A bus named Paradise

After FCDC moved to Seattle, it was decided that some of the touring was easier done by bus, so a bus was found; a bus that in its former life had had a run to Paradise in Rainier National Park and kept the destination listed on the scroll screen in the front of the bus.
And so we called it Paradise.
It was home to the dancers, the crew, some plants and an endless amount of dogs, and it had a bad habit of needing repair, not being very young when it was purchased for touring the company.
Paradise would never have won a beauty contest nor a matter of comfort. Compared to what is now used by touring bands, Paradise was rock bottom, but it had what none of these new behemoths have.....personality.
It fought its way in a snowstorm in Baton Rouge ( I am not kidding ) and it found its way to places barely on the map, endless forgettable truck stop eateries and cheap motels.
I don't know what happened to it when the company disbanded, but wherever it is, within its walls and rusty exterior were dreams and love of arts and dedication.
That would be hard to duplicate.

I did it. Today I went to town. Truth be told, I kind of had to; I was out of wine and the phone bill was due. No phone, no internet and no wine, no silly posts like this.
So I had to go.
And I made it to the first gas station with the gas gauge hovering around empty. The first gas station is also the only one within a thirty minute drive from my village, going either south or north, which made me contemplate, again, the pro's and con's of monopoly, as we have here in Mexico. The monopoly of Pemex.
And that made me think of a silly remark I read, where an agitated politician asked his adversary if he was in favor of " benign dictatorship".
Isn't that an oxymoron ?
just as describing, as some politicos here in Mexico have, Pemex as "benign monopoly " surely is an oxymoron too.
Wonder what "oxymoron" is in Spanish.

Funny how one little word changes everything. I thought I saw an ad for ...The Best Stock Of China, calling to my mind pictures of luscious and luxurious dinnerware.
I looked again and the ad really said : The best Stock IN China....referring to stock markets and easy money and all that kind of stuff.
One little word, one preposition, two totally different worlds.
Maybe I need better glasses....specs, not drinking glasses.

It was not even an argument, it was a series of emails between a person I don't know and me , a person I am not so sure I would ever want to know, a person who reacted to a massmail where my name was included, a reaction that I thought was incorrect, hence the mails.
The last mail from him was this morning, and I got all fired up again, wanting to drive my point home, wanting to make this person see the light and in my mind I composed all kinds of clever and erudite responses and then, slowly I admit, I realized that no amount of emails from me would change that person's point of view, just as in reverse, I was not going to change either.
So I decided to stop the flow of mails, to admit defeat and get on with my life and wish the unknown and unchangeable person all the best.
All the best, Bud.

Ah, the wonderful world of words.
I was writing a mail and wanted to use a word describing transition; the word I wanted was right on the tip of my tongue, I knew it, I could hear it, I could almost taste it but I couldn't find it in my dictionary that I keep next to the computer. Nor in the Thesaurus, nor the web dictionary.
Despair and rewrite but not defeat.
I got off my duff and hauled out my trusty and trustworthy Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, a tome of 1535 densely printed pages, and there I found it, my word.
By then the mail was somewhere in cyberspace or in the computer of the recipient waiting to be read, hopefully making sense, even without the special word, but I now have the word right in front of me, and I won't forget it.
Wonderful things, words.

I am biased, I know it and I try to fight it, but when the governor of Arizona signed what I think of as a super draconian anti brown bill, I took a good look at her, the person, and saw a sad woman fighting old age with all the tools available, the bleached and straw-like hair, the turkey neck and worst of all, to my mind, long and spade shaped false nails on liver spotted and bent fingers, barely able to hold the pen to sign this nasty piece of legislation, and I thought....you there, Ms governor, spend a little less time fighting age and a little more time fighting for the underdogs.
But then I am biased, and she has the support of all the steely eyed, balding middle aged males with pathetic comb-overs who would rather drown than be brown.
I am biased, I know it, and I am not so sure that I regret it anymore.

I was listening to my aunt telling my mom about her trip to visit with her. In those days we had trams running in the middle of the street in sunken rails. Our tram was # 16, it was bright yellow and it was rattling its way from our suburb to the center of Copenhagen.
And stuck in one of the sunken rails, my aunt was explaining, was a female, desperately trying to get the heel of her shoe out of the rail without---and that was the point--taking the shoe off. When she finally admitted defeat and took the shoe off, the reason became clear. She had a hole in her stockings.
My aunt related this accident as a cautionary tale.
Never, ever get stuck in a rail if you have holes in your stockings. Ever.

Gosh....I thought it would be a simple thing to delete the first Chubby Lady. Not so.
When I tried I got all kinds of warnings about what might happen and where the desired deletion would take me......a slippery slope not recommended by the little folks who work inside my computer and who speak and write in a language barely recognizable as English.
So they won. I shall let the Chubby Lady remain rather that fear the wrath of whoever decides what is good for me and my blog.
Fearsome critters, they.

I decided that the image of "The chubby lady with a stick"
was not the way I wanted it, so I made a new one.
Here it is then, "The chubby lady with a stick # 2."
Enjoy.
Same "lady", same stick, better art work.