I left town December 10 for a trip to see some dear friends in Arizona. I spent ten days there, a pleasant mix of work and play. The necessities in a small town of 300 are different than they are here. The desert is gorgeous, and so very multifaceted. Different vegetation grows at specific elevations, and every plant is adapted to this harsh environment. Everything has stickers and thorns, which I discovered while working two days, scavenging firewood from public land. (This is legal with a permit.) I took zillions of pictures, but they do not do it justice. The Grand Canyon is impossible to fathom. I think the closest I'd ever get to appreciating the size of that hole is to backpack it for about six months. I considered a swan dive. It would've been a beautiful way to spend the rest of my life.
I was true to my New Year's resolutions of 2009. This year, I will continue with those, and I have added some new ones. So for now they are:
- Continue my retirement from politics. (2009)
- Consume little or no news. (2009)
- Write more postal mail and cultivate a pen pal. (I now have two regulars.) (2009)
- Don't get married. (2010)
- Don't sign anything. (2010)
- Use moderation in moderation. (2010)
- Quit living for approval. If God approves, that's approval enough. (2010)
I have become addicted to the Cowboy Junkies' "Black Eyed Man" album. I especially like "Murder, Tonight, in the Trailer Park." For the odd and catchy (if you can catch it) chord progression; the extra measures stuck here and there; the unbridled ring of the ride cymbal and the seasoned hand of the man playing it; and the surreal treatment of a bizarre subject, I am convinced this is a modern masterpiece. My first album of theirs was The Caution Horses, and I was not expecting much variation in their later albums, but this group is like a wine that aged surprisingly quickly and unbelievably well.
And all the world needs is one more critic (or a lawyer). I suppose it's a little less pathetic to write it here than to be one of those "Real Name Verified" idiots at Amazon who tries to amass the greatest number of music and book reviews, which usually amount to shredding the artist or author to tiny bits using big words he found in Roget's Thesaurus, which he probably pronounces, "Row-gits Treasures." It's always encouraging, after reading one of those, to see "Matthew Kirkdouglas Dillpickle has 1295 other reviews! Click here to read them all!" Thanks, Matt... very generous of you, but won't you accept my counter-offer to instead kiss off? If you hate it, don't read it, bro... no need to write an exegesis about your indigestion. If you love it, give to a friend when you're done.
I admit that having a personal web site (or a blog) involves a certain amount of ego, but I try to keep this one pure by not posting anything that identifies me. You get what you pay for. I check the logs every now and again, and am always astonished to see not only that there is traffic to the site, but that the traffic is increasing, and at an increasing rate. I like rates of change... t'is one of the central concepts in calculus. No one knows I have this domain or this collection of... whatever it is I've collected, so I think my "pompous ass" score should be less than that of Matthew Kirkdouglas Dillpickle at Amazon, and well below the perfect score of Henry David Thoreau, the very definition of pompous ass, who "found himself" at Walden Pond, but a pity he wasn't found there by someone else, floating face down and bloated.
I have extra time for this because I retired from being an unelected politician whose policy efforts included watching the news, listening to radio, swearing a lot, and once every two years, voting, usually for the same idiot. I am glad that there are people paying attention to the political process, and I am convinced that living in a free country is for me, but my health is much better when I tune into the news about three months before an election and just shut up and vote. Since there are no elections today, I can at least shut up.
