lord, i want to be in that number

everything is going crazy around here, and by everything, i mean, work is crazy, people are yelling, people are complaining, my muscles are pulling away from my bones in a minor sports injury and i don't care. who cares? there is nothing like a full-blown tragedy to put life back into perspective.

there are so many stories, as there always are. the one where the man had to watch his wife float away.

and then this:

i read in today's news about a woman whose husband had cancer. he was on oxygen and they ran out of oxygen, she went to get help and by the time she came back, he was dead. she floated his body out to a main street on some boards. nobody would take the body to a morgue. the police couldn't help. nobody could help.

finally someone helped her flag down someone to take the body in. the news said:


Finally, about three hours after Bowie died, Miller flagged down a passing flatbed truck filled with downed tree limbs. After some heated words and an offer of $20, he persuaded the driver to take the body to Charity Hospital, where the police had directed them.

Turner helped load the body into the truck bed, then climbed aboard.

The truck turned and made its way into the French Quarter, where jazz bands are known to lead joyful funeral processions through the storied streets. But the streets were deserted Tuesday, and there was no music for Bowie, just the whirring of helicopter blades above.

the man who helped her had this to say:

"I'm hurt to my heart with this," the grizzled man said. "To see the city stoop this low. It shouldn't be, mister. It should not be."

yes, sir.

don't worry, i'm a doctor.

today i decided that i was going to become an emt (an emergency medical technician). i spoke to a few people who had their certification and it seemed like something i could do. they said, "you know, you could also just do an advanced first aid class, or even a ski patrol class, which covers a lot of the same material." that was because i must have made a twitchy face when they talked about having to undergo a background check and a chest xray and a tb test, and, oh, 188 or so hours of classes over a period of a few months. i would really like to help people, but only if i don't have to do 188 hours of anything. that's not true. i would like to do it, but maybe i would like to get my feet wet first. like maybe i should take the pet cpr class i've seen offered at the community college. it would be good to know how to heimlich my dog, who has been known to gag on rawhide chewies. or maybe, since there are always people collapsing all over the place, i should take the regular, human cpr class. that was my original idea. it would be good to know what to do in an emergency. in fact, this whole idea came to me as i was strolling in bloomingdale's and i saw a woman with blood sort of dripping and spattery all around her, leaning against the jewelry display. i tried not to stare, but naturally i completely gawked until it looked like she might fall down. her pre-teen daughter was kind of freaking out and was busy smearing her mother's blood all over the floor with recycled napkins from the food court. the next thing i noticed was that nobody from the department store was really helping. it was one of those times when you wonder if you should stay on the outskirts, or jump into the action. i walked over and asked the bleeding woman if she needed help. she said she was going to throw up or pass out. so a maintenance man showed up with a chair for her to sit in. it was a big huge stool. the woman sat in it, with her legs dangling down. she had razory slices all over them, and she was really bleeding. i mean, her legs looked like slaw, they were all sliced up and all the bloomingdale's jewelry people just kept showing diamond pendants and things as this woman bled. it turns out that she had fallen on the escalator and had all kinds of slicey gashes up and down her legs. i asked the jewelry clerk if she thought we should ask the woman to get off of the chair and to sit on the floor, or in another chair, with her feet up. she barked, "I'M NOT GOING TO TELL HER WHAT TO DO!! YOU DO IT!! WE DON'T HAVE ANOTHER CHAIR!" so i finally got the woman off the bloody-leg-dangling chair and i told her to get on the floor and to elevate her legs. anyway, people gingerly stepped around us and some pretended they didn't see us and nobody from the store ever came back to see if she was o.k. it was shocking. i really know NOTHING about first aid, but i just sort of remembered hearing that if somebody is bleeding their legs should be elevated. so i took control of the situation with my one piece of first aid information. that was scary. i was the one in charge. so that's why i decided i needed to know more. in the end, i got the daughter to call her dad, and the guy came and picked them up. but anyway, suppose something even worse than coming across someone who had fallen down the elevator of bloomingdale's were to happen! i would want to know what to do.

so back to the emt thing. it's too much time. too many hours for now. maybe if i turn out to be the greatest medic the world has ever known, i'll make the big commitment, but for now, i'm mostly freaked out about having to breathe into that weird mouthpiece attached to the rubbery head & torso. but i will do it. so today i searched for advanced first aid courses and i also found a first responder class. it also has a considerable time commitment. but i have to admit, i did like the sound of it. i am a FIRST RESPONDER! i think i would only be the first responder until i got there and fainted at the sight of blood. they could send me as the first responder, i could pass out and that would trigger some kind of alert to send out the second responder. the person who isn't afraid of blood and bones sticking out through flesh. also, i'm kind of a germaphobe, so unless i could reset someone's shoulder while touching them only through kleenex, i might have a problem. well, maybe they'll teach me the things i need to know: kleenex bone resetting techniques and the like at my advanced first aid class. i have a long way to go.

it's too hot

it's over 100 degrees i think. maybe 110. it feels like it. this is one of those days that makes you squint when you're walking across a parking lot. it makes you feel like if you can squinch your face up enough, your brow will jut out far enough to protect you from the sun, so you walk with a weird squint that also requires raising your eyebrows like a surprised marmoset and also furrowing, like an angry, maybe burrowing, marmoset. by the time you get to the car, you are so tired from manipulating all of those little face muscles, that you have to go drink a slurpy lemonade drink even though you hate lemonade. that, right there, is the trouble with summer. i understand that the autumnal equinox is in 28 days. i should make an autumnal equinox advent calendar, but instead of taking out little wedges of chocolate or hazelnuts or some such thing each day, i will fill the thing nightly with little swatches of fabric from every outfit i sweat through during the next 28 days. by the time fall comes, the thing will have little relics of perspiration. and then if we suffered a blow from bioterrorists, somebody would find it and think that they had stumbled upon some kind of reliquary of gauzy artifacts. in fact it would just be sweaty pieces of my unfashionable wardrobe. i think that's what the king tut exhibit is. it was probably some kind of jumped-up kind of drycleaning thing and now everyone is standing in line to see it. well, not everyone is in line. i'm not. i went 26 years ago and i pretended like i was deaf the whole time. my friend maureen and i were in a school that had a deaf student teacher and we all learned american sign language. so i remember leaning against that big thick illuminated glass of some kind of ewer from the burial chamber, and signing out the words to you light up my life with maureen. i hated field trips. we had to go to the page museum too and they had a wall with something like 400 wolf skulls on it. this was supposed to be for kids? i hated it and felt weird and had to go home and spit and wash my hands about 100 times before i ate. i would never make someone have to go see that. they also have a thing made out of plexiglass where you have to pull up on a big metal rod and the sign says: FEEL WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE STUCK IN TAR!! and all kinds of kids were pulling up on that rod, pretending it was their big hoof or something. come to think of it, that might have traumatized me. that's partly what i hate about summer. all those buzzing & hissing bugs and remembering those sweaty field trips and the ride in the school bus and the skulls and the tar and squinting and feeling sticky and nauseous. i did like coming home into the air conditioning though. once i was home, i felt pretty good. 28 more days, everyone. dog days of summer. good-bye summer, don't let the screen door hit you on the way out.

newsflash: engine on the ropes!!

i was told by an honest person, who is also the smartest and loveliest person i've ever known, that the last 3 entries in this blog weren't as--what was the word?--crackling? sparkling? funny? good? as the first ones, back in the old days, 3 weeks ago. now, before you get in a huff and start defending me by threatening the smart, lovely, honest and handsome person who told me this, (and don't try it, because this person is my favorite of all) i think that it's true. no, no, please...i do. i think somewhere in the juan de fuca straights i lost my gift. i thought this morning that i would retire the engine. it would remain a brilliant flash in the history of time. it would be like jane's addiction, or spacefood sticks, or that game with the yellow and orange or pink head that sprayed water everywhere that had something to do with a garden hose from when i was a kid. tiny engine would become THAT legendary. but instead, i decided to fight back. i will not let the engine wither into obscurity.

so here's my three-point plan: first, i will try to include nudity as much as possible. secondly, i will discuss food, which seems to make people either laugh or want to eat, both of which are good for me, and my third idea is that i will include jokes.

ok, first today's joke:
what did the boy octopus say to the girl octopus?
i want to hold your hand hand hand hand hand hand hand hand.

wasn't that fun? now for the food aspect: aspic!

now for the nudity: what the heck do you think?? you think we're really going to put nudity on here. get out of here.

we would like to invite you, our readers, to contribute fascinating facts to our pages. please see below for pertinent information:

ARE YOU SHY AND DEFERENTIAL?

We'd like to hear from you.

Contact:
Whisper
c/o The Jelliwell Conservancy
Clement-upon-Tinley

thank you, everyone.
the engine will rise! rise!

fur to go

i'm feeling better today, but yesterday i woke up and i was really dizzy. i couldn't really even walk around right. i sort of felt like i was going to bump into a wall. i mean, really only sort of - - i wasn't really bumping into any walls. i sort of wished that i was. that's the kind of thing that would really get you some attention. i kind of tilted my head over a little to see if it would make me walk into a wall, but it didn't. so anyway, i was dizzy all day, no matter what i did. i took a nap, i took antivert (whose label proclaims MAY CAUSE DIZZINESS) which i think is pretty darn funny for an anti-dizziness medication. anyway, nothing helped. this morning, though, sure enough, i woke up and i wasn't dizzy anymore. now, i want to tell you that i don't drink. i mean, i don't NOT drink, but i didn't have any alcohol at all. this was a SERIOUS MEDICAL EPISODE. but it's gone now. thank you for all the cards and letters. it really means the world to me. in spite of my feeling dizzy, i managed to apply for representation at a top modeling agency in france, and i reheated some chicken. which, by the way, is actually pretty shocking considering i was a vegetarian for nearly 30 years. i never thought i'd eat meat. ever. now i eat fish and chicken and turkey. no beef or pork though, still. i even touch raw chicken now when i used to think the idea of touching raw chicken was the worst thing in the world--like an actual nightmare. but you know i also said i'd never drive a german car and i also used to hate boxing. now i love boxing and have a favorite fighter, even though he's lost all his fights and i haven't even seen him around anymore. and i do drive a german car, but it has french tendencies. the point of this, i suppose is, never say never. that's the can-do attitude of the 19th century, and you heard it here first, dear reader.

boss tweed

i was going to start this with a brief discussion of the carmichael function, but on second thought i'm thinking it's too much to tackle for now. maybe we'll wait until fall, when it cools down and you're all wearing something a little more modest--something fitting for such an analysis. after all, it's still summer, and everyone is crazy, tiptoeing around at the seaside. perhaps it's best we wait. so instead i'll tell a little story you can enjoy with your icy drink and your beefy summer snack. when i was a youngster, i attended a school that was host to a quite spectacular teacher. she first introduced me to james joyce, an introduction for which i owe her a great deal. in any case, this woman was such a wit, such a clever brute, that i daresay she scared off everyone but the most hale of juniors. for those that held on by our bitten nubs, the rewards were fantastic. i think, though, that her brilliance left her somewhat absent-minded where practical matters were concerned. her clothes were often mismatched, and owing to her height (she was easily over 6 feet tall) most pants proved too short. she solved the issue by sewing on thick strips of lace, or other fabric in order to extend the legs. she wore clunky sandals, and well, you get the picture. let me pause to say that i really adored this woman. she was fantastic. anyway, one brisk afternoon, she had on a sort of tweedy jacket. it was the kind of blazer that had the elbow patches and had a nubby fabric. she advanced to the blackboard to explain some literary term she had just thrown out at the numb faces in the classroom, and as she raised her arm to write the term on the board, it was revealed that a black sock was clinging to the jacket, just under her arm. well, i don't have to tell you the reaction of a room full of 16-year-olds. she didn't care much though. she peeled it away and went on discussing satire or whatever it was. i found out later, she moved back east and married an irishman. good for her.

return of the engine

the engine has returned. the trip away was great. whales breaching, porpoises porpoising, that kind of thing. it was beautiful. but one thing kept nagging me, the whole time i was away: what about my readership? oh, sure, i knew there were other news outlets available and i know that some of you had to turn to cheap novels to keep yourselves busy, but i know what really was stirring inside of you. don't worry, you don't have to wait any longer. tiny engine is back.

did i mention that i love classical music? (or christmas music, as it was called by a woman with whom i once worked--that and "cartoon music," that's what she called it.) anyway, i do adore classical music. but i can't abide copland. well, is that bad of me to say? i don't like anything that makes me think i'm at a rodeo. i do like dvorak. scratch that, i am really coming to believe that dvorak is the greatest. if you don't believe me, just listen to the romance in f minor for violin. really, right now. go download it somewhere and tell me that doesn't do something for you. anyway, there's a piece called 'song to the moon' from his rusalka. time was, it used to be sung in english or german, though it was originally written in czechoslovakian. well, nowadays, nearly everyone who sings it sings it in its original czechoslovakian. renee fleming has a lovely recording of it. i would put a link in here, but i wouldn't want you to leave just yet. i am working on building up a real stockholm-syndrome type relationship with you right now. anyway, more on the dvorak later. but tonight, when you have nothing to do, and you have that leftover hamentashen in one hand, click on over to itunes with the other hand and have a listen to the piece. it's quite lovely. and for goodness sakes, pay the $.99 for it. the 30 second clip won't do the trick. ok, my friends, it's time for me to head out now. god ye good den.

darling, je vous aime beaucoup

and while that is so very true, that's not what this post is about. it's about hildegarde, who died today. and this morning, i dreamt i was a cabaret singer, singing at the roosevelt, or was it the algonquin? isn't that curious? i dreamt that every note that came out of my mouth was perfect. and then i read that she died. i'm sure no one thinks that dream is more interesting than i. she wore exquisite opera gloves. who wears opera gloves? i know, them's fightin' words. i think i feel a trend coming. oh dear.

one of us writes this blog

which one? yes, the canid.

i'm packing my chronic fatigues

do you remember the commercial when we/you/your son/your mother were/was a kid/kids where the scene was of a child's birthday party and all the kids were sitting around the honoree, singing happy birthday? the child blows out the candles, and then the voiceover says, in a business-like tone: "this child has just spread german measles to all of his friends." could that be? is that really what happened? or is it just something i imagined, like the time my sister and i saw, we SAW, in a split-second commercial break on television - a close up of someone's hands, holding up a copy of our mother's check. it was her check, her signature, her handwriting--everything. JUST FOR A SECOND! we both saw it. so i'm sure i saw this german measles thing. or was it rubella or mumps or are those all the same thing? i can't keep up with the diseases of my parents'/your son's/your grandfather's generation. polio, measles, chronic fatigue syndrome. have you heard the song by queens of the stone age that goes: "nicotine, valium, vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy and alcohol!"? it's pretty cool. it's very rock. in the way that rock can be rawk. i am thinking i'll do a song that goes: "polio, measles, tetanus, rubella, dyptheria and wizardry!" i know that wizardry isn't a disease, but it fit the rhythm of the song. i know wizardry didn't attack us! I KNOW THAT! anyway, hoping that nobody gets rubella or gastro-intestinal disease or the junta virus or whatever is going around, i would like to wish a happy birthday to august loved ones: mom, donna, lisanne, nick. it's a good month. a little muggy, but good. today will be muggy, followed by toogy, weggy and thurgy.

taking a trip not taking a trip

i am going on a trip for 10 days. i say that mostly so my legions of readers will not be surprised by the absence of glittering insights here at tiny engine. i know that all five of you have really come to expect your morning routine: a cup of tea/coffee/diet coke/guiness, tiny engine and a banana. but besides that, i wanted to tell you that after years of travelling (not really world travelling, readers, i am not that cosmopolitan-- but domestic travel to industrial parts of urban cities, lugging borrowed suitcases and one ugly wintercoat--that kind of travel) i have come to realize one thing: i am not good at travelling. well, let me revise that. i am not good at the stuff that leads up to travelling: packing, remaining sane, refraining from alienating everyone i know, managing to fit 17 pairs of socks into 8 pairs of shoes in my rolly suitcase yet still having room for the pair of pants i want to wear on the plane trip home so as to appear the cosmopolitan traveler even though i know i will not wear those pants but will instead resort to something considerably more institutional but more comfortable - - that sort of thing. i am now in the throes of that pre-travel time. bear with me, friends! i have to bring formal wear and also plastic-y items suitable for running around on top of glaciers and close to bears in their natural environment! well, that's what i'm trying to do now, but so far all i have is a laundry basket full of shoes, film (who uses film?), socks and a small tube of minty fresh striped crest gel. i am happy to hear suggestions from my fair readers. i know some of you actually own luggage. i am happy to take some ambien and have you come over here and pack for me too, but i only have 5 left from my prescription 3 years ago. i gave 2 to my grandmother who took them both at the same time, along with her painkillers, even though i warned against it. she still didn't get any sleep. maybe she could come help me pack. except then everything would be wrapped in tissue paper. maybe the ambien in her weird system, combined with the painkillers and god knows what else--defrosted cheese danish--turned it into some form of speed. maybe she could market it under the name grambien.

build it and they will come

what's remarkable--and i'll just say here that this is going to be the last post of the night--that one can simply put out a beacon and from the darkness come multitudes. tiny engine is now ranked as the top blog in the country. as of five minutes ago. this is late-breaking news, friends. we want to thank you for everything you've done. we would like to thank our beleaguered and destitute sponsors, without whose help we cound have never gotten this project off the ground. and of course, a special thank you to DELFOOT, a grass-roots chemical concern in woonsocket.

it's just the newness of you

since i started this blog a few hours ago, everything that flips through my mind is followed by: "that would be a good thing to put on my blog!" it's easy to see that i am a big gigantic geek and that i will later regret my first blogging days. it will be like when i first found out about ebay and i spent about a month buying completely insane items. a postcard of the liberation of paris. a wallet-full-of-bag, which was a vinyl coin purse with the old-fashioned clasp that once opened, regurgitated out of itself to become a nylon tote bag, with the coin purse exoskeleton dangling from the bottom, like an udder or a snake husk. that purchase has since become a source of ridicule for me. anyway, those were the early days of ebay, before you could buy prada bags and automobiles and things like that. i was a pioneer then. so i will cash in that chip now in order to post foolishly here in my early days of blogdom.

candy

i have been eating a lot of candy lately. well, chocolate really. i don't know if chocolate really counts as candy. i mean, candy is usually cherry and sugary and something you eat really fast. but chocolate - - and i mean the chocolate i've been eating - - is belgian dark chocolate and it is the best thing ever. well, so i've been eating a lot of it. and maybe i guess i've been eating a lot of candy too, because my friend vaughn has a jar of old-fashioned candy on his desk and i just found out about this kind of candy called a bullseye and it's really changed my life.

whisper on the anvil 

what's a big idea?

i haven't any big ideas, just millions and millions of little ones, floating around. all the time. when i'm sleeping, or trying to sleep, or fetching soymilk, or taking the dog for a walk. i invented a website years ago as a place to keep some of the ideas, but it was a lot of work. then along came blogging, or the phenomenon of blogs. (p.o.b.)

i am now, reluctantly, but finally jumping on the bandwagon.