Whatcha Gonna Do Today, Napoleon?

Opinions are like …

Never mind. I don’t feel like being vulgar.

I know all the words, of course. Construction workers know all the words. But I’ve known just as many construction workers who were genteel in their speech, to a fault, as white collar workers. I used to observe office workers at my former life at a big construction company. Many seemed to adopt the use of streams of expletives as the preferred communication style, because they imagined that’s what people in the field talked like. Most people, that worked in the field instead of the office, didn’t. Go @#$% ‘in figure.

As I said, I know all the words. But I’m tired of them. I long for gentility of speech and comportment. And I may severely limit that amount of people that work for me forevermore, as I will not tolerate loud music or vulgarity while I’m working, ever again. It’s lonely being normal. I must cast a wider net than your average fisherman.

I don’t know what to write about every day. I skip around this bizarro universe I inhabit and write it down. So far, that’s the plan. But what do you, dear reader, want to hear from me? That’s a complicated question.

You lie, you know. Everybody does. I can’t ask you what you want, and tally the answers. You might be polite, or busy that day, or bad people I don’t really want reading my stuff might answer in your place, and queer the pitch. And readers are always a potential thing. I have to decide before they show up.

I’ve got to figure out what the hell I know about, and offer it up to the big gaping maw of ones and zeroes that is the internet. And I can only listen to my audience tangentially to guide me on my way.

The commenter “Editor Theorist” drops by from time to time, and drops little strings of concatenated le mot juste, just like many of my internet friends. He’s half a world away, of course, and is from another walk of life. And after I described my trip to the lumberyard the other day, he wrote this in the comments:

I can’t think of anything remotely analogous in my own life to this process you describe. People’s lives really are different.

Well, there it is ladies and gents.

I read a lot of things on the internet. An insane amount of things. And every once in a while, It occurs to me that there’s nothing left on the internet that’s worth my time. I’m especially tired of persons various and sundry telling me what I should think. I’m profoundly tired of cut and paste manifestos.

I want people to tell me and show me things I don’t know about, but that are both interesting and true. I’ve had enough of blogs telling me things that wouldn’t be interesting if they were true.

I’m not Norm. I’m not Cincinattus. I’m not Jeff Beck. I’m not Archie Bunker. I’m not Bertrand Russell. We don’t have time to go over everybody I’m not, because I’m not like anybody.

I’m going to write that down.

A Most Satisfactory Veterans Day

We attended a Veteran’s Day ceremony in Marion yesterday. We have a small park hard by the water downtown for just such an occasion: Veteran’s Park. You gotta park, at the park, no matter how you get there:

Blustery but not cold. The toddlers ran windsprints in the empty flower beds, while the veterans enjoyed the folding chairs and the attention. Lovely.

Milo plays the Colonel Bogey March. The trombone has all the good parts for a change, as they whistle during the parts where they’re not playing too.

My little son stood for a long time on the little stone plinth, and ran his fingers over the raised bronze letters of the names of the men commemorated on the WWII memorial. I can’t think of a more fitting and appropriate memorial to their efforts.

Thanks to all my family, friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens that served their country in the most profound way.