1. What is your favorite type of literature to read (magazine, newspaper, novels, nonfiction, poetry, etc.)? Lately, it’s either a magazine or a computer/web design book.

2. What is your favorite novel? Kinflicks by Lisa Alther.

3. Do you have a favorite poem? (Share it!) The Poison Tree by William Blake.

4. What is one thing you’ve always wanted to read, or wish you had more time to read? The Bible.

5. What are you currently reading?

I’m taking up where I left off with my story about how Robert and I first met. When Robert met me in October 1980, my mother had been dead for about six months.

She died on her birthday, in the wee hours of Monday morning, March 10. She’d been in the hospital about two weeks and had been moved from CICU (coronary intensive care unit) to the ‘ward’ and in fact was due to go home Monday morning. But I got that fateful phone call about midnight. It was the night duty nurse. Said mother had taken a turn for the worse and I better get down there. I broke land speed barriers driving the 20 or so miles from our house in northwest San Antonio to Brooke Army Medical Center near downtown. They’d also called my brother, apparently, because when I stepped off the elevator, he was out in the hallway talking to one of the doctors.

My heart sank. I knew I was too late. The hall stretched out before me almost endlessly. And time stood still. My head reeled. My reasoning — in that split second it took me to exit the elevator and assess the situation — was that if Mother were alive, my brother would be in there with her.

The only thing I had to comfort me at that moment was the satisfaction of being right. Some comfort. I went in and stood quietly next to my mother’s lifeless body. Her suffering was over. So many years she’d fought a weak heart, emphysema, high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis. No more pain, Mommy.

The next few weeks were just a blur. I really don’t remember anything at all. All I’ve got is anecdotal evidence that I indeed lived and breathed during the next few weeks. I remember visiting the funeral parlor and picking out a coffin and a grave liner. My mother had a favorite silk dress, it was a sheath with three quarter length sleeves. The colors were muted, mauve, lilac, dove grey, cream, claret. I also found a favorite pair of gloves, also dove grey. She was set. Her favorite outfit. I was pleased about that at least.

So the funeral was planned for Thursday. Everything was in place. Except my dry cleaning. I had taken in several outfits, one of which was a black wool suit. Everything else was ready Wednesday evening except the black wool suit. Which was the ONE thing I specifically asked them to be sure to have ready. Ugh! So I ended up wearing a navy suit instead. And black shoes.

And the weather was up to no good too on Thursday morning: dark, gray, rainy. The viewing was at 9AM, casket closed promptly at 10. And my fricking car wouldn’t start. Ugh. So I had to call a cab and go rent a car. By the time I showed up at the funeral home, the casket was closed.

The real fun began in the funeral car on the way to the cemetary. Mother would be buried at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetary, next to her husband, 2nd Lt. Carl Mueller. And of course, my niece turned to me and asked, “So, Joni, when did you find out you were adopted”?

My mouth gaped open and then shut, like a fish gasping for air. I was blindsided by that. “Well, right now, I guess!” was the only answer I had for her. Poor thing, she backpeddled to get out of that one, but to no avail. The cat was out of the bag. I was adopted. And to find this out on this day, of all days. But my adoption…. was so weird…. A blog for yet another day!

This is an appropriate poem, by Eugene O’Neill:

Blow, blow, thou winter wind
Away from here,
And I shall greet thy passing breath
Without a tear.

I do not love thy snow and sleet
Or icy flows;
When I must jump or stamp to warm
My freezing toes.

For why should I be happy or
E’en be merry,
In weather only fitted for
Cook or Peary.

My eyes are red, my lips are blue
My ears frost bitt’n;
Thy numbing kiss doth e’en extend
Thro’ my mitten.

I am cold, no matter how I warm
Or clothe me;
O Winter, greater bards have sung
I loathe thee!

Great Flash movie…. Hey Mr. Taliban, turn over Bin Laden. Daylight come and we wanna drop bomb….

Don’t ask me why, but I was Googling for mousepads on the Web, since e-Bay didn’t really have anything that interested me. I found this site featuring Satanic mousepads. (Elsewhere in the site you can find Satanic stuff for every room in your house and your car.) Boy, I’ll have my co-workers’ tongues wagging next Christmas with these goodies!

I also came across this review (8-track of the moment) of the album “Black Mass” by a group called Lucifer. Very interesting. I found the entire album via WinMX. It’s all electronic music using a Moog synthesizer. Here is a track called Incubus (5.3 MB mp3).

If you’re now all fired up about Bejus and the Beast, head on over to the Church of Satan. I read some of their tenets, and actually, they make sense for everyday living. Just follow these Eleven (Satanic) Rules of the Earth, and you should live a nice life. (Well, maybe except no. 11.)

The Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth
by Anton Szandor LaVey ?1967

1. Do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked.
2. Do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure they want to hear them.
3. When in another?s lair, show him respect or else do not go there.
4. If a guest in your lair annoys you, treat him cruelly and without mercy.
5. Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.
6. Do not take that which does not belong to you unless it is a burden to the other person and he cries out to be relieved.
7. Acknowledge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained.
8. Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself.
9. Do not harm little children.
10. Do not kill non-human animals unless you are attacked or for your food.
11. When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him.

Here’s another news report of a woman in North Harris County who ran her husband of two years over with her Ford Taurus after finding out he was cheating on her.

Why don’t they just go on Jerry Springer or Cheaters the way God intended them to? Sheesh!

I was inspired by an old post of Cami’s at S-p-i-l-l. She wondered exactly how many times she really meant it when she said “I love you.”

I can tell you for me that at the time I said it, I meant it. Or thought I did. But in reality, looks like mother was right again, as usual. She always told me that you only ever have one true love. You may have other lovers, but only one TRUE LOVE.

So for me, that would be, first and foremost… Robert. I met Robert quite by accident. I was drunk at the time and had called a cab. He wasn’t the cabbie I was expecting so I stood there on the curb, probably swaying a little in my drunken state. I observed, “You’re not Vivian!” Vivian drove Yellow Cab #83 in San Antonio at the time, 1980; Robert’s was Yellow Cab #81. In my drunken fog, I’d gotten the numbers mixed up when I specifically asked for her cab — that’s called a “personal” in cabbie parlance.

So I let him take me home. We made small talk on the way. We talked a bit about music. Turns out I didn’t know diddly squat about it. I was intrigued by his intelligence, yet put off by his seeming arrogance. I thought he was full of himself. I also thought I was very cute. (I really was back then; I looked like Pat Benatar and had the cutest outfit on, a black wool knit dress that cost me a fortune, it had a full skirt that swing out in a big circle when I twirled in it, a slim bodice, three quarter sleeves and a scoop neckline. Completing the ensemble were my black snakeskin pumps, brass purse and black felt hat. Drop. Dead. Gorgeous.) I thought smugly that there’d be no chance in hell I’d ever take up with the likes of HIM!

After that, for some reason, every time I needed a cab, I’d call him instead of Vivian. Forget about her, she might have been a single mother struggling to make ends meet, but I had Robert on the brain. I’d befriended Vivian because I’d just lost a ton of weight, down to a 10-12 from a whopping 26-28 and she inherited my entire wardrobe. Because up until just a few months previous, I lived a home with my mother so had nothing to spend my money on BUT clothes. So they were pretty nice, silks, wools, suits, dresses, a fur jacket, etc. But then mother died and I was alone.

So one night, I’d decided to go out to my favorite bar, across town. I called Robert. On the way, I stopped at the grocery store to get some cash and a few groceries (including a box of tampons, a Cosmopolitan magazine, a bottle of sangria (for later at home), and some other inconsequential items).

When I got out of Robert’s cab at the bar, he stopped me, reminding me that I couldn’t go into the bar with liquor (the sangria). Robert suggested I leave all that in the back of his cab and he could just pick me up later and it would all be there. Great idea!

So when I’m ready go to home, of course, Robert is nowhere to be found. I end up taking another cab home, but I’m pretty miffed. I thought it was pretty cheesy of him to make off with my groceries. Though what kind of freak would want a box of tampons?

Several weeks went by and again, I was in a cab headed home after another night of drinking. And I was bitching to this cabbie about how Robert ran off with my groceries. I really thought it was an awful thing to do. About halfway home, the cab breaks down. Oh, great. Stuck out here on Broadway at two thirty in the morning. Just fucking great. So he has to call another cab to come get me.

Guess who arrives? Robert of course. I wondered where he’d been. He told me that he had my sack of groceries back at his place, so of course I ended up going there to retrieve them. He said he was thinking about calling it an early night. (He worked the night shift, 6PM to 6AM.) So after we got to his place, which was really just a room in a motel that you rented by the hour, day, week or month, we started talking. I wasn’t sleepy and neither was he. I remember laying on the bed, fully clothed of course, except for my shoes. And he was sitting in the chair across from the bed. We split the bottle of sangria. And just spent the rest of the evening — er, morning — talking. We talked about everything. About his work, about my mother’s death, about San Antonio, about Austin, where he’d just come from a few months previous.

So from there, I guess you could say that love — or some weird approximation of it — blossomed. In other words, I chased him until he caught me. That was October 1980. Later, much later, Robert would tell me that when he met me, he could “tell you were hurting,” referring to my mother’s death. Yeah, it did hit me pretty hard. For many reasons.

But that’s a blog for another day.

Brooke at the Bitter Shack of Resentment is wondering where all the war protest songs have gone. Joanie, Buffy and Bob have folded up their protest signs and settled into fat complacency in the suburbs.

Well, perhaps coincidentally, while I was cleaning my living room the other evening, I stumbled upon some forgotten CDs and LPs. Among them a two-CD set from Joan Baez. I listened to my favorite Joan Baez songs — songs I hadn’t heard in YEARS … all the words came back.

This one stood out though. It’s called “With God On Our Side.” I’m reproducing the lyrics below…. 8.82MB MP3 (sorry, it’s 192 kbps!)
Read more .. »

Solonor has started a great blog, What’s Not To Love? [About America]. I already went over there and left my two cents on the Texas page.

(Thanks to www.skittish.org for the link!)

I’ve been reading alot about Code Pink lately. From this article at www.alternet.com:

No Code Pink participant that I interviewed discussed her womb or her period (for this I was grateful). But Nina Human, the protester from Atlanta, said she felt that “women need to get together because it’s our sons and daughters they’ll force to go over there.” Besides, she added, “I think women are basically more peaceful people.”

This sort of sentiment doesn’t sit well with Jenny Brown, a Gainesville, Florida, activist who is a member of Redstockings (yes, this radical feminist group, founded in the 1960s, is still around). “Since when are women naturally peaceful?” asks Brown. “Harriet Tubman carried a gun when she ran the underground railroad.”

Yeah, amen to THAT! The last few people to have made the headlines here in Houston for killing other human beings have been women.

What keeps me from jumping onto this peace (??) bandwagon (wearing my Pepto-Bismol Pink dress, natch!) is the implication I get from reading the article that unless you’ve squeezed out a kid or two, you can’t possibly be a nurturing, caring person. I’m childless. And I say: Bullshit. I am TOO a caring nurturing person! Oh well.