Journal --------------------------------------------------------------------- Wed Oct 22 2025 - David Brooks' Quote Writers are beggars who tell other beggars where to find bread. - David Brooks Mon Oct 6 2025 - Homecoming Hullabaloo Local folks migh want to stay clear of my alma mater and current employer until this Sunday coming. There's a homecoming football game with kickoff scheduled at 6:45 PM CST and the campus homecoming hullabaloo has already started. Gameday, I'd say avoid anywhere south of I-10 and/or west of Acadian Thwy. / Stanford Ave. Favorite public places to celebrate life with friends and neighbors will likely be rank and rife with the inbred inebriate purple and goldsters. Mon Sep 8 2025 - My Irregular Upbringing ... for which it might be said, "puts the 'fun' into 'dysfunctional.'" A performing-arts family in a soon-to-be post-industrial wasteland means that while not at a job, performance, rehearsal or training, we would be hiding in plain sight. Performing-arts scholarships demand good grades, better performances and we were kept busy keeping up with both. Now we're visible and then we aren't. Blink and you'll miss us. Before I was ten years old, I could read and follow music, take critique and direction from a choreographer and artistic director. In fact, we took that from a lot of people. An adolescent or child learns very early how to pay careful attention, follow choreography/direction/instruction and do exactly as they are told, and in a hurry at that. Affordable and safe neighborhoods were the Bohemian, Garden or Historic districts ... until these became popular with the status-seekers, putting the rent beyond our means. Once the status-seekers find out for themselves how inconvenient it is to live there, how small the spaces are and that off-street parking is a contradiction in terms, they leave. In keeping with the stereotype, we did live out of trunks and footlockers. Where there's a seamstress around, we get to wear modified costumes, toned-down for street wear. Having been required to move from the Bohemian district to the Garden district and then to the Historic district, we also lived out of makeup kits, milk crates and restaurant pans. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Sun Sep 7 2025 - The Rocky Horror Picture Show 50 years old today and one of the most important films of my - rather irregular - coming of age. ~ Let's do the time warp together! ~ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Thu Aug 28 2025 - Overflow Housing We're in the first week of classes for the Fall Semester. Undergraguate Admissions once again accepted more first-time freshmen than there would be on-campus housing. This time, it would be thousands. Those who find themselves in "overflow housing" are re-housed in shabby apartment buildings around the campus. Always the more expensive option, this latest round of housing musical chairs found itself locally newsworthy. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Tue Aug 5 2025 - underneath the doom loop east of downtown & the capitol complex west of the old warehouse district now called downtown east underneath the doom loop un-aged by circumstances lost to the capitol city is where I live --------------------------------------------------------------------- Mon Jul 28 2025 - Competent but not Exceptional I'm not exceptionally competent. I try to be more proficient at it. Not an empath (there is no such thing) but working on empathy skills. Should I wish to be exceptional at anything, it would be mindfulness. Preferably, I wish not to be exceptional in any way shape or meaning. As most human beings are, I am unique but wish not to be exceptional. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Sat Jul 26 2025 - Team Wired for Headphones I tried using wireless headphones for a while and while they're nice for walking around the living space while listening to audiobooks, music or podcasts, there are some distinct advantages for going back to "Team Wired." These include - but are not limited to - the following. Better sound quality relative to cost. Especially noticable when using the USB versions and the cost of a relatively decent set of wireless headphones would allow one to purchase a superb set of wired ones. No battery or connection issues. No annoying boops and beeps during disconnection and reconnection or embarassing public situations when playing favorite music to find out the headphones are disconnected. Easier to reach inline controls. Much more convenient for pen or pencil note-taking while listening to or viewing course lectures when the listener or viewer can pause the playback to write something down. Easier to use inline microphone. Equally so more convenient for voice memos and quieter conversations with more privacy given to the other that one is conversing with in public places and spaces. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Wed Jul 23 2025 - Invest (weather) A gathering of thunderstorms in tropical latitudes that are under observation by meterological forecasters for potential development. --------------------------------------------------------------------- SDF Public Access UNIX System .. est. 1987