What's in my name?

Ken as a noun:

1. Perception; understanding; knowledge.
2. The range of vision.
3. View; sight.

Ken as a verb... to recognize

and Ken in Hebrew means therefore...

Ken... Ken, I Ken! Ken? No really, Ken?

Nutbag neighbors!

My neighborhood has a Yahoo group of almost 650 members. However, people publish there like it's an intimate group of their closest friends. Here's one example of someone blathering on to members of this list about members of the list but not making their intentions clear:

5a. Fwd: Neghbor in hospital
   Posted to the neighborhood group by: "G" (the moderator of the neighborhood group)
   Date: Wed Oct 11, 2006 10:17 am (PDT)


>From: S
>
>G,
>******, a very dear and wonderful friend of mine, 
>Mom (of three young boys and one older young man) and
>neighbor has had an aneurysm Monday night
>
>I just feel that it would be a wonderful gesture if some folks from the
>Neighborhood Association could either swing by the hospital, go by her home to see how
>they can help, etc.
>
>Her family is here and so many neighbors have reached out,
>but a gesture from the Neighborhood Association would be a lovely and thoughtful thing.
>
>Thanks all.
>
>Peace be with you,
>S

________________________________________________________________________

5b. Re: Fwd: Neghbor in hospital
   Posted by: "J"
   Date: Wed Oct 11, 2006 11:59 am (PDT)

*** and I and many other friends and neighbors spent several hours at
the
hospital yesterday and today. There are lots of relatives there, too.
Since
only a few can see her at a time, and she will be in the ICU for quite
awhile, it might be good to allow the family a day or two before some
of them have to leave. We are told that she will be there for several more
days. If you would like to help with providing *****'s family with
meals along with other friends, call me at XXX-XXXX, and I will put you
in touch with xxx xxxx, who is coordinating this effort.

J

________________________________________________________________________

5c. Re: Fwd: Neghbor in hospital
   Posted by: S
   Date: Wed Oct 11, 2006 3:44 pm (PDT)

Oh G!  Her children aren't aware of her condition
and they are trying to keep it from them.  Iw sh you
would have tlaked to me beofre posting.  This is
awful!

Back when I was in school I had my first pet chicken. At the time I also had a favorite housemate from Alabama who had the bad habit of calling girls chickens. I'm not the most discerning person in the world, and when someone I admire says or does something I like I tend to adopt the mannerism too quickly. Hence, I started calling all girls chickens. Once, I even went so far as to walk into a room of women at work and exclaim, "Look at all these chickens!" As redress for adopting that phrase I thought it was only fair that I should name my first pet chicken Girl. Including Girl, I've had seven chickens as pets, two of them were roosters and crowed too much to be kept very long in my hood. One thing you can do with chickens is play chicken shit bingo. I play mine more like a football pool where each guest can by any of 100 squares for $1 and then we put the chickens in a littl pen with the numbered squares on the floor. In the half hour that the hens are on the board, any square that gets shit on gets a portion of the money pool. In additon to CBS, I think that eVite may be the host to much of this centuries great wit. That is why I present, here in this post, the preserved eVite to my chicken shit bingo party along with some of the better responses.

cheese and chicken shit

Saturday, January 21, 4:00pm

Cheese and chickens are perfect primers for Saturday evening fun. Come and munch on some cheesey snacks while possibly winning a few dollars playing chicken shit bingo. Bring drinks! Iced basins for beer, cork screws for red wine, trash bins for white wine, cups left over from margaritas, and cheese will be supplied. I'm counting on you to show off your creative drink of choice and your witty afternoon buzz to add to the levity. Viva libations!

• I have not crapped in two days. Those goddamned chickens have no idea who they're dealing with.
• So if Charlie eats one of the chickens and then shits, does that count?
• bock bock moo
• I'll bring my cock too! Thanks for the evite....
• Wow, I almost missed this invite. What a loser. Sounds like a lot of fun, I'll bring my cock.
• shit yeah!! just please don't feed the chickens cheese or they'll get constipated and we'll be there all night long...
• I was saving all my singles for Sugar's, but I guess this will do.
• i'll bring my champ cock, "pinky!"
• "the chickens are like loaves of bread" - Ken
• I can't get over last night's hangover by 4:00 pm but can't miss shitty chickens.
• libations and birds pitted against one another...with unseasonably warm weather and lots of booze, the cocks will be ruling us and forcing shit bingo for their viewing pleasure by 7.
• if there's nothing else to do.
• Chicken shit bingo can also be: A BIG CHINOCK SNIT!
• my cock is a lover, not a fighter! I'll bring the electrical cords and duct tape.
• We will endeavor to prove that one CAN make chicken soup from chicken shit.
• Just to be clear we're just exploiting the chickens for their ability to shit, not eating them right?
• Why discriminate among your pets? I vote for one jackpot round of Charlie shit bingo
• I AM dark meat.
• Susan, look no further...when the shit hits the dirt - you have my number. Flu shots for everyone!
• i'll be there late with vodka and carrot juice.
• Pimms & Lemonade, chicken shit bingo and cheese all on Saturday afternoon... have I gone to heaven?
• BAWK! BAWK! BAWK!
• just need to get my avian-flu shot first
• i like dark meat.
• i might have to arrive late - please don't let that chicken shit until i get there.
• never been to a real cock fight before. especially one where they play each other at bingo. my money's on the gray one! he looks mean.
  
• I bet the chicken shits
• I checked the Tawrat and the Torah and there is no problem with chickens eating cheese (the chickens should avoid the alcohol). It's Halaal and Kosher....??....?? No but I can play the role on TV.

Hey

Did I mention that I still love the Pixies? How often do you and your favorite say, "Hey"? I'm guessing a lot.


hey
been trying to meet you
hey
must be a devil between us
or whores in my head
whores at my door
whore in my bed
but hey
where
have you
been if you go i will surely die
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained

uh said the man to the lady
uh said the lady to the man she adored
and the whores like a choir
go uh all night
and mary ain't you tired of this
uh
is
the
sound
that THE MOTHER MAKES WHEN THE BABY breaks
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained

I go back to May 1987

...when I heard Garrison Keillor read this poem by Sharon Olds during a drive from Providence to Boston. I was headed to Boston to spend a weekend of partying with my usual gang from back then. They are a story in and of themselves. However, I recall my post-this-show party commutes pretty vividly because this reading made me a big fan of Mr Keillor's, and, following this, I was always careful to schedule my drive during the broadcast with the hope of hearing more like this.

Hey Garrison, Onward!

I Go Back to May 1937 (from The Gold Cell)

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don't do it--she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don't do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

I hate flies.

While entymology is a hobby, this doesn't make me an all-inclusive fan of all insects. Flies, cockroaches, and mosquitoes I could live without.

Living in Texas, I've spent a lot of time killing flies, and the desire to eradicate them has grown into a pastime. Ever since I was a little kid I've had a knack for killing them. I typically possess normal reflexes, however I've astounded myself many times by snatching a passing fly right out of the air as it passed through my periphery vision. Especially on the right side. As I grew more serious about fly killing, I started out being quite unskilled in my hobby. I'd often ineffectually chase them around with a fly swatter. Actually I don't think I've ever owned a real fly swatter, but instead used a rolled up news paper or magazine or towel. After reading this, hopefully the your own hours of giving chase will be no more or at least, minimized and your victories will be many.

Like any enemy, the best way to achieve their defeat is to study them and find their weaknesses. Flies' strength comes through their ability to produce and in a seemingly unending front, they are militarily very unsophisticated and have numerous weaknesses which you can exploit.

As you may have noticed, files are pretty slow when the ambient temperatures are low. Unlike our superior metabolism which generates our own body heat and keeps our muscles ready to fight, flies are cold-blooded and rely on the environment to ready their fight or flight response. Unfortunately it can get expensive air conditioning the battlefield down to a sufficient temp to slow them down, and when outdoor temps drop, so do the flies making them hard to locate. If you’re lucky enough to have a fly around while the temps are low then you’ll be the sure victor in a less than thrilling combat.

Flies have terrible night vision. Corralling one in a room in the evening makes for easy dispatch. One of my favorite weapons in my arsenal is the light switch dimmer. Dimmers allow me to have a pre-bedtime victory without suffering my own burst of battle time adrenaline, allowing me to easily get slip into a post triumph slumber. Locate the fly, dim the lights to a level where you can just make out their location and calmly pinch them from existence.

Due to their poor night vision, flies are easily lured to your battleground of choice. Upon discovering a fly in the house I typically turn off all the lights with the exception one room, typically the bathroom. Then I wait a few minutes and let the fly (or better yet for your kill count, flies) convene in the lighted room to which they are innately attracted by their drive to lengthen their breeding and battling day. Then, I simply close the door, dim the lights and snuff them out. If I’m lucky / unlucky enough to have one of those days when there are many flies in the house, I sometimes speed up my victory by employing the vacuum to bag them from existence in a dusty demise.

Victory can be elusive when it comes to such a prolific foe. Therefore, in my later years of hunting, I moved closer to the source rather than simply reacting to an invasion. I learned this by studying the Bush administration’s keen response to Saudi terrorists by attacking them right at their home in Iraq.

Moving any battle with a diurnal enemy to the outdoors means expanding your technical superiority on the battle field. Analogous of the single lighted room in an otherwise dark house I’ve introduced an effective daytime fly attractant to corral them to one outside location, chickens. If you’re ready to move your own conquest to the outdoors it’s also time you seriously consider how you will house the requisite livestock. Chicken manure is and excellent fly attractant. By rounding up the neighborhood fly population in to my chicken ghetto I’ve outwitted them and taken control of the number of places they have to set down their eggs. Taking out many egg laden adults before they effectively breed is key to mass population control. In the chicken yard I’ve installed a commercial fly trap. Through the use of this trap my kill numbers have gone up nearly 5 orders of magnitude. About once a week, during the summer months, I empty the trap’s tens of thousands of conquered souls into a mass grave where, instead of ever breeding or invading my home, they feed the plants of my landscape.

This is from one of my all time favorite songs by an all time favorite band.
It hits a morphine receptor in my head.


We don't have to do anything
Except watch the leaves turning in the wind
Say what you want to say

We don't have to go anywhere
Let's just sit and talk about the usual things
I couldn't move anyway

reminiscing Christmas with the family

S says... and speaking of stealing, i do recall a dark and starry night, many many years ago, when all three of us girls were piled up in the back of our beloved orange volvo, idling in the snow, and my dad runs up breathlessly with a christmas tree, stuffs it through the back window, and yells at my mother to hit the gas. uh huh, we stole that christmas tree. seriously.


H replies... We had a stolen tree one year too. My brother stole it from a tree farm, but I wasn't with him. It was one of the best looking trees we ever had. He went out with a few friends and loaded up one of their trucks with tree cheer for all their families.

I have an aluminum tree that's quite nice that I inherited from Grampy. He's the one that used to wear western shirts. It was purchased in the late 60's for a little over $8.

Not trees, but my favorite part about your story is the orange Volvo. I bet you wish you still had it. I can see that clear as day. My Mom had a red wagon with an all metal cargo area in the back. That's where we road. Those were the days. We had a checker board painted on the rear deck and magnetic checkers to play with. My Mom used to occasionally take corners kinda hard and slide us side to side in the back in a big kid-pile. We took that car on a road trip to Michigan when I was very wee little. I remember laying in the back with my brother and sister and waving our bare feet out the back window at other cars. We thought we were hilarious.

What's in a name?
Was just having a chit chat with some cube neighbors and we got talking about baby names. I told them that I was a few days old before my sister suggested my name based on her little crush named Kenny down the street.
Now, obviously the details are gonna be sketchy here, but that jarred my memory of me (as a very young boy) telling people that the nurses in the hospital called me Harry because they didn't know my name. Later Harry was my imaginary friend who was quite tall. His line was way up near the ceiling on our growth measurement wall in the kitchen.

Fixing your maladies

Did you ever see My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Yes? I identified with the father. He was the one who sprayed all his maladies with windex. I don't use windex, but I say "Pour peroxide on it!" The last time I had a sore throat, I woke up on a Sunday morning unable to swallow and went to bed that night totally cured. Peroxide! Don't breathe through the foaming fumes, don't ingest any, and rinse thoroughly. Hope I've convinced you.

How do I feel? I feel better than James Brown, and he feels good, so it goes something like this:

Whoa-oa-oa! I feel better than James Brown, I knew that I would, now
I feel better than James Brown, I knew that I would, now
So better than James Brown, so better than James Brown, I got you

Whoa! I feel nice, like sugar and spice
I feel nice, like sugar and spice
So nice, so nice, I got you

{ sax, two licks to bridge }

When I hold you in my arms
I know that I can't do no wrong
and when I hold you in my arms
My love won't do you no harm

and I feel nice, like sugar and spice
I feel nice, like sugar and spice
So nice, so nice, I got you

{ sax, two licks to bridge }

When I hold you in my arms
I know that I can't do no wrong
and when I hold you in my arms
My love can't do me no harm

and I feel nice, like sugar and spice
I feel nice, like sugar and spice
So nice, so nice, well I got you

Whoa!
I feel better than James Brown, I knew that I would, now
I feel better than James Brown, I knew that I would
So better than James Brown, so better than James Brown, 'cause I got you
So better than James Brown, so better than James Brown, 'cause I got you
So better than James Brown, so better than James Brown, 'cause I got you

As in Still Life with Rose, by Junior Brown.
This line marks the beginning of a new adventure. Chapter somethingteen, part 1....