would have very little money to last two weeks", was my last sentence before getting a barrage of howmuchmoneydowehaveareyoutellingmethere'snomoneyforchristmaswelltheregoeschristmas...i didn't stand a chance of making myself heard now. so i got up, pulled out the records, logged onto the bank website and figured it all out.



at three o'clock i got back in bed. "well, how are we", amy asks, meaning the account. i tell her the figure we have to work with. "sounds like a lot to me", she replies. whew.



when i got up monday morning, amy was off to work so it was just meira and me. meira woke up early, got out of bed, toddled off and came back with a booklight and a book. "read", she commands in her little singsong voice. i've said it before, she's a little bookworm...just like her sister...and her mommy....and her daddy. not that there's anything wrong with that. in fact, it's great!



so we read as much as she can stand, we get up, eat, mess around, she watches elmo's world and then it's off to get the big girl.

dream #2

i'll preface this one: this dream involves my mother and my step-nephew (on my father's side) shawn, whom i haven't seen in several years. in the dream shawn is a little kid. he's probably 30 or so today.
....................................

i am supposed to be driving my nephew shawn home to newnan. my car is sort of like a little convertible sport car, about the size of an mg, only the top is missing and it's all banged up. we are leaving lafayette, alabama; on the outskirts, when i notice i need gas. i pull into the next available station. my mom is working there. she is her current age in waking life, 86, and is working at this run-down grease-pit of a gas station by herself. i'm not surprised by any of this yet i think to myself "what kind of employer leaves an old lady like my mother here by herself with who knows how many neer-do-wells coming and going"? as if in answer to my unasked question my mom says, "there was a man here earlier who had a length of twine. i asked him what it was for and he just went like this." here she makes a fist with both hands holding the imaginary piece of twine and she quickly pulls her fists apart in a menacing gesture like someone about to strangle another person. "i went inside and locked the door", she added.

i decided i needed to find this employer and tell them about the incident. at this time i begin to take in the look of the station. at some point in it's existence it looked to have been used as an auto repair shop. there were a couple of dingy bay doors with cloudy windows. car parts were strewn about outside. shawn said something to me, i know not what, and i looked down in a wooden box that was lying on the asphalt lot. i was looking for something, i think in reference to what shawn had said. i saw in the box a box cutter lying on top of a key. i moved the cutter to the side and realized the key was "hidden" and was the key to the station.

.......................................

everything in this dream had a monochrome quality. while it wasn't a bad dream, it did leave an impression.

a thought

why would anyone use anti-fungal spray? why would you want to be rid of a girl who is fun to be with?

the moon

we were given a reprieve at work last night. at 2230 (10:30) they offered undertime until 2400 (midnight). that meant i could leave work officially an hour and a half early, and without using my flex time. utterly meaningless to most people, i know, yet full of promise for me. it meant not having to talk to anyone else about schedule changes or their mother's bursitis flaring up "so i gotta get a flight out tonight and why is the fare so high don't you have any bereavement fares the other airline is two dollars less and can get me out fifteen minutes earlier..." jebus, save me from your followers. and he did. or luck did. or res planning did.

i realized, while wandering out to my vehicle, that the sky was clear and the moon was full. i love a full moon. granted, if you are a stargazer, as i am, the full moon is like a 400 pound, 7 foot tall loud-talking-cell-phone-using asshole sitting in front of you at the movie theater...a nuisance. it blocks out all the stars around and dims the ones you might be able to see otherwise, except that light pollution on the horizon, or trees, take care of the rest. since i live in the big city-ok, the city limits-i don't get much-really, any-time for stargazing, so that wasn't on my mind. what was on my mind was the most mundane of things-going home and cleaning.

i kept looking out of the truck window on the way home and noticing that i could see most everything quite clearly. the normally dark golf course was lit by the moon. houses, trees, the road were all bathed in the moonlight. i decided to take a drive.

i drove out of the city limits and into the country. i turned onto a road that had very few houses and was mostly open pasture. the moon's effect on the landscape was mesmerising. i started imagining if people who lived without electricity knew how lucky they were to be able to see the land glowing in the magical moonlight. probably not. they didn't know any other way. still, it must have been a beautiful sight to behold even to the ancients. certainly mysterious. i resisted the urge to turn off my headlights and navigate by the light of the moon. i've done it before but ever since my friend mike werner told me about his getting busted by the cops for the same thing, i've been wary. i enjoyed the blueish glow of my surroundings a while longer and then headed for home.

i was surprised that everyone was still awake. my wife, amy, and our youngest daughter, eowyn, had apparently had an altercation. amy was mad and eowyn told me that her mother was being like cinderella's stepmother. now i was embroiled in a situation not of my making. we all went to bed. i read to eowyn and before either fell asleep she and her mom had a short talk, a hug and a kiss. all was well again. i told eowyn a story about the princesses and santa. she fell asleep sometime shortly after i started, but i finished it anyway. i wanted to remember it so i could tell it again. the moon, however, was forgotten. i didn't clean either. oh well.

i want to hold your hand

i've been thinking long and hard about "i want to hold your hand" being about the cold war. cat had wanted to know my analysis. i've got to say that it has been difficult. here is what i have:

the first line sets us up. "yeah you've, got that something, i think you'll understand". the guy is saying here "hey, baby, you have something i want and you know what it is. in case you don't, i'll explain it to you, then you'll understand"
the next line, "when i say that something" (i'm explaining it to you now) "i want to hold your hand, i want to hold your hand, i want to hold your hand". on the first "hand" the note goes up denoting a high emotional factor here. the guy is ready, hot to trot so to speak. on the second "hand" the notes stairstep down. this can only be an indication of which direction the guy wants to go...down...on the girl. the "i want to hold your hand" is repeated again. third times the charm!

the third line goes on to say "oh please, say to me, you'll let me be your man". dude really wants it. "and please say to me, you'll let me hold your hand, now let me hold your hand, i want to hold your hand" he's trying the hard-sell, playing on the girl's emotions, again stating the desire three times. he's trying a bit too hard and may be in danger of losing control of the situation. so he goes with a different tack...

"and when i touch you i feel happy inside" he's gentle now, no longer aggressive or insistive, appealing (hopefully) to the girls emotional feelings as well. "it's such a feeling that my love, i can't hide, i can't hide, i can't hide!" his passion swells and bursts forth, no longer kept beneath the surface, now totally out for all to see.

the girl has done one of several things by now: she slaps him and demands to be taken home, she screams and runs off, she is swept up by the passionate plea and they get it on. i'm betting that they get it on, for the very last word of the song "hand" is shaking with emotion, with spent energy, the spent energy of lust.

"something" and "hand" are, of course, euphenisms for the vagina. "love" represents the penis. pretty straightforward stuff here. so, no cold war connection. cold shower, maybe, no cold war.

i had a dream

driving through a town in my little nissan pickup, i came upon two sets of railroad tracks. buildings on the left came up the side of the tracks i was on. across the tracks the buildings continued. on the right and across the tracks buildings continued around a bend. another set of tracks ran perpendicular behind the right-hand-side buildings. a train was coming toward my direction on the perpendicular tracks. a train was coming along the tracks of which i was stopped in front. seeing as how the two tracks crossed, i foresaw disaster and no way out of it.

sure enough, the two trains collided. i could see the boxcars and tankers leaving the tracks and tumbling towards me. the noise was deafening and all i could do was to lay down on the seat of the truck and hope for the best. when the dust cleared, i was alive.

now i was walking toward a house. i could tell it was a clinic of some sort. i opened the front door and stepped in. noone was around. i walked farther into the house/clinic where i heard a scratching. the noise was coming from behind a closed door. i looked through a slot in the door that was at eye level. the room i was looking in had its floor level with the slot so that i was looking across floor. the noise i had heard was not scratching, it was the clinking of ice as it fell on the floor. i looked up and saw my dog harley in the freezer section of a refrigerator. he was alive but apparently very cold as he was shivering. the ice was falling from harley's fur. i stepped back from the slot and put my hand on the door knob.

when i opened the door everything in the room was normal. no elevator-between-floors scene as i had expected. i felt as though someone was behind me even though i had heard nothing. i turned around. noone was there but as i looked into the room behind me through an open doorway, out steps yoda!

"holy fuck!", i stated aloud. then i woke up.

a new sort of christmas story

todays installment is a short one act that i composed a while ago. if you are offended by reinterpretations of anything christian READ NO FURTHER.

Narrator: What if Mary, mother of Jesus, was not a virgin? What if there was no "angel of the Lord"? What was Joseph doing married to a woman who apparently would not have sex with him? Was he repugnant in some way? Was he hideously ugly, bereft of penis, an idiot? Perhaps this is the answer to these questions:

Mary (to Joseph): I've been thinking lately...we need to move to a bigger house.
Joseph: We will need money to move to a bigger house. Why a bigger house?
Mary: We have but one room. Do we not have the money, my husband? You are a well-paid carpenter.
Joseph: We have little money, what with the goat cheese, dates and olives you have been packing away as of late. Speaking of big...we will need a bigger house if you keep getting large around the middle. Don't think that I haven't noticed, my wife.
Mary (defensively): Hey! Your middle isn't exactly made of chiseled stone! (softening): Husband...I am with child.
Joseph (angrily): Mary, how didest thou come to be with this child? You will not share my bed!Mary: Can we talk outside, my husband? The odor in here is overwhelming.
Joseph: Um, ok. What odor?
Mary (outside now): If you will stand downwind my husband? That's better...as I was saying, yes I am with child. I was sleeping alone the night you attended your Woodcarver's Union conference in Bethlehem. I was awoken when I felt the bed rising and falling. Also, I felt a delicious tingling sensation when suddenly an, um, angel appeared. Yes, an angel appeared to me, as if in a dream, and said,"you are with the Lord's child".
Joseph (now awestruck): It's a miracle!
Mary (relieved): Indeed, it is! If it's a boy I think we shall call him...Jesus.
Joseph: Say, isn't that the baker's name? You know, I saw him the other night parading around in a set of wings and a halo. That guy is such a weirdo.

rednecks and cockroaches

ok, here you go...today i put meira down for a nap and i lay down beside her. she was fussy but eventually gave up and went to sleep, so did i. now, eowyn won't let anything like that go on for long. those two are a study in opposites.

eowyn needs interaction and attention for most everything. she needs someone with which to play, although she can and does play by herself. meira can go long stretches of playing by herself, much like i was as a child, and can frequently be caught "reading" in the playroom. yep, she's a bookworm already. 18 months old and will sit with a book looking at every page. eowyn loves books too, but always wants someone to read to her.

anyway, i'm asleep. most days i try to close my eyes for a bit while sitting in the recliner. i put a movie on and if meira isn't napping she and eowyn will watch the movie. i close off most of the house so they can't have free range everywhere. if they need anything, they can, and do wake me. i may have been asleep for 10 or 15 minutes when i hear eowyn stomping around the side of the bed. "dada", she whispers, "when will you get up?". "in a moment", i reply. then, right outside the bedroom window, i hear a horn blast.

it ain't noone looking for me. i have no truck with car horns. if you pull up in front of my house and honk the horn you are out of luck. apparently our neighbor across the street has the kind of friends who can't get off their lazy ass to go to the door. i look over to see if meira is awake. she's not. THEN i hear....a voice. a LOUD voice.

it's not like any voice you would ever hear wafting in from across the street. more aloud to myself than to eowyn i said, "what the hell is that?". she says something but i don't know what. i get up. i hear the voice again.

we run a cd of ocean waves in the bedroom to keep out unwanted noises like dogs barking, neighbors arguing, gunshots from a few blocks over, but it filters neither horns of cars parked outside the window nor loud, authoritative voices. meira is awoken by all the goings on by this time and then i hear....the tones...ala close encounters of the third kind, just like on devil's mountain. i get a chill down my spine. a real chill. the voice starts again and echoes around the neighborhood.

even though i believe on the surface that alien encounters are all bullshit, i must harbor a deepseated wish for such because i say aloud to eowyn, "i think we are under alien attack". she says, "i don't like aliens". oops, got to watch what i say out loud.

then the voice booms out again. "THE NATIONAL WHEATHER SERVICE HAS ISSUED A TORNADO WARNING FOR THIS AREA, TAKE SHELTER IMMEDIATELY!" i begin ordering eowyn to the middle of the house and i scoop up meira. i pause at the front door which i pass as i'm leaving the bedroom. "is this real?", i ask aloud. i open the front door and look out. sure, it's been a warmer day than the previous few but there are no stormclouds or wind. just overcast, gray sky. the tones begin again, my blood runs cold...aliens.

suddenly a crackling noise like someone fumbling with a microphone issues forth and a new voice, much less authoritative, more, um, redneck says "this is only a test. i repeat, this is only a test". well, so much for aliens. unless otherworlds have rednecks, too. probably they do. rednecks...and cockroaches.

and your bird can sing

it's funny...i was listening to "and your bird can sing"-the beatles song penned by john lennon-today. i've always assumed that it was about a bird, possibly a parakeet, hence the title. of course, assuming that it's about a bird is fairly simplistic, however, lennon sings, "you tell me that you've got everything you want, and your bird can sing...". i realized that i had never gone beyond the surface of the lyrics. there is quite a bit of disparate imagery on that surface. he goes on to state "...but you don't get me". what can he mean? for the word "get", besides its common usuage for a possession, we can plug in the word "understand". "you don't understand me". but what about the use of the word "bird"?

british slang for a girl is bird. now we realize that it is a girl to whom lennon is referring.

the next line of the song goes onto to say to the recipient of lennon's narration "you say you've seen seven wonders and your bird is green, but you can't see me...". perhaps this person has traveled the world yet his girl, or girlfriend, has not. the person, maybe a friend of john's, is so wrapped up in this relationship that lennon feels left out.

the bridge of the song lets the friend know that lennon would like to renew the friendship by stating "when you're prized possessions start to weigh you down, look in my direction, i'll be 'round...". in other words "when you come off this cloud and all of life's little problems start to feel like too much, i will be there for you". this sentiment is echoed by the next line of the bridge, "when your bird is broken, will it bring you down, you may be awoken, i'll be 'round...". again: "when the new wears off with this girl, and she maybe leaves you, perhaps you'll come to and see that i am here and always have been".

the last line states "you tell me that you've heard every sound there is, and your bird can swing, but you can't hear me...". once more in my words, "your girlfriend is really hot and people are talking about you and her but you've not been listening to what i have been telling you."

lennon had a habit of writing about real life situations yet cloaking the meaning in metaphor, as a good writer would. by his own addmission "norwegian wood" is about an affair he had. "sexy sadie" is about the mahareshi mahesh yogi and the mahareshi's advances toward mia farrow's sister prudence. "dear prudence" is about lennon trying to get prudence farrow to come out of her bungalow and talk after the mahareshi came on to her.

"and your bird can sing" makes more sense when viewed as metaphor rather than viewed with a childish simplicity. yet the childish simplicity coupled with the deeper meaning is one of the things that makes the beatles music endure for many generations.