Vessel Of Knowledge

New Meat

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:45:00 +0000

I get into routines easily, or at least that is true of some routines. I don't manage to get up bright and early every day, and generally do no better than getting up when I have to most days. I struggle also to remember my plan to not eat in my room. Still, there are those things that I do well enough. I get a blog post up every day, and I stick to meals pretty well (although it might be argued that this is no virtuous routine). As I related recently, I went with two slices of turkey rather than just one for my sandwiches. That had been brought about by something of a disruption. Another...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

Something Lost, Something Gained?

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:45:00 +0000

One of the first notable incidents for me upon moving to LA was the theft of my iPod. This was a few years back now, and so it's interesting to contemplate what I think and feel about the matter now. I spent more on the thing than I would care to admit, and it meant a lot to me. Buddhists tend to discourage such attachment to material goods, and nothing suggests the wisdom of their ways quite like being stolen from. I doubt whether that happens when you don't have things. At the time, I did my best to let the thing go. What else could I do? I made some effort to locate it online, as I was...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

Down There

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 10:45:00 +0000

There is an element of life in this apartment building that I am not a part of and I do not see that changing terribly soon. On the ground floor there is a parking garage. Our unit is granted two parking spaces, neither of which do I use myself. Not having a car, it's easy to leave those spaces to the two who do. As a consequence, I have very little reason to go down there to the garage. Still, I sometimes wind up passing through. That is where the garbage is, and I occasionally am the one to bring recycling down there (with the trash just going down the garbage chute). I also sometimes...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

Gifted

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 10:45:00 +0000

A dear loved one sent me a package of some nice meats as a belated birthday gift. Naturally I ate some of it immediately, so little do I typically keep in the pantry. As a matter of fact, I'm embarrassed to say that I checked carefully to see whether it was precooked, and just ate it cold. I know that's not right, but it was my choice, and I stand by it. The sausage links were delicious as they were, and I was in no mood to wait for them to be hot. It was curious that the deliverer of the package opted to place the box underneath our door mat. The box was not small. I would say that it was...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

Lookalike

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:45:00 +0000

The other night, I went to the movies with a friend. This theater was one of those cheap theaters, but because tickets are generally three dollars and never less than a dollar fifty, it cannot be characterized as a dollar theater. It's cheap, and it's rundown, but it serves well as a repository of movies that are no longer especially lucrative but have a way to go before they reach video. I had a good time at the movie, but imagine that an encounter I had will prove to be more interesting in the long run than the alien invasion movie we saw. I went inside and bought a hotdog for a dollar,...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

Never Free

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:45:00 +0000

When I was in college, I was rather more political. I had few interests that weren't tied into politics and current events. Much of my time was devoted to absorbing news and opinion, spouting out in turn a lot of strident stuff that hadn't been tempered much by the world or experience. These days, my views aren't terribly different, but my enthusiasm for what was then a game has waned, and my stomach for a lot of nasty infighting is gone. Also gone is any urge to contribute time or money. A vote is about all anyone can hope for from me, but the ACLU doesn't understand that. They know that...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

Double Down, Erase The Frown

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:45:00 +0000

As I have noted more times than anyone is happy with, I tend to stick with food choices for a long time. I have eaten roughly the same three meals every day for a very long time, and only circumstances change that very much. I've been going with turkey and cheese sandwiches for weeks if not months, mostly with the same rye bread. The system works, but sometimes it falters, and errors can be some of the best fun in life, as I know from improv. An example of that notable barely even to me is how the other day I used two slices of turkey instead of just one. I appreciate how minute of an...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

Something Lighter

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:45:00 +0000

I've always got a book that I'm reading. As long as I've been out of school now, which is a few years, I would have the vague feeling that I was failing some kind of assignment if I wasn't reading. An ongoing effort of mine is to correct some of the deficiencies in my schooling, and that means reading the classics. If the schools had their way, I never would have read any Hemingway, Fitzgerald or most of the rest. I had to take that upon myself, but I just can't manage it all the time. I just got through with one of those books vigorously competing for the mythical title of Great American...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

Loosen

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:45:00 +0000

Yesterday I wrote of watching movies twice, and rigidly adhering to a convention of never watching a movie twice for lack of time to do anything but watch films for the first time. I really have gotten wearing of being yoked into a lot of oppressive rules about such things. When I started doing Netflix, it wasn't long before my queue ballooned out of control, growing into the hundreds. It was a stifling notion that my every movie experience had more or less been plotted out for years to come. Whatever difficulty I have with spontaneity, movie-watching is just that kind of...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

Never Again

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 10:45:00 +0000

Years ago, when DVDs seemed to be a collectible item and Netflix was not yet on the scene, I used to watch the same movies again and again. I wasn't going to go out to the video store. That kind of spontaneity was beyond me, and there was reward in watching the same things over and over anyway. Intimate familiarity was a pleasure, and total familiarity was always elusive. Each viewing of a movie yielded new details and enjoyment. I can't manage to invest in a movie any longer the time necessary to get that. Somehow there is rarely the time to watch a movie twice, even if it is a movie a...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

The Deserter, Dessert

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 10:45:00 +0000

As a boy, I can't think of any time when we failed to keep desserts in the house. Growing up in Arizona as I did, ice cream fell in line with staples like bread, mill and toilet paper. We always had one half-gallon if not more, sometimes having the big huge container or the sack of little individual cups. It was all good, so long as there was something there. You just had to have something, even if it was just the bare minimum of popsicles. I never even have popsicles anymore. Desert is non-essential now, which is a fact that was unfathomable once. Even when I was attending school in...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

Light

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:45:00 +0000

Not so long ago, I got a new wallet for Christmas. You'll recall my writing about it. It's very nice, so of course the first thing I did was to jam it full of everything that was in the old wallet (and which probably shortened its functional lifespan). I just did this automatically without taking advantage of the obvious opportunity for assessing the necessity of every item and thus increasing efficiency by winnowing down the number of items in there. Well, I've done that now. You can just imagine the kinds of things I found in there. There are always going to be blank slips of paper that...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

The Dime? Not Small Time

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:45:00 +0000

I keep my loose change fairly well organized, and maybe better than some. Each denomination goes into a separate jar, with the smallest ones obviously accumulating most rapidly, being the heaviest, and amounting to the least in terms of value. I don't do much with those. I suppose that sooner or later I'll put them through one of those change machines only to be astounded at how little I get out of it. I have low expectations. The larger denominations are really where it's at. The quarters are obviously for laundry, and for somebody else would also be for parking meters. The quarters are...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

Worst Comes To Worst

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:45:00 +0000

I'll tell you something that I hate fervently. It comes from what I was writing about yesterday. It happens all too often that one is writing something with a pen only to have it dry out in the middle of the writing. Sometimes the thing is a check or some sacred government document. It looks bad, or at the very least suspicious, even if the next pen you manage to find is of the same or of a similar color. People can tell something is off. What if you cannot find a pen of the same color? That's really bad. At that point, you've really got to start over if you possibly can. You look insane...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

Before Me The Jar

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:45:00 +0000

In front of me is my jar of writing implements. It's rather sparsely filled at the moment due to attrition, but that is about to change. I keep starting off with a pen and finding it dry or having it go dry while I'm writing something. I'm not mad about this, but glad for the chance to know each of those pens for what it really is. I look forward to having a jar full of nothing but reliable writing tools, and it's going to be soon, you may be sure. I'm going to buy a couple boxes of good pens, blue and black. It just doesn't pay to cheap out on that any more than it does to overspend on a...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

The Poseable

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:45:00 +0000

I put up a picture of myself in those sunglasses I described the other day, and people started manipulating in the style of a Chuck Norris film poster I likened my look to. In the poster, the lenses of his sunglasses reflect still shots of an action sequence. One person put those same shots over my lenses, and another pasted in images of monsters. It was an odd but flattering thing, and I thought about how people seem to like doing things to my look. People are always talking about how I should pick my hair way out, or straighten it to see how long it would be. I bristle at this a bit,...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

Sauced

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 10:45:00 +0000

Yesterday I wrote of my new sunglasses and the process by which I acquired them. I bought other things there at that dollar store, among them a bottle of hot sauce. You see, there's only one kind of hot sauce that I really go for. I never have been a Tabasco fan, nor have I ever been much for Cholula or Tapatio (although the women to whom they attribute the famed 'Tapatio eyes' are really something). No, there's a different sauce that I go for. I might have written about it before, but what can you do? It's relatively obscure, but that's not why I like it. I'd really like it better if it...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

Made In The Shades

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 10:45:00 +0000

I made a trip to the local neighborhood dollar store for a few necessary items, and noticed that the line was a little longer than I'd like, so I lingered by the impulse buy area adjacent for a minute. I couldn't help but notice the sunglasses. I typically expect the offerings for eyewear at such a place to be poor. That's what I find to be the case typically at even the best of dollar stores, so why should things be any better at less than the best? I looked at those shades though, and I saw how wrong I was. They had some really decent stuff. I thought that since this was not a one...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

A Good Chair From She Of Beauty Fair

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:16:00 +0000

I seem to have a lot of opportunities fall into my lap. That is fortunate, since I would just as soon not do a lot of legwork. I never will have to if possibilities continue to present themselves at the rate they have begun to. I wonder if that 'Secret' thing could be true after all. If it's not that, it's something. I need certain little things, and then they come to me in some fashion. I certainly do hope that it keeps up for the foreseeable future. A recent thing has been our need for furniture in this apartment, and a constant has been my interest in ladies. The two things coincided...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

Angry For A Spell

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:45:00 +0000

Poor spelling upsets me, as does poor grammar. You see a considerable amount of it online, maybe because it's so quick to publish one's writing there and because writing that goes out on the internet is seen as disposable or ephemeral. It is definitely inconsequential for all of the importance that is placed on making sure that it all adheres to the rules we agreed on. Sometimes I fancy myself to be the last person in the world who cares, and then I get scared that I will miss-spell something myself. Of course, I have spellcheck and grammar check, but those are hardly...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

Ensnared

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:45:00 +0000

When you go into a live comedy show, particularly standup, you know that you are exposing yourself to potential embarrassment or other unpleasantness. Comics often see audience members more as props than as people, so when the audience members don't do what the comic wants, they treat them like a bad mic or something. You have to know therefore that you might get hassled based on a wide array of conflicting conditions. If you come in during someone's set, it could be a problem. That happened to me the other day. You desperately try to enter unobtrusively, but sometimes the comic or...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

Eat Fast, Slim Never

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:45:00 +0000

I'm on a sandwich kick, which you'll recall if you are a regular regular and have a better than average memory. These days, I'm doing turkey and cheese on some manner of bread or another. Generally I'll make two hefty sandwiches, sometimes heating up both and other times eating one cold while the other toasts. It's always two sandwiches and two slices of bread apiece of course, except for when that isn't the case. There's something appealing about the small, impromptu single slice sandwich. I'm not at all talking about some kind of open face sandwich. I don't get that. Someone will have to...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

Wha?

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:45:00 +0000

An odd thing happened yesterday. This was, of course, on Hollywood Boulevard in the touristy section. Every time I pass through there, I am struck by how wide the margin is between it and the next weirdest place I have ever been to. In any case, I was walking towards the subway station from church, and I expected no trouble because I had not yet gotten to the Chinese Theatre where the costumed panhandlers are. I had on my sunglasses, which I was taking off and putting on on account of the inconsistent lighting in the area.I also was carrying a book, in addition to the mp3 player...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

No Help

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 10:45:00 +0000

I was waiting for the bus to take me to a party for people who had worked on a particular church play. I saw approach a woman with groceries, and I figured her to be too attractive and too affluent to be waiting for the bus. I waited and waited for her to move on after some interval for rest or whatever else. She never left, and it eventually became obvious that in spite of all evidence to the contrary, she was there to get on the bus. Of course I didn't do the bold thing and make an attempt, but I do often feel a kind of paternal impulse with some people who are waiting for the bus. I do...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!

Some Scenes

noreply@blogger.com (Calder Holbrook) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 10:45:00 +0000

You see some interesting things out walking on the street. Typically I see these things when I'm out walking for a purpose, but every now and then, I find myself feeling compelled to go for a walk. It may be because I'm bored, or as in a recent case, because I was trying to conceive of ideas and was having no luck cloistered away at home. When the ideas do not come and find you, my thinking is, you must go out there after them. I for one am perfectly willing to do so with vigor, although if I had known that there would be a sheen of mist falling on the streets, I might have been less eager...

You only get a taste here. Fret not, for you may help yourself to the rest on the site!