Hi and welcome to the Attic, I'm Frankenberry of said Blog Title and I write of just my everyday here, sometimes funny, sometimes heartfelt, sometimes angry, sometimes funny again because, well, who don't like funny, thoughts on getting older and sometimes stuff that's just kinda shit. I pen and sing the occasional parody tune and other songs, sometimes I even get a little bit poetic or short story-etic or something like that. If you're joining me here I thank you, but just mind your head and feet and keep an eye out for my little Bella and Cricket The Blind as well as the memories of Raspberry (Razzy), Mimi the Quirky, of Blink The Lil' Kit, Grayson the Mighty, Shoes the Big Orange, Shana-Girl, Benny Good Man Benny Brown, Merlin & Bob. Wouldn't want you step on them or anything … 'cause then I might just have to throw you down the stairs … damned humans.
We get a morning tray of bagels and some cream cheese delivered to work once a week. It’s a small but nice thing from a cool little bagel shop that brightens the day and is definitely appreciated. This once weekly has been the case for as long as I can remember at this place. Now, I don’t always get one as they’re pretty popular but, more often than not, it’s simply because I just forget and am only reminded of bagel day when I see the tray on a table after making make my way downstairs to the kitchen at lunch to the toaster oven for my cold cut & cheese toasted bread sandwich of the day/week or to the microwave to heat up some Beefaroni with hot sauce, or something else Chef Boyardee depending on how flush I am that week or the mood (I really like Chef Boyardee).
On those most occasions when I have forgotten bagel day, I am reminded by this …
… one or a couple of bagel half remainders in the tray and a partially used cream cheese with a plastic knife or two (no, no one ever thinks to put the cream cheese in the fridge) and I am, again, also reminded to continue to be fascinated by the mindset of whoever it is that tears a perfectly good bagel in half and then puts the other half back on the tray, as if almost being generous.
“Well, I don’t want a whole bagel, just a half, and I would surely be remiss, almost greedy, if I didn’t leave the other half for someone else to enjoy right? Plus I’m even spreading the wealth of a limited supply of bagel bounty” I think they say to themselves with a self-satisfied nod.
It’s kind of like trying to figure the mindset of that person who can peer into the at work kitchen’s community fridge and, knowing that not only HAVEN’T they purchased whatever it is that’s in there or that their mother did NOT make it for them, still find it possible to justify the taking of something. Like the devil on their one shoulder, after giving the angel on the other the heave-ho while flipping them off on the way down, has convinced their human that “well, it IS something that you like, and you HAVE bought something similar in the past so it must therefore be POSSIBLE that it’s yours”.
I realize the two things, the bagels and the fridge are different (and as to the fridge it’s the reason that I have my OWN medium sized one in my studio – greatest birthday present ever from years ago – thanks Ma, Beck & Nick) but it is the mindset of both that is so fascinating.
As to the bagel dilemma here? A few things.
One: When in my forgetting of bagel day and the eventual said discovery at lunch time of one or a couple of bagels torn in half being the last survivors note that this is the case, every fucking week. And they come pre-sliced for god’s sake making this even more ridiculous.
Two: it continues to happen because the bagel tearers obviously don’t come back down to the kitchen after sitting upstairs enjoying their torn half while just as surely enjoying the largess of their consideration for others.
Three: If they did come back downstairs they might understand that no one wants the other half of their manhandled bagel, EVER, especially now, though sadly, they would probably be more inclined to wonder how the rest of us could be so ungrateful as to ignore their gesture.
Four: I’m reminded now to buy a loaf of bread, preferably Rye, and put it in my fridge.
Five: Does this mean anything? No. I mean I still ain’t gonna be grabbin’ some half a bagel that has had someone’s meat paws all over it but I was just wondering at the silly and the mundane to pass some time. So necessary.
I’ve discovered after quite few parody tunes over the last number of years that I don’t just like to skewer the Orange, something always well deserved, but that I just like singin’ ’em, that I like the “let go” my little studio affords on an occasional Friday night when the work gang has left to whatever weekends might await them to then just be left alone to my own device, a singular one with headphones on, new words to play and a foot stomp underneath my board that I try my best to edit out or at least soften later on as I’m having fun.
This is another such fun.
Is it any good? Well that’s not for me to decide, I guess. I think they’re all good but to tell ya the truth I don’t really care. I mean, I’d like that you thought they were ok, that lyrically you’d be impressed and that you wouldn’t have to cover your dog’s ears at my singing. But in the long run? They’re only me doing karaoke with new words in my little comfort zone of a studio just minus yet another pitcher of beer and friends egging you on with hands at your back. Fun is fun and that’s been in short supply for a while now. I’ll take it where I can get it or, more to the point, where I can manufacture it.
Here’s to the occasional Friday.
He’s The Deceiver
I thought e-lections were just a people’s choice
Stand in line or use mail as you saw fit
But he powers in delusions
Make see through his allusions
To fraud as truth to prove out all his schemes
—
Then he lost the race
But still the deceiver
Fraud’s the claim
No doubt in small minds
It’s cult love
Ooohhh
What a deceiver
True dead believers
Fall in line
—
A hundred so Repubs did take a bold dumb stand
Support sedition no matter what the-e cost
Ignoring what we stand for
Destroying what we asked for
Instead just backing true great leaders screams
—
But we know the face
A one of deceiver
Though he lost the race
He won he’ll tell kind
—
It was a scam
Ooohhh
He’ll tweet his deceptions
Ask for corrections
Stay by his side
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
He just keeps on tryin’
Courts take attempts to dyin’
Ignoring all to try to stay his reign
—
Now we know his face
The one of deceiver
Preach vio-lence
It’s the only real way
If you want a say
ooohhh
In a new order
Where truth’s still given no quar-ter
—
All you’ll get is pa-ain
If you’re not a believer
All you’ll get is ra-ain
Of facts to disdain
—
Now he’s the deceiver yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah a yeah
The snow was tall, just tall as enough tall it needed to be against the front door to keep it from opening as I remember now, though 17 feet at least it seemed in my head then, though bear in mind that my tall was small (but with hope of a big someday). I was only seven or eight or so and I was mad. My parents had just bought their first house, a something numbered address on Archer road in Mahopac NY with me in tow. But I was mad, not the mad that some might attribute to me and my now of cats, a crazy cat lady guy and a need for solitude away from a mad, mad, mad, mad world, that kind of mad, but with a just being mad … why the fuck can’t I open the front door to the glories of snow?
I hate snow, or at least I hate it now, the cold that it is and the down of that cold, the darkness of a light’s short days that come with it. But, again, I was seven or eight or so. Snow was a wonder then, something just waiting for the play.
It certainly, the snow, wasn’t 17 feet tall but it feeling taller than me it could have been 30 feet, or a hundred feet, or a however many feet that were necessary to dwarf me. It was as far away as just a glass door, that extra door that you doored along with an already perfectly good door, one that could become a screen in the summer months for a bit of air and I pushed, pushed against not 17 feet of snow, but enough, against the door, a silly angry kid pushing against a door. And I even had my galoshes on. Ready. Snow.
Man, that shit could bleed, knuckles, after the mad and it’s push to open a door that didn’t want to be opened, a door that just said “leave me be son,” “I’ve been holding this off all night” “have ya seen the snow? It’s almost 17 feet.” That was my first scar, a one right atop my right hand. A fist knuckle and a hard punch. The only thing missing was the “motherfucker” exclamations that would come years later for all of the times snow or anything of the sort would be 17 feet tall.
//////////////////////////////////
Jonna and Keryl give me a pass, I think, as to our guests. It’s a show, Happy Hour, that we’ve been doing since dinosaurs searched out self help gurus to ask of what to do for their inadequacies, “I’m too big with short arms” “Mom wasn’t around for the long names that would come based on my bones” “I was a vegetarian though three stories tall and a bit ungainly”. They know I’ll never read the books from these guests, I can’t, I don’t read anything that isn’t filled with the wonder of places imagined, some of swords and kings, some of spaceships and distant planets, all of a simply not here, instead of just “self help” vagaries that tell you of who you could be if only you could be someone else. But surprisingly, some things, even in my cynicism seep through, our guests, all, have their moments for me. I Just patch them together, grab bits and pieces that may mean something and move forward. A lot of them are the same, some just a more well known, more established name “same” than others but, really, the same. But I grab that patchwork, a workable patchwork mind you, and roll. No need more.
Recently in one of our shows Jonna talked of finally wanting to write her own book. A something she has in her, like Keryl who has two now, Jonna’s Facebook posts evidence of the writer.
Jonna, if you’re going to write a book please don’t think of it as the topic of a future interview for a podcast with a couple of ladies and some dude interviewing for advice within a small world of such. Just write your book and a just you book. Write too much, exaggerate often, but just be a book that books as a Jonna book will book.
///////////////////////////////
Bella has one PC chair while I sit in the other. I have two. One is the “Shoes” chair the spot he owned from the moment I took it out of the box years ago and layed my thin Steelers blanket on it after trying not to have any assembly pieces left over. Then there’s the one slowly becoming the “Bella” chair as I sit on all nights and she sits with me after a dinner shared with Cricket the Blind on her foot recognized paper towel for the small forks cuts of extra dinner to come and an attempt at the same with Mimi the Quirky (successful if it’s chicken).
Bella is the most patient of cats, there’s not a of one of us who couldn’t be better off with the kind of patience she shows, not liking Cricket the Blind and only minding Mimi the Quirky, she exhibits her patience just for me, holds back any anger she may have at these “others” who have invaded our space for belly rubs on her dot of a small bit circle of carpet in the living room I never use in this two room place or another rubbed belly on her chair or even on her crunchy paper (my sister sends powdered vitamins once a month worrying of my possible vitamin deficiencies in a box that doesn’t really need any packing but she still does with that hard edged brown paper stuffed to the left or right of that packing box, depending on how you opened it – I think she knows it’s not needed but packs it just the same – she knows cats). It’s Christmas day every month for Bella when I get my vitamins and she gets a new lay on fresh crunchy paper splayed out next to last month’s flattened such.
I know this is a little disjointed but it’s one of the ways I like to think, in short blurbs of current things or memories that may not be connected or just might be (usually are). This one is the latter but it’s where my thoughts were this weekend, as some of you might be able to relate to disjointed thoughts, the brain being a bit of jumble during the upside down we live in. But it is a weekend where I’ve taken Monday off to give me 3 days, to at least breathe a bit (though apparently not to get my thoughts into any cohesive form here). I get 3 weeks a year of vacation time, or PTO for those technical. 15 days to do with as I will. I do this once a month and this month is a bonus with the holidays giving me a couple of others. I almost feel guilty knowing that the holidays afford me my once a month twice without paperwork and a minus #’s on my paystub but I’m not going to let that deter. A once a month Monday is a once a month Monday. The holidays are just gravy. Could I take a week at some point, call it a vacation, sure. But I’m a single dude always strapped and I have my charges. Plus, where am I going to go, especially now?
Some of you might be alright with believing a normal exists but I’m not a one and it doesn’t.
There’s so much that is 17 feet tall, hell, most of our lives are spent trying to deal with 17 feet tall, a seemingly insurmountable task of too tall walls, placed there daring us to scale maybe even bloodied knuckles to come from the attempts.
But I’m in no mood to scale today. This is simply my acknowledgement of such. 17 feet? I gotcha. Tall you are. But I’m just gonna take an extra day and sit and surveil a tall wall for no reason other than no reason, and hunker a bit away, just me and the girls.
A one of two kittens that come by the pair, replete with four mittens and a wide eyed small stare, she moments to pause from a kitten cat’s chores, to jump and to hop and to run and to plop atop sibling who mistakenly stopped and a … plop … ahead of fast sibling play … a ball now of rolling fur squeaks, screeches, giggles, if kits do it seems take then to giggle and squiggle though surely they’ve no trouble to wiggle and wriggle into places way small, to thrust paws out by ones, after one, one by one with back ‘gainst small’s wall, they defend fun to the alls till an open can sounds … stop … plop … whatchya got?
This little fat tail (downstairs at the house) is what I imagine Cindy Lou Who’s cat would have looked like if Cindy Lou Who had had a cat … and that.
… the other of two kittens that come by the pair … he thinks he likes sinks, knows he likes sinks and of your opinion of his thinks of said sinks? Well, he’s decided that he’s just not one to care … so there.
So now that we’ve gotten all gratitudey … and eaten, I think it’s safe to possibly air out some annoyances. I was gonna do it yesterday but I didn’t want to step on all this gratituding going around, especially when it was so well called for, so necessary in such a sad, sad year as this one and not just for reasons of a pandemic alone. An Orange tinge hovers, blusters. Plus, it would have bothered my Mom as she was so enjoying my shirt and tie on our Thanksgiving Zoom call with her and my Sis. I told her that Zoom has a code of fashion conduct that you have to follow in order to sign up for their services, that you have to look presentable so thus the shirt and tie. But I also told her that that code didn’t include pants. She looked at me, with a wry smile, as if to say stuff it Stephen.
Gotta love getting a laugh out of Ma, who has such a genuine and infectious one, even as her days are different now, that they come with a slide. My sister and I, along with her had looked into assisted living places just before the pandemic, even found one that would just do. A just “would do” wasn’t enough though, I wasn’t a huge fan of some of the details. But then there was the lockdown and the stay at home and Beck took her to her house near Albany with my nephews and cats and a Razzy, the definition of sweetest of dogs.
Now I have written of this before but why not a bit of repeat? Heck, it is MY blog so why not? When Beck told me, as some pandemic time passed and while I wore the same pair of sweatpants to work every day for three months, maybe even four, my own way of trying to cope by being silly amid a scared crazy, even if no one noticed other than me, I just thought these sweatpants were funny (they were clean by the way, well, as clean as butt aired out every night on the back of one of my one or the other computer chairs and then thrown in the wash every Saturday can be) but when Beck called me on one Friday and told me that she was going have Ma stay with her instead of that facility I said “that’s great” we talked some more, I held in, said “Love You’s”, hung up the phone and then broke down. Hard. Puddle.
This shitty thing, this shitty ass time, this fearful adapting had actually brought some good and, in my world, our world, that was a huge good, the best of possible good. If not for it then Beck and the boys and the fur may never have had the opportunity to discover that having Granny around was a good thing and so much better for her than some place full of strangers, to help slow her slide with all the interaction and stimulation of a house with the non-stop action of a teenager, a 20 year old, cats who don’t always get along, sometimes never and with noise, a beyond loveable dog who adoringly sits on her hip and even a crazy kitten who garners a ton of “Bloody Hells!!!” from that English lady in the extra bedroom. She was finally away from the solitude of a little one bedroom place that, though she loved, was killing her.
Yeah, my gratitudeyness yesterday was that Zoom call, and seeing Mom in some fancy dangling earrings that she so loves to sport and laughing that laugh of hers and my Sis, in a Pittsburgh Pirates sweatshirt, in an our Pittsburgh Pirates sweatshirt, seeing the gang lounging Thanksgiving comfy in whatever spots I could see through Beck’s laptop cam. So, I held off on airing annoyances until today.
But gloves are off now Mr Gratitude you thankful baastaad! You had your day and your food coma now back the hell off!!
Ma, you looked good, proud look dangling earrings an’ all and though I held off. I think you and I could share some stories of annoyances, at least some you could remember in the moment of the telling.
It’s been a long year, a too long a year filled with too many painful reminders of how fragile this all is. I wrote a lot of words last night given the time of an extra day/night (a favorite of things), getting lost in waaaaay too many of those words that kept me up, but all of them were shit, thrown away.
I tried to be profound, hoping for a “wow” that didn’t come.
I tried to sound sagely but lord knows, though I’m old and know a few things, I couldn’t pull it off and I knew no one would listen.
I tried to force some of those words through sheer keyboard.
I even thought to ingratiate myself to the myriad pets and their charges who don’t know they’re charges with tails of a simple cat guy owned, maybe even with an “Awwwwww” picture or two. Usually that’s a slam dunk. No go.
I don’t know what your day is, or how you plan to spend it.
But I hope it’s a safe spend and not one of silly defiance.
We’re still breathin’, hopefully without labor or assistance and still talkin’ of such.
Be thankful for that.
A Zoom call awaits with my Mom and Sis and the gang later (brother Nick proving to be the hardest working guy I’ve ever known as always) . I might even wear a tie for Ma just for the laugh.
I mean, gotta look good on Thanksgiving day right?
A cure of the tired tired, or at least a treatment.
Besides that Juan and John laminated grade school picture art project that I posted of earlier I have another piece of something that has always been with me.
The Steelers had always been a sad sack franchise, the word “win” wasn’t in the vocabulary, and I, of course loved them. Underdogs and “losers” have always been my thing because there is no greater victory or joy than when you get elevated from underdog and loser status to winner. The 70’s were pretty good for that elevating as a Pittsburgh fan, especially in football land, but my Bucco’s, though, always came up a bit short. They should have been a dynasty like their football brethren. In my lifetime these painfully beloved Bucco’s of mine have only risen to this winner status twice, the first time I don’t really have a lot of memory of, other than Roberto being Roberto and then being gone. I remember that. Sadly.
The second time I was in high school where my Bucco’s fandom was shared by only two others. Growing up in New York we had to deal with the Yankees and their history, their history of winning, always freakin’ winning and being reminded almost daily of that winning and it came with a unique New York arrogance that still bothers me to no end. Then our “We Are Family” Pirates got elevated in ’79.
Man, we were dicks for a day in our gloating.
But it was the Steelers who introduced me to the idea that underdogs can have their say.
Mom and Dad had just finished adding the smallest of extensions to our smallest of houses, making it just a bit larger. Mom was in her glory, this new small room was huge to her and, with a couch and a couple of side tables, lamps and a coffee table added, along with some knickknacks and a TV, it became our spot, our family spot and a one she so loved to show off.
They allowed me this spot, all to my own, one day, gave me this space to watch the Steelers win their first Super Bowl.
I threw passes to myself with a little stuffed black and gold football, another thing I couldn’t tell ya from where it came, crashed into the new couch for the most amazing of catches as imaginary crowds roared.
That was a day.
I realize that these are just things, my grade school art project, my stuffed football, and that when I’m gone will most surely be discarded as family cleans out my place, though I hope not. But they are reminders, connections to a when when we weren’t so scared or angry or worried of our future.
When I was a kid, in grade school, we had an art project. I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. The project was to find a picture that meant something to us and we were going to laminate it (you also had to find something to laminate it on … thanks dad). I don’t remember what that laminating was, probably some highly toxic shit that I haphazardly brushed on with a 7 or 8 year old’s haphazard glee, maybe even ate some of, not concerned with the possibility of future kids with four arms or an extra eye. But an art project it was. I still remember my teacher being taken aback at my choice of photo. I couldn’t’ tell ya where I would have come about this, a newspaper clipping from years earlier, but I’ve always been a baseball guy and this picture meant a great deal to me then for some reason. I’m sure my teacher was concerned with the violence of it but to me it was just baseball, but when it went awry. Who doesn’t the love the staid when it gets a bit off course?
I think about it now only because, like I said, I’m tired, and I’m eating. There’s only so much you can deal with before a regress to when things were simple, when times weren’t as contentious, or when we weren’t as frightened, when mom and dad only argued, not over politics, but over how much dad would have in his pocket tomorrow and why couldn’t he just brown bag it like the kids (my dad always wanted a couple of extra bucks in his pocket, not for buying lunch, but just in case he came across someone who could use it)
I still have this “art” project, 50 or so years later. It serves as a sort of table at my crosslegged feet while I pathetically or not pathetically eat my dinner, sharing it with cats and a bit of TV I can never decide on. It is one of my greatest reminders.
(excuse the duct tape corner. This stuff that it was can get a bit stabby after all the years)
As Hollywood screenwriters and those that specialize in surreal dark humor shake their heads in frustration knowing that no matter how good they are at what they do they will never be as good as the reality that is the batshittery of the Rudy Traveling Medicine Show, where the only thing missing from this latest stop in the tour was his sweaty melting head’s contorted face and his two snake oil associates revealing that, not only did Biden rig this election with Cuba, Jews and a long dead Hugo Chavez’s help, sending our votes overseas to be counted in Germany and Spain, but that the Biden campaign also got help from aliens. Not the job stealing brown thieving, raping, pillaging, murdering, land claiming aliens trying to cross our border by the hundreds of gazillions on a daily basis but by ACTUAL aliens, the outer spacey kind … before they get their asses kicked by Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum of course.
But these aliens, obviously as conniving and corrupt as Biden himself to offer him their assistance, couldn’t stop the bravest of brave Rudy Show associate snake oilers, Sidney Powell, from dropping some cold hard truth on us … “President Trump won by a landslide, we are going to prove it, and we are going to reclaim the United States of America for the people who vote for freedom” conveniently leaving out that her definition of “freedom” is WILDLY different from the one we’re more accustomed to while adding “oh, and Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum are comin’ with a nuke for your alien asses!”
Hi and welcome to the Attic, I'm Frankenberry of said Blog Title and I write of just my everyday here, sometimes funny, sometimes heartfelt, sometimes angry, sometimes funny again because, well, who don't like funny, thoughts on getting older and sometimes stuff that's just kinda shit. I pen and sing the occasional parody tune and other songs, sometimes I even get a little bit poetic or short story-etic or something like that. If you're joining me here I thank you, but just mind your head and feet and keep an eye out for my little Bella and Cricket The Blind as well as the memories of Raspberry (Razzy), Mimi the Quirky, of Blink The Lil' Kit, Grayson the Mighty, Shoes the Big Orange, Shana-Girl, Benny Good Man Benny Brown, Merlin & Bob. Wouldn't want you step on them or anything ... 'cause then I might just have to throw you down the stairs ... damned humans.
Sundarbans,The sunderbans, Sundarban Tour, Sundarban Travel Guide, Mangrove Forest, UNESCO World Heritage Site, Royal Bengal Tiger, Tiger Sighting, Wildlife Photography, Bird Watching, Sundarban Safari, Houseboat Tour, Ecotourism, Adventure Travel, West Bengal Tourism, Bangladesh Tourism, People of Sundarbans, Local Culture, Bonbibi, Mowal, Honey Collector, Sundarban Legends, Mangrove Ecosystem, Conservation, Climate Change, Biodiversity, Sundari Tree, Sundarban Itinerary, Travel to Sundarbans, Kolkata to Sundarbans, Sundarban Boat Trip, Wildlife in Sundarbans, Saltwater Crocodile, Spotted Deer, Indian Python, King Cobra, Sundarban National Park, Sundarban Tiger Reserve, Bay of Bengal, River Cruise, Nature Photography, Forest Life.
A personal exploration of autism from a brother’s perspective, including family relationships, philosophy, neuroscience, mental health history and ethics
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