There are many different types of Bonds, aren’t there?

(I found that image here.)

THIS post, however, is about Interpersonal Bonds, which I observed, last night, forming in a room.

While regular readers of this blog might imagine those bonds forming among people in a  group therapy room, they were actually created …

… at a restaurant.

Here’s what happened.

Last night, Michael and I went out to dinner, at a restaurant I like very much. We had to wait, a little while, for a table.

Once they seated us, our relief quickly turned to other feelings, because the people sitting next to us were loud. REALLY loud.

To use two words from yesterday’s post — Double O — one person, especially, seemed obstreperous and obnoxious.

And I noticed many people bonding, because of this.  Michael and I immediately bonded with our…

Italo Calvino said: The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts. Describe the ghosts that live in this house: Image credit: “love Don’t live here anymore…” – © 2009 Robb North – made available under Attribution 2.0 Generic

[Inspire me]

They built me by hand.

I am made of brick, wood, blood and Budwieser.

I remember the day that they turned on my electricity and the AC kicked on….

I was almost alive….

All I needed was the people.

Amy showed up in her mama’s belly just before winter that year.

Patty was almost as big as me, at least that’s what Tom had said, laughing when he tried to pick her up and carry her in to me.

I remember how angry she was when he lay on my front porch groaning.

He told her that his back was broke and to leave…

Being an author is fantastic!  The money, the fame, being able to get up whenever you want, write a couple of thousand words and then play a round of golf or go for a spin in the Lamborghini…

Today marks an important day for word users and language speakers everywhere. It’s National Grammar Day! There are all kinds of ways to celebrate this special occasion: Proofread an e-mail message before you hit “send.” Show some Facebook friends you care by correcting their grammatical mistakes in the comments section of their posts. Read a grammatical page-turner, like Woe Is I or Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Try your hand at a quick Facebook editing contest hosted by Grammarly, called “Edit This.” Or, for goodness’ sake, just take care to craft a structurally sound sentence with all your commas and apostrophes in the right places.

In honor of the holiday, here are 10 heartfelt sentiments to send to someone you love. Enjoy!

In honor of the day, tell us—which grammatical mistake makes your skin crawl?

I’ll admit it: I have a clickbait problem. When I go online—should I admit how often that is on any given day? No, let’s maintain the illusion that I’m not addled, that I still have plenty of cubic footage left in the reservoir of willpower I built up before I ever opened a web browser—I can resist most clickbait for 80% of the time that I squander there, maybe even 90% or 95% on a good day of voluntary brain stupefaction and compulsive email checking. But then, like one of the demons yanking on St. Anthony’s cloak in Michelangelo’s painting “The Torment of St. Anthony,” the link “Emotional Toddler Loses it Over Her Parents’ Wedding Song” will scroll onto my screen, or a favorite from just yesterday, “Female Penguin Falls in Love with a Man”—and I’m sunk. I’m clickbait fodder. I’m bought and sold in an instant…

Been working on this Think Piece-y essay for awhile. I got a late start watching Season 2 of House of Cards, but after watching it and mulling it over, I think the similarities with West Wing are more striking than many people realize.

Also, thanks to the Twitter-er who pointed out that this needs a SPOILER ALERT for HoC.

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House of Cards has already earned its place in history. Even if the series itself were an artistic disaster, the fact that it’s Netflix’s first original series, available for streaming and binging on the viewer’s own terms, signals an important shift in the way we watch and analyze TV. But what’s not new about the show is the way it creates a hermetically sealed D.C. Fantasyland for viewers to lose themselves in. Everything about the show furthers the impression that you’ve stepped into a different universe. The show is heavily…

I Must Die.

That’s all there is to it.

I am kneeling here…in my big rig…preparing for the exit from mortality by my own hand.

 No…hear me out.

When you do, you will see that…yes….it is for the best.

Everything is clear to me now.

I deserve it.

The sun’s rays… through the windows make the dust particles dance appear ghostly…haunted.

It is quiet now.

I have come to grips with the responsibility of dispensing this justice upon myself that I have pronounced…nay…that I have heaped upon other transgressors throughout my life.

I will not be a hypocrite.

I must be true to the laws of nature and man.

The laws that I believe in.   Self discipline.

 My rules…my guidelines.

Pet peeves should be inviolate.

I see the instruments of justice before me.

My release….

My redemption…

The ceremonial jagged piece of glass, the tack hammer, the boiling vat of…

When I was a kid, growing up on a pig farm in South Georgia, our ‘farm’ and home were surrounded by big fields of peanuts, corn, silage and soybeans.

After a good rain, we kids of the white trash persuasion and a few children of darker hue would head out into the fields and look for rain water that would pool up in certain low spots of these fields and go swimming.

Not only were some of these pools 3’ to 4’ deep, but they would also have a slimy purple, pink, gold and silver sheen to them…..

Insecticide….Pesticide….fertilizer….chemical and anal….(Horse poop goofy)

We didn’t know that then….We just thought it made the water pretty.

We’d swim in it all day!

We got it in our eyes… our noses….spit it at each other, probably had pee in it too.

Tusslin’ and fightin’, playin’ Civil War or Indians….Pushing each other down…

Captured quote from Anais Nin.

An open letter to Pope Francis…

Dear Pope Francis,

My name is Bro. Brian Zampier. I am a Marianist brother and artist. For the past 10 years I have been an assitant to a wonderful Marianist artist — Bro. Mel Meyer — who died on October 12 (the Feast of Our Lady of the Pillar) at the age of 85.

For Bro. Mel’s obituary in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, click here.

For a wonderful article about Bro. Mel by Rev. Travis Scholl, click here.

I am writing you to show you one of Bro. Mel’s recent works — his “Pope Francis Chair”… 

We are saving it at Marianist Galleries in St. Louis, Missouri so you may sit in it when you visit the United States!

Know of my prayers for you.

Love, Bro. A. Brian Zampier, SM

Check out today’s posting on the “abz paperless sketchbook journal”…