Majormajor's Xanga

Santa Wars: The Children Strike Back

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:54:15 GMT

... seriously, if your child is having this kind of a reaction to the strange, funky-looking old man in a fuzzy red suit that likely smells faintly of moth-balls, it's probably time to retrieve your child.

Although personally, it'd be interesting to watch the kid try to ram the candy cane down Santa's throat.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 17:23:50 GMT

It doesn't seem all that long ago since I wrote regarding the promise of making a life-change by moving west. I think I knew, even at the time I wrote it, that the change was both necessary and temporary; that it was necessary in order to get things rolling yet ultimately temporary as I would eventually be pulled back. I knew this to be so, and wondered when that time might come.

Three years have passed and the time, it seems, has come. In two weeks we'll leave the desert and begin our trek east to Tennessee, the next stop on our journey to what someday will become Home.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 15:50:18 GMT

Breathe in
Peace calm control
Hold
Breathe out
Seething
Irritating stupid audacity
Raking spitting serpents of fire
Hold
Breathe out
Fury
Presumptuous pompous
Selfish grubbing seeking harpy
Hold
Breathe out
Rage
Searing severing
Snapping scathing snarling swearing
Enough!
Peace calm control
Hold
Breathe out

Something to think about

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 14:31:51 GMT

"The supreme trick of mass insanity is that it persuades you that the only abnormal person is the one who refuses to join in the madness of others, the one who tries to resist. We will never understand totalitarianism if we do not understand that people rarely have the strength to be uncommon."
~Eugene Ionesco

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 06:26:07 GMT

I Dreamed a Dream...

It was... I don't know when it was. Soon. It was daylight, bright daylight, a clear day in fact. I was... somewhere. I don't know where. There was a concrete wall along the street upon which I found myself. Tall wall. Not a new wall, it had been there long enough to form a few cracks. No trees, that I can remember. No... no trees. A bus. There was a bus. I don't recall what the point of the bus was, simply that it was there. I was there, and it was bright. Very bright.

I look up, and for a moment I don't comprehend what I am seeing. A bright orb hangs in the sky. Not the sun... more like the moon. Only the moon in full daylight. It hangs there, conspicuously, letting anyone who dared look up see it. I see the ... thing, the moon, the silvery-bright orb that shines so magnificently in the sky, and then I really see it. Not the orb, but what stands atop of it. A figure. A man. Arms stretched wide, perfectly perpendicular to his body. Not moving, just standing. Waiting. Beckoning. In an instant I see, I know, I feel the breath catch in my chest and there's a rush, a roar, a wind spiraling upward. I don't even have time to gasp. He's come, and it is time to go.

Monday, April 10, 2006

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 20:50:02 GMT

When the Chattel Takes Over

(and other musings)

I am not a big fan of moving. I never have been. It’s not so much a matter of being particularly attached to a four-walled, roofed storage facility that surreptitiously dubs itself as “home”; things do not constitute “home”, therefore the container for those things can hardly qualify as “home”, either. George Carlin once made this very astute observation: “Home is where we keep our stuff. When we run out of room to keep our stuff, we buy a bigger home, so we have more room to keep more stuff.” This theory is probably more accurate than we give credence to, though in our case it’s partially true but only after adding on a rider clause; we’re moving to a bigger house to store more stuff, the acquisition of which will arise from the eventual arrival of our first child.

No, she’s not expecting yet. But we’re preparing for it.

But let me return to my original point: I am not a big fan of moving. It is depressingly remarkable the number of boxes required to hold all of one’s stuff. I can’t help but stare at the cityscape of boxes that have amassed in the small dining area of the apartment, and wonder if it’s all necessary. No, I take that back; I know that it’s not all necessary. Owning two guitars is not necessary. Having a wine rack is not necessary. Dining table, chairs, movies, books, bookshelves, clocks; none of this is necessary. Clothes? Yes, those are necessary. Food? Yes, that’s necessary too. A sofa? Not necessary. I cannot honestly say I have ever read a news article from any reputable (or non-reputable, for that matter) source that described in sad detail how a person died from sofa mal-nourishment.

For those of you who are fans of the Matrix movies, let me put it this way. The majority of the things that fill a person’s house are simply supporting layers of an overall construct whose purpose is, generally, to keep us blissfully happy and ignorant of the truth: we really don’t need this stuff to live. The problem is, and always has been, choice. We choose to own these things, ergo we are forced to deal with these things when the time comes to abandon the confines of the shell within which these constructs operated, in order that they may be moved into a new structure whose parameters and boundaries are stretched beyond the limitations of our old confines. Consequently, we find ourselves ensnared in an escalating cycle of accumulation, whose remainder is the byproduct of the system trying to assimilate our burgeoning desire to maximize our ownership while minimizing the space in which we live. Ergo, the process runs unchecked and rampant, and the end result is yet another move.

Happily, the move thus far has gone more smashingly than my previous endeavor. The last time I moved, I lost the screwdriver that I was using to unscrew shelving and the like, and searched for quite some time before I realized, much to my chagrin, that the thing was tucked quite sleepily in the back pocket of my shorts. I have pulled within five days of M-Day, and to date the only thing I have lost is a bit of skin from my right pinky finger. I am not entirely how it happened, or if I should be terribly upset by it.

This is also the first time that I’ve ever moved without really going anywhere. I’m taking all my stuff, and I’m moving about six miles. This means that while the venue for my stuff has changed slightly, I’m still living in the same town, my phone number remains the same, I’ll still be shopping at the same Walmart, and I’ll already have a pretty good handle on where I might find a pizza of decent report.

Oddly enough, the U-Haul place that we’ll be requisitioning a truck from does not rent 21-foot trucks for in-town moves (hey, what?) The 17-foot option would probably be enough to do what we need to get done, but I would prefer the 21-foot truck to give us an extra couple feet of wiggle room. As I just said, however, they don’t do 21-foot trucks for in-town moves (again I say, what?). So, rather than shorting the job and having to come back for several car-loads of refugees, I took the ten dollar hit and moved up... to a 26 footer. All I can say is yikes. That’s a big truck. And it’s a stick shift to boot. I don’t know, I almost feel like I should be wearing a greasy old ball-cap and be singing “Convoy” while I’m driving down the road. It’s an absurdly large truck, really. But at least we don’t have to worry about being terribly precise in our packing.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 16:04:37 GMT

Wandering among the shadows of trees
Dripping fingers rake across cheek and brow
Lost in a world of mindless hate
Searching for that thing to make it all clear
Worn beyond all hope of repair
Yet hope of repair entices us forward
Time slows its march and draws nigh
Whispering ancient truths into a listener’s ear
Days of smoke and daze of fear
Days of snow and daze of weariness
Watching for a hint of foreshadow
Waiting for light to dawn

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 20:44:12 GMT

A Thought To Dwell Upon
Even the wisest of fools is still a fool.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Tue, 20 Dec 2005 20:07:59 GMT

Impossible!

It's impossible; are we really nearing the end of December? What happened to November? Or October, for that matter! Who put the clock on warp speed and forgot to tell the rest of us? Months have raced by in a blur, and all I can do is look around and wonder where it all went. Wow...

That being said, Libby and I are nudging forward our preparations for the flight back to Virginia on Thursday night / Friday morning. I say nudging forward, because in all honesty we haven't done anything in the way of packing. But that's not to mean that we haven't at least made an effort to prepare; she didn't have a coat worthy of the blustery chill that will likely greet us when we step off of the plane, and towards that end we spent a few hours over the weekend on a quest for... a winter coat!

You have to understand the significance of this. Libby loves coats. I don't really have a firm grasp as to why, given that she lives in a desert and, for most intents and purposes, doesn't need to own anything more than a basic windbreaker, or at most a lined jacket. She adores coats; it's almost like an obsession of hers. Some women like purses, others shoes or hats. Her vice is coats. They're cute and furry; the furrier the better, in fact. I had to laugh last year when we were walking around the federal building district of DC; the young adults there were all dressed very yuppie-like; long black overcoats, dress slacks with the smart looking shirt-and-tie, business skirts with the trendy pumps... straight out of a fashion magazine. And in the midst of all this was Libby, in her long brown sort-of courtoroy coat with the kind of fur that would do well on one of those troll pencil-toppers lining the edges, a pair of comfortable jeans, sneakers, and a super long, white, fuzzy scarf. Southern California fashion invaded Washington that day; it was a beautiful thing.

But to return to the original point, Libby got to go winter coat shopping over the weekend. After drifting through a few stores with minimal success (did I mention we were looking for a good, heavy winter coat in the middle of a desert?), I spotted the sign for a store that I was confident we would find what we were looking for: Burlington Coat Factory. Now for those of you that live in colder places, you may be familiar with this store; the place is stuffed with marked down coats, along with a variety of other clothing items, and would naturally be one of the places you might think of when looking for a coat. Libby, my wonderful wife and self-professed coat-addict, had never been inside one before.

It was like turning an alcoholic loose in a liquor store.

In any event, we emerged from the store some time later, with a winter coat tucked safely into its bag. It's long and black, with snaps AND a zipper. And a hood... with a fur lining the edge.

So given my sporadic postings, I'm going to assume that I will not post here again before we leave for Virginia. With this in mind, I want to wish each and every one of you a Merry Christmas, and a wonderful new year!

--Steve

Saturday, December 03, 2005

Sat, 03 Dec 2005 19:59:56 GMT

DING!
(fries are done!)

Well... ok, not really. But I have finished assembling the last bit of my novel! So for those of you that wanted a copy, just send me a note with your email address, and I'll be more than happy to send you the file. Questions, comments and feedback are always welcome, just keep in mind that this was written essentially in a month, so it's going to be pretty... erm... rough.