Isn’t it funny how, when an Arab or Muslim kills a crowd, and maybe himself, too, he’s a terrorist, fanatic, and brain-washed; but when an American kills a crowd, and maybe himself, too, he’s mentally ill, deranged, and “needs help”? No, that’s not funny, is it…
Updates from hardie karges Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
hardie karges
-
hardie karges
Is it my imagination or is there an inverse relationship between technology and intelligence? It seems like all the iPhones in the world couldn’t help some people pass a basic sixth-grade test in spelling… math… science… or history. I hope I’m wrong…
-
hardie karges
How can silly love songs make me sad when I don’t even understand the words? That’s what I’d like to know. Something about minor keys and ROYGBV’s, I think. They’ve got our frequencies. They’ve cracked the code. They’ve reduced us to wave-lengths and LCD’s, liquid crystal displays and lowest common denominators, random probabilities and tendencies to react certain ways under certain conditions. Cool.
-
hardie karges
Random Acts of Kindness
The Little Old Lady (LOL for short; wait a minute…) was barely halfway across the street, when the light turned green, she teetering and tottering and hanging on for dear life, walking stick in one hand, rolling luggage in the other, a look of chemical fear spreading across her face while I looked on from the distant shore of her destination. She reminded me of Hetty from NCIS-LA, aka Linda Hunt, long past her gender-ambiguous days as Billy Kwan in ‘Year of Living Dangerously,’ and now just the LOL that she is, naked and afraid like a deer caught in the headlights. Hetty’s tough, but is it enough? It’s still LA; am I to be her LL Cool J? She’s hanging in there; good thing, too, because the car in the lane she’s just now cleared is hot to trot, got his motor running, heading out on the highway, looking for adventure, etc. The car in the lane she’s still in is holding still at the traffic light. He sees me watching him.
I’m tempted to just step out, grab her under the arms, lift her up, and carry her over to the near shore,, but… that might scare her more than the traffic. I don’t want to startle her… or insult her either, for that matter. So I start inching my way out, as if approaching a dog whose masticatory habits I’m unfamiliar with, then reach out my hand to take the luggage. She hands it to me. I place it on the curb. We’re good. Then I reach out again, to take her hand and steady her while she steps up on to the curb. She’s somebody’s mother, after all, and obviously not homeless. Why is she out here on the streets alone? “Are you okay?” I ask. “Oh, thank you so much!” she exults. “Well, you’re welcome so much. It’s nothing,” I respond. And it wasn’t. What I did for her was negligible. But what she did for me was priceless.
-
kc
for some reason, “no good deed goes unpunished,” so look for some rainy skies coming your way
-
hardie karges
Ha!
-
-
-
hardie karges
In Defense of White Anglo-Saxon American Protestant Women (and the Continuing Search for the Difference Gene)
A few days ago, while doing my weekly power walk down Sunset Blvd in search of ground provisions and other forms of sustenance, there in front of the 99c store loomed ahead of me a young lady hogging the center lane, and sauntering a bit wobbly. I was unable to determine her exact trajectory so stayed right behind her until the last moment, when I suddenly swerved left to attempt to overtake on the inside lane, at which time she swung wide to let me pass, while simultaneously giving me a long once-over—which I apparently passed—then flashed me a big sh*t-faced grin and a big two-fingered peace sign (one finger bad, two fingers good; got it). Well, I don’t get that every day, so bounced the big smile back, but keeping all my fingers right where they were, afraid of a catastrophic miscount.
Then I started thinking: what just happened? I’ve been grinned up and chatted up more in the last thirty days than the last thirty years put together. What does it mean? Am I radiating something? Do spray-tans really work? (After a near-eviction, I’ve been swimming for exercise instead of my usual rowdy calisthenics, hence the seasonal rosy glow). I’ve narrowed it down to a few possibilities: 1) I slipped into a space-time discontinuity, and am now reporting to you from a parallel universe called Zandorf; or 2) the young lady not only approved of my increasing beardliness, but assumed it represented something larger, and more of the hippie sort than the Islamic; or 3) she was an out-of-stater, looking for a little tea and sympathy, and perhaps something stronger; or 4) all of the above; or 5) none of the above. (More …)
-
Sven
Hi Hardie, I just started reading your stuff/blog…
I have a friend making a blog that I have been following for years.
http://mobithailand.com/It might not be that interesting his last blogs but check his “Creative writing” in the right hand side! Very good stories! Especially th e one about his life!
Good guy, going through a lot.I will start checking your blog now!
Sven
-
hardie karges
Looks interesting, thx…
-
-
-
hardie karges
Future of the Internet: It’s Chinatown, Jake…
And I’m not talking about the mock-up tourist-trap Chinatowns of a thousand modern Western cities, graced by a red-tile roof in up-turned smile and filled with Mom-and-Pop trinket shops specializing in red lanterns and fat-bellied Buddhas and calligraphy that says whatever you want. Nor am I talking about the Chinatown of the Polanski film/Towne script/Nicholson fame depicting 30’s LA, though that comes closer.
No, I’m talking about the Chinatown of a thousand forgotten real Asian neighborhoods where street signs compete for sight-lines and taxi-girls hustle for ten-dollar fares and old market ladies who haven’t seen sunlight in years huddle in dark dingy stalls, their only sensory stimulation the olfactory interplay between pungent chilies pricking and bathroom odors wafting, may the strongest smell win… The market always wins. (More …)
-
hardie karges
Southern Linguistics–on the Skids, Y’all
In tribute to my southern roots–potatoes, turnips, etc–I rather like saying “y’all” sometimes; it’s kinda’ fun in a kitschy sort of way. The problem arises when it’s time to get plural. You thought “y’all” was plural already? That’s a common mistake. No, the plural of “y’all”–believe it or not–is “y’all all.” You heard it here first. I have it on good authority. Chew on that, Chomsky. You’ll have to admit there’s some symmetry there. It even rhymes. At least we’re consistent.
-
hardie karges
Tomatoes Are Like Golden Apples… or plump things with navels
Still life with author and tomato
Some people have never seen a real tomato. I’m not talking about the perfectly uniform red spherical or slightly elongated varieties that typically line supermarket bins and veggie trays in typical neighborhoods, but real lumpy beefy acidic nightshades with genetic histories beyond the greengrocer’s unholy laboratories. Some whole countries have never seen the real thing I suspect, Thailand for instance, which prides itself on the finest sweetest least-fibrous variety of every possible fruit (no comment on the women), but in this case relegated to the cardboard-cut-out picture-perfect puff-pieces that serve as little more than filler to an honest sandwich or salad.
Many countries and cultures don’t necessarily eat sandwiches, of course, so I can’t blame them for their negligence, any more than I can blame the happy Mexicans who produce most of the ones we Americans eat these days. They invented the blessed fruit, after all, or at least nurtured its evolution from some primordial berry into the lusty beefsteaks (sometimes) available today, though such varieties are hard to find in Mexico itself (be prepared to ask for jitomates if the word tomate doesn’t work, presumably the most direct etymological descendant of an earlier aboriginal form, something like xitomatl, meaning ‘plump thing with a navel’ in Nahuatl). Sounds like someone I know. Italians see them as ‘golden apples,’ pomodoros.
-
hardie karges
A day without the smile of a child is like a day without sunshine: innocent and fresh, outward expanding, barely conscious, attractive by nature…
-
hardie karges
It’s amazing how much 60’s music still gets played by even the hippest modern stations, not just dino-rock… as if we were also listening to Al Jolson way back then, or maybe Rudy Vallee…. OK, Frankie Valli, sure, and maybe a little bit of Sinatra, at least in the early years, but 50-year-old music? No way! 60’s politics may have sucked, but the music rocked! It set off ripples around the world that are still being felt…
kc are discussing. 
streaming consciousness... 
Reply