BLATHER REVIEW

Blogathon! Help Keep Sporky Off The Streets!

GOAL HAS BEEN REACHED!! WOO HOO!!!!! YOU GUYS RULE!!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!

Some people who've made a decent living have had their livelihoods swept away when their jobs were sent overseas. Others, like me, who've made a decent living in the past have had their livelihoods swept away by technology. In my case, computers. The market for experienced printing press operators ain't what it used to be.

Well, after six months of looking for something that pays more than minimum wage, my unemployment benefits ran out. Surprisingly, at that point, finding a job that pays even a mere 8 bucks an hour proved more difficult than I'd expected. Even low-paying assembly work seems to demand several years of experience for crying out loud. And making the rounds is tough when you've got no gas in the tank.

While I am finally back to work (Yay!:)), I have come to be two months behind in my rent, and I wont have enough to make a payment until I'm three months behind. Needless to say, my landlady, Denise, is hurting, trying to make her mortgage payments without any income from yours truly in over two months. (She was on disability for a few years and is now probably making not much more than I am which ain't much, lemme tell ya.)

She needs a rent payment from me now. ASAP. As in this week. I can't afford to move. I don't want to move, and I'm sure she doesn't want me to move, but this is crunch time in Blather Review Land. So, my rare, precious and beautiful fellow bloggers, let's have a Blogathon!

My goal is modest: $600 by the end of the weekend. Even if it takes a week and a half for PayPal to get me some funds, at least I can tell Denise that help is on the way. So, whadda ya say, sporks fans? 600 bloggers at $1 each and we're there! But let's not count on 600 bloggers coming through for us. Give 'til it feels good! I may even have a prize for all donators. Maybe I'll email y'all a copy of my 2nd place Barnum Essay Contest winner. I dunno.

So, help to keep me off the streets. Help keep Blather Review online. Keep telling yourself that it's for a good cause. Spread the word, and lets see how fast we can reach that easy goal!

Thank you for your help!

Only 10 more shopping days 'til hot dogs and bologna are off the menu. :)

UPDATE @ 7:11pm: Woo Hoo! We're at $96.20 already! Thank you thank you thank you!! You guys and gals rule!!!

UPDATE @ 8:47pm: Nuthin' comin' in in a while. Come o-o-o-o-o-on, my Lovies! Let's see if we can bitchslap that $600 goal tonight and get it overwith!

Sending thanks to my special friends now...

UPDATE @ 3:52pm Sunday: Only 5 donations thus far. **sigh** Gotta spread the word a bit more widely. Let's see....

UPDATE @ 11:11pm: Goal is reached!! Just passed $600!!!

I am in awe of the blogosphere. I have no appropriate words to express my humble gratitude except to say THANK YOU. This really means alot to me. Crap, I wish I had something to say that was worthy of your generous assistance to a blogger in need. **sigh** Must. Get. Sleep. zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....

Well, That Was Odd

PART 2:

First I noticed that I existed and, by the voices, that there were others around me. But I knew nothing of what or where I was. The voices were female and things began to seem a bit familiar. This is the bus, I realized, and I was about to die.... then I snapped up while taking a quick deep breath and things immediately seemed a lot clearer. I wasn't about to die.... I was about to fall asleep. Head so foggy. My brain was tingling with growing comprehension, just like back in the days when I was a teenager and used to hyperventilate and then hold my breath while squeezing my chest to get the oxygen overdose until I passed out. Coming to then was just like this. Where was that damn bus driver going? Oh, he was off to that little store for a bottle of water, I guessed. I put the crossword puzzle in my coat pocket. If I'd dared to look at it I might've never woken up again.

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PART 1

I was in the back of the bus hunched over a crossword puzzle. I'd completed only about half of it and wondered if I could finish it. The remaining spaces -- large chunks of the puzzle -- were empty because I just could not get any of the cross-words and get a clue about the other words. The bus came to the stop just in front of the A&P supermarket and, by the sound of their voices and the character of their banter, I knew that a few highschool girls got on board. The bus driver turned the engine off.

The girls came closer and closer as I stared straight through the crossword puzzle. I wasn't distracted -- I had nothing on my mind. My only sensory input seemed to be their words which I was not listening to. In my upper-left peripheral vision I saw one girl sit down directly in front of me. "Sit over here, girl," a more distant voice said, and the sitting girl skooched over toward the voice. I thought of looking up. I thought that I might be dreaming and remembered that if I ever wondered if I was dreaming, I was. I didn't know where I was.

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EPILOGUE

Hmmph. That's never happened before. Everything you just read that happened between "'Sit over here, girl'" and "Head so foggy" happened in the space of about three or four seconds. Maybe it was a mini-bout of narcolepsy? Weird, that.

ME ( pt 1)

So, I waa sitting there:
12 years old and sitting in my mother's chair and worried about stuff.

Well, I had no reason to worry. I hadn't lied to my mother in a while.
I sat there trying to relax myself and convince myself that I had nothing to worry about. A whole evening free from stress! What a gift for myself!!

Why? Because the future builds only on the present and the past. And the present and past -- when I was 12 -- weren't lookin' like much to build on at the time.

I was lost in a world of bullies and brains and jocks and geeks and me. To suggest that I was merely "disinterested" might even be flattering. But, alas, I was merely disconnected.

I was never a part of any "crowd". I was always me.. alone.

I joined the Cub Scouts when I was 8 and in 3rd grade. I liked the uniform. Did I join because my mom thought it was a good idea? Nope. It was my idea.
Then I wanted to play in the Little League. My mom asked me "How are you gonna do that?"
"I don't know," I said
:"Well,, neither do I" she commanded.
I never played Little League.

If there's one thing my mother understands it's cold-hearted abandonment. And apples don't fall far from the tree...

About ten years ago my elder sister, J, asked our father why, exactly, our parents had seperated so early on in their marriage. He told some lame-o story about how our mom got herself pregnant by some phantom friend of theirs.
But since I have a half-brother who's only 3 years younger than I -- and, as best I can reconstruct -- he left us when I was about 2: methinks that dear ol' dad has not only left his first family for a second, but that he's unfairly tried to shift the blame to someone else (namely: Mom).

Don't l.ie to my sister, Daddi-0.

My grandmother (my mother's mother) used to say (when we were kids): "Don't hate your father...!"

As a kid I never knew why she kept saying that. As a sorry excuse for a man I know: She wanted us to believe that parents are to be cherished at least as much as Life itself... and/or - take yer pick - children......

- - - - - -

I've earned almost nothing that I have. The computer I post this on was a gift from a friend. The TV that's playing in the background was the gift of a friend. The bed that I sleep on is made up of cushions from a sofa that was given to me by a friend's father.

That I have survived this long in this old world amazes me.

If I ever do destroy myself, it's only because I was never anyone that mattered in the first place.

Gawd, I hate when when I think like this... ;)

UPDATE Yikes! I re-read this and it sounds like a frickin' suicide note! IT'S NOT!!!
I just wish I had some kinda realistic goal in life is all.!! Is that so wro-o-o-o-ng...?"