What Makes The Super Bowl Super?

So I hear there is a football game being played tonight. I’m not watching it. I’m not sure which teams are playing.

Nor do I care. I haven’t cared in a few years.

Not long ago, or maybe last year, I was talking to someone who asked me if I was going to watch “The Game.”

I said, No.

And then she said, “I’m just going to watch it for the commercials.”

And I said, or perhaps asked, “Did you hear what you just said?”

There was no reply, so I felt the need to fill the silence with words, “You are going to watch TV just to watch paid advertisements. Advertisements that companies have spent millions of dollars on for the sole purpose of inducing you to spend money on something you probably don’t really need. (There’s a bit of a dramatic pause here.) Just so they can make more money. (And this part is a bit quieter or more quiet if quieter isn’t   a word, and it may not be.) Capitalism has won.” (I’m shaking my head slightly at this point.)

I don’t remember how the rest of the conversation went.

But we’re still friends. Though I don’t hear from her as much as I used to. But it’s probably not because of that conversation.

And really, if you’re like most people, and let’s face it, I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again, most people are like most people, you will probably see these commercials 1000 times in the not too distant future. So why the need to see it the first time it appears?

I think it’s a little weird, but I chalk it up to societal conditioning and a general lack of interest in giving much thought to most everything,

I don’t think I’ll get to the end of my life and look back and say, “I wish I had watched more football.”

And I know I won’t look back and regret not having seen the premiere of a commercial.

But that’s just me.

So instead of football and commercials, I’m drinking a little wine, listening to some favorite tunes and sharing my thoughts with the universe.

How are you spending the evening?

A Thought Becomes Me

I’m lost in thought. Or is thought lost inside of me? So many thoughts chase each other around. Are they trying to build on each other or are they simply trying to become something other than what they are? And what exactly are they? Half truths or distantly remembered platitudes or a snippet of dialogue or the terrifying task of putting feelings into words. I don’t know and I can’t figure it out which is probably why the previous sentence isn’t even a sentence in the truest sense of the word. Or the only sense of the word, since I believe a definition of sentence would be something along the lines of a word or group of words conveying some type of thought or action and containing both subject and predicate.

An example may be in order. But not an example of a sentence because examples of sentences are everywhere here if you know where to look. And by the simple act of reading, you know where to look. (I had to go back and add the comma in the previous sentence because I wasn’t sure that you would pause where I paused as I was thinking the thought that became that sentence and if you didn’t pause where I paused then you might not experience my thought the way I experienced it. Of course, that might not be such a terrible thing.)

So far, every word is an example. Darkness falls. That’s another example. But where does darkness fall from? Are we applying a metaphor? Are we equating darkness with a curtain that comes down over a window or a stage? But not all curtains fall. Some are pulled together in some way. And the way the light leaves a space when a curtain falls or is closed is not the way we experience the change from day to night unless you’re on the equator. If you’re on the equator the change from day to night or night to day is quite abrupt.  I know because I was there once with there being the equator or thereabouts. It’s not like there’s a sign. But I was told I was about twenty miles from the equator. South, if you crave details or are a stickler for directions.

I didn’t check the coordinates with a GPS because GPS wasn’t a thing back then. Nobody even talked about it. Though some people must have been thinking about it because enough satellites were launched to get us to where we are. But it’s not dark where we are or where I am but it will be eventually.

And that’s the problem with ‘darkness falls.’ It’s the gradual eventuality of it on most parts of the planet.  Something to do with being tilted on an axis, I think.  Darkness doesn’t so much fall as it becomes. It is an ever changing state. It slowly becomes more dark until it becomes more light. Light and dark are just different versions of the same thing. One cannot be without the other.  Light and dark define each other.

We are all light and dark. Not necessarily equal parts of each and probably not even a constant state. (Not every group of words masquerading as a sentence is really a sentence. I have no excuse. My high school English teachers would be appalled.) And of course, we’re probably all a little tilted on an axis, too. I’m less appalled by my fondness for sentence fragments but that probably has something to do with the tilt of my axis.

Perhaps the axis is ever changing the degree of its tiltiness. Tiltiness isn’t a word or it wasn’t until I just used it in a sentence. I’m pretty sure that’s all that matters. Mainly, because most things don’t matter. It might even be that nothing matters. But if nothing matters why do I care if darkness falls, or wraps around us or slowly becomes? Though darkness doesn’t become everyone and not everyone becomes dark.

I suppose I care because darkness gets a bad rap. Many are afraid of it. Most don’t want to embrace it. But there is a depth to it. Much the same way there can be a brilliance to light. And while most tend to want to step into the light, darkness offers a respite or perhaps just invisibility. It becomes a place to be lost in thought. Or a place where thoughts come to play and lose themselves in the inky depths.

Lifted from Gocomics.com

Observant Goat Didn’t Find Chicken Tender’s Freshness To Be Inappropriate

So I’m back from goat herding and cat sitting though I didn’t sit on any cats. There were also a couple of horses that demanded my attention twice a day or three times really because this year unlike previous years they received the added treat of beet mash with their evening oats and chaff and the beet mash had to be soaked in water for about an hour before doling it out because apparently beet mash is best consumed in a wet state which would be Florida the last few days or weeks. The weather guy said we’ve had about 15 inches of rain since June 1st. That’s probably why the ground is so wet and my backyard sports waterfront property but not water sports because it’s really just a bit of standing water which will be gone after a couple of sunny days.

Some of you may recall that whilst herding goats and sitting with cats, I was to experience life as a chicken tender but not the deep fried kind, but the scatter chicken feed and collect just out of the chicken fresh eggs kind. Sadly, or happily, depending upon how you feel about my getting the chance to be a chicken tender (I remain ambivalent), there were no chickens to tend as they failed to reach full chicken status. Coyotes are suspected in the murder of all the chicks. All that remained were feathers and a bit of blood. Happily, in this case though I was sad for the little chicks, I never had to see the evidence.

My only regret in not being able to list ‘Chicken Tender’ on my resume or curriculum vitae if you want to get all Latin about it, is I didn’t get a chance to sample a fresh out of the chicken egg. I wonder if it tastes different from the ones in the carton from the store. It’s hard to know how fresh those eggs are. Sure, they put an expiration or ‘sell by’ date on them but we have no way of knowing when that sell by date was stamped on the package and I think that would be useful information. Maybe they should have a ‘stamped on’ date as well as the ‘sell by’ date so we would know just how fresh those eggs are.

Of course, the really observant observer would note that not being able to list ‘Chicken Tender’ on my resume was also a regret so not only was ‘only’ inappropriate in the previous paragraph, it was untrue. Of course, the really observant observer would have to be a longtime reader or maybe have just read whatever post it was where I said I was looking forward to being able to list ‘Chicken Tender’ on my resume because not everyone can claim to be a professional Chicken Tender. I could embellish my resume anyway with my Chicken Tender claims because people often embellish their resumes but I tend not to do that.

While I was in the land of NO cellphone reception and intermittent and slow internet access, I celebrated a little blogaversary. The previous sentence is untrue. Not the part about the NO cellphone reception or the intermittent and slow internet access or even the blogaversary part, but the celebration part. I didn’t celebrate. I didn’t realize it had even come until it had already gone. There was no sexual innuendo in the previous sentence though I’m sure some of you were thinking it and apparently so was I or why would I even bring it up?

I did celebrate my birthday yesterday. I turned 29 for the 27th time or 39 for the 17th time or 50 for the 6th time. Yes, I’m thirty twenty-six! It’s how I like to think of it because forty sixteen doesn’t have the same ring to it, probably because it used different words or in this case numbers which happened to be words. You might not think thirty twenty-six is a real number, but that’s because I spelled it out with letters instead of using the Arabic symbols for the numbers. I wonder if Arab phobic people will ever insist we stop using an Arab system of numbers and go back to Roman numerals. I don’t think most people could cope with that.  Not to mention all the calculators would have to be changed. And phones and computers. I have difficulty keeping the ‘L’ and ‘D’ straight not that they are in constant need of straightening but I can never remember which is 50 and which is 500 and that might make a difference in a calculation, though I don’t pretend to be a math wizard which is why I often spell numbers instead of using the symbols. There is some sort of style rule that applies, but I don’t pretend to know that either.

Instead, I celebrated the anniversary of being expelled from a warm safe space into the harsh cruel world by robbing other creatures of their lives. It seemed fitting. Yes, I went scalloping yesterday. We endured a brief downpour in the river on our way out to the gulf, but once out there, the sun appeared and the water was warm and we collected bivalve mollusks. Then we anchored outside the channel near the mouth of the river and separated bivalve mollusk meat from the shells and tossed the shells and guts overboard to be eaten by other sea creatures which may even include other bivalve mollusks. Sea creatures are not picky eaters and sometimes practice cannibalism. And you thought this paragraph’s opening sentence’s use of harsh cruel world might be a bit harsh. Sadly, it was not though it was a bit prophetic and sad. But only for the scallops.

I guess what I’m trying to say and it took almost 1000 words, or M words if you’re feeling all Roman numerally, to say is, I’m back.

This is a picture of a scallop. I didn’t take it yesterday because I didn’t have an underwater camera yesterday but I took this last year when I went scalloping with an underwater camera. There were people there, too, it wasn’t just me and the camera and the scallop.But it’s not a problem that the picture is a year old because scallops still look like this. Evolution isn’t relatively slow, it is extremely slow.

 

 

A Highly Sensitive Person Wonders About The Mathematical Reality Of Normalcy

Borrowed from gocomics.com

I haven’t been around much lately. Well, that’s not true. I’ve been exactly where I have always been except for those times when I was somewhere else, but I haven’t been hanging out in Blogville. Of course, it’s possible that you read that first sentence and thought that much isn’t a place so how could anyone be around it and I understand your confusion now that I have reread that sentence too many times to admit to most people but since most people don’t read what I write, I’ll tell you that I have reread it four or five times, maybe eight. I have a problem.

Having  a problem wouldn’t be a big deal except that I am finding that I have more than one problem and I’ve been finding these problems online. A few weeks or maybe

Confessions Of An Invisible Woman

Invisibility came to me slowly. At first, no one noticed I was there. Soon I was invisible in a crowded room. Now, the transition is complete and nobody remembers I was ever here.

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This is my response to Trifecta’s weekend challenge of a 33 word first person narrative. It is community judged and if you wish to cast a vote you can do so at Trifecta’s website before the deadline on Sunday.