It is risen

I got me a fresh sheet of virtual paper and I roll it into the carriage...

I think I’ve been sick of typing. I’ve even found it difficult to effectively do e-mail, and that is one of the few ways to reliably get ahold of me. The FaceBook, 2-3 sentences and I’m out, has been de rigeur around here.

It was a really harsh winter around La cerise de chateau, maison du fumeur de detente. So right now forsythia is like the breath of the atman made manifest on earth.

I had a really, tremendously, bad bout of infection that started just before Thanksgiving. For the most part I missed all the holidays. On Thanksgiving itself I was too sick to even walk next door. About a week of 104 fevers. Since then it’s been a long, slow, road back.

I popped into UBU’s one of the very first good days, that was a good thing, getting out, into town, having lunch. Now I have have to pop back and give him back the books I bought as well as a few additional. I find myself in the market to get rid of, in some cases sell, books. That is something I’ve never been good at at all. It feels pretty free to be in a place where I can let a book go deliberately as opposed to losing it.

I’m ready to let more things go.
I have started sorting out anything I don’t have a pretty legitimate claim on to be sent back. I’m watching the hoarders and I don’t want to be there or leave that for someone else to deal with. Keep the precious and let the chaff blow away. That’s the new mantra. There will be a porch sale this year.

Gen-somnia

I have a classic picture of the old man. He is clearly sitting on a couch, cast a little sideways. One arm is up laying along the back of the couch. His chin is on his chest, and he is totally out. Of late this is me most evenings in Nigel’s big comfy chair as well. Then, about one twelfth of the time, when I finally can get up and go to bed, I have insomnia. So did he.

I’ve always had very strange sleep. Up to about age eleven I never wanted to. I remember when I was about six or seven, my mom burst into my room at three in the morning to ask me if I couldn’t, perhaps, polish and rearrange the furniture at a more reasonable hour. I then basically slept straight through eleven and twelve. I discovered serious partying at thirteen and never wanted to sleep again ‘till I was about twenty-six. All during the latter I became almost narcoleptic. I would fall asleep, uncontrollably, inappropriately, and often inconveniently, at the drop of a hat. I basically only took naps for thirteen years. Naps being anywhere from three seconds to 4 hours. I also invariably begin to dream instantaneously. This constant waking and dreaming has always made for much confusion between the worlds.

I now have fairly decent sleep hygiene. I really do. I take little to no caffeine. I get up pretty much at the same time every day. I nap (intentionally) pretty sparingly. I don’t take the evening dose of one of my meds because it can disturb sleep. I (mostly) use the bed only for sleeping. One reason being that the feeling of that full body stretch when one first goes horizontal is just, so, delicious. But this year I have struggled more and more with sporadic insomnia. I suspect it’s genetic.

We seem to be saddled with more than our fair share of lousy genetics in my family. It has become almost a game to see with whom which traits will pop up next. Like instead of Bing-O it’s Crap-O. Don’t get me wrong, we have a few really good genes like serious brains, some particular beneficial sensitivities, my hair, umm, hmm, - that’s really all I can think of off hand.

I think I’m about up to A. On this side of aging I feel the P & O looming. I’m sure that they’ll pop soon. Which of course leads up to the question, what then is the prize? I’m damn sure it’s not money, could it really be wisdom or is that just old folky, trying to feel compensated, claptrap?

Chemical Castration

I’ve been having a bit of a “flat affect.” You may not have noticed.

So “we” are trying some new things. Massive doses of vitamin D3 is one. Three weeks after taking 5000 IU’s a day my levels are up into the bottom ranges of normal. Therefore I assume, that there was in fact, a previous deficit. Even though it’s one of the least expensive supplements I’ve ever gotten I am glad to say I can now drop on down to 3000 IU’s. Every little bit it helps.

Also it would appear that somewhere a hypo-thyroid thing appeared. I am being told that this nifty new pill will put some zippy in my pip. Am I pzipy yet? You tell me.

Then there’s the perennial favourite, which is that it is no longer February and early March in Michigan. This winter was a straight out bitch. What a long drawn out drag.

And there is the slow burn, subtle furious-ness at government and their insistence and propaganda that as a fat smoker I am THE embodiment of THE problem. Slow burn hatred is never good for my productivity. But again, I’m sure noone noticed.

And there you have it, the word castration is coming from the Greek word kaezein.
And that’s a cheesy movie reference, if you don’t get it it really can’t be helped.

“Everybody got problems buddy, I got mine”

I woke up at about 4am (to pee I suppose). When I went back to bed I looked out the window and the whole sky was lit up in pale orange. I’m supposing it was the almost full moon through water vapour overcast. But it was simply divine. And eerie.
I really miss staying up all night and wish I still could. Much like when I was a toddler I resent having to sleep and try to do it as little as possible. I try to stick at no more than 7 hours. I prefer 6. It’s a conflict because I am so in love with my dreams. I dream lots and very vividly. It’s like surrealist movies all night every night. I spent the ages of 11 to 13 sleeping 14 hours a day because my dreams were so much more compelling than (alleged) reality.

I really miss being a creature of the night. Watching the sky revolve, the stars wheeling through their cycle, seeing moonrise and moonset. All the magical, slithery changes things undergo when shadow and light play over them. And those completely unexpected and rare events like purple rain or pale orange snow. That first tinge of dawn which relaxes the primitive watcher at the back of the brain. The gorgeous fears of the darkness. The idea that anything, anything at all could be out there just outside of your field of vision.
“I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear my trousers rolled”

It ain't Burroughs but....

“Suddenly I felt bleak, oddly depressed. It took a moment for me to realize that one of Meyer’s recent lectures on international standards of living was all too well remembered.”

“... so divide everything into two hundred million equal parts . Everything in this country that is fabricated. Steel mills, speedboats, cross country power lines, scalpels, watch bands, fish rods, ski poles, plywood, storage batteries, everything. Break it down into basic raw materials and then compute the power requirements and the fossil fuels needed to make everybody’s share in this country. Know what happens if you apply that formula to all the peoples of all the other nations of the world?”
“You come up with a bleak fact Travis. There is not enough material on and in the planet to ever give them what we’re used to. The emerging nations are not going to emerge - not into our pattern at least. Not ever. We’ve hogged it all. Technology won’t come up with a way to crowd the Yangtze River with (sleek, high powered speedboats).
“It was OK Travis, when the world couldn’t see us consuming and consuming. Or hear us. Or taste some of our wares. But communication by cinema, satellite, radio, television tape, these have been like a light coming on slowly, being turned up like a rheostat control in a dark cellar where all of mankind used to live. Now it is blinding bright, cruelly bright. And they can all look over into our corner and see us gorging ourselves and playing with our bright pretty toys. And so they want theirs now. Just like ours, God help them. And what is the only thing we can say? ‘Sorry, You’re a little too late. We used it all up all except what we need to keep our toys in repair and running and to replace them when they wear out. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.’ What comes after that? Barbarism, an interregnum, a new dark ages, and another start a a thousand years from now with a few million people on the planet? Our myth has been that our standard of living would become available to all the peoples of the world. Myths wear thin. We have a visceral appreciation of the truth. That truth, which we don’t dare announce to the world, is what gives us the guilt and shame and the despair. Nobody in the world will ever live as well materially, as we once did. And now as our materialism begins to sicken us, it is precisely what the emerging nations want for themselves. And can never have. Brazil might manage it. But no one else.”
John MacDonald “The Scarlet Ruse” 1973

Oh happy, happy XMAS.

Oh I am a beast

Well I did me some papering and if I don’t get my coveted A it will mean that I have gone insane w/out realizing and made no sense a’tall for 14 pages. Last night I was so very happily relieved and today I am bitch ugly and want to drink and fight.
So, if you run into me somewhere tonight, (because I now want no part of socializing and that just seems like a really good reason to force myself) and I seem a little buzzed, it’s probably best to just swallow any pride and be conciliatory to me. I have a bad habit of being a REALLY happy drunk until without warning I become extraordinarily vicious. Lon Chaney eat your heart out.

PS No moralizing required, as when these things happen I always hurt myself somehow, and usually pretty badly. It’s like perfect karma in a bottle.

No promises, and knock on simulated wood veneer...

But, maybe, I’m back.

It is still rough, ruff, ruffe, but I feel a little less paralyzed in all lobes of my monkey mind.

Sorry for the freakout/bailout but that’s what happens when your blogger has “issues”. One of which is literally overwhelming anxiety from it being an election season. Man, do I have a hard time processing all that shite. It’s as if it has the properties of a big, sticky wad of suffocating, smeary, putrid, plasticene. And then it’s as if it was shot straight into my mainline just clogging up all my functions and trying to beak apart my heart. Why does it always have to be in fall when I am already struggling through a major seasonal affective shift? As well as why are people such little bitches about it all?

Swimming With the Sharks

I get really annoyed with the bloggers who don’t blog. I then assume (project) that you’all are annoyed with me. Well:

• My muses are apparently occupied elsewhere, (I wrote a couple songs last week).

• It was Oliver’s Birthday and the small, but nice and lengthy soiree wore me out.

• The illness ( and chemo like doses of antibiotics) were causing me to nap up to four times a day and suffer from both enervation and ennui for weeks.

• While sick, I have been hustling, preparing to hustle, and planning several hustles.

This drive to get, and keep, some money is pretty strong at the moment. I spent a solid week while sick in bed anyway, going through approximately 5000 “Magic The Gathering” cards I have had packed away for about 15 years.
So if you know anyone crazy enough to really, really, want “Time Walk” and “Time Twister” in near mint condition, I’ll let them have both for 600 bucks.
Or if their pockets are a little shallower and their tastes a little more to the exotic I have a lovely “Sharazad” and some nifty efreets and djinns.
No really, if you or your loved ones like the game, I have thousands of cards which retail from .13 cents to 500 big ones I’d love to sell ya.....

We also have started the process of preparing for The Big Yard Sale. Now if the weather will just cooperate we’ll get that party started this weekend or next. I’m thrilled. Really, I am simply thrilled. I just love sitting, hungry, thirsty and in dire need of a pee in the backyard for hours on end selling my bits for pennies on the dollar. However, getting the basement emptied is a real incentive. And in this weather hanging out down there is not the worst thing one could do. The cats find it fascinating anyway.

These and other schemes are taking some mental, emotional, and physical effort. Of which I am still slightly limited at the moment. So while I await my MRI and the subsequent results I’ll be hustling my bustle and scheming my dreams. I’ll let you know how the life of the fabulously wealthy turns out.

For those in the know

We’re experiencing another rash of Uncle Bunny setbacks. So send vibes, thoughts, whatevs you gots his direction. I wouldn’t mind if you sent some to my family as well, as that situation deteriorated as well.

Synchronous

“Having the same period and phase”
It’s odd. Repeatedly.
Just when things are bad, quite bad. And I’m angry, so angry. And depressed. An odd series of events frequently occurs. They don’t have to be big, just oddly arising out of the muck (like the spontaneously arising lotus) which, if I’m paying attention, remind me that this is how real magic works. In it’s time. For my ultimate benefit. And without force and manipulation. Not to buy me a cadillac, but to remind me that there is some method to this madness.

It’s -ugh- official

Yesterday when at the secretary of state I was officially designated a corrective lens wearer. You bitch. I only missed 2 letters.

Writin' a rap

We’re doing a double dip tomorrow. There’s a party and Quatro Veda plays, then the 6 Foot Poles, then The Bottom 99, then Largebeat. So, Oliver and I will be doing 2 completely disparate sets. At least not back to back.

This is the intro I wrote for one of our darker songs (also shown). When you hear it with the lamenting clarinet with it, it really reminds me of when Klezmer gets sad.


“When I wrote this song in 2003, I had some vague hopes that the upcoming election would help make it irrelevant. It didn’t. First came Katrina, then hard on her heels the Sago Mine Disaster.
So, I’d like to dedicate this to the brave people still struggling for survival down in New Orleans, to those 6 workers dead in the dark at the Crandall Canyon Mine and the people who just died at the Gibson County Coal Mine.”

Pick and Shovel, Fire and Flame

To keep repeating history
Let them eat policy
Let them eat cake
To keep them on their knees
feed them on fallacies
how much will take?
To not acknowledge idiocy
greed and banality
is a mistake
Compounding the insanity
fake christianity
Who’d you forsake?

And still we die
from flames and fire
pick and shovel
wind and rain
Thirst and starvation dog this nation
ragged and driven
bowed in pain
We’ve become
awestricken, dumb
battered and numb
our hands are chained
And still we die
from flames and fire
pick and shovel
wind and rain

Guh

Man. This heat. I haven’t been able to think, sleep or eat right for... well.... I really don’t know how long because it’s totally sucked my butt and my brain for days now.
I remember doing the show on Saturday. It was hot but not horrific. After that it’s all just a blur of some Indian food, then opening and shutting windows, adjusting fans, becoming increasingly angry and irritable. People on the phone wanting this, that and all this attention.
There’s bits of sitting in the basement frustrated and bored but at least semi-cool. Begging Oliver to go out somewhere, anywhere, air-conditioned. Of course there’s his stubborn refusal to go anywhere avoidable in public. I tell you what, sometimes being the muse to the moody, freakish, broke, genius is a serious chore. All I wanted was a pepsi and he wouldn’t give it to me. So I went insane instead, having only just now gotten enough cool air into the house and Chunky Monkey ice-cream down my gullet to not be a serious, head ripping off, threat to the next person who walks by me.

Meanwhile I am leaving town on Thursday and have very little that needs to be done, done. Nothing of import can be done when you’re sitting in a chair passing out from heat prostration and you don’t want to lay down because everything is wet or becomes wet within nanoseconds.

I’ll be tooling over to upstate NY to look at a lot of falling water (hopefully). Checking out the old birth place, and then doing the tunnel under the falls at Niagara. All the family except a second cousin are now dead, so clearly I won’t be seeing them. But we’ll see the places and eat wonderful, wonderful roast beast on Kimmelwick. I’ll be picking up some quality horseradish and Wise potato chips as well. Maybe I’ll try to pick up some Carvel something (not gigantic) too. Cookie Puss!!!!!

Gibby is the king of awesome

I just got a comp with "Movin' To Florida" on it (which I pretty much bought it for). I don't know why I think this is one of the best songs ever, I just do. I haven't even heard it, in like, 20 years and it's been haunting me the whole time. Well I just listened to it about 16 times and here as best as I can tell are the lyrics-

Moving To Florida The Butthole Surfers

I’m a’gonna move down to Florida
and I’m gonna bowl me a perfect game
I’m gonna cut off my leg down in Florida
and I’m a’gonna dance one legged, off in the rain

Well they say that Sidney Portier was a blind man
and they say that LBJ was a Soviet Jew
I tell that when I go down to Florida way
there ain't no kind of sexual healing that I would not, should not or could not do
I say this right here

Well I’m moving down to Florida
and you know that I’m a’gonna have to potty train the Chairman Mao
And I’m gonna make the governor write my doo-doo a letter child
And then I’m gonna grind me a White Castle slider outta India’s sacred cow

Well I’m goin’ down to Florida child huh huh
and I’m gonnna build me the atomic bomb
I’m gonna hold time hostage down in Florida child
ain’t nobody, ain’t nobody gonna tell me what to do, stepchild

By this time I guess you figured out about Florida
Turn the muddy water inta’ vaseline stained
They be making tadpoles the size of Mercury’s in Florida
That be telling Julio Iglesias what to sing now

Well whoever said that Sidney Portier was a blind man
knew the same of Elvis Presley too
Cuz all the sausages that dance like Ray Bolger on the hood of a car in a traffic jam
Know just exactly what to do - right here

Well I be going to Florida
pole cats and dusty seminoles son
You know that I’m in Florida
just like Vince I walk (unintelligible)
When I went down to Florida I got hurt
So I took all the children down to Florida
then I started to get lonely gee
Well I’m never going back to Florida
That's why I’m leaving J W
When I settle down in Florida
I’m a gonna explode the whole darn Tampa Bay
Get that boy in Florida
to teach me what to do

Damn Essay

AM earworm (You’ve Got To) Hide Your Love Away - Lennon & McCartney

It wasn’t really my intention to get up this early. Given, the cats were doing the usual 6:14 am, exploratory, breakfast bid for attention. I can usually growl, turn over, cover my head and get another hour though. But the brain engine started revving. The volume on the earworm went up. And I had to pee.
Upon returning to bed people were long and loudly laughing outside my window and I thought to myself “who laughs like that at 6:15 in the morning? They must be trippin’ or something.” Then I wanted to get up, to spy on the laughers, to see if they were tweaked. I hope not cuz they were pushing a baby carriage begging the question “where in the world are you taking your baby at 6:16 in the morning anyway?” Maybe to church.

Now I’m up. The cats are fed and Little ghee has performed the obligatory breakfast dance. My own stomach starts growling warningly and the roommate clogged the sink so dishes wait in a pile for his return from work to fix his screwup.

And that brings us to the subject that is on my mind of late. Lying. Why do people so casually do it? I, myself, cannot escape culpability on this. I admit I am a fan of the sin of omission if it’s going to prevent a big problem. BUT (and it’s a biggish but) that is usually a deliberate, planned maneuver to avoid hurting someone's feelings or putting them on the defensive. After spending many years purging myself of the lying factor (apparently there’s a gene for it in my family or something), I became what some friends and coworkers called “ the queen of no tact”. It is a fact that rabid, ruthless, truth telling is most unwelcome in our society. It is however interesting to note that several of the people who shamed me most often and most enthusiastically about my brutal truthing were in the final analysis found to be avid and compulsive liars themselves. I adopted a “shut my mouth” policy. Not overtly lying, but very frequently not telling my whole truths either.

I used to attribute much of it to astrology. There is an actual link in my view. A lot of water in your chart just seems to make truth a fluid substance. Try living with a lot of un-evolved Pisces if you don’t believe that. Try a quintuple Pisces if you want a most blatant example.

Now we add the idea that it is frequently attributable to “authoritarian” parents. If draconian punishments were administered the children lie instead of taking personal responsibility. This is something I’m going to be watching for in my lying studies in future. I think there is potentially a good deal of validity to this theorem.
For an example, I offer my observation of 2 brothers I know who lie in the same ways (casually, frequently and often easily detected and/or disproved) about the same kinds of things ( usually attempting to make themselves look better, cooler, smarter than they are and avoiding taking personal responsibility for their fuckups whether minute or large). Since I know their parents and have had the opportunity to hear many stories about their childhoods I feel that there certainly could be a correlation. The father is a bit of a raging ass.

Another factor I believe I detect a link with, is substance abuse. The most apparently upright citizen will easily lie if this issue is present. That one becomes a chicken and egg conundrum though. Did the self esteem problem that needs to be bolstered by lying occur before or after the substance issue?

And here’s one I really hate. I have been outright instructed to and expected to lie, by various bosses. This idea that lying is being built into business models really, really, bugs me. Force me to lie and eventually I’ll find a way to quit.

If I catch someone in one or two minor lies I can possibly, probably, mostly, overlook it . The circumstances, how comfortable or glib they seem to feel about it is a real tell. I try to accept people for the face that they want me to see. But I watch and frankly I’m judgmental. If the public face varies too much from the real face I stop trusting altogether.

Those are generally white and grey lies. My true horror is the black lie. Buddhism says this is pretending to have spiritual accomplishments you don’t. This can screw up peoples karma for millennia. Probably just not a good idea. I have seen many painful examples of this. My friend who committed suicide after the Rajneesh scandal destroyed what he believed in. Another who now hates Buddhism after following a false guru destroyed his family. Those are just a couple examples, I’ve seen a lot more. Obsessed as I am with cults and false prophets this is a big issue for me. The idea of one person throwing a huge monkey wrench into another’s spiritual growth for fun, profit and power is very alien and abhorrent.

I also think that lying for fun, profit and power about things like WMD’s or Jews, the Rom, and homosexuals being a problem or whether your industry is destroying the environment and your workers lives and health, which results in the death of anywhere from one to millions of human beings is pretty much the black lie as well. If I believed in Satan I would think it was downright Satanic. As it is I have to try to accept that those are just extreme examples of complete ignorance of the nature of reality and that the people committing such atrocities actually, truly, believe that this will somehow bring them happiness. It’s a hard pill to swallow but it is one of the only ways to try to retain compassion for them in their stupid, ignorant, destructive, negative, foolish, shortsighted, wickedness.

Which brings me to my question. By accepting all the little lies are we totally laying the foundation for the really big ones?

Lists

Apparently I have switched my focus from writing to reading. However I’ve got to get back in the saddle as I have three major writing projects on the summer burner. I have really enjoyed the several weeks of reading a novel a day though. Nothing like being sick for an excuse to just lay around munching down the mind candy. Lot’s of John MacDonald and children’s books, but I never finished The Prince which is a day overdue now.

I’m back to thinking about Blake, Tolstoy and Swedenborg, their manias and visions and am hoping to squooze in some more research on TLE now that I’m thinking about it again. But my list of summer tasks grows each day and I’m not making much counter strikes on the scratching the finished ones off as of yet.

I am back on the blood sugar efforts as well as having got myself down to one black tea bag a day and no chocolate for a couple weeks now. I’ve also gotten the smokes back down to 18 per day. Having trouble getting beyond that yet. Been sounding very Sylvia Simon lately.

First order of business is triune: Get the hole in my stomach healed, get ready for a big garage sale beginning of June and get the Elder program up to par.
In between all of that I have to try to get going on finding some money for school next year as well as get admitted somewhere. Those are the big ticket items.
The rest is the perpetual house chores and I’m hoping to garden.
Now that I don’t have to do crap like writing 12 page papers, I hope to get more of this sort of writing done as well as I’ve set myself a goal of 20 new songs over the summer. I have 2 half written so far.

All right, that’s a start. I'll get back to you with something profound when I get it put together. I’d say I’m getting stronger everyday but I see where that gets me.....

“Things fall apart-

The center does not hold”

A tinker, a tailor, a soldiers things

Drove into the heartland of the midwest this weekend. Every time I do I see more trailers and abandoned or junked out houses. Boarded up front doors with the folks living out of the back. More gas guzzling toys of the lower and middle classes for sale.
More desolated towns and abandoned dreams. It’s like living in a Tom waits song.

The bottom has fallen out and the descent is limitless. Makes one appreciate what you have but also get real nervous about what could happen. And the thing that is really creepy is that as the impoverished get desperate and start trying to sell everything off, the rich swoop in and by the family heirlooms and last hope valuables on the cheap thus further consolidating their wealth and the other family goes under anyway because the month or two it bought them is never enough to save them.

Scrofulous Humours

Well-
Uncle Bunny is back in the hospital
Little ghee ended up at the vet with fever
I’m in bed waiting for gross things to come spewing out of my stomach

I get just tired of labs and offices and waiting rooms.
Pills and doses and needles.
I’m tired of bed
sick of tired
Waiting waiting waiting

"Who knows what evil lurks in the mind?"

Because I have Diabetes I have a really weird syndrome. Apparently every diabetic has their own glucose release cycle from the pancreas, So at some fairly regular time during the day there is a release, and a time when they are running a little short just prior to that. Ok that’s the part I sort of, understand. We think we’ve figured out that mine is just around dawn based on 2 things, one being that I always have really high morning sugars, which then somewhat normalize throughout the day. The other being that I usually have really fucked up dreams right before I wake up. They are not exactly nightmares but are usually full of stress, aggra, and anger. A lot of the time there is a lot of me yelling at people who I’m fairly pissed off at in real life.

Today it changed from weird to furious in short order, something about freaky dogs, a creepy basement and a refrigerator box, moving quickly to me fighting with a whole group of people I’m having an issue with, and I’m pulling hair, slapping faces and calling people pussies and jerks. I’d like to try to be philosophical about it, and say to myself;
“see, this is a great example of how NOT to handle this situation and how it accomplished NONE of your desired outcomes.”
But I have to admit that what it mostly does is make me kind of depressed that I still have these kinds of situations in my life needing to be handled at all, and that the shrieking, bar brawling, kicking ass and taking names, Stella is still right here, uncomfortably nearby, ready to go it. It seems a little ludicrous that she should be so close to the surface as it’s been years since I’ve been in a physical altercation.

People express such shock and disbelief when I say I’ve been clinically depressed since the age of six, or that I just got out of the hospital again, or that I’m a person just brimful of hatred and anger. And that, man, I am just an evil, grudge holder.
I’m always hearing the likes of;
“But you look so wel"
"But you’re always so cheerful"
"But you’re always trying to be helpful, kind and funny.”
I’m not wanting to be thought of as a big fake or two faced Janus type. (Who would?) But I’m certainly not about love, light and unicorns. I'm just trying really, really hard to not take it out on say, the retail public, or the people nonchalantly hanging round when the jerk almost runs me over in his SUV, on the cell phone, when I had the walk sign and he was turning. Because expressing it as rage, out loud, is cancerous and I know it. Given the chance, that shit spreads like lymphoma. We all know it, and we all live examples of it everyday.

So I guess Im just wanting to acknowledge that when you are polite, friendly and reasonable to me, that I really, really appreciate it. Because I SO very well know how difficult that can be to keep up. And that, my friends, is why I so loved it when Kosmo Kramer said;
“Manners are the oil that greases the wheels of civilization.”