I get a modest amount of traffic and am rarely linked by other blogs so trackbacks were pointless for me; if someone linked me and it drove any traffic my way I saw it in my stats anyway. I fail to see the benefit of trackbacks, for me at least. Not to sound ungrateful to a charming person who is at least partly responsible for the blogging software I use for free, but part of me thinks maybe Mena is a control freak and trackbacks sort of grew from that, the need for absolute control over the blog; you know, like, Who’s Linking Me? But the only ones I got were trackback spam, and I got hundreds so I went and stripped anything trackback related from all my blogs and guess what, I still get them from automatic programs spamming me. I have a couple MT links to check out, I’m sure there’s a solution for it, I am just too busy this week at work to spend any time doing it just yet, but I’ll fix it eventually. But my question is, do any of you see a point in trackbacks?

We dropped the kid off at her friend’s house, apartment actually, Alpha and I walked her over on a bright cold weekend day. They let her in, we said goodbye there in the hallway, the mom in the doorway and the kid’s friend and Alpha didn’t see him because their Golden Retriever was out saying hi, licking me and jumping on me and she’s not a dog person and so all she saw was dog but I, being a dog person, was all Yeah, boy, howyalikedat Yeah, attaboy and relaxed and I saw him, peeking out from behind his mom, the kid’s friend’s little brother, pure psycho evil and only five years old. Eyes as dark as the deepest pockets of Johnny Cash’s blackest coat. The little kid stuck a 60 watt lightbulb in his mouth and it lit up. Not really, but I imagined him doing it; you wouldn’t be surprised if he had. Gamma came home later with a bruise on her cheek and a wiggly tooth where he had hit her in the face with a big chunk of icy ice when they were playing outside and for some reason her friend got grounded for it. And I thought, we got off cheap and I thought, this isn’t the last we’re hearing about that guy, some day his neighbors will be saying on TV, He was such a quiet person.
And then they’ll stick the microphone in my face and I’ll say, That little fucker’s given me the heebie jeebies ever since he was a little bitty boy.

The way I see it, a guy my age you has two choices when things bog down: 4uto-er0tic 4sphyxiati0n or self-hypnosis.

That’s just one choice, isn’t it? Two alternatives. Mom, if you’re reading this, I’m starting out with self-hypnosis.

It can’t hurt. Worst-case scenario: it doesn’t work. Nothing happens. Big deal. So I found some directions on the Internet.

Those are famous last words, aren’t they? “I found out on the Internet how to do this.” Second only to , “Hey, y’all, watch this.”

This is, briefly, how it is done:

1. Count down from 100, relaxing as you go

2. Then count down from 5, telling yourself at each step, I’m getting more relaxed, I’ll make some nice suggestions, etc.
3. Make suggestions
4. Count yourself back up to 5, waking up a little at each step.

Or, in my case, you count down from 100 and around 50 you hear loud snoring and wake up.
It turns out to be a fine way to fall asleep at night. I drop right off. It’s changed my life.
As far as the hypnosis goes, I have to try it sitting up. Not sure if it’s worked yet. I’m totally in the middle of a crisis sort of week(s) and even having panic attacks (standing in front of the elevator at the UN a couple days ago, amidst a gaggle of diplomats, I wanted nothing more than to scream “WAAHHHHHHHH” as a breadloaf-sized lump of misery and panic exploded from my solar plexus; then I looked around me and wondered how many other people there felt the same way), so I suppose it’s shaken something up. I’m taking a positive view of it. In Chinese, the word for “crisis” is written with the characters for “can” and “worms”, right?
And I sleep better.
And the chances of being found dangling from a doorknob in my wife’s clothes are infinitesimal.

Duane Keiser is an artist who does a painting a day and posts it to his blog here. He also has another website here. I came across Mr. Keiser via Negative Velocity, which seems not to have been updated in a while. NV got it from Boingboing.

If I had the money, I would buy paintings from Mr. Keiser immediately. They are wonderful, wonderful details, wonderful colors, wonderful light. Good eye for beauty in all things. That peanut butter and jelly sandwich is making me hungry, and it’s not even nine in the morning.

On my drive in this morning, I thought, that’s how I’d like to write. Then I thought, it is how I try to write. That is it. That’s it. Lime slices, you know? Gum wrapper. Peanut. Pigment. And the grander stuff at the other site. Fine stuff, Mr. Keiser. You’re inspiring.

From now on, all my blog posts are for sale, starting at $100 a piece for the smaller ones.

Imagine walking into a forest. Have you read Kafka on the Shore yet? (That is, Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami. Not “Kafka on the Shore Yet?” by etc etc. ) No? Good, because I’m lifting this from him, partly. Say you walk into a forest until you get lost, and then continue on, deeper and deeper, until you’re hopelessly lost. Then you take off your pack, and leave it on the ground with your axe and canteen and keep walking until you completely lose your orientation, any sense of direction. You can’t be any more lost than this. You are so lost, place, distance and direction have no meaning anymore. You even lose yourself. At this point, well, not “point” seeing as how place has no meaning, but at this point in our story, at this point in time, although it’s also a timeless place forest: now, although strictly speaking there is no “now” here, I mean “here”, fear dissolves. For instance. Say. Fear of being lost. Because you are lost. And you’re not getting more lost.
Whom do you meet here?

Mom: What’s up with the string tied to everything? It’s a mess.
Gamma: Erm…
Dad: Did I ever tell you about how when I was bored when I was little my mom gave me yarn and I would stand in the corner for hours making spiderwebs between the curtain rod, two doorknobs and the handles on the dresser? Or how if the weather was good she’d send my brother and me outside where I’d hang bits of yarn from the fence for birds to make their nests from, and my little brother would follow me, picking the yarn back off the fence, and when we got to the end of the fence I’d think birds had already taken all the yarn, then we’d go back to the start of the fence and hang the same yarn back up again?
Gamma: Hehe.
Mom: Thanks for the backup, pal.

90% of my mother’s parenting consisted of ploys to get rid of us, and 10% of trips to OMSI. And yet I have fond memories of so much of it – drawing pictures in the kitchen on rainy days, wandering around the countryside, sitting in my uncle’s garden discussing life with his beagle.

I was listening to Bananarama’s Greatest Hits in my car yesterday because the mix of Jorane, Snow Patrol, Iarla