The End Of Cruising? Bye Bye, American Pie?

_
The fuel situation has changed "cruising" by teenagers forever.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/us/29teengas.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Cruising was a 20th Century phenomena. I don't know the history of it, and I didn't participate as much as many people of my several generations did, I was a bum and a hitch-hiker who rode shotgun with whoever picked me up off the side of the road for years and years.

About the only non-rich kids who will be able to cruise the streets now will be gang-bangers who finance their habits by the black market created by the War On Drugs. If the War On Drugs was abandoned in the same way Prohibition was abandoned, then only rich kids will be cruising the streets of America. This is sorta sad to me. It does not infringe on me so much because I'm an old man. By the time I owned a car and was able to cruise around looking for fun and excitement, I had obligations I had to learn to ignore. I hate it for the kids today and those to come who will never know that freedom because gas will cost so much it'll be considered a luxury. Casual irresponsibility will have to find another way to express itself. The world may not like it. So what, there's a lotta things the world don't like.

I put a link to my various blogs as the .sig file of all my e-mails. I started doing that so that the people who read what I write on the discussion groups will realize that although I do make sense sometimes, I'm basically as nutty as a fruitcake. I have to be nutty as a fruitcake to let myself be tempted to try and understand the big picture. To find balance I have to look at both sides of the issues that attract me. That's not as easy as eating a big slice of Mom's apple pie with a big scoop of ice cream on it. Even entertaining unpopular thoughts can associate me with things people get murdered about, either by individuals , groups, and especially the government. It's gonna get worse. Exploring both sides of sensitive topics about politics and religion can and will get you locked up in places like Gitmo. Nobody wants that.

Maybe they do. Maybe there are people who feel like they need to get locked up and survive some place like Gitmo to truly understand what's going on. Something similar happened to me and I did it. I did it knowingly. Well, as much as I could know before I actually did it to find out what could actually be known.

People enamor themselves with/of me. They don't need me to help them do this. I truly think they resent my interference. Obviously, I pay no attention to their concerns, and that's one of the main reasons they fall in love with their idea of me. For most of my life I actually thought they fell in love with who-I-think-I-am-is, but I deluded myself. Both ways. What I thought about them adoring me had nothing to do with their adoring me. Usually, when I figure that out, it makes me mad. Furious!

I'm persnickety to some extreme. Unfortunately, it's not an act. If it was, I could turn it on when I needed it, and when I didn't, stop it, and keep my stopping still. I'd really, really admire myself if I could make this happen like they do in the movies. I'm even persnickety in my sleep. That's saying that I'm persnickety when I'm totally unconscious. Persnickety-ness is my first nayme. Legally. If you got any discrimination at all, you know damned well I'm not legally felix manos peregrino. I don't even capitalize it, but that's who I have been since my remembering vision, because that's why the legal me made it up to represent something much, much older. I have to reside in my home town to remind me how to pretend to be human. felix has no such restrictions that I know about. Elsewise, I would make other arrangements.

I became my parent's son and bore their nayme as proudly as I could until my remembering vision proved to me with no uncertainty that I didn't belong to nobody, and there's the shame of it. I'm the world's oldest bastard. Nobody knows how to be a bastard with the finesse and crudeness I-am-is capable of. I sort of regret the crude part. I envy the more diplomatic bastards of the world, but I gotta go with what got me here until I can find more polite way.

It's easy enough to keen how I got to be this way (mean-spirited) when I consider everything that I've ever made myself into since I arrived here looking very much like an oyster pearl, except there was nothing corporeal about what that might have been.

It was a stupid little incident. That's all. There was nothing intentional going on. How could there be? I was allone in my house in my own domain. I don't have to act with intention here unless I get visitors, and I go to extremes to make sure every possible dimension of that event occurring is under my thumb.

I walked over and used the remote sitting beside my inherited motorized recliner to turn the TV on to distract myself from being persnickety. It gets on people's nerves. No blame. It gets on mine too. Even as the picture on the old analog TV with a digital converter came into view I could see the close-up was of a piano keyboard, and by the time it came completely into focus I knew it was PBS and the program was thepianoguy.com instructional video about teaching oneself to play the piano.

Since my hands and wrists now hurt so bad I can't even get through a short session of playing the scales, I'm really angry when thepianoguy program comes on. Not at thepianoguy, I'm angry I can't play through the pain. I'm angry that I was defeated by it. I'm angry I waited too late to do what I always knew needed to be done, and I didn't do it outta pure spite. I'm so pissed off and spiteful about several of my own discisions I find it more and more difficult to forgive myself as fast as I condemn myself. That's why I think I'm in sorrowful physical pain. I was warned. I was told. I blasphemed the spirit in which it was told. I tried to mend my ways and make up for lost time, but I don't even believe myself when I try to sound sincere. I got a history of lying to my Self, and it runs deeper once the colors are struck.

Sometime I think the essence of what's happened in my life is that I learned that lying to my care-takers would cause them to leave me alone to my own devices. They wanted to hear me tell them their worst fears were not actively transpiring. They didn't wanna know what I was doing. Just that I was being their version of a good boy. They wanted to hear my lies, and see me blink my long eyelashes deep in the shadow of my protruding brow.

The essence of the me-and-thee-ing (meaning) to be found in my formative years in life is what happened between me and thee. Everything else was chit chat. As a child I felt like that was all that mattered, and the world proved it to me every day that passed, and expecially in the Navy and other large institutions like colleges and hospitals. The only thing that mattered was those moments when my mother looked me straight into my eyes and demanded I tell her what happened, and I told her the lie she could use to defend me with. My mother was my first PR agent, and my mentor for becoming a journeyman liar. Later, I found out that any warm body would do of any age, color, or gender. Just politely provide whoever with the lie they could defend me with, and they'd let me go my way. "Thank you very much. Get in touch when you're back in town. I love the way you let me be you." Selah

I read somewhere that the term Selah is not well understood. A significant number of scholars appear to have concluded it was probably a musical symbol that meant the end of a passage or phrase of song or poetry. I use it that way because I want to impress people who take it religiously, and because I don't have to ask nobody if I can. Why would I not?