Sunday.
What is my purpose in keeping an online diary? Mostly to stave off oblivion and to memorialize the mundane. And to brag and posture. Complain a bit, of course; as an avid hypochondriac I can’t wait to share my symptoms and miseries with others (who often have much worse health challenges than I do.) would you believe me when I say that very often my morning prayer includes an aching request asking for help to write something that will make people laugh and smile? I do. I’ve reached the amazing point in my life where I don’t even try to be amusing when I write, and yet manage to get LOL reactions by the barge-full.
And I want to make this diary an online record of praise -- to me, from important people. I am obsessed with validation from professional writers. I have self confidence issues. So let’s start with email responses from journalists to the poems I sent them this week:
Rich Motoko of the NYT liked my poem about his story of the ‘ice monsters’ in Japan:
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4:10 AM (3 hours ago)
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Thank you for this poem. Too bad it's so sad....
This reporter liked my poem on his story about free snacks in office break rooms:
Jamie Lauren Keiles
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Tue, Mar 12, 1:28 PM (5 days ago)
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I did a poem on oil boom Texas and the reporter replied thus:
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Fri, Mar 1, 7:13 AM
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Tim, I love this. Thank you for reading and sharing your poem.
(I am wondering if the above is an automated reply -- has the ring of one.)
I can’t resist including one more:
About a poem I did on Trump’s deteriorating relationship w/Europe --
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Mon, Feb 18, 1:04 AM
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I am so glad you’re still doing this!!
--
Katrin Bennhold
Berlin Bureau Chief
The New York Times
@kbennhold
Please note my new phone number:
+49151 6564 4109
Now it’s time for breakfast -- warmed up anchovy pizza with a side of cottage cheese.
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The cooking bug got to me this morning. I decided at the last moment to make a small bowl of chicken salad, since I have 4 cans of Kirkland brand canned chicken breast from various people who leave things at my door. I combine chicken, macaroni, green onions, onion powder, a bit of cucumber, and sunflower seeds, with cottage cheese and mayo dressing. I’ll put it out in the kitchen at ten thirty -- maybe nobody likes chicken salad that early in the day. I dunno. Just felt like doing it.
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Only two people had any of my chicken salad, so I’ll just save it to serve tomorrow at FHE.
I prepare the Sacrament each week, filling the plastic cups with water. It’s bothered me for a long time that so many of those who take the water have shaky hands and spill most of the water on themselves before getting it up to their lips. It irritated me, until today when some charitable insight finally drilled its way through my thick skull. Those people can’t help having shaky hands -- so why do I insist on filling the cups up to the brim each week? Today I made sure the cups were only half full, or less.
Joyce Baggerly invited me to stay for Sunday School, which she is teaching. I said I was very tired and needed a nap. Not a lie, exactly, but not the total truth either. We used to have young and innovative Sunday School teachers come over for our class here at Valley Villas. I appreciated their energy and frisky outlook. But Joyce, bless her soul, had to insist to the bishop that what we old folks needed was one of our own teaching Sunday School, who would reflect our seasoned outlook and experience.
So now we’re stuck with elderly gasbag teachers that live here and haven’t had an original idea since the Nixon administration. I don’t want to listen to them drone on and on for half an hour; they have no idea how to initiate and carry along a lively gospel discussion. For this sin of arrogance I fully expect to be called as a Sunday School teacher one of these days. But until then, include me out.
I will now pass the afternoon reading, waiting for my appetite to return, around four, when I will have a ham on rye with some Clover Club brand potato chips. Clover Club is a Utah brand, and costs $1.89 a bag. Lays potato chips, on the other hand, cost $4.99 a bag. They taste exactly the same to me. But then, I think a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli tastes just as good as anything at Olive Garden. My taste buds are shot to pieces.
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(Asterisks denote the passing of time, in case you hadn’t realized.)
It’s only 3:39 in the afternoon but I am officially declaring this day to be OVER. I have nothing planned for the rest of the day except to read a bit more and then watch Deep Space Nine on Netflix. I never have visitors in the late afternoon or evening.
My sandwich and chips were only so-so. I rarely enjoy lunch or dinner when I'm eating alone. I like to eat breakfast alone, but not any other meal.
I have to be careful what I watch because I get so easily depressed with zombies and sex and gunfights -- which is about all Netflix has to offer, outside of hyperventilated ‘documentaries’ like Inside the World’s Toughest Prisons or cooking shows like The Paleo Way. Ugh and double ugh. So I stick to the Star Trek franchise and Family movies. I keep telling myself that I’ll repent and start watching more T.E.D. talks instead, but then I just have to find out what the Ferengis are going to get up to next . . .
I reviewed today’s poems and have decided they are subpar, mostly because they are sad and angry, not lighthearted and cheering. So I’ll try to end today’s diary entry with what I hope is a light-hearted memory:
When I worked for Bruce Veldhuisen at his TEFL International school in Ban Phe he used to put on English Camps over the weekend for high school students whose parents wanted them to improve their English with some short term immersion camps. So Bruce would rent a set of fancy bungalows along with a big conference center on the beach for the weekend and about forty kids would show up, at around ten thousand baht apiece, for 2 days of all English/no Thai. Initially I didn’t have anything to do with the weekend English camps. But then Bruce asked me if I could do a clown show on Sunday night for the kids. I really didn’t want to mess with the greasepaint in that hot tropical environment, so I offered to do a ‘nutty professor’ routine instead. He said go ahead and try it.
We worked it so on Sunday night the kids were herded together into the conference hall and told they would hear a long lecture from a noted linguistic authority -- Professor Torkildson. After the lecture there would be a test. Naturally enough, the kids groaned and made sour faces. Then I showed up, in my one good suit, looking very serious indeed as I stood behind the podium to begin my lecture. I started with some generalities about Romance languages and their relation to the latinate gerund. Then, idly putting my hand in my pants pocket, I would yell like a banshee -- pulling my hand out of my pocket with a mousetrap attached to my fingers. The kids began to suspect Something Was Up. Next I asked for a glass of water to sip on and was brought a glass tumbler with a live goldfish swimming in it, which I didn’t notice until just before quaffing -- doing a huge doubletake. Now the kids began to relax and smile. I asked for a juice box, since the water appeared unsuitable for imbibing. But I had trouble with said juice box, unable to get the straw to puncture the box -- and then when I did puncture the box I immediately squeezed it and sprayed myself in the face. And so it went, one silly catastrophe after another. I ended the routine by finding a balloon in my pocket, which I immediately began blowing up as I strolled through the crowd sitting on the floor. As the balloon got bigger so did the shrieks, first from the girls then eventually from everyone, as the balloon reached its bursting point. This is a variation on an old clown gag called bigger and bigger -- and it never fails to get a rise from the kiddies. Eventually my balloon pops and I take a pratfall on the floor. And when I get up to brush myself off, my pants fall down, revealing a gorgeous pair of lavender swimming trunks. I rush out of the room, to thunderous applause and laughter.
I must have done that routine a dozen times while working for Bruce. It was one of the nicest things he ever did for me -- letting me entertain the kids that way.
ขอบคุณ Bruce.
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