Don't Show Your Breasts

 

It’s a nuisance, I know. You’d feel empowered and free, in the moment. You’d enjoy sharing that connection with another person that comes from sending a picture. And of course, you’re so certain that the person you’re sending it to will keep your picture secure, will never be careless with it, will never show it to anyone else, will never have a falling out with you, or if the two of you do have a falling out, will delete your pictures. Of course, you want that to be true. You presume, here and now, that it will be true. You can’t be certain that it will be true.

Remember that celebrities who can afford high-grade security on their images and their text files have had them stolen.

Even if you were to go the old-fashioned route, with hard copies, with Polaroids, those can be copied. Heck, they can be scanned on a printer and then boom, they’re on the Internet anyway.

In the fullness of time, this nonsense is going to run its course. There will come a day when every prominent woman in politics and the arts and letters has a bathroom selfie or a Mardi Gras photo or a beach shot, or if they don’t, they’ll have a deepfake that is so well done it’s difficult to plausibly deny. At that point, it really will be no big deal. Waving nude photos of someone will be a big so-what, and if they reflect badly on anyone, it will be on the clod who waves them around, just as it should be. But that day is not yet.

It’s a terrible shame, it’s a huge injustice, it absolutely shouldn’t be a big deal. I know all of that, but for the sake of your safety and peace of mind, I urge you most earnestly: don’t show your breasts.

 The Magic Eight-Ball says, "This isn't justice, it's just what is."

https://pollycastor.com/2018/10/05/be-a-lady-they-said-quote-by-camille-rainville

On Eagles’ Wings

As we walked along the sidewalk, Dad paused and pointed upward. All I saw in the sky was the contrail of a jet.

“Look…it flies!”

“Haven’t you  seen them before?” my brother asked archly.

“Heck, I’ve even been in them - but isn’t it a wonderful thing? It’s good to appreciate it.”

That was very typical of Dad. He was always going off on something and demanding that we notice how wonderful it was. One time, he’d picked up a rock off the ground and said, “See how there are pale bits in this gray rock? They’re fragments of older rock that’s been recycled into new rock. And look at the pale bits.”

He pointed at the largest of the pale chunks. It had little flecks of something shiny in it.

“This planet is old,” he said emphatically. “The rocks cry out, ‘Ancient I am! Ancient of days!’”

He’d tossed that rock aside, but I had picked it up. It was a pretty cool rock, after all.

As his hand dropped from pointing out the airplane, I looked at the sky a bit longer, seeing the tree branches and the telephone wires. I remembered a walk we had taken when I was three or four. He’d pointed out different things and told me what lived there: trolls lived in street drains, tiny four-eyed people lived under potted cactus…cats rode bicycles on telephone wires. That last one had stuck in my mind, and I seldom looked at telephone wires without picturing cats on little bicycles racing along telephone wires.

Dad put a strong emphasis on seeing wonderful things in life - and on making them up. I didn’t think that was contradictory of him.

 https://youtu.be/VW0jDEM1Qxc

The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Don't just look -- LOOK."

Man of Steel (2020 Revision)

 STREET SCENE: JOE and JERRY walk down an otherwise-empty urban sidewalk, the camera preceding them down the sidewalk, slightly higher than eye level, so that we look slightly down on them.

JOE I’M NOT SAYING THINGS AREN’T BETTER THAN THEY USED TO BE. I’M JUST SAYING THAT THE WORLD IS LESS MYSTERIOUS, LESS SURPRISING. THERE’S NO MORE MAGIC IN THE WORLD, NO MORE MIRACLES. NOTHING TO MAKE YOU STOP AND SAY --

JERRY has stopped. He puts out his left hand to stop JOE from moving forward, though JOE doesn’t notice at first.

JERRY LOOK . . . .

JERRY’s right hand slowly rises, index finger pointing towards something higher than our POV.

JERRY (In an awed half-whisper) UP IN THE SKY . . . .

Ted read over the scene again, grinning. It was good. It was very good, the perfect opening scene for Superman: City of Tomorrow. It established the theme of a world whose wonders could easily be missed, ignored or taken for granted. Superman would serve as a metaphor for the marvels all around, the everyday miracles of life, science and human creativity. At the end of the film, Joe would spot a rare bird and point it out to Jerry, who would express surprise at Joe’s noticing it. Joe would grin and say, “I spend more time looking up these days.”

Okay, so he had a beginning and an ending. Now he just had to fill in a hundred or so pages. That, and find a way to get some studio person to take a look at it, and he still had small idea of how that was done. It was all so complicated, and did sixty-year-old men ever actually break into scriptwriting? Not in big-budget franchise pictures, he knew that much. He probably shouldn’t even be working on his Superman movie – better to concentrate on learning how to write basic scripts for low-budget pictures, the kind he might possibly get a shot at – not that he knew much about how even those kinds of films got made.

But the Superman project was what he wanted to work on. It was what fired him up. He liked Superman.

He looked down at his T-shirt, at the red “S” centered on his chest like a target. So he was a grown man who liked Superman. Big deal. Some people drank.

He saved the file, “SCOT1”, and massaged his aching wrists while the computer shut down.

It will get easier, he told himself. As with all things, it came with practice. Facility, speed and confidence would all increase, the more of it he did.

He got up, flexing his fingers the way the physical therapist had shown him. The pain in his hands reminded him that sometimes doing a lot of something for a long time could also use up your capacity to do it. He’d had a good run as a massage therapist, almost twenty years, but he'd reached the point where he couldn't go on doing it. Joints and tendons wore out, that was all there was to it. And as much as he had enjoyed the work, there were simply too many LMTs in town for him to make a grown-up living.

He'd enrolled in nursing school, and enjoyed it immensely, but he had flunked out. He'd gone back the next year to take the second term over again, in spite of the expense, and failed a second time. When he was invited to attend the graduation of his former classmates, they'd all been glad to see him, and he'd been glad to see them, but he'd felt as though, having just recovered from a hysterectomy, he'd been invited to a baby shower.

He'd continued to work as a nurse's aide. It was simple work, poorly paid, but at least he was still in the healing profession.

It was a job that required strength. A lot of it. He recalled one client whom he'd gone to for two hours a day, six days a week, to get him get out of bed and dressed. It had taken a tremendous amount of strength and self-control to maintain a professional demeanor through all of the man's griping, nitpicking, rude questions and insults. One morning, the old man had for some reason pressed him for details about the kind of services he performed.

“Really, sir, I can’t say much about other clients. It’s a question of professional ethics.”

“Huh. I wouldn’t call someone who works for minimum wage a professional.”

A) "What the hell business of yours is it how much I make, you nosy bastard?"
B) "I’ll have you know I get the highest rate the agency pays."
C) "Go to Hell, why don't you?"
D) “Well, sir, to my way of thinking, even a convict on a work gang can act with professionalism. That depends on your own personal dignity.”

Choosing "D" to say out loud had taken plenty of strength. More than Ted had thought he possessed. So there you were.

Ted sighed and shook himself. He had tried to learn to leave garbage like that behind at the end of a shift, and here it was years later, years since the failing of his back had made it impossible for him to continue working as a CNA, so he'd been reduced to living on Social Security Disability Insurance. What was the point of letting that dickhead keep on riding his shoulders? Time to make supper, anyway.

He cleared a space on the dining table, one of the few pieces of furniture which had followed him and his wife from their house to the tiny apartment they had taken together. He remembered a time when he'd seen his son Jake doing homework with a girl he vaguely recognized.

“I’ll need some room to work. Could you spread out a little less?”

“Let’s just go now,” the girl had said, and they'd started packing up their papers.

“We’re gonna finish up at Carol’s place,” Jake explained. “I’ll probably stay for supper, too.”

Ted had nodded. If he were going to be alone for the evening, he’d probably just cook up a ramen. His wife had been at yet another board meeting for the group she was keeping afloat mainly by her own efforts. He was used to eating alone.

As the kids left, Jake stared at the “S” on Ted’s chest.

“What do you wear that thing for? You’re sure not Superman.”

Ted smiled.

“You’re wrong, Jake. I am Superman.”

Jake had looked at his father without saying anything, then turned and left with his friend.

Now, years later, with Jake a grown man with a wife and family of his own, and with his wife dead nearly a year, Ted remembered that night.

Before heading into the kitchenette to cook up yet another ramen, Ted looked at the mirror hung on the wall on the other side of the table. An old man, he supposed, but not an ugly one. His wife had found him attractive, as had other women. There was a woman a couple of time zones away, a former and possibly future girlfriend who might bring love back into his life eventually.

The man in the Superman shirt was nothing special to look at, it was true. But Ted smiled at him anyway, and when he did he saw in those soft brown eyes a glint of something that could never be broken.

Jake didn’t know. None of them knew. But that was all right. In fact, it was exactly as it should be. It was only appropriate that no-one should suspect that beneath that mild-mannered exterior was a man of steel.

[I wrote this story some years ago. I've revised it a couple of times to better reflect my own life, and I felt like redoing it once again. I feel the need of steel in my spine more than ever today.]

The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Appearances can be deceiving."

We Never Belonged To You

Dear Mom and Dad:

Thank you for all the care and love you put into rearing us. We are all pretty well-adjusted and well-launched into life, and we have you to thank for a lot of that.

You need to know, though, that we are launched into life. We’re not your babies anymore. We need to decide things for ourselves now.

Last week at Thanksgiving, you both attacked Bettina for bringing Leslie to dinner, and belittled their relationship. We were all shocked at your behavior.

Leslie is the person Bettina is closest to, at least for now he is. The fact that they are not romantically involved is beside the point. Bettina isn’t looking for a romantic relationship, and like Leslie, she might very well be aromantic. Or, she might just be focussing on her career right now, and will be open to romance later on in life. That’s irrelevant. What matters is, it’s Bettina’s life, and you need to respect that.

 

https://genius.com/Margaret-atwood-the-moment-annotated

The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Nope."

Go To The End of Jefferson Avenue, Then Stop

My physical therapist has prescribed 45 minutes of walking, daily.  I'd like to walk a different route every night, but I'm understandably starting to run out of them.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says,"Actually, you should go to the end of Jefferson Avenue and then turn around and go back."\\

George Mails a Letter

While George was putting on his jammies, John told him a story.
"This is a story from when George was a little bit older than he is right now.  George was writing a letter to his Grandma Dorothy.  He told her about what he was studying in school, and about friends he was making this year.  He told her about some new toys he had received recently.  He asked her some questions about how she was doing.  He folded up the letter and put it in an envelope, and he went to where John and Kathe kept stamps and also their address book.
"He copied down Grandma Dorothy's address very carefully, and wrote his own address in the corner.  He put a stamp on the envelope, but then he got worried about whether it was too heavy to mail, so he clipped the envelope to the postage scale that Kathe had shown him how to use.  He saw that his letter weighed a little bit too much for one stamp, and would need a second stamp -- but there weren't any more!
"George went to Kathe and said he was going to the Post Office to buy a stamp for his letter.  Kathe asked him if he would be willing to wait until she went out next, and she would promise to bring stamps home this time.  She said she was sorry she hadn't already bought some.  George said he would rather go right away, because he once wrote a letter and forgot about it, and when he found it months later he had felt very bad about it.  Kathe said she understood how he felt.
"Kathe got a twenty dollar bill from her purse and gave it to George.
"'Please go buy a book of stamps for me, and use one to mail your letter, and bring the stamps and the change back, okay?'  George nodded and took off.
"At the Post Office, George waited in line, and when it got to be his turn, he asked for a book of stamps and then reached into his pocket and -- there was no money in it!  The clerk looked down at George sadly as George's eyes filled with tears.
"'Calm down,' the clerk said.  'Check your pockets carefully before you panic.'
"George put his hand into his left front pocket and felt again, but there was no bill there.  He felt his left back pocket and his right back pocket and then his right front pock-- and there it was!
"George bought a book of stamps and took the stamps and his change, peeled a stamp from the book and stuck it onto his letter, and dropped it through the slot.  Now it was mail, and soon it would be delivered to Grandma Dorothy.
"George walked home and--"
"And on the way home, it rained twenty dollar bills! And George picked up a thousand of them!"
"Okay.  At first George stuffed the bills into his pockets, but soon they were bulging and could not hold any more.  Then he started stuffing them into the neck of his shirt.  By the time he got home, he looked like the Scarecrow of Oz."
"Ha -- haha -- haha!"
"And when he got home, John and Kathe were both amazed, and George was laughing like crazy when he reached into his shirt and pulled out a fistful of twenty dollar bills and said, 'I didn't forget your change!'
"There, how's that for a George story?"
"Good!"
"Okay, well, good night, George."
"Good night, Dad."

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "These things could sell."\\

A Small But Wonderful Thing Happened Today

I almost didn't notice it at the time.

I was telling Gideon a "Gideon story" (I tell him a lot of stories, and Kathe is after me to start writing them down -- I know she's right...) in which Gideon was with a group of carolers.  They sang "Stille Nacht", and Gideon told the group that his Dad had written a book about the Christmas Truce.

Gideon interrupted to ask if it was true that I had written a book "with pages, that people read?"  I told him, not many people so far, but I had hopes that it would sell more eventually.  I opened my laptop and showed him the illustrations I had used, and he pointed to one of my advertisements and said, "I have seen that!"

  

 

 

So I guess now he knows it's true.  In the morning, I will sit down with him and page through the copy I had made at CreateSpace.

I'll try to find a passage from the book that I can read to him.  

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Maybe the soccer game?"\\

Love You, Dad

My father will always be with me.  Like today, when I was handing over a check marked VOID in order to set up direct deposit for my paychecks, and I heard Dad's voice saying, "This is so much easier than in the old days, when you had to actually take a check and void on it".  Love you, Dad....

//The Magic Eight - Ball says, "He loves you, too."\\

Good Cookies

http://www.williams-sonoma.com/recipe/oatmeal-chocolate-chip-cookies.html

I make them for Kathe and me to eat on the paper route.

Still wish I could find Becca's recipe card for the recipe I used to use.

Or ask Becca about it....

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "She loved her mother. And she loved you."\\

I Forgive You For Hating Teen Moms

I have only just discovered the FB page "I Hate Teen Moms" and the unfortunately large group of pages which imitate it. Looking them over has helped me to finally understand why Jesus said "Judge not, lest ye be judged". Clearly, Jesus understood that most people who are extremely judgmental are trying to push away the possibility that they would not measure up to the standards they set themselves, and think that attacking other people they will somehow shield themselves from judgment. Lighten up, people. It won't work. In fact, the best way to feel better about your own failings is the opposite: to be forgiving and understanding of other people.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "I think Jesus said that, too."\\

Happy Birthday, Walden

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Hold him in the Light."\\

Not Babysitting

Over and over I heard it: "Babysitting today?" Over and over, I gave the same reply, always with a perfectly straight face: "No, he's my kid." At least nobody ever asked Kathe where she got the gay nanny: http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2012_05_27_archive.html#1384367121943060380 //The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Admit it, you'd have loved it if that had happened."\\

God Damn It All

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/a-young-black-man-being-late

Emmett Till was an awfully cute kid, too . . . .

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Inch by inch, row by row."\\

Christopher Robin and Pooh Come to an Enchanted Place

Tonight I read the last chapter of The House at Pooh Corner to a little boy, and we talked about it a little.

I remember my mother reading to me from that book (especially the Woozle sighting), but I definitely don't remember her reading me the ending.

Possibly she thought it would be too confusing for me. Or possibly she was simply interrupted by her fast-changing life, back when she was a college student and the mother of three preschoolers (good grief!). Or perhaps, knowing what a fickle child I was, I one day said, "Winnie the Pooh! Yuck! I'm not a baby!"

I read Winnie the Pooh to my own kids, but we never got around to The House at Pooh Corner. Not sure why that happened, either.

But I by-Christopher-Robin did read that last chapter to one little boy, anyway.

For whatever that's worth.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Leave them there."\\

The Year Ends

Was it a good year for you?

Yeah, me neither.

No job, acute emotional depression, dubious prospects for the new year.

My father died, my grandmother died, and other things were difficult also.

The first post in this blog was titled, "It's Easy to Get Discouraged". It still is.

I am taking antidepressants, and they help some, but not enough, really. I wish I could go back into therapy, but we really can't afford it, and my former therapist has moved away. I am looking for a support group for the long-term unemployed, but there doesn't seem to be one. Maybe I should start one.

On the other hand, we did get the water out of the oil tank so the heater runs again. And we got the mud out of the kitchen sink drain so water runs through it again. I finished my first novel, and possibly it will bring in some money. That'd be good.

And the new year...will be a new year. Anything could happen.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Put one foot in front of the other. Repeat."\\

Peace On Earth

I have just read Nate Powell's Any Empire, and I like it rather a lot.

It tells, in a non-linear fashion, about how children's "missions", the play which they approach in absolute earnest, shapes their choices in adult life.

I am especially reviewing it here because one of Powell's young protagonists is deeply impressed by the classic cartoon "Peace on Earth", which deeply impressed me, and remains one of my own holiday favorites.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "People say war exists because of 'the nature of the beast', and they are right, but the beast in question is not Homo sapiens but Leviathan."\\

Grandma's In The Hospital*

*Probably Riverbend, but I'll let people know when I know for certain.

She fell and broke her hip last night.

Mom (Dorothy) is rushing to her side.

I'll let you know more when I know more.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Keep calm and carry on."\\

My father left very few things undone. One that comes to mind is that he never published or wrote (so far as I know) a science fiction novel like the ones he so liked to read.

One story that he mentioned he would enjoy writing is one in which the Central powers were victorious in the First World War.

I'm not writing that story either, but I am right now engaged in a project inspired by the Christmas Truce of December, 1914, and it does involve an alternate history and a different outcome for the war that his own father fought in. And I do think of my father and his father often as I write.

I feel another affinity for my father as I work: I am doing it in no small part because I have a family to support.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Filius est pars patris, for better or worse, like it or not."\\

Walden and Mary Got Married

Wow.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Amazing."\\

'Bye, Bellfountain

Kathe and I went to Bellfountain one last time today, to retrieve a few more items and for one last walk-through.

That's it. We have given up the keys and will have no more reason to go out there.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "To everything there is a season."\\