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The Simpsons started airing in 1987 as series of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show, one of two programs Fox Television debuted with. The first half-hour episode of The Simpsons, the Christmas episode "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire," aired in December 1989, coming up on 30 years ago. Its first season aired winter and spring 1990; it's been a fact of TV ever since, and is the longest-running animated prime time show ever, beating out The Flintstones and its run of 166 episodes (as of this post, there have been 662 Simpsons episodes).

High-school me immediately loved the show. I now realize how much of a privilege it was to get to watch it in college, with like-minded smartasses, during that unparalleled 1990s run of seasons. The Simpsons was so good, for so long.

And it evolved. Nothing on TV lasts that long without evolving, of course, and the show in its early seasons quickly became both weirder and more epic. That was a big influence of Conan O'Brien, who wrote and produced the show right before he got hired to host NBC's Late Night: his "Marge vs. the Monorail" was a) funny as hell and b) one of the stories to open up the world of The Simpsons. It can be a musical! It can have famous guest stars in on the joke! It can have impossible projects being built in Springfield like an escalator to nowhere!

But before, back in its second season of 1990-1991, The Simpsons did a segment that was intentionally light on gags and was much more an exercise in mood: the last segment of the original "Treehouse of Horror" episode, its own adaptation of "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe.


The poem was adapted into a Simpsons-friendly script by the late, great Sam Simon, previously a producer of the show Taxi; frequent Simpsons director David Silverman directed it; James Earl Jones narrated. The segment was a gamble; show creator Matt Groening worried that it might be genuinely bad, or that it might be really, really pretentious. But many critics at the time singled out "The Raven" for praise, and man and damn, it still works like gangbusters. The Homer reading (Forgotten Lore — Vol. II; heh) in the sketch and the Bird-Bart who torments him were versions of both characters the show hadn't done before, but fit both the segment and the overall show so well. That's a hell of a vocal performance by Dan Castellaneta; and Bart (then, as now, Nancy Cartwright) gets to still be a smartass even as a bird. And the music behind it all was the first episodic score Alf Clausen wrote for the show, beginning a 27-year run as The Simpsons's primary, mostly sole composer.

The above clip ends before the segment's end; Bart is dubious and not scared of the Poe poem, and while Lisa (Yeardley Smith) matter-of-factly admits that "maybe people were easier to scare" back when Poe wrote it, Homer, who'd been outside the treehouse listening, is spooked the hell out.

All this also reminds me: it's also a privilege that I get to hear Edgar Allan Poe's work in the language it was written for, with that dreamy-turned-nightmarish imagery and that regular, regular cadence and rhyme scheme. It's music to my ears.

I had plans. Actual plans, plural, for today, possibly including a decent-length car trip to see family out in Dundee, but first I had stuff I wanted to do in-town. Library stop: check. Beulahland stop: check. But then, my body started telling me, "Um, me, maybe TAKE IT EASY TODAY." Because I felt on the verge of getting sick.

More subdued than earlier, I curtailed my plans and headed home. Since then: crackers, Cream of Chicken Cup-A-Soup, broth, more crackers, water, and reading and resting. Haven't decided yet if I'll be ready for work tomorrow, so I'll see. The main goal at the moment is DON'T GET SICK, but if I do, deal with it...

I was at work today. Usually this is a day off, but I needed to take a class and a test (I won't bore you with why) and I got paid for being there for the test, so that helps.

Rarely if ever do I bring my tablet with me to work, but today I could. After the class and the test, I until around at PDX and took pictures of the Departures Roadway and parts of the terminal. Now I'll share:




On a clear day, from here you can see Mt. Hood.

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It's been a long week.

I've been in bed preparing for sleep for the past hour already.

And technically, my work week isn't done: I'll go into work for a couple of hours late tomorrow morning for training (we're adding a service that our Valet operation hasn't done before), but at least I can sleep in.

And, of course, before then, get some sleep.

Be well, y'all.

".................................................yes."

Despite a second late start at work in a row (for the same reason as Sunday), I made an effort to make today better than yesterday. I think I succeeded.

And I had an unexpected pleasure: a cousin who lives in New Jersey, right across the Hudson from Msnhattan, flew into Portland this morning (his immediate family still lives in Oregon) and stopped at the valet booth to say hi. He had to wait a bit as I was bringing down a car, and then he had to wait a little more because I was so in Work Mode that I didn't get why my co-workers were gesturing at the guy sitting on our outside bench going "say hi!" THEN I took a good look and: hey, hi, cousin!

What also helped my day be better was me realizing we had plenty of people working today, so I asked during my lunch if I could simply clock out early. I got the OK, and went home to relax, stopping at McDonald's on the way.

Today was an "off" day. Maybe it should have been an off day where I just called out of work, because I was awkward and the day was awkward. More than once I wanted to say, out loud, "Oh give me a break"...that or "Give me strength." Fear not, I didn't.

One thing I did say today: "I'm sorry, that was really rude of me."

Another thing I said today: "Don't run me over." (But that's a whole other story...)

Today was annoying from almost the start, thanks to a slower bus than usual. I got to the MAX platform just as the doors to my usual train closed, and I wouldn't have had a chance to get to the train and get the doors open before it left. So, I was late and had a short day. Also a day where...maybe I should tell that only on my Patreon.

(Kidding. Badly kidding. I don't have a Patreon.)

So. I made it home (no problems or accidents!) and I should be able to relax now.

While I was out today — driving to Moreland/Sellwood, stopping at the library, walking around the neighborhood's antique shop district and people-watching — I stopped at a branch of my bank. For maybe the first time in my life, I deposited not a check but cash: the bulk of my August tips from work. I'd come up with a cunning plan: save up that money to, eventually, do something with it, and why not put it in my savings account? Then it could do a little work itself and help me get those little bits of interest while I decide what, perhaps, to do with it later.

Satisfied with watching an ATM swallow those $5, $10, and $20 bills* and tell me exactly (and correctly!) how much that was, I continued on my day out, got home, and went online to where I could do an electronic transfer of those funds from my bank to my credit union.

I couldn't, turns out.

I think I know why it didn't work, and it's probably related to the credit card balance I have with my credit union — don't worry, I'm working on paying down that, it's manageable and I accept that I have a balance to pay — but I also didn't want that tip money to stay in my main account that I use most often. So I wrote a check to my credit union for that same amount and mailed it off. My tip money will go where I want it to go.

Am I more of an adult now? I got excited about financial transactions.

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* Once so far, a few months ago, a customer tipped me a $50 bill.**

** I wound up not saving the many $1 bills I'd gotten; I decided at one point this that it made more sense to add those to my pocket change. Meanwhile, I'm working to be a better tipper of other people, and having cash to do so helps...

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Entry title a quote from this.

Ah, dreams. I think about them a lot, and after last night's I had this wider thought:

Many, many, many descriptions of dreams boil down to "Something that shouldn't make sense, made sense!"

At some level, many dreams do make sense to the dreamer, but without all the filters in your head to help reflect and refract the dream's sense, that description will often become really boring and pointless to anyone who listens to you describe it.

The most I'll describe about the events of my dream last night is that they involved a hotel room, driving away from the hotel and taking a complicated route to do something based on a plan I hadn't nailed down with other people, realizing I'd forgotten an important thing to do at the hotel room — SHOULD HAVE TURNED OUT THE LIGHTS, DARN IT — and having no luck getting back before the dream ended...

...but seeing interesting stuff on the way. Like a food cart that literally could not be seen when looked at one way, but could be seen when looked at another way. In other words, this dream-food cart was somehow disguised unless you knew where to look for it.

Getting even further into the weeds of this dream, I looked at the cart as I passed and thought "Oh! That kind of reminds me of the food alley!" Which is a dream location I often dream about, this alley between brick-and-mortar restaurants which has more eateries. Portland obviously has food carts, but it doesn't really have alleys like this, other than a block of road in Old Town/Chinatown (around the corner from the original Voodoo Doughnut) that was converted into a pedestrian-only alley. The food alley I picture is narrower, more eccentric, very DIY with its furnishings and hangings to protect people from rain...and with wonderful food.

Yes, of course I dream about good food.

Thinking about the big conflict of the dream, where I needed to detour back to the hotel to turn off a bunch of lights, I can realize now that I'm awake that all I would have needed to do was JUST CALL THE HOTEL AND GIVE THE STAFF PERMISSION TO ENTER THE ROOM AND TURN OFF THE LIGHTS THEMSELVES. And also, likely, because I'm me even in my dreams, to thank them for doing so and to apologize for making them do so. See? That would make sense.

Maybe this all would make sense if I keep talking about it, but, you know. Boring and pointless to others.

But I'm glad I like my dreams.


(Title paraphrased from a Randy Newman song, because I'm me.)

My mind is trying to be useful. I'm imagining me trying to give directions to people (and having them not really listen or get what I'm saying, argh) even though it's late and it's the end of my work week and I'm hoping to relax.

Still, I think — and hope — I'll sleep well tonight.

I have a poem in progress. Earlier this year, I had a different poem I was working on, and I got distracted and stuck and then I was surprised that I'd started that poem in March of this year and hadn't even looked back at it until August. But I had the opening of another poem by then, and I prefer to get one poem done before I start another — I used to get bunches half-done or less, or never even write my poem ideas down so I'd've had even a harder time finishing them — so I got that earlier one done and noted that line and got started on the new poem. Slowly.

That earlier one, "Awkward," is far from my best work, but: at least it got written.

I've made what I think is notable progress on the next poem, but I've put it aside for the night, JUST FOR THE NIGHT, because I worried I was starting to over-think it. It also has no title yet, and I want to be sure I have one before I show it to anyone.

But I can do this. Just not right now.