Why I'm not spending money on that

I have children and a house.
I have children and a house.
I have children and a house.

I love my children.

I like my house.

I hate poetry, except when I like a particular poem

Doggerel doesn't count--by definition.
Fun is fun.
Funny is fun.

The Robert Frost poems I memorized as a kid don't count, because I grew up with him.
He's, like, part of New England--and me too.
I even live in New Hampshire now.

Percy Bysshe Shelley got me through some rough times, so all his stuff's fine.

It was that Richard Holmes biography that got me to love Shelley. I'm glad to see it's back in print.

One morning in July

On my rational commute
in my sensible car
I see, in the left lane:

Red
Mustang
Convertible.

Envy--a light happy envy
consists of 

imagining the thrill

Knowing actual ownership

would involve
higher maintenance,

gas mileage,

sunburn

And even

stuff blowing off the seats

that I didn't want to lose.

suggested alternates to a crude term for excrement

or, Why have people stopped saying "stuff"?

Especially when "stuff" is perfectly good and exactly what is meant.

Alternate ways to end a sentence:

Collect your

1. stuff
2. things
3. junk

You're full of

1. baloney
2. nonsense
3. malarkey
4. hooeeey

That's a load of

1. baloney
2. garbage
3. nonsense
4. hogwash
5. manure  (if you must...)

I don't need this

1. nonsense
2. treatment
3. runaround
4. aggravation

He's losing his

1. temper
2. self-possession
3. tenuous connection to reality
4. marbles

Alternate expressions:

1. Get your act together. (This is how it used to be said. It still works.)
2. You're bluffing! (and this way you don't need to end with 'me')

Discworld Audiotherapy

Listening to Stephen Briggs perform Discworld audiobooks is my main therapy for spiritual survival.

— Margery Harrison (@pargery) June 9, 2018

It is literally therapy. I can be listening to a different audiobook on the hour and a half drive to work. I park, turn off the engine, the audiobook playing through the Bluetooth connection is silent. I collect my things. To get the energy needed to open the car door, grab my stuff, and walk into the office to begin my workday, I turn on a Discworld audiobook.
Other people are talking or looking at their cellphones. I walk into the building listening to Stephen Briggs's narration. I need to always have one checked out of the library (via Overdrive or Hoopla) so that there will be an audiobook for me to play on my smartphone. 
If the day's going badly but the weather is nice outside, I can eat my lunch at the picnic table with Discworld playing, and feel better about going inside for the afternoon. Hearing Discworld gives me stability, a sense that something is right with humanity, a reassurance of the existence of humor and wisdom.

Rental Values

Once there was a poor man who was an immigrant to this country. He and his wife had seven children. They needed a place to live, but no one would rent to a family with so many kids.

So he told some of his children to hide. With only a few children, they were able to rent an apartment. Whenever the landlord came by, the “extra” children hid.

The man fixed whatever broke in the apartment. His wife cleaned the hallway of the building so that it sparkled.

One day all of the children were playing outside in the yard. The landlord came by. He asked each child, “Where do you live?” Each one answered, pointing, telling the truth.

The landlord knocked on the door. “How many are living here?” The father admitted, “Yes. They’re all mine. They all live here.”

The landlord sighed. He looked around at the sparkling clean hallway and into the well-maintained apartment. He listened to the children playing outside.

“It’s all right,” he said.

Years passed. Two of the children--two brothers--went into business together. They prospered, and even purchased their own apartment buildings.

Sometimes other landlords ask them: Why do you rent to the new immigrants–with their large families, and so many relatives crowding in with them?

Then each brother silently asks himself: Where would I be, had our father’s landlord kicked us out?

They tell the other landlords: “These are hard-working people. They deserve a place to live.”

The crime against nature that is pre-ripped jeans

Pre-ripped jeans are exceedingly silly.
Would you buy shoes with pre-worn-out soles?
New jeans should protect your skin from cruel brambles.
Old holes are earned trophies from rambling and fun.

Remember the miners with pockets all torn?
Jeans were invented to save sweaty gold.
If you make a garment whose purpose is strength,
But ravage its nature, defying its nascence,
You puncture integrity--
The jeans' and your own.

Fall in love with Leslie Howard

I just left this review for "Petrified Forest" on Alibris:

OK, I haven't seen it for a while, but I remember it as one of my favorites.

This is the movie that gave me a crush on Leslie Howard when I was 14 years old. Ditto for my aunt at similar age, when the film was released. Because of this crush, I cringed to see Leslie later in "Gone With The Wind", or actually, in color. He is still gorgeous in Black and White.

This is the movie that made Bogart a star.

Movie had originally been a play, and it still seems like a good play. Would not be expensive to produce.  I remembered it as desperado Bogart and intellectual Leslie Howard talking for most of it, as they sat in café with Bogart's gang holding everyone at gunpoint--but when I saw it more recently, it actually didn't take up as much of the movie as I had remembered.

Historically important line: "Tipping is un-American."

Its theme of people not living up to what they wanted to be in their lives is not restricted to the principal characters. This is a good historical movie with still-relevant situations and dialogue.