You Are Still A Young Man - Idiot!

I have to straddle a line between retaliation and just let it pass. I haven't told you the story yet. There is always a story. It is not apocryphal. It is tough out there in the brick and mortar world.

I was on the train. Young man and his friend enter the car as they start talking about girls. I have dubbed him Dumbstruck and his sidekick, Goofy.

So Dumbstruck was yacking on how he could not find any chicks. It was too early and the girls were not liquored up yet.  It was around 5pm so I could kinda see his dilemma. It was all I could do not to want to hit Dumbstruck upside the head.

Goofy co-sign with an understanding head bob to Dumbstruck's assessment of the situation.

Dumbstruck then continued conversing how he could find nothing but ugly women all day long. He had a need to find pretty girls.

I'm taking a quick look. The body seemed to be between 18-20 years of age. Rail skinny. Could not detect any form of rump on his behind. It looked to be all bone and not much of that. A strong draft beer in a tea cup could knock him down the street.

He wasn't ugly but I can't seen anybody rushing to lock lips on him. You couldn't do it anyway. The main feature was his mouth. Damn thing would not stop moving unless he was coming up for air. 

Goofy had a half pound more meat on his frame but his main attraction is that he doesn't say much.

Anyway, Dumbstruck goes on and on and on until a woman ask him "where he is getting off the train?' He responds "MacArthur Park."

She gets up and moves to the far end of the car.

Normal people might have taken that as a clue but Dumbstruck starts to harp on her that if she didn't like what he had to say "she shoulda put on her earphones". He rags on her for about three minutes about his right of freedom of speech and then goes back to his subject of choice.

Girls.

There are ugly women. There are old women.There are pretty girls.

These can be divided into the ones that will talk with you, the ones that won't (forget them, he told Goofy) and the ones that will do stuff. His job, as he sees it, is to locate that female objectified possessive noun and do what he wants.

Not his fault if they are stupid. 

You know just typing this I want to smack him for all the girl children on the planet. 

I didn't trust myself. I would have smacked him on behalf of the decent guys too.

I tried tuning him out. I had my mediation music. I'm trying to go to my happy place but Dumbstruck's voice carried louder than I could safely turn up the volume on my media player.

My understanding is that he was heading home to get ready to go to a party or series of parties where he could find and "do something" with some liquored up young girl.

Goofy was down widdit widdit. Non-verbally speaking.

Now, maybe it is me. I haven't been around a young man in a long time.  It is one thing to brag about your imaginary skills with the ladies.

It is another to announce to captive train audience that you need to have the object of your desire incapacitated before you can get anywhere.

I don't think you can be that drunk to let Dumbstruck touch you let alone "do something"  but I don't know what the heck is going on with young folks now days.

Eggad, I've crossed over. 

All I know is that by the time the clowns got off the train I mentally turned in my imaginary cougar card. I was thinking about guys in the 30s or 40s but it would take 20 plus years to clean out the dreck in that kind of head. At that rate I'd be 75.

No. If they are making the current crop of young men that stupid, that selfish, hate based and penile directed then whomever wants that slab of bones can have him. And Goofy too.


As for me, I gotta find better headphones.

Lusting Tempos for National Poetry Month

It is National Poetry Month. I don't have to tell regular readers what May is but stock up on the lube just in case. Replace your worn out electronics and for your podcastical dilatation you might want to visit Erotica al la Carte.



It is Friday and it has been a long day. Need something to take the blah out of it. This poem is from Victoria McColley who has a blog at www.poetryauthoress.com.

I don't have anything profound to say. I have been drained by the week and I am looking forward to the L.A. Times Festival of Books so I can walk among the words and the people that carry them.

It is a pain to hike across town but it has been a nice couple of days since the heavy rains. I need to walk this yutz out of my system. It starts with a poem.

Programming School Dropout and Redemption

I've been avoiding telling folks this but it is time to come clean and start again. I am the beauty school dropout in Grease.



I hate quitting anything. Really, I can be guilty of hanging on for dear life until I get it done. Well, life snuck up on me and went booger-booger.

Strike 1. I was doing okay. I wrote my first program and thought my homework was done. What I failed to realize was there were a whole bunch of lessons underneath the first one. I catch that mistake two days before the first quiz and try to cram it down.

You can't do that with an intro Python programing class. I tried but it was painful.

Strike 2. My day job at the Salt Mine got crazy. I can't go into details but let me just say the widgets were asking questions of the whatsits and the whatsits were waiting on the doohickies and in the meantime salt is flowing all over the conveyer belt.

It was lunar baby, stuff was flying everywhere and all I had was a spoon.

Strike 3. I came home and tried again. I'm in Lesson two. I'm still learning vocabulary and programing at the same time. The dude shifted from vocabulary to concept and then from concept to implementation.

I was still on understanding the concepts when bango zoom he was talking about the rafinstinbonk.

It was over. I cured up in my bed, I knew I didn't have a flipping chance.

A Possibility for Redemption

A new session of the class is starting up on April 16th. I'm stubborn. I do not like not learning what I set out to learn. You don't get to be this old without picking up some life skills.

Boomer power baby!

I am gathering supportive tutorial materials:

Videos

Khan Academy has some programming videos:



I can watch or listen to these on my phone via YouTube.

Tutorials

One size does not fit all and I'm looking for re-enforcements.

• At Python.org there is a Beginner's Guide page for non-programmers to access tutorials and resources.
• There is another interactive tutorial at Learn Python.org.
• Python Turtle is for kids and those willing to think like one. There is no shame in my game. You download the software and the follow the instructions to learn concepts in order to move the turtle.
• Yes, there is a podcast for just about everything, this one is for young programmers so if I add the numbers my age I could be youngish.

What About Life?

I know. I could be setting myself up for a fall again. Salt is still shooting across the room but the flow is now in check for the time being. If I can get a better bead on the topic before the new session starts I'll sign up again.

If not, slow and steady will have to be my workflow. Monty would have wanted it that way.

(The programming language was named after Monty Python, which is nice to know but I still feel like a git.)