What I've Been Doing - Vol 3

In the latest Eye Witness poll 62% of the people think the tax policy announced today is fair whereas 34% think its unfair. While those numbers were OK, I wish they were better. I think if the ratio were more like four to one in favor, we could storm the phone lines.

It took some doing to locate the President’s this morning on the internet but I finally found it. Stephanie Miller had the end of it. Just listening on the radio I was critiquing it for style. It’s an improvement, but the speech could still stand to have a few sentences switched around. The President would pause at the wrong points and then not pause for effect, when it counted. At key points when he should have raised his voice, he lowered it. The President still has a tendency to speak too fast, especially at key points, and also he could throw in some common every day example, as to why he makes sense and the opposition is nuts. He also needs to vilify his opponet, just as the other side is so adept at. He need to portray and belittle them as being out of the American main stream. He needs to listen to more speeches by Roosevelt and Johnson. As to the substance of the speech it involves raising 1.5 trillion dollars by closing corporate loop-holes so that secretaries aren’t taxed at a higher rate than their boss. All in all it’s a very sensible program but of course it’s dead on arrival. All the usual liberal talk show hosts liked it. You know, if just 16.18034% pf the people of America were raptured out of the world next week, it would tip the balance on a lot of things and this bill might just stand a chance. I think most people hold the nut job factor at about 23%. Suppose that a larger figure was used such as 61.8% of the people were left after the rest were raptured, this would definitely go along way tword tipping the balance of all sorts of things, even members of the House. With that contingent gone, the President would be able to pass all sorts of legislation that’s been waiting in the wings. Perhaps Survivor could have a contest in the future of Religious vs Secular- and see who the better people really are.

I still don’t have my bank statement. I don’t think I’ve bounced any checks but I’m too lazy to go back and do the math for the past month and a half or whatever. The cough I had last winter, or was it the winter before, is returning with coughing spasms now and then. I hope that doesn’t get worse. I played Pac-Man and once again I hit “stop script” when the notice appeared, and it kept going. There was sticking early on but it improved. I was rushing games hitting enter when the players weren’t done being displayed, which might allow time to buffer. My scores were terrible like 4,700 or something. I used some rather dramatic divergence from my usual strategies.

We had corn dogs for lunch and potato chips and tomato soup and an apple for the teacher. I think they are trying to put us all on a diet and I don’t need to lose weight at this point. (This isn’t 2006) The other two “What I’ve been doing” postings were July of 2009 and August of 2009. If this were the old days forty years ago you would have people like Eric Severeid or David Brinkley doing extended commentary on how vital it is to pass the President’s jobs program and how people who oppose it are idiots.

Dr. Levy convened class and announced that by contract he only has to show up here once a week and he’s going to implement that since he finds himself busier on Saturdays (or whenever) these days. Today we at long last watched a video of Dr. Levy’s trip to India. A few observations can be made. The image was obviously “compressed down” with a real low video setting. It looked like a movie that had analog copied a few too many times. Also there was a bit of a pin-hole or tunnel effect. My camera lens is an F 2.7 - -which is unusually wide with the standard being F 3.5. However I can choose to use zoom to various degrees. But with Dr. Levy you got the sense of needing to pan out and do the whole image rather than jerk and zoon from target to target. As to what he filmed, sure there was poverty there but nothing unanticipated. All the children looked healthy and at least passably clothed. Of course Dr. Levy takes plastic silverware with him to restaurants because he doesn’t trust these establishment to wash their utensils after each use. As Dr. Levy had had all his shots, he never got sick. I was growing drowsy due to a coffee deficit and almost nodded off a couple of times. We had a break around one and then talked about what we had seen. Dr. Levy used more of that inappropriate humor of his. He spoke of seeing a movie next time which I’d rather not do. Since we are primarily a therapy group, we need to talk, particularly if we are only going to meet once a week. Me and Fred helped Dr. Levy take things to the car. Then Dr. Levy gave me a five dollar bill for coffee, as he had agreed to do. The Salem PD are acting like assholes if they are going to throw Taylor in jail merely because she has favorable things to say about the arrest suspect. They had the gall to accuse her of feeding Quinn information about the case which is so absurd on its face I won’t comment on it.

Today I got my flu shot from Dr. Saran after two. I didn't tell him the skin ointment I got from Marsha made the eruptions on my right wrist worse. I went down and got two cups of coffee from Laura, and I listened the rest of Randy Rhodes. It doesn't matter how logical and clear the people on our side are, all Rush Limbaugh has to do is emote and use words like "man-child" and have some sort of Gene Scott catharsis every show and his listeners eat it up.

Sunday we had good beef stroganoff for dinner. It had a nice oil glow to it and it wasn’t mushy and it had plenty of beef. There were peas and corn with bread cake that was still warm, which Yadera touted as a “pot pie”. I had the news on including ABC network news but never had NBC football on even for a minute. The Simpson’s didn’t air because they had the Emmy’s on FOX and so I switched to something else. I pretty much finished up my coffee supply last night. No phone calls in or out.

On impulse I went down to check on the Mormon gathering last night just a little before six thirty. They were all just waiting around and we continued to wait till past a quarter of seven. I had almost decided to get up and leave when Seid and Nicky made it. They brought chocolate and vanilla ice cream and I had two helpings, and one small piece of yellow cake. Someone said they thought they had “mahi-mahi”. Seid said he had “good news” for us and we all sat, including Nicky, waiting with baited breath. At Wally’s “request” Seid said he was going to give a “five minute talk on Creationism”. He added “if I talk longer than that I become boring. He began at twenty past seven, maybe sooner, and was still wound up with more to say at past ten to eight. I was getting concerned the store would close and I remembered I needed cigarettes. His topic was our lives in pre existence with the Heavenly Father, and how this earth experience is a “learning experience” for us that can’t be achieved any other way. He would talk of making minute by minute decisions such as “should I step out on my right foot - - or my left” and whether our decisions are pleasing to the Father. He also lit into people who spend their time watching TV rather than doing good deeds for others. I asked him “Will we remember all of this when we get to heaven?” and Seid said we would. Then Marcia asked Seid whether if we failed to learn our needed lessons here whether God would teach them to us in heaven. My mistake was in not letting Seid answer Marcia. Instead I began mentioning the Bible, thinking of all those “wood, hay and stubble vs gold, silver and precious things” messages I’ve heard from Mark Bove pertaining to the after life. But all Seid needed to hear was “Bible” and it kind of set him off. He never did answer Marcia’s question but instead took off on a rant against the Bible and says “This Bible I’m holding here is a piece of garbage” as he waves it around. Somehow I was offended by his low regard of the word of God. Seid appeared to be having some sort of emotional catharsis in progress. He made reference to the possability of a recurrence of the cancer he'd battled. He signaled out Richard Powers as someone who "Had made a profound statement to him a while back that may have saved his life", but I never found out what that was. Others began chiming in with questions. Rose was being a major asshole all night already telling Seid how to use his own resources. So I excused myself and hurried out of there and went to the liquor store and bought one pack of John Black cherry. It was pitch dark and about five to eight. But as I said it turned out that part two of that Flanders and Mrs. Carbopple episode wasn’t even going to air this week. To tell you the truth I remembered I had left the TV on and wasn’t even sure I had locked the door before I left. I had only planned on being gone a few minutes.

I thought Nora was coming back but maybe I mis-read the signals. I had some confused dream I found mentally taxing that I can’t even remember now. Some of these jinxes are like a thousand paper cuts. It’s not just one event but many of the jinxes have lasting effects like this crazy blister I have on my finger. I’m getting a little tired of the shower not getting hot enough. And of course the problems with FOX coming in is a recent thing. On my way to the bakery I noticed the half moon was about at the zenith of the sky. I bought a large coffee. I had the Stephanie Miller show on. We had Raison Bran for breakfast and flavored scrambled eggs and toast and butter and jelly. I see now it’s getting close for dinner and have to partake of that all important sacrament, smoking. We are on page six now.

They are listing the menu now on a weekly basis to make it a whole lot easier for those planning ahead. We had spaghetti tonight with garlic bread and a green salad. We had vanilla pudding with fruit in it and Loretta gave me a quarter of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Laura ran out of spaghetti. This is becoming a significant trend lately not to have seconds. It was true with that “half enchilada”, true with the stroganoff, and true with the corn dog. Eye Witness news is on now. All four of us were there.