Tuesday, February 22, 2005
 
Hear The Sound Of The Pouring Rain Coming Down Like An Armageddon Flame
I am Routine's bitch.

You don't need any more evidence than this blog. I write posts at the same time every day, five days a week. Then I write one more on Sunday nights, but always the same time on Sunday nights so that my dear, faithful readers will have fresh Bucket to greet them on Monday morning.

OK, so it's not really about you people. I tried to lie, but it's no use. It's the Routine. I've settled into the habit of writing at certain times and so I write at certain times, come hell or high water (more on that in a second). If I were being completely honest with myself (an overrated concept if you ask me) I would admit that I would write and post with the exact same frequency if everyone suddenly stopped reading. This is what I do instead of checking to see if the oven is turned off every 15 minutes.

The irony is if I were being completely honest with myself in the beginning, I never would have started a blog. I told myself the purposeful lie "Yeah, I'm fascinating. People want to know what I have to say". This is the basic lie all bloggers must tell themselves in order to start cataloguing their lives for public consumption. For many of us the lie stays a lie because we write about shit nobody cares about in uninteresting ways. Those blogs die well-deserved and timely deaths. For others the lie becomes self-fulfilling prophecy (don't know if I'd say "truth" so much) because we are able to write about shit nobody cares about in rudimentarily semi-interesting ways, just enough to draw a few suckers in and get the snowball rolling.

But again, this is outside of my general point. I'm writing now because I have to; my slightly abnormal brain chemistry demands it.

Blog writing is just a part of the daily routine, though. Now that the holiday has come and gone, we're back on School Time, one of two basic Day-Schedule Templates I carry around in my head to keep the demons of disorganization at bay. The other is, not suprisingly, Not School Time.

Because I am Routine's bitch, I ran through all the motions this morning. This includes turning on the television at 7 am to catch a little bit of the early news, primarily to check the weather. This was a patently ridiculous thing to do this morning. For those who don't know, it's been raining for a week straight in southern California. It's supposed to rain the rest of the week, too. I knew this. Everyone knows this. But still I had to check.

Before the weather came the general news. Wanna guess what it was about?

Mudslide in Highland Park.

Mudslide in Bel Air.

Mudslide in Glendale.

Mudslide in Orange.

Mudslide in Woodland Hills.

Mudslide in Mission Viejo.

If you don't live on a hill in SoCal, you live in a valley. It's just the way it works. So in these years when we get double or triple our average rainfall, you find yourself perched on the side of a hill capable of sliding or looking up at a hill capable of burying you while you sleep.

Because the persistent threat of earthquakes isn't enough to keep us alert, now we have to worry about giant boulders crashing into our bedrooms and killing us.

So tomorrow, Routine can go fuck itself. Instead of turning on the news to hear about teenage girls being murdered by rampaging landscape, I'm going to hit myself in the face with a hammer several times instead. I may wrap it in a cloth first, I may not. Either way I'll have to consider the long term as I will most likely have to work it into my daily schedule from here on out. Routine is not fickle.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 7.5


Pops

Comments:
I started blogging not because I thought people wanted to hear what I had to say, but because I wanted to hear what I had to say. Mine was the ultimate narcissistic display. Now, it's a routine I look forward to (just like you). :)

I miss your "Cake? Who wants cake?" tag line though.
 
You are the Alpha Blogger.

...and I miss it too.

I put it back. How's that for customer service?
 
I'm just wondering ... will the hammer-in-the-face part be before or after your blogging?
 
Hopefully a large percentage of your routine won't be avoiding natural disasters.... although that is a pretty interesting read
 
Hammer in the face...reminds me of a scene from The Shining...

But that was a huge croquet mallet and a guy who was possessed by meanie spirits.
 
Hm, isn't it just a natural truth that if you don't live on a hill, you live in a valley? I mean, it's either up or down. It's not just specifically California, is it? Hm. I will think about this. I wouldn't know about hills, here in Wisconsin, we don't have any land forms higher than, well, we just don't have any landforms. We don't have any exciting things. Darn.
 
I shore as hell am glad I don't live anywhere near a hill or valley. That's one of the benefits of living in an older flat area that decidedly wisely not to let any "natural beauty" remain, meaning there is no dirt anywhere near us to turn into mud. Well, that's not true--since the driveway people are waiting for stuff to dry out to finish, we've been living with this giant moat-like thing in the front yard, and the sides of our existing concrete have been crumbled, meaning I have to this Indiana Jones thing every morning and evening when I need to get in and out of the car. Hopefully that damn driveway will get done sometime this year. *sigh*
 
HFB: Depends entirely on how much trouble I'm having coming up with a decent blog-post idea. Sometimes I need a good old fashioned blunt trauma about the face, chest, head and neck to get the ol' blood flowing.

Brent: I agree, I would take a mudslide if it meant never having to post about George Bush anymore.

Jess: Believe it or not I have never seen The Shining. I am shamed.

Yoli: I will respectfully refer you to the above answer to the question you just reiterated.

K: Erm... you kind of illustrate my point. There are parts of this great, fine nation of ours that is what I like to call "topographically challenged". Wisconsin and every state south of there all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, for instance.

Steph: That will teach you to get all uppity and try to improve your property. You take what the Lord done give you, woman, or you feel His holy wrath. Reap the whirlwind, sister.

MPH: I think you are awesome, though I would bet probably not in the same way you think I think you're awesome.
 
The Shining has been way over-hyped through the years, but it did have some great and creepy scenes, that I'm sure you could quote verbatim even though you've never seen it.
 
You know, I just did a map of the United States for my geography class and we had to color it like a physical map. And, there are some yellow spots in Wisconsin, showing that it's not all flat. We do have some hills. I take it back. I have just never seen them. (Damn, I've been to the Andes Mountains and I havn't even seen the "hills" of my own state. I should work on that.)
 
I like to write comments because I only have to write about things connected to shit nobody cares about in rudimentarily slightly-semi-interesting ways. For example.

In one of them John McPhee books, I read about plants in California whose seeds only germinate after a fire. The plants also become highly flammable every 8-15 years to help start fires. Should we kill all those plants to save people in The West (I've never been to The West, so I only assume it really exists).
 
Hey now, Wisconsin isn't all that bad. Have you ever seen Illinois? I mean, for reals, have you ever driven ACROSS Illinois?

The states to the south of Wisconsin (and even to the west) have it a lot worse in the craptastic flatness.

Also, K, not sure which part of the Sin you are in, but the further north you go, the more interesting the landscape gets. That's my personal opinion. :)
 
SJ: Yes, I've seen the highlights. I think I tried to watch it once, but the giant flood of blood in one scene kind of turned me off. Is that the right movie?

K: Fine fine, it's not totally flat in Wisconsin. Wisconsin is the best state ever. Happy?

Rambuncle: John McPhee? No, you mean John McClane. That was yesterday's thread topic.

Sunny: Oh sure, well, if it's soooo great there, why did you leave it in favor of the geographical splendor that is Missourah?
 
No no, I blog obsessively so I don't have to check the oven every 15 minutes. If I did both, there would be something wrong with me. I would probably have to take one of those pills they advertise on TV with the people walking through tall grass under an impossibly blue sky.
 
Thanks for your early morning entertainment. It sure beats watching the news! (Oh, by the way, up here on the B.C. coast where it usually rains every day we are having a month of record sunshine!)
 
We're stealing all your rain. You're not going to be so grateful this summer when the record drought kills all the trees.

Oh, and you're welcome.
 
Seems we have some semantic confusion, whereas we are confused semantically. Let me explain

I challenge you to a duel! Nerf Bow and Arrows at mid-afternoon.

"The Detroit Pumpkin Seed" is, though unrelated to natural disaster/man vs nature, good.
 
I totally followed all of that. You don't scare me.
 
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