RAINING

When I first went out this morning the weather was miserable. It was damp & raining. Last night I watched C.span from 7:30_9:00 up until right before the beginning of the debate. There was a call_in segment for people to suggest questions to ask the candidates. I considered calling but didn't bother. Every time I've ever tried to get through to something like that the lines have always been nightmarishly busy. Uncle Frankie came over for a while to see it. Mary Anne said, on the phone this morning, that she had a good time at it. Michael especially must have appreciated it. I just don't ever stay up late if I can possibly avoid it. I found out from on of my Myspace connections that some states even allow early voting. In Tennessee it was Election Day today. Yesterday I practiced my guitar & read more of "MacBeth". It takes a while for that Elizabethan English to set into my head so I have to read it extremely slowly & extremely carefully. The footnotes have always aggravated me. My next Carmelite meeting will be on Saturday morning. I should most hope the attendance will be at least a little better than it was last month. Hardly anybody showed up.

THE BIG HOFSTRA DEBATE

Mary Anne, my sister, will be moderating a pre-debate panel at 7:30 tonight (Wednesday) that will be live on C-Span television and Sirius radio. Hope you will be able to watch/listen. Yesterday I finished "King Lear" & started "MacBeth" again. I hope I shall be able to finish it this time. The last time I never got beyond the middle. As always nothing much worth bothering with is on TV lately so I read quite a whole lot. I found out that my father got a call on Monday night inviting him to go see Sarah Palin in Scranton. He wasn't willing to go. Nobody bothered to tell me about it until it was too late. If I should have known, I should have been happy to go. This will be one of the most significant elections of our time. I just noticed that there's a new movie out about Bush 43. It's called "W". Since nobody likes W, whose approval rating is even worse than Nixon's, most probably nobody will be willing to bother with "W" either. Bush has certain things in common with Nixon. Nobody wants this war any more than Viet Nam & nobody likes Cheney any more than Agnew. The death toll in this war is insanely higher than Nixon's war.

ELECTION GETS CLOSER

Columbus Day worked out quite well. It was very nice & quiet. By now I'm plum sick & tired of all the electioneering & can't wait to get Election Day over with. The phone constantly rings with recorded messages & surveys. I've always absolutely despised the phone anyway, even in general. Much of the mail these days is about politics too. My father had to take my mother to an 8:00 doctor's appointment this morning. At their age things like that come up a lot. Yesterday I watched "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire", once with Meredith Vieira & once with Regis Philbin. One of the benefits of my consistently watching that show is that I can increase the range of things that I'm knowledgeable about. It's a good way to find out about all sorts of things that could otherwise never even possibly have occurred to me. Lately I've been trying to learn to play John Lennon's "Working Class Hero". It's extremely heavily politically & socially charged & a good anti_war song. I should assume that very many people will be learning to play those kinds of songs these days.

COLUMBUS DAY

All went well when I lectored at 5:00 Mass on Saturday. Unfortunately for the moonbats, today we celebrate Columbus Day. I've just found out that Barack Obama has organized truth squads. Of course, his supporters claim that they are supposedly countering any foul play that may come from the opposition. Detractors, however, claim that they are harassing voters. There's entirely too much propaganda in it, though, to be able to get to the truth. The Clintons were in Scranton yesterday. I should have gone over to see them if I could have known in advance. Last night I went to a meeting of the Holy Name Society at O.L. Sorrows. Jerry, as always, served "Blazing Saddles" food. Unfortunately either O.L. Sorrows or St. Joseph's is inevitably going to close very soon. The same is true of very many other churches in the Scranton Diocese. Steve just sent out an e mail about his band, Spectrum. They'll be playing in the Long Beach, N.Y. Library on Nov. 1 from 2:00 to 3:30. It's in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month. Uncle Frankie came over for a while yesterday & stayed for supper.

QUIET WEEKEND

My father & Uncle Frankie went to the game last night as usual. In keeping with the typical stupidity of life around here the phone rang pert near off the hook last night. It was all for garbage. Besides the utterly pointless ones, Aunt Lauren called too. Unfortunately she has a bad virus or something. Benjamin wants to be a monster for Halloween this year. My mother called Dotty who's been in the hospital lately. I got back to reading "King Lear" & by now have already finished well over half of it. Later today I have to lector at 5:00 Mass. Lately that's getting to be quite a habit. It's the second weekend of the month so tomorrow will be the Holy Name Society meeting. The weather was very cold again this morning but at least it wasn't foggy. Monday is Columbus Day. Over in Manhattan they have a big parade. I don't think too much of anything gets done like that around here. On that day we celebrate the day when Columbus brought the Americas to the attention of the civilized world (western culture, that is). Of course with all the politically correct, leftist revisionist history we've been forced to swallow over the course of the past few decades, there will be the inevitable whining about it.

ULTIMATE IRONY

Yesterday, on Beatle John's birthday, I got a haircut! Considering that he was instrumental in making us men get lazy about haircuts in the first place, that's quite a surprise. Having made a 2:30 appointment at the Eighth Street barber shop, I got there at around 2:15 ish. That's a shocker for me because I'm usually insanely early for everything. It was just the usual desperately needed haircut. All went well & I was finished at around 2:30 ish. The weather this morning was very foggy & colder than I can handle. When I was on my way to St. John's for 8:00 Mass I noticed that they're paving the streets of Pittston. Those streets are an absolute nightmare, so it's about time. I also saw gas stations where they only charged $3.19.9 a gallon. Financially, that's the only good news these days. Fran & Bridget called yesterday. As far as I know, Fran's still sick. Bridget didn't have to go to school because it was Yom Kippur. To the best of my knowledge, my father & Uncle Frankie will be going to yet another game tonight. I've started reading "King Lear" again. Recently I started it & plum forgot to finish it.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BEATLE JOHN

"Oh Danny Boy, the Odes of Pan are calling". Today we remember that on this day, in 1940, was born the late great John Winston Lennon. The reference with which I started this entry is heard at the end of "One After 909" on the "Let It Be" album. It alludes to the fact that John, Paul, George & Ringo derived very much of their music from classic western literature. At the end of "I Am the Walrus" the Fabs even cite the words of Oswald, Edgar & Gloucester from King Lear (Act 4, Sc.VI). Today is also the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Pope Pius XII, one of the most significant figures to come out of World War II & the twentieth century in general. We should hope that he will someday very soon be canonized. I made sure I called up Rose over on Eighth Street this morning to make an appointment for a haircut. It's at 2:30 this afternoon. This is the first time I've ever bothered to make an appointment with her. Usually I just go right ahead & show up. Yesterday, early in the morning, it was bitter cold & got warm during the day. This morning started out very warm. It's all so weird for October. I just found out that October 5 was the birthday of Larry from the Three Stooges. He was born in 1902.

SUICIDE IS PAINLESS?

On a very sad note, I just found out about the suicide, yesterday, of a really young guy I vaguely knew on Myspace & a few other sites. Jesse, known as Jkrapture, was only in his early twenties. He's not the first suicide among people I've known over the course of my lifetime. Life can get pretty seriously painful & depressing at times but most people don't usually go quite that far. All I knew about him was that he'd been having many seriously drastic problems. Nobody'd ever expected anything like this. These days, because of the trouble the entire country's in, suicides will most probably be happening all over the place. Unfortunately that kind of thing has a tendency to inspire copycats.

INTERNATIONAL DISTURBED PEOPLE DAY

When I first went out to my car this morning the windshield was a sheet of ice. Fortunately I found a scraper in my trunk. The leaves are fast turning colors & falling off the trees now. That's a very nice portend of all the ice, rain & snow yet to come, of course. Halloween's only a few weeks away & it was always bitter cold when I was a kid. Lately I've been noticing that reruns of "Married With Children" are on at 6:00 a.m. When it was on originally I used to watch that show quite compulsively. Like "Seinfeld", it appeals to my bizarre side. I still desperately need a haircut. Most probably I shall procrastinate about it indefinitely. I always end up really stupid looking because my hair's very hard to control when it's too long. Yesterday I played my guitar again. I'm hoping to figure out how to play "Do You Want to Know A Secret", "A Hard Day's Night" & all my other favorites as well as possible. Today is International Disturbed People Day. Each of us knows more than a few of them.

PLUM FORGOT OKTOBERFEST

Cheryl called Saturday & asked me to lector for her yesterday. We switched & she took Saturday. Fr. Urban was there instead of Fr. Walsh. He read a letter from Bishop Martino reminding us that no one may, in good conscience, vote for a candidate who is pro_abortion. Of course, it wasn't all that big of a bombshell. Everybody who knows anything, & whose conscience is at least reasonably legitimately formed, knows that much. All worked out quite well this weekend. I even found fifty three cents in the suit jacket I wore yesterday. I didn't end up bothering to check out any local Oktoberfests that may have been around yesterday. Uncle Frankie showed up & hung around for a while. It was just a typical Sunday. Unfortunately I couldn't help noticing that I ended up pigging out on quite a whole lot of extra junk food yesterday. I need more iron in my diet but I don't need any more junk food. Yesterday, "I Love Lucy" was on all day long. Besides that I watched some of the vice presidential debate. Sarah Palin has a major twitch. In spite of what people say, I don't think she's doing it on purpose. It simply seems to be a weird involuntary quirk. As always, I've been playing my guitar. I haven't played in front of anybody else in quite a while, which is quite a very smart move. I'm getting there though.