The Breadbin

I've never seen a ghost.
I've felt one, or at least the cold spot that is commonly linked to ghostly activity. That happened a quarter century ago, and you can be forgiven for thinking I imagined it; I can only assert that I didn't, and that the
sensation of sweat freezing on you in midsummer is a helluva persuader. It scared the crap out of me, I don't mind admitting.

If you haven't guessed, I believe in ghosts. I believe in ghosts on the grounds that there have been entirely too many sightings of ghostly phenomena for me not to. Even if 99.99% of these sightings are fraudulent, that still leaves a goodish number of odd events for which "ghosts" are as good an explanation as any.

I've read a great number of accounts of 'true' hauntings over the years, and one of the common denominators in most of these stories is a specific sort of death. Heart failure is unlikely to lead to a haunting, whereas if someone dies of a broken heart...that's a…

I'm about as flexible as your average iron bar. Ask me to touch my toes, and I'll tell you to hand me a chainsaw. In all honesty, I can't reach much below my knees without cheating.
This is, as I've said before, one complication from my premature birth. I have been advised--by an actual doctor, with an actual medical degree--that while flexibility exercises would help me, they could only do so much. (Which I couldn't help but hear as why bother. Stretching is bloody well painful.)

My appalling lack of flexibility has had one, arguably, positive consequence: my knees are invincible.

I've been kneeling since at least kindergarten. Other children would sit cross-legged for story time; little Kenny would look as if he was deep in prayer. I think that was my first clue I was not like other children...they sat cross-legged so comfortably, and every time I tried to mimic them I'd want to scream.

A career stocking shelves has only toughened my knees further. Suprem…

My apologies for the lack of so much as a crumb in the Breadbin over the past twelve days. There has not been very much of late I can, or want to, write about. Out in the wider world, I sense we're in a period of calm before the fit hits the shan in earnest: I won't speculate just when the feces will commence to spattering, but I don't believe the relative levelheadedness of the Occupy movement will last much longer. Nor, for that matter, do I think that the jitterbugging stock markets (two hundred points down one day, a hundred and sixty up the next) presages anything worth contemplating. I hope I'm wrong on both counts, and concede my predictive track record suggests I probably am--but if so, I'm afraid I have more questions than answers.  At what point, pray tell, does the money being frantically scribbled on to the collective balance sheets of several European nations actually disappear from whatever balance sheet whence it came? And what happens when people ge…

I found this floating around the Net and grabbed it:

click to embiggen
The people behind this poster think they get it. They think that the people in this poster are clueless and naive and every bit as greedy as the Wall Street banksters are made out to be. After all, the corporations these rabble-rousers are rabbling and rousing against furnish every least comfort they've ever known.

For example, many of those folks in that poster own some sort of iDevice, developed in large part by the late Steve Jobs. Jobs was a one-percenter: his net worth at his death was something on the order of $8.7 billion. Do the protesters hate Jobs and Apple? Likely not. They gleefully use their Apple product without a thought as to the effort and money that went into it. They don't hate Apple: supposedly, they hate "corporations". Well, Apple is a corporation. Not just that, it's the richest corporation on the planet.

The people behind this poster do not get it. The people in this po…

I'm supposed to be on holidays right now. Our anniversary is Friday, and longtime readers know it's a tradition chez Breadbin to bugger off right around now and do some mooning of the honey. Alas, my new job threw something of a monkey wrench into our plans.

I blame it on Ottawa. This is either the fourth or fifth time we've planned to go to Ottawa, only to have something come up, last minute or no, and scuttle things. Frankly, I've lost count. Also, hope that I'm ever going to see what I seem to remember is a beautiful city ever again.

Of course, this time it isn't that I need a new computer, or the Breadbin needs a new lid, or whatever else has cropped up (again, I'd rather not remember). This time it's good news, in that I have a new job, that does indeed pay more than I was making after eleven years at my old one, and that also (I found out today) pays a Sunday premium, not to mention paying me for every minute I work. That I am awed and amazed by t…

There are many things I do not understand in this world. Some of my misunderstandings stem from a lack of experience (I think I'd have to be a woman to honestly "get" makeup). Others from a surfeit of empathy: why do so many people find pain funny?
But some things are actually beyond my ability to even conceive. The biggest one of these: so-called "angry passion".
It's a feature of many a TV show, from Everybody Loves Raymond (why the hell are Frank and Marie still together, since they hate each other's guts) to Married...With Children (ditto for Al and Peg Bundy). And I've often heard of life imitating art: the married couple that fights like cats and dogs, yet still claim to love each other.
Aside: this is one reason I watch very little television. I've learned to (mostly) keep quiet over the years, but I can't shut up the little niggling voice in my mind. Watching the aforementioned Everybody Loves Raymond, it says things like Hey, Ray! D…