Saturday, December 27, 2008

After Christmas Sale

Christmas definitely loses value fast. I went to a couple of stores the day after Christmas and everything was 50% off. Bargain hunters were picking over the carcass, which surprisingly had an enormous amount of meat left to take. I went to Walmart and they had so much Christmas stuff you'd think they hadn't sold anything up till that time. The Christmas card stock looked like a fresh shipment.

I was at Walgreen's last night and everything was 50% off there too. Then driving by today I noticed it was up to 60% off. The Valentine merchandise was out, which I believe is normal for the day after Christmas. They need to get an early start because it, of course, dies quickly when the time comes. I remember one year getting so much candy the day after Valentine's Day, and still had money left over.

Christmas loses value fast in your mind too. Mine anyway. The day after it's blah. We were listening to Christmas much there hot and heavy, fairly so. But nothing since Christmas day. I got the CD of Brenda Lee's Christmas album this year, maybe two or three weeks ahead of Christmas. It's surprising that you can't get a download of "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" at Amazon, and I don't believe they had one at I-Tunes either. I had an MP3 that I got somewhere once but I wanted an official one, a better one. The rest of the album is nothing nearly as good. Brenda's version of Silent Night is as bad a version as any I've ever heard. The phrasing is very much delayed in relation to the music.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

I'm Not Really Back

It looks like I abandoned 'All My Children,' my dear blogs. It's a matter of something like biorhythms. Interests. The ebb and flow of the election, then the intensity of it, then the denouement, a mixture of funk and elation that led to deeper spiritual pursuits, including things off the beaten path.

I wanted to make note of something, which I imagined once as a lengthy post, that is, when I was in the terrible thick of it. I was in a real quandary with bacteria, at least in my imagination. It's hard now to believe I went through it, but there was so much smelly bacteria surrounding me, in my chairs, my walls, my desk, my floors, my clothing, that I was doing daily battle with it. My weapons to fight back included Oust and hydrogen peroxide. I abandoned two chairs. I Oust-bombed my rooms a few times. It was a difficult time.

The bacteria smelled funky-good at first. But the funk of it fed on itself and grew in its potency. Until it was sickening in every way. I was changing clothes a few times a day. Me, a guy who might wear the same pair of pants for well over a week! But this stuff was coming through my pants. Seriously. I was doing other things with peroxide, which I won't get into entirely. Suffice it to say this was a battle on all fronts.

I thought I'd beat it. Then it'd build in intensity again. I was looking up bacteria on websites, but couldn't find anything about this. My memory of it now is fading. But it was all consuming for more than a week, maybe two. I had several theories as to what was going on.

The weirdest thing is I inquired of another person who was present a few times. And this other person didn't smell anything out of the ordinary. I thought maybe it was something to do with my own nose and mind. Which is a weird feeling, because you start thinking if you can't trust your senses what will you do next?

Anytime I smell anything now slightly out of the ordinary, I start thinking, could it be the beginning of another onslaught? But it hasn't happened again. This stuff was in September, at the end of the September sometime and maybe (maybe) into October. I didn't write anything down, except this post, now in December.