Rambles

I want to keep in journal-contact with the fine friends I've made here even though life (four young children in particular) keeps me from the keyboard most of the time. But anyway, here goes.

Our baby thrives, that's the most obvious good news. We do so love him mightily. The photos I've taken often don't seem sharp, a product of my too-cheap digital camera (my first) and partly because I don't understand its functions. Everyone here posts splendid, sharp pix shaming my paltry efforts so far. I love being able to live off my 2 GB memory card and being able to go to the CVS drugstore and print up the latest for 15 cents a frame if I print 50 plus.  But even there there's a problem: one Kodak self-printing machine is far sharper than their huge machines that look like they came from Detroit.  Elsa, my wife, has new photos taped to the refrigerator; Elsa makes-do: what a woman!!  Holy smokes she shouldda done better than me....

Mini-drama. I mailed a rude letter to a relative by marriage who lives (lived as it turnd out) in Australia. No problem the postmaster forwarded the letter to another city, and another relative by marriage. Astounding!  I got a reply, with info on who's dead, from "Susan" who informed me she married into that family. She had opened and read my letter, as well as perused the outside of the envelope which I'd decorated with explosive verbiage, and, God Bless her, returned all of my posting in her envelope which was minus a return address. This latter I attribute to her not wanting to enrage her husband. Ah, but the cancellation stamp is partially legible showing "Wool..." which could mean Woolongong. (Woolamaloo?! Ha!).

My original letter was sent with a newspaper clipping about the world's chagrin and astonishment at the vile rudeness of the present Australian World Champion cricket team. The team actually deserves a thashing for their rotten bad sportsmanship. It's embarrassing, low class like American message board trolls. One troll I've now unmasked has lived all his life on inherited money: no wonder he turned out to be a talentless lout and sadist!  He gets his jollies from tormenting me about my poverty!  Ha ha ha ha ha  ha ha........      I know another one of those from colleges days: that one lives in mortal terror that someone might take his money away! ha ha ha. Actually I know two of those, and from the same college. No!  Three. One died of AIDS.  Money couldn't save him. Pity. He was kind. Stood up for me. Literally. That poor little rich boy played a Southern general who dies in Ted Turner's GETTYSBERG. His name appears in the end credits, small white letters on a huge black background, memorialized bcause he too had died.

Oh dear.

What's it all about Alfie?

It doesn't pay to give God a raspberry. That's for sure, that's for damn sure.

Luv ya....

Barry