20 Minutes Out

            I could feel the plane slowly losing altitude and then I heard the ding.  The fasten seat-belt signs came on.  The pilot made the announcement that we were 20 minutes out and had been cleared for landing.

            The flight attendants came through and made sure our tray tables were up and our seat backs were all the way forward.

            From this point on we were to stay in our seats.

            I remember the moment the pilot said 20 minutes out because it was the exact same time I knew I had to go to the bathroom.  

           I began mentally calculating the 20 minutes needed to land the plane, then whatever taxi time was needed to get to the gate.  After the plane came to a complete stop we would hear everyone unbuckle their seat-belts.

            The aisle people would stand first and get their carry-on from the overhead compartment.  Then they would just stand there.  Everyone would have to wait until the outside worker maneuvered the rolling gateway up to the plane and then he would open the door. 

            Eventually I would be able to see heads at the front of the line file out but each row would wait for the middle and window seat people to scoot over, stand up and then retrieve their carry on.

            This was going to be a very long process and that’s if nothing went wrong anywhere along the way.

            Assuming I made it that long - I still had to go single-file off the plane, traveling only as fast as the slowest person in front of me and then I would have to scurry to locate the closest restroom to that particular gate in the airport.

            All of this was running through my head when I felt the plane touch down.  I closed my eyes and held on to my armrests as the pilot gave it full flaps and applied the brakes.

           Just for a second I felt a glimmer of hope knowing that 20 minutes had ticked off the clock - although the moment I closed my eyes a vision popped into my head. 

               

          

           

The Right to Die

I need to make a serious attempt at separating my audiences.

My propensity for cranking out this gibberish sometimes a lot of the time causes me to appear as a babbling lunatic.  

This occurs when the wrong hemisphere of my brain tries to create an intelligent, cohesive work and the end product (far from hitting its target) lands on the wrong audience.

I sat at lunch the other day trying to avoid thoughts of pie and cake.  The way I do this is to occupy my mind with even more gibberish.  I pick a topic at random and then just start writing about it.  88% of the time I crumple and then hook the finished product off the wall - making a last minute basket to save the team.

Unfortunately, I sometimes think, “I wonder if Karen, at the paper, would be interested in this?”  But instead of sending an e-mail to ask a simple question, I send her my ramblings.

Well, I have learned that this is not a wise practice.   She printed my last one, just as I wrote it.  Yikes.  

I’m sure it was the topic that caught her attention, but wouldn’t you think that as an Editor she might come back at me and say, “You know Zobostic- This piece you wrote about, the right to die never comes to any conclusions.  You mix up your references to the Constitution with the Bill of Rights and in general you pre-amble all over the place. This  article deserves the right to die.”

Nope.  She just prints it. 

Well, I have learned my lesson.  YOU guys are the only safe audience.  You are used to this sort of nonsense and take it as it is intended: to fill time while you’re waiting for the bathroom so you can get ready for church. 
(A wild guess on my part).  

Anyway, I shall not make that mistake twice.  I can only assume that the newspaper reading population of Mule’s Breath will now give me a wide birth at the supermarket checkout line.  They will avoid eye contact in restaurants and murmur under their breath after I leave.

 I’m not really sure which hemisphere of my brain is the one that has gone out of warranty but I suspect there is a defect and there are no replacement parts on order.

I'm just saying...

Returning to the Scene

Within the findings there are small bits of truth, although not enough sometimes to build any relevant philosophy or even enough to establish a strong footing within a debate.  Nonetheless, they are there, each as pure as if a first year law student had stood before his class and spoke them aloud.  

They are simply small bits of believable truth lying there amidst the larger, more blatant fabrications and colorful exaggerations. 

Behind the black robe nods of acceptance disguise thoughts of meatloaf and mashed potatoes.  Lunch is but moments away and only steps across Main Street sits the Gavel Cafe, where judges and lawyers alike banter around those bits of truth, being careful to remove from their teeth the tiny fragments of gristle. 

The adversarial system produces actors, set designers, and writers of half-truths.  Not wishing to illuminate with dialogue - we quietly fold the corner of our napkin over that bit of gristle, that we not acknowledge its existence.  

The gristle of our society gets ground up and processed.  We place the black hooded napkin over its face and then look the other way as we release the trap door. 

Riding home at days end we feel the cool, smooth leather seats that came as an option on our New XK Mega Ride with All Wheel Do-everything - only now noticing the small imperfection on the passenger's seat where a momentary slip years ago had sent Elsie falling against the barbed wire.

Our focus being captured by this flaw causes us to run amuck; our right front tire catching the edge of pavement, sending our new XK off across the gravel shoulder over the short stretch of grass and into one of many wooden posts supporting an old barbed wire fence.

Surely, a moo point now.


zc

Harmonic Facilitators

There can be no harmonic facilitators within an isolation-grouping factor of 6.  

As basic as this seems it is often this foundation that is overlooked when establishing a parametric gram chart.

Example:  There are 30 pieces of chocolate in a candy dish.  Mary sits across the room from the dish watching a daytime soap on TV.  

The room is the waiting room of a local practitioner. Enter one stressed housewife toting 3 small nose minors.

Is the practitioner a:

1.                Doctor?

2.               Dentist?

3.               Lawyer?

4.               Counselor?

or

5.               BMW Mechanic?

Those of you who have worked parametric gram charts before already know that the candy dish is green.  The rest of you have been bogged down with semantics.  The term, Housewife, snagged several of you while Nose Minors captured the rest. 

I submit the follow exercise.  Do this on your own time.  Do not cheat and work the problem in division multiples of Z by 41.

Nancy lives on a rectangular property.  Her bathroom window faces the west side of her neighbor’s garden.  There are more tomato plants than onion, why?

This post was to show you how lost I felt all through high school.

Which is why the school had bars on the windows

and took our belts and shoes every morning.

Life Noises

          It is the daily chatter of co-workers, office machines, factory whistles and all of the background things that are ever so present that we never even think about.  It is meaningless conversations with people we don’t like that eventually fill up our work day until the quiet of the ride home seems like a peaceful background to the setting sun.

          These are the noises we shut off whenever we retire.  It is a switch that snaps us into an unanticipated silence.  A sudden lack of interaction plunges some of us into hobbies or catapults us into travel adventures but ever looming is the harsh reality that after we’ve built the last Kleenex box cover and after we’ve hiked the floor of the Grand Canyon we must return to the quiet. 

          We must invent chores and projects to take the place of being a social animal.  Sometimes you can tell how long someone has been retired just by counting the layers of paint on their walls.  

ZC

         

Plan Bee

Hello Blog readers.  As I examine the events of this past week I can't help but wonder how I have survived it all. 

It began last Sunday night.  Our seemingly endless chores were done and the only thing left on my list, now that it was way past the bee's bed time, was to go out and spray some Bee-B-Gone in through their vestibule and hope that it would drift down their hallways and into their bedrooms and up into their little bee noses.

Unbeknownst to me there were several guards stationed as lookouts, as these late-night raids had apparently annoyed the Queen.  Once I got close to their front door I found myself being dive-bombed, shot at and hit.

I took a sharp stinger in the neck, then one on my ear and a third on the back of my hand.  These were not warning shots.  They meant business, and I had been identified as the enemy.

I dropped the can of Bee-B-Gone and made a dash for freedom into the darkness towards the end of the driveway.  It must have been the pain from being stung that caused me to forget about how the road construction had left the transition from driveway to road quite uneven. 

As I ran, my left foot slammed into the edge of the curb and down I went.  I flipped over and lay sprawled out on the fresh asphalt and gravel mixture.  Now on top of the pain of being sting I had some very damaged body parts, not to mention a little road-rash.

Having been outside longer than usual Claudia flipped on the porch light to see what I was doing.  All she could see, however, was the can of Bee-B-Gone laying on the ground in front of the garage door.  I was nowhere in sight.  That is, until the neighbor's headlights swept across me as he pulled out of his driveway.  I was hoping he noticed me lying there for I was in too much agony to move.

At the same time that I was focusing on just how close his left front tire was getting to me, I could hear Claudia opening the front door.  I wanted to yell for her to stay in as I knew the bees hadn't gone far and may be gathering reinforcements but the tremendous pain emanating from my now swollen ear let only a slight squeak come from my voice.

I could hear Claudia quietly yell, "Are you out here?"  It was at that exact moment that the outside edge of a Good-Year 75R-14 rolled across two fingers on my right hand.

Actual Post Starts Here:

Greetings,

As you can see - this year my Poetic License got renewed so I thought I'd take it out for a spin.

What do you think?

It has a lot more leeway than my old one did and has a tad more flash.

I kind of like it.  The clerk down at the writer's block said that this license, when used correctly, would keep folks from snoozing.

Looks like he was right.

I should note that at no time were any bees hurt in the above story. 

On May 25, 2004 I was walking through Meier's Department store trying to use up my lunchtime with something other than eating.  As I wandered up and down the aisles I noticed an 8-inch stainless steel frying pan, with a label that read, NEVER STICK OR SCRATCH, guaranteed for life.

I lifted it from the display hook and it felt quite substantial.   $18.99 on sale for $10.90

How could I not buy this pan?  It was the perfect size for frying up eggs or cooking up onions or whatever needed cooking up, PLUS, it was guaranteed for life.

So why am I telling you about my favorite pan?

I guess because over the years it has become a challenge to find one spot where I can keep the receipt and label identifying all the particulars of the warranty.  You see, if I lose that, I lose the one thing that drew me into this Pan – Person relationship to begin with.

I must say that for the past two years now this pan has lived up to it’s claims.  No sticking and no scratches.

The only flaw, if you will, is that the two rivet heads that secure the handle to the pan have lost their non-stick coating.

Somewhere along the old breakfast trail I must have scrambled up those lose flakes of coating and consumed them, along with a little onion salt and a sprinkle of chives.

At that moment we bonded.  We became blood brothers for life.  Although each of us works at opposite ends of the spatula we are now connected. 

In the words of an old Heckowee Chief, 

“Nitchpac Yupdurka”

(He looks like an egg and he’s a little cracked).

Technology Update

New stuffs in.

My stuffs suddenly old.