My Wasted Breath

Iron Clad

2012-02-09T20:10:00.001-06:00

This may be the last thing that I write for a while, and by a while I mean a long, long time. A measure of time that might be forever. I have in the past 24 hours come to realize that I am not, in any shape, form, or fashion, good at communicating. Via text, blog post, or in person, I am clearly bad at expressing myself. Everything, I say or write is either wrong, or well let's just stick with wrong. Being wrong all the time about everything has a unhealthy effect on one's being. It just begins to wear down a person's 'soul' like water does to a stone over the years. Though unlike the stone, my particular soul, does not take a polish. It just wears down, and at this rate there isn't going to be any soul left very soon.

That loss of soul as it were sounds bloody awful, and I can not seem to arrest it's erosion. I am not sure that going silent will help, but I am willing to give it a shot. After all, the words I have been using have seemed to caused a lot of misunderstandings, and me a lot of grief. A quick glance over these pages will reinforce that opinion. I am not good at this, I am not going to become good at this, and doing things badly isn't really an option. I am not good at so many things that it boggles the imagination. Some of them I have to continue to do just in order to get around in the world, but this is not one of them, and this I can, and have to stop. It just seems that I am a flat head screw driver in a world full of Phillip's headed screws. Useless, and out of place. A tool that has lost its purpose for existing is no longer a tool, it is superfluous.

I have tried, but can no longer ignore the signals that 'mission control' is sending. It has been painful obvious to anyone with half a brain (i.e. NOT me), that this is not working. It is a clear indictment of me that I haven't figured it out before now. I wish I could say I have an excuse other that stupidity, but I don't. I won't try to defend myself, for there is no defense for me. Maybe the truth of the matter is that it has been pure vanity that has been propelling this blog along for quite some time. It is time to turn this ship of vanity towards the sun and steam straight ahead. Burn up and burn out all at the same time. The ashes might make a wonderful pile. However, I doubt that pile would cause too much concern except for the person or persons who would have to clean it.

I do hope that somewhere, someone, may have gotten some enjoyment from all of this drivel. From this extended 'love song' to everyone I know, but I doubt it, and even if they have, well the miscommunication by far outnumber the enjoyments. It is an article of (my limited) faith that once you start have miscommunication, then you are never quite the same again. Miscommunication is like a snowball rolling down hill very fast. It gathers speed and mass, and just rolls over everything in its path. It is that snowball of miscommunication, that force of nature that I cannot seem to arrest, cannot seem to control or guide that has rolled right on over me, and left me blue from the cold. Things, especially certain things, become brittle when they get cold, and when things get brittle, they break. This is broken, and I do not believe that, at present, I have the ability to fix it. As Rimbaud, a real writer, figured out a long, long time ago, and with such brilliant insight, there comes a point where a 'writer' has to stop 'recording' and just merely stop writing. This is the point at which I find myself today, I hope (I guess) that it isn't a fixed point, and I will be able to move past it. I also hope that my (all too few) readers have gotten some pleasure from this journey, but for now this is my exit, and I need to gather my belongings, return my ticket, and get off this train.

Apollo

2012-01-24T20:11:00.001-06:00

The following list is far from comprehensive, or remotely complete, but I am (as I have mentioned before) a lazy, lazy man.

First, there was Becky. The first girl in my love rodeo. The girl I lost my virginity to oh so many years ago. It was a mutual deflowering, and as you would expect it was (at least the first time) pretty brutal. It was probably like watching a killer whale taunt, and kill a baby seal. It was short, nasty, and I am not sure if either of us enjoyed it too terribly much. However, after a few more attempts, we got things in the right spot, and I found 'the' spot, and we began a wonderful, happy relationship. This was back before the war, and in the small town where I was reared, when you deflower a girl, it was only supposed to end one way. And that way, isn't recollecting events over 20 years later without Bethany in the room. It was SUPPOSED to end happily ever after, and it did for Bethany and another fine fellow (a former friend) they are happily married with 3 children, or at least they were the last I heard. She promised she loved me, and wanted to spend the rest of my life with me, clearly she was talking to the wrong guy when she told me that, and I wonder if she told him the same thing. She seems to have meant it, and least when she told him, me not so much. She left.

Years later, there was Yvonne. An exotic name for an exotic woman, from another country she was (and still is I suppose) some place that most of the people I grew up with have never heard. Did I mention I am from a very small, very redneck town? Not that it mattered, by the time Yvonne and I crossed paths, I had been out of that place for a very long time. Yvonne was a very, very bright girl, which makes why she took up with me an even greater mystery. However, at the time it was not a mystery that I wanted to explore to deeply. She too, said a lot of nice things about and to me, and even offered to take me back to the exotic place of her birth to live our lives out together. She is still in this country, and dating a wonderful fellow, i.e. not me. She had a pretty bad accident, and was not quite the same woman after, she became a woman who did not suffer fools gladly, and I am, without a shadow of a doubt, a fool. She too left.

Then there was Eileen, and as the name imply she was a redhead with a LOT of Irish in her. Tall, thin, pale, and young. She was (at the time) a walking embodiment of the perfect woman for me. However, while she had quite a bit of musical talent, she wasn't the swiftest horse in the stable. I am far from being a genius, but sometimes Eileen and I were reduced to awfully lengthy discussions about the colour yellow. Now, I like yellow as much as the next fellow, I even painted a bathroom yellow once, but there isn't a whole lot new to say about the colour yellow. But she was tall, thin, young, pale, and covered in freckles, so I managed to overlook the 'yellow thing' for as long as I was able. She was another girl that I deflowered, and that really seems to mean a lot to women. She eventually became a long distance relationship, and I flew many a mile to see her. I came close to asking her to make it permanent, but the distance and the 'yellow thing' were just too much for me to cope with. She also told me, in different words, that she would have said 'yes' if I had asked. The other big problem with Eileen was I met Anna (see below) when she moved away. They were together the perfect woman, it was a damn shame that there were two of them. She is now married with three children, and happy as a clam. Good on her. She too left.

Then there was Lisa, Lisa was another fiery redhead that actually had 2 'bites at the cherry'. Round 1 was also many years ago, and it was more of a fling than anything else. She was, at the time, a long distance relationship, and I drove a lot miles to see her on more than one occasion. She was an exciting girl, and pretty sharp herself. However, the distance, and time were against us, and she faded into the mists of time. Then one day out of the blue, I got an email from her, I've no idea how she found me, or why she wanted to find me, but she did. It was an instant reconnect, but there was still distance involved. We talked for hours on the phone, and if you know me at all, you know I don't really talk on the phone. We planned almost our entire lives out during those phone calls. We fell back into love during those chats, and then it all when pear shaped. We talked about everything during round 2 of our relationship, and the breaking point was, of all things, Charles Baudelaire. She pretty much told me "It's Baudelaire or me." Well, on my bedside table is a book of Baudelaire's poetry. The whereabouts of Lisa, I do not know. I like to think I made the right choice, but she promised she loved everything about me (including my love of literature), and she left.

Then there was Alice, Alice was a fellow student of history, and a lovely girl. However, Alice was a bit too frail for me. She had (and presumably still has) a fairly significant illness, that made our relationship a lot harder to conduct. It wasn't any sort of illness that prevented the good stuff, it just made her tired a lot. She once told me "if you asked me to marry you right now, I would say yes.' Guess what? I quickly changed the subject, and moved on to less dangerous relationship waters. It was probably a wise decision, since after me Alice decided to revenge fuck my best friend. This is one of the reasons that I no longer have a best friend. She has recently became engaged, and I am happy for her, and hope that the lucky groom's best man isn't too handsome. She too left.

Then came Nancy. Fancy Nancy as I liked to call her. She was not amused by that nickname, and I quickly found out that Nance wasn't amused by much of anything. Those who I allow to know me these days, will (hopefully) tell you that I am a pretty funny guy. Funny as in HA HA, not funny as someone who like to wear a lot of chartreuse scarves. I never really understood Nancy, and I don't think Nancy ever really tried to understand me. It was, in spite of all this misunderstanding, a torrid affair, and my roommate at the time was so impressed he once, clapped when she left the house after a night at the opera (as he liked to call it, I'm certain you can guess why). She wasn't amused about that either, but she certainly did care enough to want to sign up as a permanent ticket holder, if you catch my meaning. However, operas have limited runs, and she too left.

Then came Anna, Anna was, when put together with Eileen (see above) the perfect woman. Anna was (and I am still sure is) one of the few women I have dated that was miles smarter than I am, and I don't date dumb women. Except for the fact that they have dated me, which causes their sanity, not their intelligence, to be called into question, I love intelligent woman. Anna was a fucking overachieving genius, and why she fell for me was completely unfathomable to me. She was smart, funny, well read, well spoken, and a a for sure keeper for almost any man in the world. Any man but, yours truly it seems. We had a really, really rocky relationship that was defined by, me still having feelings for Eileen, and one other fact that I have only ever told 4 people about. This is not the time to reveal what that fact/issue was. There may never be a time to reveal that fact again, and I hope that Anna has forgiven me, even though she said she never would, and I peg her as a woman of her word. She is also married now with at least one child. I heard from her about three years ago when her team, the Saints, beat my Vikings in the NFC championship game. It was not a consolation email, it was a gloating email. It led me to believe that Anna has not forgiven me, and truth be told, she probably shouldn't. I thought many a night how she was a keeper, and she really was. She too left.

Then came Esther, I married Esther, and that should tell you all you need to know. If you want to know more, I suggest you read "Portraits of a Marriage" by Sandor Marai. A good book that will tell you a lot of things about Esther and I, even if she's never read it, or is ever going to read it. She too left.

As I said this isn't a complete list of all of my follies, and I am sure there will be more follies to come, but to each of these wonderful women I told one important story. I won't go too far into the details of the story (more of a theory) that I shared with women, because I don't share it that often. It has to do with numbers, and each of them will understand exactly what I mean by that. It is not a happy theory, but it is a theory that I believe in strongly. A theory is just that a theory, something that isn't a law but something that can be shown to happen again and again under the same set of circumstances. Thus we get a theory. Each of these women, to whom I owe both a massive debt, and a heartfelt apology, to, have helped me show that my theory, as depressing as it is, is sound. It is another tragedy that I will have to deal with, and it makes me very sad. Sometimes being right about things hurts a lot more than being wrong.

P.S. There is no hidden agenda or meaning in the post, but there is, if you try hard enough to find it, a hidden message.

Bulkheads

2012-01-22T18:38:00.001-06:00

In the past month, I have had my ass handed to me emotionally twice. Once was at work, and once was in my personal life. I try very hard to keep them separated, but sometimes, given the subject matter of my job, they bleed over into each other. When I first started my job over nine years ago, I swore not to let it define me as a person, I fear, after those nine long years, that I have failed in that task. I really want to be more than the sum of my parts, but I fear I am failing at that goal (as I do at most things I try).

These two 'ass handings' have led me to become what I hate the most (other than my father), an emotional 'wreck.' Normally, I am not the most emotive of fellows, and I try very hard to compartmentalize my emotions. It is not the easiest of tasks, but I have been accused of doing it quite successfully in the past. I say accused, because the person making the claim about my ability to compartmentalize things, was not saying it in a positive light. The emotion ass whipping I received at work, I can do sod all about, it was delivered from on high, and a mere worker ant such as myself can not nothing about it. Not that I didn't at least try, but as I mentioned earlier, I am a professional when it comes to trying and failing. Seymour Skinner doesn't have anything on me in the failing department.

The work beating wasn't even given to me to my face, it had to be delivered to me by someone other than the architect, I guess that is what minions are for, to do all the unpleasant tasks that the throne would find off-putting. Either way it was done, and I'm still struggling to determine how much of my pride, and other important bits of me survived. It is going to be a bit of a slog, but it looks as if I'll survive, at least for a while. Though I fear the matter has merely been delayed, and will not be denied.

At least the personal beating took place to my face, though in retrospect I wonder if that makes it better or worse. I wasn't overly surprised that it happened, but I was, and still am surprised at it swiftness and its brutality. These things are not for the weak of will nor the faint of heart. I didn't think I was either, but as flail about trying to understand what is happening, I fear that I might just be both. That is not something that I find particularly pleasant, or easy to admit. Things have recently begun to fall apart, and there is a growing concern that the centre cannot hold, and that is a oddly frightening notion to attempt to wrap my head around.

The bulwarks that I painstakingly built over so very many years have begun to collapse like a house of cards on a very windy day, and the 'ship of me' the only ship I have, is listing dramatically to the left. Taking on water at an alarming rate, and is caught on a lee shore that will be very difficult to navigate off of. I have put all hands to the pumps, but the only hands I have are mine own, and as referenced above, me doing something equals me failing at something. It is a gift, one of the many I would like to return but can't, seems I've lost that receipt as well.

All of this is to say that if the melancholy expressed on these pages, has been, or gets too bad, at least now some of the sources have been identified, and perhaps that is the first step to building better, stronger bulkheads. I guess failure does have its purpose. My watching the compartments I build be breached with such ease, I now understand that unless I want to stay under these waves tonight, I will have to build with more care, and more cruelty. Whether I am up to the task remains to be seen, and I wouldn't bet on me if I were you. But, then again if I were you, I wouldn't be having these problems in the first place would I?

Heureux

2012-01-15T18:18:00.001-06:00

'I just want you to be happy' three, not one, not two, but THREE different people have told me that in the last week. As if happiness is something that I can order off of the Wendy's 99 cent menu. Which is why I gave the reply 'happiness is not on the menu.' The tricky part of the statement is that, in their own way (I think) each of them actually meant it. They actually want me to be happy. Why, I don't know, nor do I particularly care. The fact that when one of them told me 'they wanted me to be happy' they were in the middle of making me decidedly unhappy is an irony that was probably only evident to me.

The other two 'happy wishers' have also, at different times been in a position to make me happy, and or sad depending. I am just now beginning to realize that is my fault not theirs. The fact that I allow another person or persons to control my mood or emotions is just plain stupidity on my part, and it is something that will have to be changed, and soon. To continue to allow any other human being, and I am using that term very broadly, to have the ability to influence or determine my feelings is deplorable. I can not for the life of me sort out how the blue fuck, I allowed myself to be placed into such a position, but here I am. However, just because I am here, doesn't mean I am going to STAY here, and I think that a certain self-adjustment shall be made. Self-adjustments are the hardest to make, but when they are pulled off properly they are well worth it.

Each of these 'happy' souls also told me that they thought I would make a good father, again I had to disabuse them of that notion as well. As a card carrying misanthrope, and a cynic of the brutal type, I am fairly certain I would make an awful, awful father. My normal response is to say that i do not like children, and in many ways that is still true, but being a former child myself, I have now determined that it is the parents that I don't like. I certainly didn't like one of my at all, and the other one is currently not speaking to me, so maybe that colours my thinking a little bit, but I am beginning to warm to the idea of disliking parents.

I am sure that most parents do the best they can rearing their offspring, but it's just that most of them also do a really shit job of it. Children, from what I have been told, do not come with an instruction manual, and even worse, seem to have a mind of their own. Though I am not sure I am ever going to be ready to have children, mainly because of the potential 'motherships' out there seem to have disqualified, or disabled themselves in one way or another. There is a reason for this, but I lack the words (or the courage you pick) to explain that reason. It is just sufficient for now to say that their actions could never be reconciled with their words.

This happiness that these well meaning people wished me, is something that I am going to have to find myself. A lot of people will tell you that happiness is the presence of something, cold beer, warm women, a large piece of unguarded chocolate, can and may provide you happiness, but it is fleeting happiness. After the beer has been drunk, the chocolate eaten, and the woman has left (and each of these things will happen), then you are right back where you started, unhappy. That is if, of course, you allow the presence of things to make you happy. Another theory is it is the absence of things that can make you happy, the absence of pain, the absence of hunger, or maybe even the absence of people can make you happy. Once again a flawed theory, you are going to experience pain again, unless you die, you are going to get hungry again, and people just have a tendency of getting in the way. Leaving you back were you started, unhappy.

Happiness might be a bit too much to hope for, and besides is it really necessary? After all there exist in this world people who go out of their way to attempt to ruin other people's happiness. Almost seems pointless to find happiness if there is just someone who is going to try to take it away. Perhaps happiness is a house in the burbs, 2.5 children, and the white picket fence that we all liked to gently mock as rebellious free thinkers in our student days. Or maybe it is some radiant city, that lets us drink for free, never age, and not have to go to work in the morning. Either way it is something that while elusive, need not be exclusive.

Bunny Hop

2012-01-12T15:12:00.000-06:00

As I was taking a nice relaxing bath the other night burning one to make the day's stress disappear, a very loud, very insistent knock came upon my door. 'Damn and blast' I muttered, can't the world leave me alone long enough to get high in the bathtub? I am not an important person, and my presence is not really ever needed that often, but here it was at 5 in the afternoon, and some damn fool just wouldn't leave me in peace. I threw on a robe, and slightly dizzy, made my way to the front door. Now, I know that most of you, dear readers, will probably think I've gone mad when I tell what I saw but, I swear it was the truth.

On my doorstep, and it took a few rapid blinks of my eyes to confirm it, stood the fucking Easter Bunny! No shit! There he was in all of his glory, the fucking Easter Bunny, basket in hand waving at me as I opened the door to let him in. I really didn't know what else to do except let him in, after all there really doesn't seem to be a protocol for this sort of thing, and besides I had be led to believe that this guy/thing didn't exist. I was certainly going to let him in, and try to sort out this mystery myself. I could be famous, going down in history as the man who 're-discovered'/proved the existence of the Easter Bunny.

He wasn't as tall as Harvey the other 'fictional' bunny I had heard about, and he didn't say anything, he just bunny hopped into my living room, basket in hand, and gave me a stare that only a rabbit could get away with, it was a bit unnerving, and really fucking funny all at the same time. He seemed to know what he was doing as he hopped around on my fancy rug, and he placed his basket down on my coffee table, pulled out what I can only describe as the largest fucking egg I have ever seen, and placed it in my (suddenly) out stretched hands.

He then shook his head very slowly, as if to say 'I know you didn't believe in me, and I know you probably don't deserve any of my gifts, but here I am to show you that sometimes non-belief doesn't matter. You can believe in what you want, it doesn't make me any less real. Yes, he was somehow able to convey all of that with a simple shake of his head. It was amazing, and a little humbling. He then wagged his finger at me as some sort of vague warning and hopped out of my door, slamming it ever so gently behind him.

As I stood there gawking like a country bumpkin who has traveled to Brooklyn to see 'this here bridge they keep trying to sell me', and clutching his egg like a rube, I couldn't help but notice, and be very upset as I looked down and noticed that the fucking Easter Bunny had tracked mud all over my rug, and that rug really tied together the room!

For the birthday girl, who gave me this idea, I hope it is a happy one, both your birthday, and the tone of which you've noticed is a bit bleak at times.

Stranger on a 5

2012-01-10T22:16:00.006-06:00

It is funny how two people can remember the same event so very differently. What I said to him wasn't 'I am leaving you' but four more important words which were 'You have to leave'.' Those two statements are radically different, and make a huge difference in what followed. I was his mistress for five and a half years, that much is true. During that time, I got to know him very well, probably better than he knew himself. Not that he would either admit that, or for that matter knew that. However, that was his problem not mine. In those five and a half years he told me, without really meaning to, everyone one of his passwords. Which is why I am here now, I know, or have known everyone of the passwords he so jealously guarded from the rest of the world. You see he isn't the only classically educated person in the world who knows a shit ton of French history. He will be both appalled, and impressed once he figures out he has been hacked, and he will change his password immediately. It will be to something that he thinks, wrongly, that I don't know, but I will let him keep that dream alive.

For five and a half years, I put up with his lies, his self-delusions, and his cheating. He thought he was clever, and that I didn't know. I knew, and I know, it was just for five and a half years I didn't care. I knew that no matter how far afield he might have strayed, that he would always come back to me. I was (and still am) quite that good. He knows that even to this day, even if he is too stupid to admit it. Therein lies part of the problem, he isn't stupid, in fact (and he refuses to admit it) he is, in so very many ways, the smartest man that I have ever met, and I have met a lot of smart men.

He is probably, as I type this, out with one of his 'whores', at least that is what I called them. The multitude of women that he somehow convinced he was single that fell for his charms. They aren't really to blame for what they did, it is almost entirely his fault, but they are still what I call his 'whores.' They didn't understand him like I did, they didn't know him 5 plus years ago as a shy, socially awkward man, who really didn't understand which fork to use for which course. I had to teach him that, I had to teach him a lot of things. Some of which he really didn't want to learn, but I taught him anyway. He should, but he won't, thank me for those life's lessons.

He complains that 5 and a half years is a long time for a man his age, and he is correct, but for a woman my age (about 10 years younger than his old ass) it is even longer, and women and aging are not friends at all. Men grow distinguished as they age, women just grow old, so I feel no pity for him as he approaches another birthday. In the grand scheme of things 5 and a half years to him is like 9 years to me. I was a very young, and very naive girl when he met me all those years ago, but I have both aged and matured, he has just aged. I doubt that he will ever mature, which is part of the reason I told him he had to leave. He didn't like being told that, and I suspect that is why he chose the coward's way of posting a blog post about it. It is typical of him, to argue with me, or anyone else he has an issue with via some vague, hard to decipher blog post. A post that he likes to think only he knows the true meaning of. What a fool! I know him inside and out, and if he thinks that he can write a post that I can't figure out the true meaning of, then he is an even bigger fool than I thought he was.

However, when I met him, he was just as naive as I ever was. A wet-behind the ears idealist who thought by just trying hard enough, he could change the world. I had to be cruel to him several times, and I was cruel, cruel beyond compare. I broke his heart, and shattered his concept of justice and fairness, for his own good. He won't ever thank me for it, and he probably shouldn't, but regardless whether he will admit it or not, I made him, (forged him if you will) a stronger, better person. I even made him cry, twice, it took a hell of a lot of effort, but he cried like a Jew at the wailing wall. He will deny it, and he did a remarkably good job of hiding it, but he cried, twice. It was about the only time I ever saw his human side. Which is sad in so very many ways.

I know he hates himself, I know that if he could just get the courage up, he would either run away to Paris, and starve to death by trying to live by his pen, or that he will take the revolver that he inherited from his father, and blow his brains out. I tried, so very hard to convince him that the first idea wasn't so bad, and that the second idea was just a coward's way out. He is still alive, but not living in Paris, so I guess I failed at both. I know all the childhood issues that he has, the one's that he refuses to admit to himself, but that are so very clear if you pay close attention to his actions.

He is correct when he says that when he first met me that we loathed each other. I was loud, I was crass, and I was (like six perfections) hard to tame. He was shy, confused, and timid. The fact that he gathered the courage to attempt to 'tame' me is one of the few things that I give him credit for. Considering his awkwardness he did a remarkable job at taming me. After all, I am a force of nature, and taming me is like bailing out the ocean with a very small, slotted spoon. It is to his ever lasting credit that he tried, and tried for 5 and a half years, about 2 years longer than any other fool I have ever known. Maybe that is why I still admire him so much, the fact that he had the audacity to try to conquer me for so long speaks volumes about his staying power. You see, I am a breaker of spirits, I take people (men, women, children) chew them up and spit them out. It is always just a matter of time before I break the spirit of anyone silly enough to try to tame me. It is to his everlasting credit that he tried for so much longer than anyone else, and I am pretty sure that, given the choice, he would try again in spite of the bruises I have left upon his soul.

And I did batter his soul, not that he was some sort of sensitive soul when he came to me, but I made sure to find out his weaknesses and exploit them to my benefit. He will tell you I was a cruel mistress, but the truth of the matter is that I am quite simply, a raging bitch. And he was, in so very many ways, the bitches bastard. He was just as cruel as I ever tried to be. He could break a heart as easily as other men put on pants. I should know I saw him do it on more than one occasion. It wasn't really his fault but the one's who's heart he broke. He had a rehearsed speech that he gave to these poor women explaining what a bastard he was, and that he wasn't going to be good for their soul. They hardly ever believed him, at least until it was too late, and by then, well it was too late. He gave me that speech when we first met, but much to his dismay, I believed him. He was pretty convincing, and I took his measure pretty quickly. Perhaps that is why we lasted for 5 and a half years.

The real reason that I had to tell him to leave was twofold. The first was that I knew that he loved me, but that he didn't trust me. It was a constant source of friction in the relationship, and one that we just couldn't resolve. It was just a bridge too far for us, I never really understood why he didn't trust me, but after a while I made sure that he had good reason not to trust me. I guess that makes me a bad person, but I was dealing with him, and he was, and remains one of the worse people I have ever met. The second reason that I had to tell him to leave was that he was scared. He was scared to allow himself to love me as he knew he should. He was afraid to love me like a 'normal' man, the type of man I deserve, the type of man that could screw his courage up to the sticking point, and make the serious, life changing decisions that needed to be made.

And so, I forced him to leave, telling him how happy I was when he wasn't around. Destroying his confidence, and breaking both his and my own heart. It had to be done, and I really do wish that it would have been him, rather than me, that would have eventually pushed the little red button that led to our relationship entering nuclear winter. We were two points collapsing, and it was just a matter of time before one of us buried the other. I can only hope that he realizes that this figurative burial is much better than a literal one. Je t'aime.

Roxanne

2012-01-09T20:43:00.001-06:00

I love The Police, the rock group, not the guys in the blue uniforms (though I guess they aren't all bad its just that for the most part they can't sing). It is a clear sign that musical tastes have passed me by, the fact that I still cling to a rock band who's music is over 30 years old. Back in the day, when I was a young impressionable, lad, I listened to the Police A LOT. The lyrics written by Sting, and the wall of sound produced by the band have had a long lasting effect upon me. I would have as many hours of tantric sex as I could manage with Sting, and would be proud to brag about it (providing I survived the experience).

Most of us know at least a few Police songs, and one of the most famous is Roxanne (partially thanks to Eddie Murphy and 48 Hrs). It is a song about falling in love with a prostitute (never a good idea) pure and simple. Sting was 'inspired' to write it by seeing the prostitutes 'working' outside his hotel in Paris in 1977. The name is stolen from the lead female character in Cyarno de Bergerac, and even though the band wasn't overly excited about the song at first, it has since gone on to become one of their all time greatest hits.

All of the above is background to my own little tale of romance gone horribly awry. Until the events that I am about to relate took place, I am fairly certain that I had never even seen a prostitute, and for certain never paid one, or fell in love with one (a certain lack of money, and good sense kept me from falling into that trap). Even when I met my first prostitute I wasn't aware of it. It wasn't like I called some escort service after striking out at my local pub, or was I cruising the 'red light' district in hopes of a new, sordid, experience. Nope, the prostitute that found her way (briefly) into my life was an normal looking girl seated a few chairs down from me at a bar having a few drinks with a (female) friend of hers.

A certain lack of memory, and a desire not to give away too much information, will be the reason that I will gloss over exactly how I managed to strike up a conversation with her. Drunk me, according to some reports is much more of a talker, and rumor has it, is a bit of a charmer. It was clearly drunk me that worked up the courage to speak to her, 'charm' her, and eventually take her home. Drunk me is a fast mover it seems. Whatever charms drunk me possessed on that night worked like a charm, because I did take my Roxanne home, and enjoyed the charms she sold to other men for free.

She did not spring the 'oh by the way, I have sex for money' thing on me on that first fateful night, and perhaps that is why I never had to pay. I don't know if prostitutes are like drug dealers, and give you the first one for free to get you hooked or not, but I know I got the first, and every other time afterwards for free. Even when she did tell me about her prostitution thing, I didn't believe her. I mean who the hell thinks hey I am lying in bed next to a woman who has sex for money, and I am getting it for free? I figured she was just yanking my chain (so to speak) about the prostitution thing, until she showed me solid, convincing proof (and no it wasn't some video).

Needless to say I was a bit shocked by this proof, but considering the sex was fantastic, and I was not having to pay for it, I kept seeing her. We had some interesting times, and some pretty odd conversations, and some really dirty sex in our time together, and I would be lying if I didn't admit that I was probably a little impressed with myself. After all, here was a very pretty, very young, very nubile woman that charged other men a fair chunk of change to bang her, banging me for free. Even going so far as to say that she 'liked me'. Take that for what's its worth, lucky me huh? I find a prostitute by accident in a bar, and get to have sex with her for free, and she starts to like me.

To her credit, she would never have sex with me on the same night she 'conducted other business' which was nice of her I guess. I never really got the protocol down for 'dating' a prostitute. I mean Hallmark does not make a card for this kind of situation, and trying to explain to your friends that the babe you've just introduced them to is a prostitute will get you some very odd looks. Looks of utter disbelief, and a lot of laughs, but when she herself would confirm my story, those looks changed really quickly. I guess some of my friends were disgusted by it all, but a couple began to show a new found respect for me. I guess getting a prostitute to have sex with you for free is some sort of an accomplishment, though I am pretty sure my mother would not be at all pleased.

The relationship, as it were, lasted only about 3 months, but those were 3 of the most interesting months I have lived in a while. Of course, I sort of figured, once I did in fact realize I was 'dating' a prostitute that it couldn't last, and I am only surprised that it lasted as long as it did. I mean there isn't really a long term future in dating a prostitute is there? And eventually she is going to sort out the 'why am I fucking this guy for free' issue, and start to wonder what the hell is going on.

Recently, as a part of my job, I had to argue that a gentleman who is mentally ill, be committed to a mental institution for both his own safety and the safety of society. It wasn't a particularly difficult hearing as there were two doctors that both agreed that the gentleman in question needed serious mental help. However, one of his 'delusions' was that prostitutes were controlling his thoughts. It took all my sense of what is proper not to tell the court "Your honor, I used to know a prostitute, and I can tell you with all honesty that, at certain times, she most certainly controlled my thoughts, she even controlled my actions on several occasion as well." I doubt that my employers would have been amused, and I seriously doubt that the judge would have been too happy with me either. Besides, I figured that if that delusion was getting that poor bastard sent off to the funny farm, they might just decide to take me as well.

For my own Roxanne, where ever you may be, I can only hope that just like your name sake, you don't have to put on the red light tonight.

Maitresse

2012-01-09T20:17:00.000-06:00

'I am leaving you' she said with a slightly impatient sigh, and left me sitting there with a slightly stunned look on my face. After all, she had been my mistress for 5 and a half years. In the grand scheme of time, that isn't that long of a time. For a man of 40 odd years it is a significant amount of time. Considering I didn't lose my virginity until I was strapping lad of 22, I have only been in the dating/gene pool for a little over 18 years. All things considered, 5 and a half years out of 18 is almost one-third. When you do the math that way, you start to understand my shock. And shock it was, an almost (to her I am sure) comical look was surely on my face as she uttered those four simple words, "I am leaving you."

It doesn't take a genius to sort out that once one party utters those deadly words, that there isn't a whole lot the other party can do to stop the actual statement from becoming true. Of course, that doesn't stop us, it just that it is going to be harder than Chinese math, a sum that you can not solve, like me trying to explain why I thought leaving me was an awful idea (and not just for me). After 5 and a half years, we had no secrets, we had no uncharted territory, no real surprises for each other. However, that really wasn't the reason she was leaving. I said we had no uncharted territory, we did have however, have unexplored territory. We both had walls that the other was not allowed behind. Thick bastard of walls that just did not encourage climbing over, mining, or tunneling under.

She had built her walls early on in our torrid affair, and it was a torrid affair, and I bumped into them quite frequently, and with some force, until eventually I learned to respect their existence. Of course, like the mature adult I am, I built walls in response. It was like a relationship arms race, and the more walls I bumped up against, the more walls I erected. It became quite silly after a while, and I am pretty sure that if you were to ask her, she would tell you that I built the first wall, and she was just trying to protect herself from becoming walled in by me. Who knows maybe she is right, maybe I built the first wall, maybe she did. It might have mattered then, it certainly doesn't matter now.

The ironic part is that when we first met, I couldn't stand her. She was demanding, loud, rude, and frustrating. So frustrating that I didn't for nearly two years consider the candle worth the game. We were sort of thrown together by forces beyond our control, and we just decided that if we were going to be planted together, we should go ahead and bloom. And bloom we did, I like to think that I came as close as man could or will come to taming her. I am not bragging, I am merely stating what I feel to be a fact. It took about 4 years to get her under some facsimile of what I call 'control' (and not in a bad, creepy way).

She was a hard mistress, and she taught me a lot life's lessons, and she didn't teach them softly. She forced me to look out upon a sea of failed relationships, and didn't sugar coat the fact that we were, in many ways, adrift upon that sea in a very small, very leaky boat. She was not gentle, and a small part of me will hate her for that for a very long time. Even though the larger part of me realizes that her cruelty was the only way she had to show me what I needed to know. Of course, I thought I knew all I needed to know, and that was probably the problem that led to her leaving to begin with. The impatience with which she declaimed her desire to leave was almost more than I could bear at the time, and remains a source of mystery to me. After all we had been together for 5 and a half years, and now suddenly I was being judged to be made of inferior material.

I did try to understand, to comprehend why after so long, and some really good times (some bad one too, but that the nature of relationships) she suddenly (or so it seemed to me) concluded that she was 'happier when she wasn't around me', and 'happy when she knew she wasn't going to see me.' Those statements left a very large, very dark bruise on my psyche that I am not sure will ever fully heal. The fact that she repeated them about 10 times certainly didn't help.

You have to trust your heart to know what is real, and my heart had spoken, it promised her the sun, the moon, and the stars if she would just stay. However, she was not the type of woman that needed those types of promises, she walked on moonbeams all on her own, and certainly was not going to believe the sun, the moon, and the plans we had made to be anything other than the last gasp of a desperate man. She taught me to feel as blue as blue can be, and I guess I should thank her for that, for showing me that despair is a feeling that you can eventually get used to, and then get over. She left, and took a lot of my time with her, wrapped up in her being like a butterfly in a cocoon. Time mostly well spent, and I can only hope that my next mistress allows me to do the leaving. Because say you what you will about how hard it must have been to leave, it is the being left here, leaning against the loneliest street lamp this clown has ever leaned against, that has taught me another of life's valuable lessons. However, I will keep the details of what that lesson is to myself. After all, if I told you what that lesson was then you would be almost as clever as me, and I can't have that now can I?

My Day

2012-01-08T10:53:00.001-06:00

My desire to participate in this day died about ten minutes ago. Not that any of you lot care, but my phone will be off, I will not check either email, or facebook, and if you try to come to my house and knock on my door, it will be to your cost. I am quite sure that before any of you read this post, if any of you read it at all, none of you had even one little thought about me anyway. Therefore, my checking out of the events of the day, or the day itself will have little to no effect upon you.

There was no Kierkegaadian type earthquake that tripped my desire to suspend my participation in this day, and even if there was, it isn't anyone's business but my own. I try to accomplish two things on a daily basis, mind my own business, and not put my business too far out into the public view. I try to mind my own business because it is my business, and not anybody else's. It is (at least I hope so) unique business to me, and if I want anyone to know about it, I will tell them myself. Which leads to the second thing I try to accomplish, keeping my business from becoming too public. A trifle more trickier than it seems, because people love to mind other people's business (myself, to my shame, included).

The truth of the matter is that I realize that the day, just like every other day, will sail along quite smoothly, maybe even more smoothly, without my participation. There are just over 7 billion people on this rock at the moment, and the loss of one person's interest in the day, will make not one fuck to the either day or the rest of those 7 billion (minus one) people. In fact, though I hope it isn't true, my non-participation in this day might either make the day go by better, faster, and happier for a certain number of people. If that is the case, and as I said I hope it isn't but suspect it is, then well my participation in any number of days probably needs to be rethought.

It is that rethink that I might indulge in while I am sitting in the coffin I call my apartment disconnected from the world in general, and the people who I normally interact with daily in particular. This isn't some sort of 'cry for help' I don't want your help even if you wanted to try to give me help. It is merely me checking out of the loop for a day to see if one, I can do it, and two, if it has any positive affect on me (and by extension others). Or, if that rethink starts to distress me over much, I might just fall asleep, and see if perhaps the dream world can conjure up a better day for me. The risk there is a nightmare but it is a risk I am willing to take, after all nightmares aren't real. This day is and has been so far, all too real.

Plans or Sweet Revenge

2012-01-05T20:10:00.000-06:00

Plans are something that we all make, from the lowliest prole struggling to put bread on his table, to the king in the high castle trying to sort out how to conquer the chambermaid or the country over the mountain range on the southern border. Hopefully, for the prole, maybe for the chambermaid and not so much for the king these plans, so painstakingly made, and (also hopefully) based on sound judgment, and a fair amount of common sense, succeed. It is the success of those plans, if they succeed, that allows each of the people in the above example to continue to plan. If plans fail regularly then, sometimes people just throw over the whole idea of planning anything. A failure to plan generally leads just to failure.

In many respects to live is to plan. You plan your day from the (too fucking early in the morning) time that your alarm jolts you out of dreaming of Nicole Kidman (or some fairly close model thereof), until the time that the copious amount of alcohol you've had to consume to get to sleep, finally overcomes you final vestiges of consciousness, and you fall into that black hole know to the rest of the world as sleep. The awful, awake time that comes between those two events, that time that is know as 'your day' (the thing people are always asking how it was), is the part that it is necessary to plan. If, and it is a big IF, you are allowed to plan the majority of your day by yourself, then you are one lucky bastard.

Most of us (proles at least) have a large chunk of the majority of our day(s) planned for us. This is done by the thing that we generally call work, or if we feel fancy, we call it a career. Either way work or career is just another way of saying that (generally) someone or something else is planning our day for us. However, they, those bastards planning our days, do allow us some time to ourselves to plan however we choose, and it is that, ever so precious, time that is the really important part. How you plan your 'free' time is entirely (you hope) up to you. Certainly if you are burdened/blessed with either a significant other, or a group of friends you might have to, on occasion, alter your plans, or go along with their plans. But, that is just part of being the social animal known as humans right?

All of this non-sense is to say that I, personally, have made a lot of plans, most of them were shit. Lots of them were absolute shit plans, and their (eventual) failure should have come as a surprise to no-one, least of all me. However, in my 40 plus years on the planet, I have on the rare occasion had some absolutely brilliant plans, some real corker of plans that left even me shaking my head at my (ever so brief) genius. I am far from brilliant, and the only type of genius that I might (just might) be is the evil type, so when one of my plans comes out the idea oven as brilliant, it is a cause for general rejoicing. However, that rejoicing usually did not last for too long, because as I said the vast majority of my plans have been shit. Long-term, short-term, or life-term, I am a man that is very good at making really, really bad plans. I guess it is a gift, but a negative type of gift that, unlike your usual awkward xmas gifts, take more than they give.

The good news is that I have, finally after many years of angst, realized that my plans are usually foiled, and not by some secret agent like James Bond, but by the simple passage of time. It seems that my plans are, in many respects, like me, easily foiled, and not overly well thought out. Either way the knowledge that, as a planner goes, I am shit, while costly, and painful, has lead to some good consequences. I am now able to, with remarkable ease, recognize a shit plan when I see one, especially if someone else is making it. Which is a lot more fun than one would think.

This is the good part, being able to recognize eventual failure can entertain you for days on end. If you really don't like the person, and let's be honest, I don't like a lot of people, then when you see the failure of their plan before they do, it can lead to a chuckle or even a guffaw. The misery of others can be almost as much fun as your own misery, and the if some ship of fools crashes upon your shore, you would be remiss not to get a few laughs out of their plight. Things fall apart, and sometimes the centre cannot hold, you can only hope that you have braced yourself for the eventual moment when it all goes pear shaped, and you are able to survive. The real joy of watching another person's plan fall to shit is not being the person who caused it, but playing no part in it, but then reaping some, quite unexpected, reward from the disaster you just watched. There is no rule that says you have to be 'nice', and sometimes being cruel is actually the right thing to do. Sure you look like a bastard, but only if you aren't clever, if you are clever the person who's plan just collapsed like a house of cards around them, has no idea that you are the person benefiting. That is a rare as a virgin in a Venezuelan whorehouse, but it is as sweet of a revenge as you are ever going to find. The trick is to enjoy it because tomorrow, way too early for your own good, your alarm is going to shock you out of your sleep, and you are going to have to start planning your day, some of those plans, as plans are wont to do, will fail in spectacular fashion, and somewhere, someone will get their sweet revenge upon you. Thus the circle of life and failure is complete (at least until we break on through to the other side).

This post is dedicated to (at the very least) 3 people, maybe more, but 3 for certain, who's ever so brilliant (and they are ever so smart at planning) plans have fallen to shit about 24 hours after making them. They were plans that took a lot longer to make, and the fact that they collapsed so very quickly, has become a source of everlasting joy for me. Enjoy the taste of failure, you lot deserve no less than that.

Siege

2011-12-27T22:22:00.000-06:00

I am, for the most part, a patient man, and I like to take things somewhat slowly. I would make a great besieger, in fact, I have laid two sieges in the last three years. Thus, the point of this post. Back in the grand day of Vauban, he of the star-shaped fortified towns, siege craft was an art form. You dug your approaching trenches, you mined under the walls, and tried to create a breach of the city's walls. That done, and depending on how you felt about the town you were besieging, you gave your loyal troops 3 to 7 days to rob, pillage, rape, and burn the place until their hearts were content.

However, usually it was considered the proper thing to do to let the besieged city, once they knew their game was up, to allow them to surrender with honor, and to allow the city to be saved being sacked by your troops. It showed that you weren't the bad egg your enemies had made you out to be, and allowed you to keep from getting too terribly many people killed.

Then, as with most things, someone had to go and spoil the rules by which the game of siege was played by, and thus you got the fight until the last man type of siege. The sieges of the Vietnam War, and of Korea. The really dirty sieges that didn't allow for honor, and didn't really care about the human cost, the goal was to win at all costs.

The two sieges I laid were one of each, both were, eventually, successful, but both had different costs. One was quite simply war at it worst, there was no quarter asked for, nor any quarter was received. It was a long, drawn out affair, and the eventually success I obtained was all the sweeter for the fact that I was, at first, the offended party. In fact, it was that offense, which the person giving offense might not have even realized what they had done, that lead to the siege taking place in the first place. I said I was a patient man, I did not say I was a pleasant man. Truth be told, I am not sure the besieged ever really knew that they were surrounded, or that I was, in fact, besieging them. Maybe that is the best kind of siege to endure, the kind that you don't know is happening, and even after your city 'falls' you really don't understand the reason behind it. For the besieged, that is probably as good as it gets. Ignorance being bliss.

Those type of sieges are still quite fun for the besieging army as sieges can get. The fact that your (eventual) success has gone (mostly) unnoticed should not detract from the fact that it was still a success. In many ways this type of siege is the best type. All you have to know is that you are winning, and that you will win, your target doesn't really need the knowledge about their loss. It would probably just hurt their feelings anyway, and you've probably already done that once or twice anyway.

The second siege that I (most recently) successfully concluded was more of the 'surrender with honor' type of siege. It has been a siege of just over two years, and while their were losses, they were not huge losses. Don't get me wrong, this siege had its nasty moments, and for a while it looked to be a bit of a 'fight till the bitter end' type of siege, but eventually, finally, good sense, and good manners prevailed. It was in some way better, and in some ways worse than the first successful siege, but that is a story for another day. The sweetness of the victory is slightly different than that of the first siege, but by no means is it less sweet for that. After all, two years is a long time to besiege a city, any city, and when it eventually falls, by hook, or crook, or a lot of booze, fall it has, and to the victor belong the spoils right?

It's the Mention I Miss

2011-12-25T18:18:00.003-06:00

The title of this post is a line stolen from one of my favorite movies, and in that movie it is said by the character that I like the most. I will leave it up to you, if you care enough, to look that information up yourself if you want to be bothered, if not it really isn't that important anyway. It is just a cool title.

Picture two people having a chat, one male, one female, because if it wasn't like that, then this post would be even more pointless than it already it. This being the 21st century, this little chat takes place via text, after all isn't that an easier medium than either face to face, or by talking over the phone. . I guess our Juliet didn't have a convenient balcony for our Romeo to declaim his love from underneath before climb the trellis to claim his just reward. The male member (pun intended) is clearly a nice enough bloke, and is chatting up our female contestant quite nicely in an uniquely 21st century way.

This being christmas, god and the baby jesus get a mention, and our Romeo claims to believe in both. Of course, what was he supposed to say? Being a religious person herself, our Juliet would not react well to some raving atheist. Back and forth this little quasi-romantic chat zips over the mysterious airwaves of cell towers in their fair city, and eventually after laying it on a bit thick, Romeo asks Juliet to 'let me buy you dinner'.

A time, a day(Thursday at 8, and a (quite pricey) place (that I would never go) were selected, and everything seems to be going along swimmingly for our Romeo and Juliet. Until of course, as often happens with these tricky negotiations, life intervenes by throwing one of life's little roadblocks in the way. Seems Juliet had an unexpected event (doesn't matter what) come up at the last minute, and our poor Romeo's tryst had to be postponed until a latter day. I am sure the blessed event will be rescheduled, but that information is not available to me at this time.

Not that it matters I am not the Romeo, however, I do know the Juliet, and I am sure it will be a lot of fun for them both. It is just that during all this flirting back and forth, no mention of Count Paris has been made, and it is that (since I am the Count (sort of) in question) mention that I miss. Funny you wouldn't think I would.

Pants

2011-12-25T13:20:00.000-06:00

'You do whatever you want' she said with that tone in her voice that made it crystal clear that doing whatever I wanted was an absolute shit plan (not that I haven't had shit plans before, but that is a post for another day). I have come to the conclusion that when someone, anyone, says that you can do whatever you want, that you shouldn't do it. No matter how much you want to do it, whatever it is, no matter how much you think that doing it would make your life complete, you shouldn't do it.

And that is where pants come into the story. One of the things I want to do is not to wear pants. I may or may not being wearing pants now as I type this, I will leave that up to your (horrified) imagination. I am just not a big fan of wearing pants, but since 'society' seems to think pants are necessary, I have to spend way too much of my life wearing pants. I find it quite sad. You see, I have never, ever made a bad decision while not wearing pants. In fact, the majority of my bad decisions (and I have made A LOT of bad decisions) have been made while wearing pants. I am not sure if it is the pants fault or not, but I tend to blame them.

I also think that a certain (mostly female) portion of society can go without wearing pants as well, but that is probably something that "I want to do" that isn't going to happen either. The trick about doing the things you want to do is that almost everything you want to do, no matter how trivial (in your mind) has wide ranging effects on people. Not just the stern person telling you to 'do what you want', but other people too, people you might not even realize are going to be affected are going to have to bear the burden of your decision 'to do what you want'. It might be your boss, it might be your girlfriend, your best friend, or a total stranger on a train, but it is this lot that is going to possibly be blinded by the sight of you not wearing pants. Treat them kindly, even if you think they don't deserve it.

And even if they do deserve it, who gave you the right to decide that? It is not your place to decide who deserves what, nor who gets what. Unless you've risen way above your station, and are suddenly in some place of power, you are not the person to give people what they deserve, after all that would mean you get what you deserve as well, and I am pretty sure the last thing I want is what I deserve.

Merry Xmas you lot, and remember pants has another meaning as well, and I am pretty sure this post fits squarely within that meaning, sorry.

Punchy

2011-12-05T21:08:00.002-06:00

The first punch you rarely see, it slips past your guard, catches you square in the mouth, and leaves you seeing little stars dancing around your head, like some Looney Tunes character that has just had a piano dropped on their head. You (eventually) managed to shake that punch off, and get to your feet, because more than likely the first punch has knocked you flat on your ass, and you need to get up eventually. Once you get up, and get your bearings (east is to the right, west to the left, got you), and run your tongue over your teeth to see if any of them have been dislodged from your mouth, you come to the realization that your ballroom days are over, and this just got serious.

How serious is yet to be determined, but you are fairly certain that it is much more serious than you had imagined as you spent yet another day locked in your ivory tower. If, you manage to slip that second hay maker that was following the first like an express train following a local, then you have at least managed to ward off quick defeat. But now of course, you have to get it together because you are certain that this wasn't just merely a skirmish but the opening salvo in a fight that one of you will not walk away from. School, all those glorious years of school, has not prepared you for this, and the only thing you have to rely upon now is your wits, which have sadly been addled by the first punch that knocked you somewhere south of goofy.

Hopefully, you will be able to at least defend yourself, even as you realize that David vs Goliath usually ends up with David being crushed like a bug, and as you look around over your situation, you realize that you've been cast as David in this particular dance, and that does not instill you with a great deal of confidence. And that is Goliath's main objective, to take away you confidence, and then hammer you into submission. That is what hammers do you know, they pound and pound away until whatever they are hammering turns into dust. Once they've stripped away what little confidence you possessed it is just a matter of time, and time is usually on their side.

Eventually, though you are going to have to throw caution to the wind, and throw a few punches of your own. It is a risk, and it has a high degree of difficulty that might (more than likely really) end up with you staring up at the ceiling wondering how wonderfully cool the floor feels upon your shoulder. And there Goliath will be looming (he is a great 'loomer') over you asking you if you wouldn't mind getting up, so that he could knock you back down again. And this is now going to be, whether you like it or not, your defining moment. If you stay down, which is really what you want to do, he will just kick you, because (from all I've ever heard) it is wonderful to kick someone while they are down. It then become incumbent upon you to get up, and get up quickly. Sure you'll probably (likely) get knocked back down, and maybe multiple times, but that is the point. They can't knock you down unless you are upright in the first place.

You know who you are, and you know what this post means, actually you probably don't Goliath isn't known for his intellect. Sort it out for yourself big man.

Tradition

2011-11-23T07:18:00.002-06:00

Tomorrow in this country, is a little holiday that we like to call thanksgiving. It is a day that leaves dead turkeys and bugling waistlines everywhere. A day where the 'tradition' is to collectively cook enough food to feed Norway for a week, and individually eat enough food to feed Oslo for a week. It is a day that people like Jenny Craig exist because of. The tradition of the day is supposed to be, as far as I understand it, to thank god for the bountiful harvest that keeps us able to shovel food down our greedy gullets at Rabelais-like rates. Some pilgrim/Indian deal that I wasn't a party to, and cannot fathom why I have to celebrate.

Truth be told, I don't celebrate it, as a card carrying agnostic, I find that giving thanks to 'god' is a bit over the top, and I certainly don't need to spend an entire day eating myself into a coma. I am already tubby enough thanks. But it is tradition, I hear you cry, we HAVE to get together with family, eat until we are struggling to breathe, then go out after with our friends, get drunk, and complain about how crazy Aunt Jessica has become since the last time we saw her (which was last thanksgiving).

That is the tradition and we all have them, there are sports traditions, like the President of the US throwing out the first pitch on opening day of baseball season, kicking the ball out of touch when a player is injured in football, social traditions like lawyers wearing wigs, and military officers wearing spurs, and not double dipping a chip. Traditions abound, you cannot swing a overly dry turkey leg without hitting a tradition. It is the way things have always been done, and by jesus it is the way we are going to keep doing them, whether you like it or not, and if you don't like it then we will make you sit at the kids table again this year.

Of course there are an increasing number of us non-traditionalists that buck that tread. We aren't cool, we aren't trend setters, and we aren't powerful individual with enough force of personality to tell the world to 'go fuck itself'. For the most part we are just assholes that what to be left alone, that figure this tradition stuff is bollocks, and can't be bothered to pretend to care about Uncle Earl's gout acting up again. Trouble is when you tell people that your plan is to sit on the couch in your spiderman underwear, eat Krystal's burgers, and read a really good book, they go through two stages of reaction. First, they say 'oh you don't have an family here?' and give you a pitying look, then they look at you as if you are a leper, and mutter something about 'well to each his own I guess.'

Those are the kinds of questions and looks that are the precise reason I have the (non) plans I do, not a fan of people. Another problem, though not one for me, is what if you have conflicting traditions what if one of your traditions clashes with either another one of yours, or with someone else's? Who wins that clash of the titans? Do you draw lots? Play cards? Flip a coin? The conflicting traditions must be resolved right, or the Earth may spin off of it axis and go hurtling into the Sun, and that would be just awful. However this conflict is resolved, it is more than likely going to disappoint someone, and that is one of the rubs of tradition, just because we've always done it this way, doesn't mean it was right. It was bollocks a hundred years ago, and it is just as much bollocks today.

Sometimes that conflict can't be resolved, and feelings are hurt all around. Compromise, that dirty little word, must be reached but sometimes just the NBA lock out, both sides dig in their heels, and refuse to budge. It is possible for the conflict to create a, brand new, first time for everything, tradition, but usually it isn't a pleasant one. The choices you make with regards to tradtion are your own, and whether you choose to 'tow the party line' or to be an outcast is up to you. Just remember next year we will be in the same fucking position again, and I hope you enjoy your choice because you are stuck with it. happy turkey day!

Grace

2011-11-22T21:26:00.001-06:00

'After hanging up the phone, I stood for awhile looking out my window wondering if I should have told him no.'

After all, he had asked me to commit a serious sin, and a crime to boot, but he was like that, a guy you found it hard to say no to. I stood there looking out of my tiny little window at the dirty street below that was being washed 'clean' by the third straight day of a pissing rain, and wondered why I didn't tell him no. I might not be the most moral, or ethical fellow in the world, but I had managed to live my life up until this point without committing any major crimes (a little speeding, and a bit of drink driving are not crimes where I am from they are traditions).

As I watch the rain fall in buckets, I begin to realize that the reason I didn't tell him no was because I just didn't give two shits anymore. My life had reached a point of indolent indifference that would make an Ottoman proud, and it was apparent to me that things were not going to change anytime soon. So why not agree to this madcap scheme of his, after all, we are two clever lads, and who knows we might just pull it off. One never knows I guess, well until it is too late, and by then all one can do is say to one's self that 'it seemed like a good idea at the time.' Which is the problem with these types of ideas, them seem sound at the time, they seem obtainable, and they seem like the type of idea you should have had ages ago.

The problem is they aren't they are shit plans, ideas that are best left in the dustbin of history, there is a reason why no one has had this idea before, it is because it is an epically bad idea. An idea so fatally flawed, and so toxic that if you were to think it too many times you might catch cancer. But, bad ideas are like bad relationships you think they are good at the time, and you find them so very hard to let go of, both are something you can get used to, and who knows when another one (relationship or idea) will come along. Either one don't just grow on trees you know, and besides you aren't getting any younger, or better looking for that matter.

However, the more you thought about his idea, the more you thought it a work of genius, and you wouldn't want to miss out on a genius idea would you? It can't rain forever, and eventually the sun has to come out for all of us, and you can't just ignore the signals all the time. It was a far reaching idea, and one that if it were to work, would allow you to finally tell your boss to do awful things to themselves, while you bunk off to the south of France. The crime wasn't one that required any (large amount) of violence, and besides you would be careful. No need to let anyone die just so you can skip out of work for the rest of your miserable life.

Which is the main reason you didn't tell him no, your life's plan (if you ever had one) has gone awry, and you are not going to be able to straighten it out with the resources you currently possess. In fact, it only seems to be getting worse, and the more you try to paper over the widening cracks, or ignore the massive flaws, the more you realize that time is not your friend.

The friend you do have, the one that placed that important call is the one you need to be thinking about now. Hard to turn down, not because he was some physical presence that reeked of bad things happening to your limbs if you told him no, but a charmer. The type of guy that could sell a copy of the Koran to the fucking Pope at a profit. The kind that could charm the pants of a nun, if nuns wore pants. Your partner in crime, and in sin, the type of guy you wish was your brother other than the fat, lazy slob that actually shares your DNA. A stand up guy, one that you would 'go to the wall for' and not think twice about it.

But as I picked up the phone to call my other friend the one that would be ever so conveniently placed to foil this dangerous plan of my'brother' you sadly think to yourself. It really, really is a clever idea, and with my help he could have pulled it off, and no one would have gotten hurt, and that villa in the south of France would be all mine. Of course it wasn't the criminal nature of the idea, nor was it the immoral part of the idea that led me down the path of betrayal. None of that overly concerned me at the time, nor does it concern me now. Now that my friend is spending his time as a 'guest of the state.' No I wish I could claim that it was my sense of right, and morality that led me to 'drop a dime' on my friend, but the truth of the matter is that his 'crime' was much more mundane. He fucked my girlfriend more than once, and for some reason that upset me, now I hope he enjoys being some large fellow's 'wife' for the next 10 years.

“I stole this line from page 220 of Rules of Civility by Amor Towles”

For Grace

For Shame

2011-11-17T07:37:00.000-06:00

Tricky title, and not going to be some post where I wax poetic about how many things I (and the rest of us) should feel shame for doing, thinking, or eating. This is a post of a different flavour, so enjoy if you want, or ignore it if you must.

Imagine yourself a writer, an author, not some scribbler that works for the local rag producing yellow journalism to scare the ignorant masses, but a full blown, this is how I earn my daily bread, and pay the rent, type of writer. A published writer of many large tomes. A writer of fiction, a writer who has created entire worlds, and populated them with some the best (and worst) characters in fiction today. Hundreds of characters all, for the most part, well drawn, not the cardboard type of characters that we see in many of today's moder literature, but characters that have some depth to them. Good on you right? Good for taking the wasteland of American/Modern literature, and giving it some life, some hope for the readers amongst us that are desperate to read something worth our time.

An author is what you are, it was what you always wanted to be, and you've made it! Made the grade and have whole bookshelves in local bookstores that are groaning under the weight of your published works. Does the heart proud, might even make the parents happy, though I am sure dear, old Dad wanted you to be something useful like a doctor, or a lawyer, but you've got the last larf on him haven't you? Shows him what's what doesn't it? How many lawyers do you know that can just laze around in front of a computer screen "thinking" all day? Most of the lawyers I know don't do a lot of thinking period, and certainly couldn't sustain thought for an entire day.

Of course, the rub is this, and it is the reason for the post. You've become a victim of your own success. You've written wonderful, wonderful books, and the reading public, those greedy bastards, have come to expect you to churn out a book on a regular basis. They, the bastards, have no idea how much work it takes, how hard it is, and how difficult new ideas are to come by, they just want to hand over their 10 quid, and read something fantastic, and it is incumbent upon you to give them what they want. After all, you're a writer aren't you? Write us something clever then. Go on, write us something that we want to read, something that takes our minds off the shitty economy, the bad hair days, and our under-performing hedge fund, and miserable sods of a football team.

And that is your job isn't it? To write something that does all of the above, so your vast readership isn't tempted away from you by some other writer with fresh ideas. Knuckle down, and get to writing, and suddenly there it is! Your latest work, complete only about 200 pages which is a lot less that your major works, but hey you were in a bit of a rush weren't you? It will suffice, it will feed the need of your readers for a bit,while you work on your tan, err your next 'major' work. They won't mind a short little tale to tide them over, after all if they had any brains, they would just write something decent themselves.

But, here's the rub, and it is a big rub your latest word is dross. It is awful, and as a member of the bastards known as the reading public, I feel it is my duty to tell you that it is one of the worst books I have ever had the displeasure to read. One of the top ten worst books I have even seen. It is just god awful, no story, no plot, disjointed, and just plain BAD. It is an insult to the world of literature, and I hope you are ashamed of yourself. Though I doubt it, after all you got paid didn't you? What I can't fathom is how you got this piece of donkey shit past your editors, and your friends who (as you are quick to point out) read your work, and offer brilliant insight as to how to make it better. Trust me on this, there is no number of brilliant insight from anyone that could have made your latest book readable. Though on the bright side they couldn't have made it much worse. All I can say is, For Shame!

Benefits

2011-11-06T17:30:00.000-06:00

"I will give you the benefit of the doubt" she said with very little conviction in her voice. Truth be told I probably didn't deserve the benefit of the doubt, so I merely replied thank you. Not trusting myself to say anything further without getting myself back into the trouble she was offering me a way out of. Also, I figured that keeping my mouth shut was probably for the best, it usually it, and it needs to be one of life's golden rules that I follow more often.

However undeserved that benefit was, it got me to thinking about benefits in general. There are quite a few benefits that we toss around like dwarfs at a Scottish fest, and I am pondering which of them are really important. There are the fringe benefits that those of us who have what are termed 'real' jobs have. The medical insurance, the life insurance, the paid vacation, and all the other little perks that some jobs can provide. There are friends with benefits type relationships, that I am sure many of us have been in at one time or another. These types of relationships are easy for shallow, emotionally stunted men like myself, are designed to have. The relationships that start of easy enough, but generally end in tears. While they last, and while both parties are in agreement as to what they are, they are not the worst type of relationship to be a party to.

Then we have the 'benefits of a classical education'. These types of benefits are myriad, and sometimes very difficult to quantify. They can range from being really good at trivia competitions, to being a marvellous dinner companion that people love to sit next to at those awkward social gatherings that we, as social animals, are forced to attend in order to be normal. The ability to carry on a conversation about a topic that does not involve your favourite sports team, is a very desired quality, especially in a man. These benefits can also include the ability to make meaningful, positive changes in the world around you. If you are classically educated enough, and armed with the proper motivation, and the right tools you can change at least a little part of the world for the better. That is a solid benefit, and one that should not be over looked. It is this benefit that is probably the greatest benefit a classical education can offer, and one that is well worth paying for, and believe me classical education does not come cheaply.

I, perhaps without proper authority, consider myself to be classically educated. I am a fair hand at trivia contests, and if I were such an awkward sod/misanthrope, I would probably make a decent dinner conversationalist, but I am a misanthrope, so my dinner party invitations (also thin on the ground) have pretty much dried up as of late. Not that this upsets me in the least, it is just something that I am not prepared to mourn. I certainly do not use my trumped up classical education to effect the world in any positive manner. I am not armed with the proper motivation, nor do I generally find or receive it in/from my fellow human beings. I also lack the correct tools, or at least I haven't figured out how to use the tools I do have properly to make the world a better place. I understand this is a major failing on my part, and I at least try to hope that if I don't make the world a better place (as I should), I at least try not to make it a worse place (not sure I succeed in that endeavour).

Maybe an unintended side effect of a classical education is what is preventing me from positive change. That side effect is, in many ways, very ironic. To be classical educated is to realize that there are HUGE gaps in one's education, and to understand that one is woefully undereducated. No one can process all the knowledge of the world, but one has can be smart enough to realize just how ignorant one actually is. It is a humbling realization, a frustrating thought, and a crushing burden all at once. On the other hand, it while it has been a bit of a burden, it also has provided me (quite recently) with an new idea.

That idea is simplicity itself, if I am actually classical educated (which is debatable) I should, and do understand the gaps in my education, and my new found idea is to fill those gaps. They are too numerous to every fill in completely, and I am not sure I am quite certain where to start, but at least now that I have the idea I can begin try to make the holes less glaring. I know nothing of opera, very little of the history of China, next to nothing of any foreign language, and am clueless on a wide number of other topics. At least, I now realize that these gaps are unacceptable and that has fired my desire to plug those gaps with actual knowledge not just to pass the time at my local trying to avoid stabbing douche bags in the eye, although prison might be able to provide me the isolation, and regular schedule I could use to continue my classical education, I prefer to try to do it on the outside, after all I am too pretty to go to prison.

Freedom

2011-10-30T09:29:00.002-05:00

Friday at about 4:30 p.m. the warden of my prison allowed me out of my cell, marched me down to a lovely little conference room, and gave me my freedom. I had to sign a bunch of papers, and promise to be a 'good' boy from now on, but I am free. My sentence begin a little bit over five years ago, and I had to sign a bunch of papers then as well My crime was not particularly odious, and I don't know that I totally deserved to flatten my time, but I did and now I am free. I even had a 'charge partner.' However, that person was released a long time before me, and I am sure they have been good every since. We don't talk much, my charge partner and I, they have moved on in both the literal and figurative sense, and I plan on doing the same now that I am a free man.

We have all heard of the stories that things taste better when you are free, the air smells cleaner, and even your football team manages to win a game they weren't supposed to win. I am here to confirm those rumours, food was better, beer was sweeter, and Arsenal beat Chelsea. Now that I am free to find other things to fill my time, other than serving time, I am pretty excited. As anyone who either knows me, or has read any of this blog, I don't 'do' happy very well. Well, I am coming out of that cave of despair, and showing the world the (albeit small) happy side of the GI. I doubt it will last, and I expect that I won't be the best at showing my happiness, but the noose around my neck has been removed, and gods damnit that gives me joy.

The emptiness of the valley of my heart is to now to be filled, and filled with new, joyous memories, no shame in defeat, and all but this one time I won. Even though it was a Pyrrhic victory, and another one like it, and I would be undone, it was still a victory. The iron walls and steel bars that held me prisoner for over 5 years are gone, and I now plan to bloom in my new 'planting.' I suspect that my new found happiness, and less Eeyore like behaviour will garner me some odd looks from my friends, but they will just have to adapt. It is an adapt or die kind of world, and I sure they will do the former rather than the latter.

The 150 thousand dollar weight that has been lifted off of my shoulders makes me want to stand taller, and be a better person (which shouldn't be that hard to do). The bittersweet part of my parole was I had to sit across that conference table from two people making the same mistake I made five years ago, and pretend to be excited for them. It is a testament to how badly I wanted out of my prison that I smiled at the right times, nodded in agreement at their enthusiasm, and even gave them a parting gift. I felt slightly dirty doing it, but only for about 3 seconds, for the whoop of joy that I gave vent to after I walked out of the room probably gave them a hint as to my true feelings.

I do wish my prisoner replacements well, and I hope their sentence is more joyful (if a prison term can be described as joyful) than mine was, and I also hope it is longer. They seemed to be thrilled at the prospect of moving into the prison, and were just bubbling with happiness. I wish them bon chance, and am going to go bubble with happiness myself for a while. I think I might even start out with a little bubbly at brunch. Freedom!

Droit

2011-10-17T19:10:00.001-05:00

Her: 'Why do you act the way you do?'
Me: 'I am just trying to do the right thing.'
Her: 'Well why don't you then?'
Me: 'I am not sure I know what the right thing is.'

That last line caused us both to collapse into laughter, and that is what it was designed to do. It was my (not so) clever attempt to prevent any further probing into my actions, and why I act the way I do. It worked, just barely, and for that I was thankful (at least at the moment). Maybe my temporary companion wanted it that way as well, I sure as hell wasn't going to ask her to continue to ask me questions that I either did not want to answer, or worse, did not know the answer to myself.

However, afterwards (afterwards what I will leave to your imagination), I got to thinking about what that 'right thing' was. What was the elusive thing that I was trying (and clearly failing) so very hard to do? Was it something specific to the conversation? Or was it something more general? Some overarching 'right' thing that I need to do in order to call myself (in any sense) a decent human being? For no matter how hard I try to deny it, I am still a member (no matter how reluctantly, of the human race).

And we all know some decent human beings, some people who are just way too nice for you to stand next to for any length of time lest you start to get a complex. People who know, and do the right thing on a daily basis. Helping little, old ladies across the street, opening doors for ladies, etc, etc. These are the people that make the rest of look bad without even knowing they are doing it. The people we want to be more like even as we want to push them out in front of an oncoming train.

The truth of the matter is that, after a while we start to expect these people to do the right thing, and after more time we even start to equate their actions with the right thing. But, what if, just if, they aren't as ''right" as they seem? What if they either had this evil idea of being a 'good' man from the beginning only to lull the rest of us into trusting them? Or if they just decided one day that wearing the white hat, and being the hero is just dull as dirt, and they wanted to be Hans Gruber for a while? Would the rest of us even pick up on it until it was too late? The trust we have placed in them, and it is a LOT of trust, is going to be shattered like a glass, bad luck to break, but even worse to keep intact and see their reflection in after they have gone off the rails.

It is a crap shoot in the end, to decide whether to trust this 'good man' and their ability/history to do the right thing, or to step back refocus for a second, and look into their eyes to see if what you want to be there is actually there or not. It is in many ways a lose/lose position, if you are right and the good man has gone bad then a little part of you has died inside, if you are wrong, and you mistakenly believed that a right thinking/doing man has done wrong, when in reality he hasn't then how can he ever trust you again? It is a grave dilemma, and one that does not have an easy answer. But then again, who ever told you life/doing the right thing was going to be easy. If someone told you that then they were obeying the first rule of life, the rule that one should NEVER EVER forget, the rule that should be the basis for every interaction you have with the world, the rule that can be summed up in two simple words. People Lie.

La Luna

2011-10-08T14:02:00.000-05:00

A buddy and I have an idea for opening a bar, since we are lawyers we figure we have enough drinking experience between us to have a reasonably good chance of success at our joint venture. However, in many ways it is but a pipe dream, but it is fun to blather about over a pint at the bars that we haunt that are already open. We have even picked out, what we believe to be an awesome name, and have figured out our 'theme' for our bar.

The name is J______'s Rocketship, and it is an going to be a space themed bar. Even more of a pipe dream if you realize the shite hole of a town in which we live. It is way too complicated to open this type of bar in this town, and therefore this bar will remain on the drawing board of our minds rather than becoming a reality. However, when I ran the name past a friend of mine they replied 'that it sounds like a gay bar.' I protested that it did not sound like one to me, and wouldn't be a gay bar, even explaining my astronaut them to her. She replied 'that will even increase the chances of it being a gay bar.' Not that I am opposed to the gays, after all a lot of them have more disposable income than us straight men, but I really don't want to be the owner of a gay bar. No offense, but it isn't something that is on my 'bucket list.'

I argued that the name and the theme is, in fact, as manly as you can get. After all, to human kind, the Moon is the ultimate piece of ass. Hanging above us on a nightly basis, going through it monthly cycles, making us mad as a March hare when it is full, and taunting us by being just so out of reach. Only 12 people, all men, all American, have stepped foot on the moon, and while 12 might be a high number for a piece of ass to give it up to, it is a very tiny number in the grand scheme of things. This isn't the hot bartender at your local watering hole, that the regulars all love, and want to have sex with, even though she would never favour any of us with the time of day in that regard, this is the fucking MOON! Entire countries have spent millions of quid in the attempt to make it there, and to make it there first (taking the Moon's virginity as it were) was quite the feather in the cap for the good, old United States.

If you get the Moon to grant you her favours, then you sir, are in an exclusive club that few men have entered, and fewer still are likely to enter, if you are good enough. That is the trick to keep the Moon's favours, you have to realize that even though there are moons as thick on the ground as fleas are on a camel, you are in possession of THE MOON. The fucking Moon, picked you, of all the daft blokes in all the gin joints, in all the world, the Moon picked you. Because after all, as much as you would like to think that you picked the Moon, the truth is the Moon picked you. That is the first step to both the most exciting, and the most terrifying realization that man can come to.

That wonderfully scary realization that on one day, at a certain hour, the Moon was positioned just right for you to 'walk on the Moon' as it were, and even though you have no clue as to why you are blessed with the Moon's favours. They are delicate favours, and sometimes the Moon can be a fickle bitch, but you, the daft slob that you are with enough fault lines to cause your own earthquake, have set foot on the Moon. Sadly, your weight isn't reduced by one third, and the Moon has a dark side, but you've got the one thing you, and all of mankind have been striving for generations to accomplish. It is now incumbent upon you not to 'fuck it up.' There is one one Moon in your universe, and if you bungle the landing, then you will go down in history, and not in a good way. Success is tricky, success is hard, and success is sometimes fleeting, but if you stay focused, and avoid the pitfalls that have destroyed greater men than you, then you get the Sea of Tranquility all to yourself. Bon chance!

Rules

2011-09-26T23:33:00.000-05:00

There are certain rules of society that we all have to follow whether we like them or not. They are the rules/ties that bind us to a civilized society. Without these rules, the fabric of our society would be torn asunder, and chaos would reign. Not that I am not a fan of chaos, I am, but it seems that chaos is us a bit too much for the majority of us to bear, so that leaves us following the rules. Those rules, the ones that we haven't a clue who made, are the rules that we blindly follow just to keep ourselves fully functioning members of society. The 'ties that bind' as it where the ones that keep us from going native.

But here's the rub, what if the person that made the rules, the ones we are mutually agreed upon to follow decides to break them? Where does that leave society? If two, or more people decide this is a rule that we should all follow, and then one of them breaks it then what happens? Chaos? Who the hell knows, but chaos is probably sure to follow such a disaster of rule breaking.

Personally, I've never been a fan of rules, and I always been a hard sell when it came to following them. I mean my disrespect for authority runs fairly deep. I am the son of a man who once punched an MP in the face while having a roll of nickles in his fist, so rule breaking runs in my family. It is a firmly held belief that rules were designed to be broken, as often, and as hard as possible. After all, what is the point is merely bending a rule? Break that rule like it is fine china that you don't have to pay for, after all it is probably someone else's rule to begin with. Sure there will be consequences, but what do you care? They weren't your rules to begin with now where they.

Or maybe they were rules you adopted, rules that someone else made that you agreed, in your foolishness to abide by, rules that you thought were good ideas at the time. Maybe you agreed because it got you where you wanted to go, or maybe you agreed because you really thought it was a good rule at the time. After all, mutual agreement to a rule is a good thing right? It shows that two parties have decided that a rule is good for both of them, and following it can only be mutually beneficial. But therein lies the rub, what if one party decides, without bothering to tell the other, that this glorious rule is bollocks, and unilaterally decides to no longer follow it?

It took two of you to agreed to the rule, but it only takes one of you to break it. Plain enough I guess, but what if you both break it? Then why do you bother having a rule in the first place? Wasn't it just a race to decide who broke it first? Maybe, or then again maybe the first person who broke the rule was just a bit too clever, a bit too slick, and didn't get caught breaking the rule. Then as that person revels in their ability to break the rules with abandon, they find out the other person broke the very same rule. What happens then? Does that person, the person who broke the rule in the first place have any right to complain? Do they get to bitch the other person out for be faithless to the rules?

All of this silliness is to say that once not so long ago, I chose to enter into one of these rule compacts, and I did a fairly good job of following that rule until it became a hassle for me, then I broke it, and I broke it hard, and more than once. However, being the talented soul that I am, my fellow pact member never had, or never has obtained a clue as to my rule breaking. However, I recently found out, without trying to hard that they also (more recently) broke the rule that we agreed upon. I can not be upset, after all I broke it first, and more than once. Actually I feel a bit proud in a odd sense. Pride in the fact that I broke the rule, and got away with it, and when they broke the rule I found out within 24 hours. Does that make me the evil son of a bitch that I think it does? I both hope so, and hope not all at the same time, but I will leave this judgement up to history.

Heliotropic

2011-08-29T20:43:00.000-05:00

Christ, how does an entire month go sailing past, and I manage just one, pathetic blog post? Have I become that bereft of ideas? Or I am just so fucking lazy that the ideas I do manage to have (and remember) are just not worth the effort? Or could it be that blogger and my computer are seemingly conspiring against me to make any idea I do manage to have fucking impossible to type, and get corrected without calling in a special task force of computer geeks?

I haven't had cable in months, so in theory I should be devoting more of my time to my 'writing.' Clearly that idea doesn't not seem to have worked out, as you can tell by the dearth of posts lately. I am not sure how I have managed to waste the time I used to waste in front of the boob tube, but wasted it has been. That is a crime of which I have no defense, and should be (am) rightly ashamed of myself. I know that I am not a great (or even good writer), but I also know that I am a better writer than when I first started this blog (even if I still can not spell for shit, and my grammar is abysmal). Like any skill, writing takes practice, and that is what I am doing when I write these rambling, senseless posts with obscure titles. I am practicing, what for I am not exactly sure, but I hope that will reveal itself someday.

In this case, that title is heliotropic, a rarely obscure title, and I trust your own ability to Wikipedia the damn thing, and read all about it. The gist of it is that it is a type of reaction to certain plants to the sun. Solar tracking is now the politically correct term, but that just sounds a bit stalkerish to me, so I will use heliptropic. I might use it out of context, or I might (more likely) be using it in my own obscure way to prove a point. Either way it is a great word, and I am going to try to work it into as many sentences as I can, just so I can look all educated and shit. Not that I am not educated, but my vocabulary would make a sailor stop and pause, and I need to fix that. I paid (and will be paying forever) for the classical education that (supposedly) taught all these fancy words, and it is about time I started getting my money's worth, and I am not talking about fancy words that will just help me win one of the thousand of 'words with friends' games I am currently playing.

Heliotropism (see I can use it in different tenses even, yay me!) would appear, at first blush, to be the type of behaviour that would be beneficial for the plant. After all, the sun that M type star that light takes 8 minutes to reach the Earth from, is the life giving, blob that keeps plants, and by extension the rest of life on Earth, from oblivion. Terminal oblivion, not the oblivion that we all love to reach after about 6 Loratab, or 12 beers in about 3 hours. That oblivion is sweet bliss, at least to some of us, but without that M type star around, we would be facing the end of everything that we know. That end, which is going to happen when the Sun goes all red giant on us, is something that we all have to face. Be it our demise, downfall, or merely a fall from grace. Each of us have one waiting for us. Maybe just around the corner, or maybe in the middle distance, or maybe (hopefully) light years away.

If it is not our demise (which we can have no reaction to) the downfall or fall from grace could be a defining moment of our life. How we handle that moment is something that we each have to sort out for ourselves. We will be judged by our handling of the situation, and it is important that we handle it 'well'. Not for the audience, they are just happy that the downfall is happening to us, not them, their reaction means fuck all at the end of the day. It is how we handle it for ourselves, that is what counts. When the time comes to stand up, keep a stiff upper lip, and be 'a man,' it is incumbent upon us to do the right thing.

The tricky part is figuring out what the right thing is, and once you're lucky enough to sort that out, well then you are golden. Like you've been bronzed by the sun golden. Just be careful to remember as you are basking in your bronze skin, and heliotropic behaviour, the sun, if you lollygag too long under its rays, can burn you to a crisp.

The Trust

2011-08-04T07:31:00.004-05:00

You lazily asked me if I trusted you, "Of course I do" I replied. After all what I am supposed to say? The 'real' truth about how I trust? I doubt you would take kindly to that, few people have over the years, and besides I am (still) trying to be a better person. Part of that attempt is to change the way I 'trust' people. I fear that I may be failing at that attempt. I blame society, and predicatibility.

As you may have noticed if you read any of this blog, I am a card carrying, people hating, misanthrope. I deal with a lot of people on a daily basis that reinforce my dislike of the human race, and it is something that helps define me. The sad part of this tale is the fact that I DO trust people, but it is a negative trust. A trust built upon years of (bad) experience(s), and a mean streak a mile wide. I trust people to betray me. It will happen, despite all their protests to the contrary, they will betray me. And, truth be told, I will probably betray them. Life is sort of a race to see who betrays whom first. Eventually, myself or my 'friends' will be faced with the classical 'me or him/her' dilemma, and if they or me have any sense whatsoever, the choice will be me (i.e. the person faced with the dilemma). It is human nature, and it is natural, to pick me over them it is hard wired into my DNA. I am sorry, I know it makes me a bad person, and all that, but I am the only person that I am certain I can trust in a positive sense. Even then I sometimes wonder if I am not my own worst enemy, but until I push my own self under the bus, I have to hope that I, mostly, act in my own best interests, depsite quite a large amount of evidence to the contrary.

And no matter how long we've known each other, in any sense, and no matter how much we 'love' each other, or how well we get along, or if I am the benevolent "uncle" to your children, our interests are not identical. At some point the you or me situation will come up, and I, maybe with regret, maybe not, will be forced to choose me. It makes me a bad person, but it ensures that I will at least remain a person. I expect you to do the same. The knife that will be buried hilt deep in my, or your back, will have a name on it. The name might cause you or me sadness, but at the end of the day, knives kill. That just what they do, the name on the blade isn't going to make dying any easier or more difficult.

That knife, if it carries a familar name, will be a farewell present between us. A sort of lethal 'have a nice life' parting gift for a contestant that just was unable to survive the 'showcase showdown' that is life. It will sever ties (and if well placed, other things) between us, and until I, or you remove it, will be a constant reminder that negative trust can sometimes be the best kind of trust. After all we expected this didn't we? We discussed it on the front end, and agreed (maybe over a couple too many beers) that the kind of trust we share is negative, and that eventually (hopefully not for a long time, but still eventually) one of us will not survive to continue the relationship between us. It will be sad, funny, tragic, and fatal all at the same time but, it will happen as sure as the sun rises in the east, it is one thing that, even though I'm not supposed to, I will bet on with a sad certainty.

P.S. The picture above is of the actor Sam Neill playing Sidney Reilly in "Reilly: Ace of Spies" a lovely PBS mini series from a zillion years ago. The point of the picture, other than Mr. Neill is one handsome fellow, is this. Sidney Reilly was a master spy, a man at home in the house of deceit, lies, and betrayal. Yet, his downfall was to be lured back to Russia to support an alleged anti-Bolshievk group that was to try to overthrow V.I. Lenin. It wasn't a real group it was a group set up by the NKVD to lure Reilly and others to Russia in order to have them killed. Its name, well it was, ever so aptly, called "The Trust."

Gauche

2011-07-28T13:31:00.001-05:00

I am right handed. Born that way, raised that way, will be that way until I die. Sadly my paterfamilias did not realize the potential in having a left handed son that he could turn into a relief pitcher and secure his family's finances for years to come. I do realize this clever niche market, but since I am legally bound not to procreate, I am going to have to find a stand in child upon which I can make my retirement fund.

Other than left handed pitchers, or left foot wingers, I would suspect that being left handed in a world made for right handers must suck ass. About 10% of the world's population is left handed, and I would imagine the other 90% of us (including me) lord over that minority as much as possible. Right handed desks ensure that even as children left handed people are singled out for maltreatment. Kids are cruel, cruel things, and anything one kid does that is different is sure to get them held up as an object of ridicule.

Plus, they get hosed by the word itself, the Latin word sinistra originally meant 'left' but has since changed meaning into sinister or evil. Gauche the French word for left, can mean someone who is socially awkward. Give these poor lefties a break for fuck sake. Since I love to be contrary, and I figure left handers need all the help they can get, I sometimes do things with my left hand in a bit of social protest. When I am playing darts particularly badly with my right hand (which happens quite often), I will switch to my left hand because I can only get better. There are a couple of video games that I now play better left handed than I do right handed. I drive left handed, and I have attempted to write things left hand with very little success.

There is an awesome scene in 'The Princess Bride' where Wesley engages in a sword fight with Indigo going back and forth both showing amazing skill. At first, Wesley is using his left hand, and the moment, after being asked by Indigo, why are you smiling, he replies "because I know something you don't know. . . I'm not left handed' is beyond cool. All this to say that being left hand can be a bitch, but it can also be something that sets you apart, and that you can, if you are clever enough, use to your advantage. Also, after years and years of trying I finally, last evening managed to do something left handed that I had never thought I could. I will leave it up to your imagination as to what that task was, all I will say is that it made me very happy, then I fell asleep.

Independence Day

2011-07-24T18:37:00.000-05:00

(This was supposed to be published yesterday, but I got lazy).

Today is July 23rd, and it is my personal independence day. There is no country in the world that declared their independence on this day, and I guess since there are only 190 odd countries in the world, and 365 days in the year there are some days that will be like that. However, even though I don't share my independence day with anyone one country, I still like to pretend that I have my own independence day like one. I don't set off large amounts of fireworks,no one has written a song for the occasion, nor is any one particular food called for, and I try to celebrate it cautiously.

Because to be independent is to be cautious, you never really know if your self-declared view of your independence is going to be embraced by the rest of the world, or if some bully is going to 'send in the tanks' to get you back in line. Hopefully, and more likely, the 'world' as it is, isn't really going to be too bothered by your actions, and will just let you be. At least until you start making a nuisance of yourself. And that is the tricky part, how to not become a nuisance. Sitting at home, and minding your own business is one, very dull, way, but even the most curmudgeonly of us are social animals.

And you are going to have to, eventually, go out into the society of nations, and mingle. After all your independent now, and that is cause for a new found confidence, and a new found desire to be 'out there'. One of those first steps in any good independence movement is to get organized. After all, before you weren't strictly in charge of much, and now suddenly you are in charge of everything! That could be a bit 'more than one can bear' if you aren't careful. And you will need to be careful, because now that you are independent, your safety net that you used to rely upon, is gone. You are your own Prime Minister, Minister of Finance, Foreign Affairs, Defense, etc. etc. all rolled into one.

Hopefully, you will be up to the task, for it is quite a task, and it might be one which you are clearly unready, or unsuited for, but you took the leap of independence, and if you fall flat on your face, you have no one but yourself to blame. That is one of the hidden little things about being independent, all blame is now directly, solely attributed to one person, you. Of course, things might not have been too much different before independence, which could have been one of the reason for declaring it in the first place. Either way, here you are newly independent, and wondering 'now what?'

The answer to that puzzler is not going to make itself readily apparent, nor will the United Nations be of much help. They can offer advice, but you always have to ask for a translation, and you have to look at the state of the country offering advice. Are they telling you to do things that they are obviously unwilling or unable to do themselves? If so, then perhaps their advice, freely given, and well intended as it might be, might be something you have to take with a whole bucket of salt. Finally, you have to try to remember the mistakes that made you dependent in the first place, and to try to avoid repeating them. After all, losing what was so hard to obtain would just be awful, and you don't want to subjugate yourself to that type of pasting again. As the wise man said, those who fail to learn from their mistakes, are doomed to repeat them, and you don't want to count yourself amongst the doomed, do you?

Last Bastion

2011-07-17T13:52:00.000-05:00

Patriotism is the last bastion of a scoundrel----- Samuel Johnson, and Lisa Simpson

Today the country of my birth the grand old USA play Japan in the Women's World Cup final. I will not be watching, nor do I have a rooting interest in the game. As I have mentioned numerous times on this blog, I am a fan of Sweden. That means all of their teams no matter what sport, and no matter how awful they may be at it. This disloyalty to the nation of my birth has caused me to branded a traitor, and I have gotten quite a bit of stick about it. I grow weary of it.

To set the record straight I became a Sweden fan in 1994 when they finished third in the World Cup held in America. It was also the beginning of my obsessive man love for Henrik Larsson. I have held by that choice for almost 17 years, and I am not going to abandon it anytime soon. I watched us fail to qualify for the 1998 World Cup, the 2010 World Cup, and watched us get blasted out of the 2002 World Cup by Senegal at what was 3 a.m. to me, I watched us lose to the stinking Germans in the 2006 World Cup, and I am hopeful of our qualification for the 2012 Euros, and the 2014 World Cup as well. They are my team, they will remain my team, and the fact, which I had nothing to do with by the way, that I was born in the United States will not change that.

I do not now, or have ever possessed the ability to pull up stakes and move to Sweden. If I did, it is possible I would. However, I think you can still root for whatever team you choose. Call me crazy but I thought that was one of those 'individual freedoms' Americans like to bang on about. An accident of birth should not trump calm reflection, and personal choice. I will not root against America (except for when they play Sweden), but there is nothing in my makeup that makes me want to root for them. I like to think this makes me the type of person who has the courage of his convictions, but it seems into today's jingoistic climate it makes me something akin to Quisling. So be it.

I have spurned several invitations to 'come to the pub, and watch the game' for several reasons. One, my team played, and won their game yesterday, two the place will be packed, and three it will be packed with 'fly by night, only root for the US when they are winning' type of fans. I was at the pub when Sweden lost to Japan, and I had to suffer one or two particularly obnoxious American fans that just wanted to talk to me (while I was wearing a Swedish jersey) about the American team. New flash genius, I give fuck all about the US team period, and I CERTAINLY give fuck all about them when Sweden is playing, and when Sweden are losing I can get murderous.

This brings me to the main reason for my absence at the pub, I have the common decency not to go out in public and root against the US, for given the way I have been hazed lately, that is surely what I would do. I am not watching the game, and really do not care who wins. I am sure the US will win, and we will be bombarded by how they are the greatest team in the history of the sport, and they should all receive the keys to the kingdom Sure they are good, they are the number one ranked team in the world, which in my opinion, means maybe they SHOULD win. Sweden finished third, and that makes me proud, it is probably about as best as we were ever going to do, and therefore I accept that. I accept my traitor status, but I also remember one thing. Sweden 2 USA 1.

Happy

2011-07-15T08:43:00.001-05:00

The chubby, cheerful fellow depicted above is Happy Dwarf of Snow White fame. Notice the grin, notice the girth, I often wonder does one equal the other? We have another fat guy who goes by the name of Santa Claus who is also pictured as rotund, and jolly. Does fat equal jolly? Or is that just how we like to think? We live in a society that bombards us with adverts for food. Billboards, TV commercials, radio spots, and all sorts of other media sources slam us with pictures and words about delicious, appetizing food. We are fast (food) becoming a nation of lard butts. Our individual daily calorie intake would feed a small nation for a week.

Of course, maybe this is a good thing, maybe if we all become a bit chubby, like Santa or Happy Dwarf then we will be jolly, smiling, laughing people as well. It will also make our heart doctors very wealthy people, as if they aren't already. Sadly, I have experience in this field, and I can promise you that fat does NOT equal jolly. Despite most villains being depicted as thin, brooding types, (ever seen or read about too many fat villains?). I am here to proclaim that fat people can be brooding as well. In fact, I have recently been called a brooding type by more than one person. Happy Dwarf is a two dimensional character. He has the width all right, but he lacks depth, and it is depths that allow true characters to bloom.

Maybe Happy is just happy who knows? All we ever see him doing is smiling or laughing. Maybe he is truly a happy fellow. I am inclined to think that is not true, I (being the brooding type) think that Happy just doesn't think too much about life, and therefore his happiness is based upon a 'let's not think too much about stuff because it will distress me' philosophy that I can not embrace. Brooding doesn't usually make for jovial (look up where the word jovial comes from,and you will see jovial equal fat/large) companions. Brooding is usually best done alone, you might be in a room full of people, but if you are brooding you are alone. Conversation with a man getting his brood on is desultory at best, at worse it could earn you a punch in the mouth, or a verbal slash from which you stagger away bleeding YOUR happiness all over the ground.

Perhaps all of us fat bastards just eat so much as a way of coping with our own personal demons. I am pretty sure life looks a lot better after a big plate of smothered tots, and about 90 beers (if you can see at all that is). Beer, the most wonderful thing in the world, is just empty calories after all, but it does, upon occasion, have the effect of making even fat people jolly. However, it always poses the risk of making a brooding fat guy, just that much more of a brooder. It is a 50/50 shot as to what effect the alcohol will have, but life is, at its core, a zero sum game, and I guess, given that knowledge, 50/50 is about as good as it is going to get.

Logic Dictates

2011-07-03T10:22:00.000-05:00

I have a decision facing me, or rather staring me in face (and has been for a while), but I am, or rather have been trying to avoid it. However, like most distasteful things, it can not be ignored forever, and today is the day to stand up, face this decision, and move on with my life.

It is a tough decision, or else I would have made it by now. It seems that postponing the decision doesn't really help a whole lot, and just makes the 'paying the piper day' just more difficult. It is a decision that I HAVE to make, not one that I want to make. Therein lies the rub. The (small) feeling part of me, and despite my best attempts, I do still have feelings, really doesn't want to make this decision. Which is understandable, since it will be the feeling part of me that is going to suffer the pain. Of course, there is a theory that states that it serves me right. If you don't want to have your feelings hurt, then just don't have fucking feelings. Good, sound, logical theory, and I try my best (which is rarely good enough) to follow the theory at all times.

Sadly, though the feeling part of me decided to take a turn at the wheel, and here I am having to make a decision that will hurt my feelings. That is what happens when logic turns its back even for a second, the feeling part takes over, and runs us aground. Of course, feeling part of me, the one who created this shipwreck, is useless in a crisis, and just rushes about wringing his hands and generally acting like a twit. Logical me, the real me, the me I want to be has to climb on board, and attempt to keep the 'ship of me' from sinking.

Unfortunately flawed as well, because logical me isn't all logic. Logical me has one really big flaw, and that is he has a temper. I am not sure if anger is a feeling, an emotion, or both, but it is rarely logical. Logical me carries this temper/anger around on his sleeve, it is not hard to see, and it is very close to the surface. Sometimes logical me lets his temper go, and the results are not pretty to see. However, when the logical part of me tries hard enough that temper/anger he wears like a badge of honour is cold. It is when he goes cold inside that logical me becomes the animal I need him to be. Because 'feeling' me is going to get us hurt, and hurt badly. Logical me is not a fan of feeling me, and one day logical me is going to sort feeling me out for good.

However, until that glorious day arrives, logical me will just have to cleanse the wounds dealt by feeling me the best he can. The problem is, that logical me isn't feeling me, he uses gasoline to cleanse wounds, strikes a match, and watches it all burn to the ground. The glee he feels in this inferno is obvious, and I sometimes wonder if feeling me realizes the damage he is doing to us both with the flames start to take hold. I doubt feeling me is that smart, and logical me doesn't give a shit, so here I am a rag, and some gasoline, I have the feeling this decision is about to make it very hot in here.

Dear Eric

2011-06-25T11:43:00.005-05:00

Today is Eric Blair's birthday. One hundred and eight years ago in far away India, Ida Mabel Blair screamed her way through childbirth, and gave the world a bouncing baby boy christened Eric Arthur Blair. That little bundle of joy would go on to reappraise his life at the age of 24, and decide to become a writer, and poof! just like that the world was given the gift of George Orwell.

Today is also my birthday, and if you reverse the numbers of the age that M. Blair reappraised his life, you have my age as of today. Birthdays are motherfuckers, they come regardless of whether you are ready for them or not, and (hopefully unless you're hit my a MATA bus) keep coming whether you want them to or not. Birthing days are tricky days, on the one hand, if you are lucky like me, you are still alive to celebrate them (unlike M. Blair), and you have a wealth of good people in your life (that you don't deserve) to wish you well, and to celebrate the day of your birth. On the other hand, as the birthdays keep piling up, you have to wonder if/when you reached your 'tipping point.' That point where you realize that you have already celebrated more birthdays than you have left to celebrate. Of course that can happen at any time, regardless of age, but MATA buses aside, you have to think positive.

I am fairly certain that I am past my own 'tipping point' and pretty sure I am also past my 'sell by date.' However, that did not seem to stop this day from arriving on time like it has for the past 41 years. Regardless of how much drunken hope I had during last night's binge, the dawn arrived outside my window as usual, only this time bringing with it another year added to my life. It has been that life, that like M. Blair, I have been (badly as it turns out) attempting to reappraise. It seems that I share more than just a birthday with M. Blair, I too have aspirations beyond my current situation. However, unlike him, I lack the courage to just chuck it all over, move to Paris and start writing books while I wash dishes in order to eat. I also lack another important thing that M. Blair had going for him, and that is talent. Courage can be 'screwed up', or found in a big enough bottle. Eventually, we hope, courage comes to us all at the right moment. That is how drowning children are saved, and how little kittens get out of all of those trees.

However, if I were able to muster the courage, and that is still a big IF, I still lack the other ingredient that M. Blair possessed, and that is talent. Talent, unlike courage, doesn't come in bottles, or at least in any of the bottles I have been drinking from lately, or ever for that matter. Talent doesn't 'rise to the occasion' if you see a burning house with a child trapped inside, talent isn't the one performing the rescue, that would be courage. And courage can come without talent. Talent doesn't just show up late, like a party guest that had his dates confused. Talent just is, it can be nurtured, but I fear that I am past the nurturing age, and therefore the small (ever so small) amount of talent I possess, is all the talent I am going have.

That small (ever so small) amount of talent is, in my own harsh opinion, not enough. Perhaps I am right in that assessment, or perhaps I am wrong. There are a few daft souls out there who think I have talent, and they believe in me. Those mad hatters are the reason that birthdays are bearable. That belief, ill-founded as I believe it to be, allowed me to stagger out of bed today, and continue to reassess my life as it sits in front of me. The belief, which is apparently rather strong, wants me to be a better person (which considering the right bastard I am, shouldn't be that hard to do). Those brave souls that express their belief in my talent are the lighthouses in the darkness that my soul sometimes gets lost in, without that light, things would just be downright gloomy. They allow me the freedom to attempt to express myself on these pages, and it isn't their fault if I do it badly.

Those 'lighthouses' keep me off the shoals of self loathing, and help me realize that perhaps the measuring stick that I am using is a bit too big for me, and that I need to adjust my aim towards a goal that an everyday slob, such as myself, can hit. Knowing how far the talent you possess will get you is the first step in allowing that talent to take you further that you can imagine, and after all, we can't all be George fucking Orwell now can we? Happy Birthday Eric!

Boston

2011-06-13T19:59:00.004-05:00

'You should come to Boston, with the snowfall, and me. I think you would love it.' 'Come to Boston, and put an end to you senseless rambling.' I sighed, deeply because I knew that this argument was going to end like it always did, badly. I just said 'no', and tried to leave it at that, but she was not to be denied a good old-fashioned argument that easily. 'You know I'm your number one fan, and you are a damn fool if you don't come to Boston.' Another deep sigh as I struggled to find the right words to explain to her that my 'rambling' as she called it was just me being lost. Lost and certainly not found, at least not yet, and not sure I can be. 'I might have to add myself to the list of people that mysteriously disappeared,' I joked. Truth be told, however I was not really joking, and to her credit, she knew that.

'Besides I hate the Red Sox, the Bruins, AND the Celtics, Boston is like sports hell on Earth for me.' I said that with just a bit of humor in my voice, but it is true, and it was an argument that I had tried before, it was summarily brushed aside by her swearing at me with real vigor. She replied, as I knew she would, 'Boston might be your sports hell, but you know I will make it your relationship nirvana, only you're too fucking stupid to realize it.' 'I'm the best thing that ever happened to you, and the best thing that WILL ever happen to you, and you are letting me rot away half a world away in Boston, while you search for something you've already found right in front of you.'

Time was when she shouted that last argument down the line with frustration dripping from her voice, as I could picture her gripping the phone, white knuckled with rage. I knew that the more times we had this argument, the more her resolve weakened. She said 'You can find the space between my arms, if only you will stay.' It was almost a sob, and it came near to breaking what little heart I possess, but my courage had been screwed up to the sticking point, and I merely sighed and reminded her that 'all you want is to tether me to Boston, and to you, you don't really want me, you want the idea of me.' 'You know it, I know it, hell the fucking free world knows it.' 'Years from now, when you have met the true love of your life, and birthed a couple of babies, you will thank me for not coming to Boston, and you know it.'

'I'm going to hang up now, and I think you should probably not call me again.' 'It can't be healthy for you, and it certainly makes me feel like warmed over shit when I get off the phone with you.' I paused, and waited for the tears, because ever once in a while there were tears, hers or mine or a combination of the two, but this time it was the world weary sigh, not tears. Which isn't quite as bad, but it was usually followed by some pithy comment that smashed into me like an atom in a particle accelerator. I needed time to wander, and she never understood what, was to her, the simplest thing in the world. That she was my dreamboat, and I was letting her sail off in the Boston sunset without any attempt to keep her moored to the pier of my heart.

The silence following that sigh grew longer, and I was on the verge of just hanging up when she said in a very small voice 'how could you do this to me.' That almost collapsed my resolve, and I almost booked the next flight to Boston, maybe I could learn to like the Bruins? But, I found the moral cowardice to resist that urge, and merely told her 'learn to hate me, it will help you in the long run see what is good for you.' 'You may not believe me, and you may not realize it today, or tomorrow, but one day you will realize it, and after you are done hating me, you will realize I'm right.' Finally, the pause ended, as I figured it would with a snarled 'go fuck yourself!' and a loud click as she broke the tether that had tied me to her for all of those years.

I slipped that tethered knot, and have since moved around quite a bit, and I don't know, but I suspect that she did learn to hate me. She certainly moved on, and did birth a couple of babies like I had predicted. I have since been to Paris, Porto, Vienna, Stockholm, and a host of other cities, and I now realize that maybe, after all this time, she was right. After all these years of blankness and darkness the idea that perhaps she was the best thing that was ever going to happen to me, and as I stand here outside the TD Garden, morose with the realization that I've come to Boston, only to discover that she has moved (years ago) to Denver.

Falstaff

2011-06-09T21:09:00.000-05:00

I am fairly certain that I have mentioned before that I am a bit 'larger than life,' and I am not talking about the force of my personality. I was born a lard ass, raised a lard ass, and have been a lard ass for, my soon approaching, 42 years on the planet. It is just the way I am, the way I was, and it seems, the way I am meant to be. Even now, as I write this I have lost in the last year or so almost 50 pounds, and I am still, in my opinion, a tub. I have been stuck at the same (over) weight for almost 5 months, and it has been driving me insane. It has led me to believe that my scale could not register a weight below my current weight, and i had to place a bag of potatoes on the scale just to prove myself wrong. It seems that I am the problem, not the scale. Which I knew all along, but really did not feel like admitting.

The method I used to lose the nearly 50 pounds has recently been revamped, and I have found the new method to be worst than useless, so I am in the process of trying a new, harsher, method that makes my day to day life a living hell of longing for food, any food. Clearly, I have had a long standing love affair with food, any food, which is why I got as big as a double wide trailer in the first place. I seem to lack any will power to turn down all those foods that are on the 'bad for you, but taste so fucking good' lists. I also like beer, lots of beer, and it seems to be not the best thing to drink if you want to lose weight. Which is a tragedy that would make Hamlet seem like a light comedy.

All this has made for a rough couple of weeks as I have tried the new, harsh method, and has now led me to realize that my friends (rot them) are determined to keep me fat/make me fatter. It seems that the really FAT me must have been a jovial companion that was the life of whatever party he attended. I am not sure how since his fat ass would get out of breath eating a doughnut, and fat me ate a lot of doughnuts. It seems this fat bastard was a character much like Falstaff in Shakespeare's plays. A larger than life, life of the party type that just made any time a fun time. I cannot, for the life of me, believe this to be true, but it seems my friends (rot them) are determined to bring this fat fuck back from the 'dead.' They do this in the most insidious way possible, they have this week alone asked me to go 'out drinking' four nights in a row! This is outrageous! I am not sure why skinnier (but still a lard ass) me isn't as much fun as the really fat guy I replaced, but it seems my sense of humour was lost along with all that weight.

I thought that I had kept my jovial attitude, and was just less likely to break the bar stool that I was occupying, but it appears from all of this invites to go 'drinking/get fat again' that I have become the non life of the party, and need to gain 30 lbs quickly. One of these friends (rot them) did suggest that they just wanted to hang out with me, and if I drank Diet Coke they would be just as happy. This suggestion was met with the safest amount of derision that I could muster, and still call this person a friend. For there is one thing that me and really fat me have in common, and it is the reason there will never, ever exist a painfully thin me, it is that we lack willpower. Dunking Donuts is still in business thanks to really fat me, and skinnier me fights daily to avoid the temptation of going into my local store, and ordering about 10 dozen doughnut of various types, and eating myself into a coma.

I suppose that I should be happy that my friends (rot them) still want to hang out with skinnier, morose me. For I must be morose if all they want to do is get really fat me back into the picture, but I can't keep resisting the siren song of booze, broads, and beef jerky for much longer. After all, I didn't get fat by staying at home, and eating fucking salad all the time, and if I keep doing that eventually my friends (rot them) will just stop calling me to hang out at all, and that would just make skinnier me depressed, and when I get depressed, I want to eat doughnuts, thus the circle of (fat) life is complete.

A Desert of One

2011-05-26T19:27:00.011-05:00

He looked over the top of the wall that I had helped him build, glanced out at the dust cloud on the horizon, and said "They are coming for us, you know?" Well of course I know that I can see just as well as he can, and besides, I am the pessimist in the group. I know 'they' are coming for us. However, those thoughts I keep to myself, and I content myself with a simple "Yes, I know, but I wonder who 'they' are this time." He smirks at me (he does a great bit of smirking), and replies "Does it really matter? There is always going to be a 'they', and 'they' are always going to come for us, and try to batter down our walls." He is right, and it sticks in my craw that he is, no matter how much I wish it weren't true, his assessment of the situation is spot on, and I turn back to the desert outside our walls, and pose another stupid question. "How many do you think there are this time?" It is a stupid question, because the answer I know that is coming duly arrives loaded down with the sarcasm he does so well. "Does that matter either? Five, fifty, or five hundred. It's all the same to us isn't it?"

One of the sadder parts of our situation is that we are in a desert, an sandy outpost in the middle of nowhere. A place of no particular interest to anybody else in the world. A place that time should have scrubbed off the map ages ago. A place that you wouldn't claim to be from if you had any sense, and a place chosen by us for that exact reason. Picked out with exactitude, and built by ourselves, for ourselves, in order to keep ourselves walled in, or maybe the world walled out, either way, it was chosen for the isolation it provided. And it was that blissful, hard-fought isolation that we wanted, that we prized above all else. To be far, far from the maddening crowd was our goal, and for an, all too brief, time it worked like a charm. However, the world sometimes just doesn't let you cash in your chips, and withdraw from the game quite so easily, and we were finding that out again, and to our cost.

We built the walls as strong as we were (at the time) able, and while we were fairly good at building walls, they are, by no means, impregnable. This wasn't the first group to try to batter down those wall, and we didn't figure them to be the last. "This would have never have happened if you weren't so damn stubborn you know?" I had to say that to him, because it was the same thing I always said to him, when the enemy was at the gates, and he gave his usual reply of "why don't you go tell THEM that, and while you at it go fuck yourself." It was our usual banter just to ease the pressure of waiting for the storm to break over us, and it was the same refrain every time. I doubt either of us even really paid attention to it anymore, but somehow without it, things just wouldn't have been the same.

Of course, in theory, I could have walked away and left him behind those walls by himself. There was no contract between us, nothing in writing anyway, and I am sure that he would not have been to surprised if I were to just pull up stakes, and head for 'higher ground' (as he would call it). However, I was in his thrall, and both he and I knew that. I could no sooner leave him than I could cut my own throat. Sometimes it seemed to be a beautiful idea, and on more than one occasion I tried it, but each time, he was there to stop me, and he didn't really have to try to hard to do it. It was one of the most infuriating things about him. He knew that it was impossible for me to leave him, and to his credit he never held it against me, or even acted like he knew. He is the most imperfectly perfect men that I have ever met, and that is high praise. Even his flaws, of which he was quick to own, were perfect. They just made him flawed enough to be even more perfect.

"We could just let them in, you know?" I said, hopeful that he would finally relent in another ongoing argument that flared between us on occasion. "And, IF I were to do that, do you think that would stop more of them from coming?" "Do you really think the hordes would stop with just letting in one lucky group?" I sigh (for the thousandth time) and reply "Of course, not you're right as usual, if we let in a few scouts then battalions are sure to follow." "But, do you think they will ever stop?" He looks over at me with real determination in his corn-flower blue eyes, and says "no they won't stop, you know they won't fucking stop, you knew they wouldn't fucking stop when you signed up for this, and you also know that I am not going to fucking stop either." "So why are you asking such a silly question?" I am not shocked by the venom in his reply, and my feelings, though slightly wounded, will recover from his display of anger, but I still mutter "because I figure that you would, one day, some day, give me the answer I want to hear."

That's the sad thing about us humans we always have an answer that we want to hear, not that we get to hear it, or that we would believe it even if we did, but we still long to hear it.And when we don't hear the answer we want, we tend to get peckish. But peckish or not , I have to turn to the walls that I helped to build, and try to repel 'them' those nameless ones that are battering at the gates. Whomever 'they' are, the people that won't be happy until they shatter the peace that we have found here in the middle of nowhere. The peace that we foolishly try to preserve, knowing that 'they' will not stop coming. Knowing that 'they' have no other purpose, whether they are fully aware of it or not, but to destroy our desert of one.

Partner

2011-05-19T14:35:00.004-05:00

The fellow above is one Count Leopold Berchtold, and his (only) claim to anything that would pass as fame is that he was the Imperial Foreign Minister of the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the outbreak of World War I. I do not know if the good Count has any living descendants left to be offended by this post, but here's hoping that if he does they aren't so bored as to find this blog post. History remembers him only for the 'job' he held and even then probably not very fondly, or very well. History is written by the winners, and Count Berchtold was on the losing side, only the melancholy historians of the world, the ones who are somewhat fascinated with the 'what ifs' of history would have anything other than a passing interest in the Count. His term in office was from February 17th, 1912 until his 'fall' on January 13th, 1915, just 24 days shy of three years. However, those years were vital to the history of the world as we know it today, and the Count's performance, or lack thereof had far reaching effects that he probably never envisioned when he began to sign his name to all sorts of important documents as Foreign Minister. We never really understand the ripple effect of our actions until it is too late, and sometimes we fail to understand the effects at all. Thus, history is a fickle, fickle bitch.

The Count was born wealthy, married wealthy, and probably died wealthy. He was reputed to be one of the Empire's richest men, so it is sometimes difficult to have a ton of sympathy with him, and his plight/fate. Although his plight was pretty bleak, he was appointed at the tender age of 49 (the youngest foreign minister in Europe at the time), and without really having the qualifications to do the job that was thrust upon him. I feel his pain, there are times at my job that I have a similar feeling, but I guess, like the Count, we should just try to do our best, and hope no one catches onto the idea that we are basically faking it. Luckily for me, my responsibilities aren't nearly as onerous at his were, and if I fuck up millions of people aren't going to be killed, maimed, or otherwise affected in bad ways.

Still, you have to feel sorry for the poor bastard, in over his head, and harnessed to a creaking, decrepit Empire that was on its last legs, shackled with an army poorly trained, and composed of about 30 different nationalities, and forced to deal with a bureaucracy that was filled with village idiots. Not that he covered himself in glory while fulfilling his duties. After his fall, he retired to his country estate (don't we all have a country estate), and lived the high life, playing no further role in the events that he helped to create. A pretty sweet gig, if you can get it, and one that was probably better than he deserved.

However, the Count and his Empire did have a partner in the dance of destruction that was to engulf Europe during the late summer of 1914, and that partner (and to many the real villain of the piece) was Imperial Germany. Not the Nazi Germany that we all know and love, but the Kaiser/Bismarck Germany. The Iron Chancellor, and his Kaiser were the true power of the partnership that would be known as the Central Powers during the 'War to end all Wars'. It is clear to any simple student of history that Austria-Hungary was clearly the second string/fiddle in their little tryst with Imperial Germany. The Germans were an organized, well-drilled, experinced fighting machine, with a strong-willed genius at the helm of the ship of state. Bismarck had his flaws, but in his day, he was not someone you wanted to fuck with.

And that is the basis of relationships/partnerships there almost always is a weaker partner. One that is the star, one that is the role player. We all remember Michael Jordan, but Hoarce Grant won a shit ton of rings too you know. Not the best analogy, but I am not that creative, and you get the general idea. In these types of partnerships it is actually the weaker member that calls the shots. You would think Germany would just (metaphorically) reach over, and slap Austria-Hungary a few times and scream 'keep it together you fucking idiot, and we can win this war.' The real true of the matter is that Austria-Hungary, by being the weaker of the two can always say 'sorry Germany, but if you dont give me more help, I am going to collapse entirely, and then you are fucked brother.' And, if you are Germany, what choice do you have? The wolves are at the door, and you need all the help you can get, and any help is better than no help, and if the bumble fucks you have as partners are the only thing between your backdoor, and the wolves, well then you better help keep them afloat, or shit is about to break bad for you.

Suddenly all those rosy ideas about you being the big man in this alliance are roasting like marshmellows over an open flame, you have to help them, or face the cold, hard fact that without them, you are doomed (doomed I tell you), and no one likes to be doomed, not even melacholy students of history. So, you shrug your (slightly broad) shoulders, and lean into the burden that they bear, because by becoming their partner, you have signed up to help shoulder their burden(s) as well as your own. It does not matter if your burden was enough, or that you were barely keeping your own shit together, what matters now is that you have to help with theirs, or face the mutual destruction of the partnership that you so painstakingly put together.

It doesn't matter if the game is no longer worth the candle, you are trapped like a rat in a maze of your own making, and you are beginning to suspect that whatever 'cheese' there was has long since been moved out of your immediate reach. All you can do, all you can hope to do is prolong collapse long enough for a solution to either come to you in a flash of inspiration, or someone to see your distress, understand that you are 'tired of being Germany, and want to be Austria-Hungary for a while', and lean into your burden to help you. Sometimes that happens, and during those golden moments when it does, you should be grateful, and say thank you, and remember Count Leopold Berchtold, after all someone needs to.

What Measure is Man

2011-05-15T02:29:00.000-05:00

I have your measure my dear, and I am not talking about how tall you are. That does not matter, be it 5 foot nothing or 10 feet tall, and bulletproof, I still have your measure. Granted, it took me years to get your measure, and it was quite the task to do, but rest assured that finally I have your measure. Also rest assured that this measure, that I have taken so very much effort to obtain, I will use against you in the most insidious ways. I will not be gentle, nor will I be kind. Gentle and kind have gone the way of the dodo bird. They are non-existent. And that is as much your fault as it is mine, so do not expect mercy, I certainly do not.

Because, quite simply, we passed the kind and gentle stage a long, long time ago. That time was before I had sorted out the type of person you are, and when I was young, dumb, and stupid. Those days have, for the most part, passed. Now I am old, and not quite the fucking retard I make out to be, and I have put your round peg into the round hole into which it fits. The sad part of all of this deep thought is that it did not have to turn out this way, you could have with just a simple, non-complex gesture, or a wave of an out-stretched hand made this all better. But, you did not choose to do that for reasons that are inexplicable to me, and that I am sure make perfect sense to you. However, those reasons are the reasons that I am measuring you up for a fall.

And fall you shall, as sure as the sun rises in the east tomorrow, you will fall, and I can only hope that I am the architect of your downfall. It will give me the greatest possible pleasure to be the main reason that you come crashing down to earth. Welcome to the ice that the rest of us have to suffer. I hope it is cold enough for you, and that your brain stops working from that cold. I hope you freeze just like the rest of us. Mainly because it will be the first, and perhaps only, feeling that you share with the rest of us mere mortals.

It is this painstaking task of taking your measure that has occupied me for a very, very long time, and I can only hope that, since I have managed it, that it has a happy effect upon my life. I figure that since I have sorted it all out, that I might be able to be sleep better at night. Sleep the sleep of the just if you can, and snore away the day secure in the (mis) conception that you have it all sorted out. You don't, and it will make me so very happy to show you that you are mistaken. Because regardless of how tall, or short you are, I have your measure, and I am telling you this as a warning. The warning is that perhaps whatever attention you deign pay to me just is quite enough.

Magic Carpet

2011-05-10T21:17:00.001-05:00

Step on board my magic carpet ladies and gents, it is not the prettiest pig in the poke, nor it is the most stable, but it is mine, and if you will indulge me this once, it can be yours too. That is if you are willing to suspend, at least a modicum, of belief. Because without that suspension and lack of (full blown) belief, well magic carpet rides become a whole lot less magical.

So, step aboard, mind the fraying around the edges, and above all, pay attention. This carpet ride is not as effortless as it seems, and it is taking most of my, very limited, skill to keep it air-borne. If you distract me too much with inane questions, then we might crash into some (in)convenient mountainside. And that would be awful, just awful. Either way mountains aside, try to enjoy the ride, for it is a ride, and like all rides it will, eventually, come to an end. But that is for later, for now enjoy the scenery.

Certainly someone will need you back down there on the ground, but once air-borne there are no refunds, and remember to keep your arms, and hands inside the boundaries of the carpet at all times. We do not want to become unbalanced, or unstable. I wish the carpet was more luxurious, and could provide you with every little thing you want, but we are working with a limited budget, and space is at a premium. Also, be careful to not get too excited about this being a happy magic carpet, it certainly has the potential to be a thrilling ride, but it also has the ability to be a 'fuck the lot of you' type of ride as well. One never knows where the carpet is going to take you, well that isn't strictly true, one does know, but that one is a cryptic fellow, and isn't likely to tell you beforehand, that would ruin the trip.

And it is a trip, one that you might not like (think bad acid), or one that you might want to continue on for a few years, or even forever, if you are allowed. Magic carpet are fickle bitches, and you are never going to be sure when the ride is going to end. It will end eventually, hopefully not in tears, but ending is as certain as the sunrise tomorrow. There will be pain on the journey, do not doubt that for a second, and if I decide to open my bag of tricks, and offer you one of a billion ways to feel no pain, then you have a tough choice in front of you. It is entirely your decision, but be aware that not feeling any pain is tantamount to wanting to get off the ride.

If we are inclined to stop the ride because the pain is too great for you, then be aware there are no refunds, and you will not be invited to ride again. There is a list of people who have made that choice before, and once on that list you are on it for life. On the flip side, there is a great deal of pleasure to be had on the ride as well. You just have to have an open, but not too inquiring, mind. If you allow the ride to just be the ride, and don't try to stitch together the fraying bits of the carpet, or attempt to 'spot shot' any of the noticeable stains, then the ride will be like riding on a dreamboat.

And that is the key to this ride, or any other magic carpet ride that you choose to take. The ability to look over the small flaws, and see the big picture, if there is a big picture to be seen. We all like to think there is a big picture, but I am quite sure that millions of us are deluding ourselves into believing that particular fantasy. Though you may seem secure throughout the ride, be aware that sometimes (to steal a line from HUM) that downward is heavenward.

Pictures of Them

2011-05-02T19:30:00.000-05:00

As you stand there in the ruins of another failed relationship, amongst the blow back from the horror that just happened, do you start to think? Or are you so stunned at being told, in more than one way (and maybe even a foreign language) to go fuck yourself that you cannot even form a single clear thought. The storm you've just witnessed may have taken your breath away, and left you feeling like you've been hit by a bus, but it surely wasn't that unexpected. After all, you entire 'relationship' life has been one storm off after another. The ruins of your failed relationships make Egypt green with envy.

However, once the shock of the loss has passed, and it will pass eventually, you start to realize that you have in fact been here before, and if history is any judge, you will be (sadly) here again. You close your eyes, and you picture the latest ruin, and it finally occurs to you, that if you were to line her up beside all the other 'hers' that have told you to fuck yourself, it might look very familiar. The people you call your friends have made this joke for years about your 'type', but you scoffed at that saying you were not so limited in your appreciation of the fairer sex. Then you start to ponder, after a while at least, if maybe, just maybe those so-called friends were on to something. Something so vague and buried in your own psyche that it takes someone with some distance to point it out to your blinded eyes.

The horror that it entails is not something that you wish to consider too much, after all, it is a startling, and somewhat disturbing realization. It is not just the sad fact that if you were to line up pictures of 'them' (them being your last 5-7 relationships) you might detect an odd fact. That fact being that if a stranger were to look at the photos they might ask "Oh, are they all sisters, or related somehow?" You would wince with pain if you were asked that question aloud, but as you put those pictures (both real and the ones you carry around in your head) into an "all-star studded ex-girlfriend" line up, you realize, that the similarities are eerie. The sad truth of the matter become suddenly, shockingly apparent right there before your very eyes. You sir, have a, what is commonly referred to as a 'type', and there is no mistaking it. The evidence is overwhelming.

Of course, you try to mount some sort of (weak, unconvincing even to you) defense, in the hopes of convincing someone, anyone that you do not have a type. Then again, as you ponder this concept deeper, you begin to wonder all sorts of other things. Things you are afraid to verbalize because if you spin the idea out to its logical conclusion, that conclusion just plain frightens the pants off of you. And the world is a much better, safer place if you mange not to take off your pants.

A Parade

2011-04-24T12:32:00.000-05:00

Life is a succession of bad days, they progress past you like a parade of the damned, one day blurring into the next because bad days can be blurry. In fact, bad days need to be blurry, all the booze you consumed to make up for having a bad day, is supposed to wipe the memory of the day from your mind. That is one of the many, useful purposes of alcohol. But, after so many bad days, after the parade gets to be so lengthy that you wonder if you can remember any GOOD days squeezed into your life, alcohol ceases to help.

That certainly does not stop you from trying to get alcohol to help, the truth is you probably just increase the dosage in the hopes that more alcohol makes up for more bad days. Sadly, for you, happily for your bartender(s) it doesn't. They live well off the slightly extravagant tips you, in your daze, leave them, but you well, you know that even if you manage to sleep tonight, another bad day is waiting outside your window when you wake up tomorrow. And you have to wake up eventually, and face the day, whether you want to or not. The day will wait for you, it has nothing else to do, it's a day, that what days do. Wait for you so they can start falling to shit.

The biggest problem with this parade of bad days is that you begin to expect them, you lie there in your bed trying to avoid opening your eyes on the disaster that is your life, and ponder what the fuck went wrong while you were asleep. Because bad days will wait for you to realize they are bad, but there is nothing in the rule book (trust me, I've looked) that says they have to wait for you to start being bad. They can become the kind of day that ends in tears while you are snoring away the last bad day. And the sad part is that, as far as you can tell, there is fuck all you can do about it. Ever been told to "have a nice day?" Sure you have, but the truth of the matter is that the day is the one picking the music, and you are the one dancing the jig. I doubt many of us have tottered off to work, school, church, or the strip club with the express intent on having a bad day. Personally, I have started off a few of my days with the intent of making someone else's day bad, but that just because I am an asshole.

And maybe this parade of bad days that I am seeing slide by me week to week is sweet revenge. Maybe there is some medicine man in some far off tent, chanting my name over some fire placing a curse on me for my douche bag behaviour. If that were true then I wouldn't feel so morose about these days that continue to go to hell in a hand basket. For then at least, I would know the source, and the reason of this bad day parade. Instead I am left to sit on ponder rock, surrounded by an ever increasing number of empty beer bottles, and try to sort out what exactly I did to deserve this many bad days in a row.

It can, on occasion, devolve into a pity party, but not usually. I am a fully grown man, and I deserve little, if any pity. I don't deserve, and I certainly don't want it. After all pity is just going to make a bad worse. It might give off the impression that the bad day is somehow winning our little war, and I don't want to let the day know that, now do I? After all bad days can sense weakness, and they do not come as single scouts, but in battalions. Wave after wave of them will assault you as they try to batter down your resistance, and make you spirit break. The only spirit you have any time for comes in a bottle, and gets you ploughed so you can face what is already, and you are still in bed, another bad day. Perhaps it is time to invest in one of your own, hopefully better, medicine men before you find out to your dismay on your deathbed, that your life when it flashes in front of you is nothing but a VERY long parade of bad days.

This post is dedicated to someone who had a bad day Friday. It was his last bad day, and hopefully, if the people that are celebrating today's date are correct, that person is in a better place. Here's also hoping that his flashback was not a parade of bad days, but was a happy, if all too brief, parade of good days. They made a few of my days less bad, and they will be missed, both the good days, and the person.

Pictures of Me

2011-04-17T23:59:00.001-05:00

There used to exist, before I destroyed it along with most of the other pictures of my childhood, a picture of me and my maternal grandmother. She was a lovely, hard working woman, and I spent a great deal of my childhood at her house. She, unlike the wolf that raised me, was a wonderful cook, and is probably the reason that I was such a tubby child. She died about a decade ago on this day, and I, much to my dismay, rarely think of her nowadays,.

Either way, in this picture a (very young, tubby me) is seated upon my doting grandmother's lap it is a picture that Norman Rockwell would be proud of, and is disgustingly happy. Such a happy photo except for one small flaw, that being that in the picture my grandmother is sporting a lovely black eye. When I was older I inquired about how she obtained the shiner in the photo, and was told that the younger version of me had "accidentally' head butted my beloved gran, and given her an unintentional black eye.

It is a sign of my gullibility, and my sheltered childhood that I believed this story without any second thought. After all, who expects the grandmother they worship to lie to them? Now that I am a fully grown, card carrying cynic, I realize the truth of the matter. It is what I do for a living, not buying the lies I am told on a daily basis. I get lied to a lot, and I like to believe that I have a fairly well developed ability to spot a lie when I am told one.

Fast forward about 20 years until yesterday afternoon, I have been in a murder trial from Monday to Friday of this week, and it was only on Friday afternoon that the jury found the defendant guilty of all sorts of bad things, and sometime next month the judge is going to sentence the murdering bastard to a whole bunch of time in prison (hopefully). It is what he deserves, and I am mostly proud of the result.

Though the credit for the verdict goes mostly to my brilliant co-counsel, I like to think that I played at least a small role in the piece. Friday night, after the verdict was rendered, was a night of celebration where I received the congratulations of many of my very supportive colleagues, and was bought a whole lot of alcohol. It was a nice night, and I must admit I was a bit proud of myself. However, as I awoke the next morning with the mother of all hangovers and feeling smug, I realized that instead of basking in the glow of "winning" a trial I should remember the victim.

She was not Snow White, and she was not 'as pure as the driven snow' but she did not deserve to die like she did. She did not die a brave man's death, but died pleading for her life (on the 911 tape). She had a child in common with her killer, and he took away a little boy's mother. I know it is silly, but I kind of feel that now I have taken away that little boy's father (even though he is a murdering bastard). That was my week, and I am very glad that it is over. Until yesterday, it was a week that could be classified as a 'good week.'

It was yesterday afternoon that things all went pear shaped. I was listening to my IPOD, minding my own business ( I find that minding my own business gets me into a lot of trouble), when a song about domestic abuse begin to play, and the 'repressed' memory of my grandmother's black eye bubbled to the surface. It was like my own personal punch in the face. When the, now grown up, me connected the dots that younger me could not manage to do all those years ago, I was shocked at my ignorance. That song, of all things, brought the concept that my grandmother was a 'battered' woman to the forefront of my mind.It is a good thing that I was already sober (for a change) because it was a sobering, gut wrenching thought, and I must confess that I had several moments of deep seated angst (or I cried like a Frenchman at the fall of Paris, you pick).

After those moments of angst, which are still plaguing me as I write this post, I called the wolf that raised me to confirm my suspicions that my dear gran's 2nd husband (she had buried the 1st) beat the shit out of her on a regular basis. It was confirmed with a world weary sigh, and the comment that "it was a long time ago." I replied that I did not give a shit how long ago it was because it was all new/green to me, and I proceeded to tell the story of my week to the wolf that raised me. I made her promise to visit my grandmother's grave, and pass along the story of my jury's verdict. She promised me that she would, and for only the second time (that I remember) in my adult life the wolf that raised me said "I love you" to me. It was a proud moment, and a sad moment all at once, and this post is dedicated to all those women and men, like my dear gran that are true victims of domestic violence. You are not alone, and I will be there for you as long as my sanity allows.

You, Again

2011-04-04T12:55:00.001-05:00

This is a post about you, not to you, or because of you, but about you. Not any of your traits per say or, anything that you have done other than be yourself. Let's focus on you as you sit there reading these words in your apartment, house, or office. Whatever the surroundings are isn't really important, because this post is about you, not your surroundings. Take a deep breath and allows your eyes to wander over this page of nonsense, and then close your eyes, and focus on you. On yourself as a being in, of, and out of time (think Sartre or if you are really bright think Heidegger). For you are a being in time, a time that we all occupy known as the present, you are a being out of time for you will occupy someones future, and you are a being of time because you occupy someones past.

Feel your pulse, your heart beating (does it go thump sometimes?), then thank some guy named William Harvey for figuring out the circulation of the blood that is being pumped through your body by that heart. Think of the rest of body, move those fingers, those arms, those limbs. They are yours to command, and if you remain healthy (here's hoping) they might be at times the only thing you can command. Think of all the other body parts that go together to make up you. The lungs, the liver, the circle of Willis in back of that wornderful mind of yours, and the miles and miles of blood vessels, and skin that are the building blocks of you. Open those brown/blue/green eyes back up, and continue to peruse this page of nonsense.

Shake your head of brown/blond/black/red hair, and ponder how you've managed to survive all the minor disasters that take people like you out of the world. Maybe you are special, more than just a number, more than just one example of human life form in a world of six billion people. More than the sum of your parts, more than just a cardboard cut out of a person. You have feelings, whether you want to admit them or not, and you (even though it makes you upset to hear it) impact other people's feelings as well. But that isn't the point of this post. This post is just simply about you, the fully functioning example of carbon based, human life form that you are. And we hope you remain a live, fully functioning human being for years, and years to come because (to quote Sting when he was still with the Police) without you, we would be so lonely.

Snoopy the Vulture

2011-04-02T17:10:00.004-05:00

We all know the fellow above, the lovable dog Snoopy pretending to be a vulture to scare poor Linus below, for whatever reason a dog pretending to be a vulture to a young boy who needs a security blanket just to get through the day is supposed to be funny. And, it is funny in many, many ways, and on many, many different levels it is high comedy. It is also tragic, and since I am better at writing tragedies than comedy, we are going to lightly brush over the tragic part of Snoopy's attempts to bully Linus.

Vulture are divided into two major groups, Old World Vultures, and New World Vultures. These two groups are not closely related, and probably do not exchange a lot of Christmas cards with each other. Regardless of which type of vulture you run across, it is probably not good news for you. If you are being hounded by a 'wake' of vultures (the term for a group of them) then you might be in need of a wake yourself. They rarely attack healthy animals, preferred to prey on the sick, and the dead/dying of the animal kingdom. I suppose there are enough of the dead, sick, or dying to keep the vultures in business for they don't show any signs of dying out, and I also guess that they perform a sort of 'garbage man' type service to Mother Nature (the bitch). I mean without vultures around, all those dead animal carcasses would just stink up the joint.

However, like I said they do get a bad rap, and I am fairly certain they deserve it. I mean no one invites vultures to any sort of gathering, they just show up, and shit starts to break bad. Seeing a vulture, whether it be circling over your head, or sailing past you as you jump out of a perfectly good airplane, is a sign that shit is about to break bad. Probably for you, or at the very least for some member of your group. Vultures are hard sons of bitches, they don't have real jobs like the rest of us, and therefore, can afford to perch patiently on the nearest tree, waiting quietly while you become their breakfast, lunch, or dinner (or maybe if you are chubby enough, all three). There they loom, staring at you with those unblinking eyes, quietly reminding you of your impending doom.

They will pick your bones clean, and leave you being only a memory in the rest of the group's minds, providing any of the group survives. Vultures probably aren't big fans of survivors, after all, survivors are just a meal that managed to get away, and I imagine vultures like to eat just like the rest of us. You start seeing fat vultures, you suddenly realize that you've wandered into the wrong horror movie. While the picture above is in a 'comic', and is intended to be funny, I can only imagine Linus' terror. Above him sits a reminder of his mortality, an unsmiling, looming, dark presence that is there for only one purpose, to watch him die, and pick his bones clean. It must be doubly horrifying for a sensitive, intelligent child such as Linus. No, I choose to not see the comedy that is supposed to be inherent in the drawing above, I see the horror of a child/man being stalked by his doom.

It is that doom that vultures foreshadow, they are a patient lot, and can wait out the strongest of victims, it may take them a week, a month, or even several years, but vultures usually 'win' in the end. After all, they are vultures, and this is what they were put on this earth to do. And unless someone gives us a proper burial so that we can be food for worms, then we are likely to just end up food for vultures.

Beware of Bears

2011-03-31T15:17:00.001-05:00

The poor, obstinate fish that is about to meet his 'maker' is a salmon. Someone thinks that salmon would make a good blog topic, and so here I am trying my best to make salmon interesting. I do consider the salmon a particulary stubborn fish. They swim upstream to return to the pool of their birth, and swim alone. Unlike the tuna, salmon are not caught in giant nets while swimming in schools like a bunch of plebs. The tuna isn't that hard to catch, get yourself a good boat, some rubber boots, a big ass net, and a sonar, and boom! There you are a tuna fisherman. Well, there might be a bit more to it, but you get the general idea.

Salmon spawn in freshwater, live most of their lives in seawater, then return home (upstream) to spawn, and die. That is if they manage to make it past those tricky sons of bitches known as bears. Bears just have to sit there in a nice pool of cool water, mouth agape, and wait for food to jump in their general direction. I am sure it isn't that easy for the bear, and they probably would tear me from limb to limb for thinking so, but still it looks like the predator wins this round.

Perhaps there are more clever enemies of salmon out there in the deep, blue sea that make your average bear seem small in comparsion, I don't know, I don't fish. Never have fished, and never will fish. In this analogy I am on the side of the salmon. Swimming upstream, just trying to get a little loving, have a couple thousand of small fry, and die a happy death. Not that complicated, and not that much to ask for, but it sure seems to be a lot more difficult that you would think. It is ok to be stubborn, and swim against the stream/tide (it is a bit like walking against the karma wheel), but at some point the game is no longer worth the candle.

And you know this, as a fish, that those stinking, tricky, bears are there waiting for your tasty ass to make one bad leap, and become their dinner, but you can't help what/who you are. You can't (successfully at least) fight against what is fundamentally your nature (or fight nature for that matter, you won't win). But that is the point, you won't win, the bear will eventually win, that what bears do, win. It might take them a couple of years but they win cause thier bears, and you, well you are just a stubborn, dumb fucking salmon.

Chess

2011-03-31T11:35:00.000-05:00

The still photo above is from the movie The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman. It is a lovely movie, and even though it wasn’t made in this century, I still highly recommend you watching it. The reason for this post (other than the topic that was posed to me as a challenge) is chess. It is a wonder game, that can be used as all sorts of analogies, and while very complex has rules that can be understood fairly quickly if you pay attention. Chess is a bit like life, the rules are fairly simple, but it is the interaction of difference pieces, within those rules that have a tendency to make things a bit complex. The use of chess in The Seventh Seal drives the plot, and without a little knowledge of the plot of the movie, the plot of this post is wasted. But, since the title of the blog is all about my wasted breath, I figure one more possibly wasted post wouldn’t hurt.

The fellow on the right is Antionus Block (played quite well by Max von Sydow), and he is about the engage the lovely gentleman on the left (i.e. Death) in a chess match for his life. Clearly, the result is already decided Block is just buying time to try to get home from his travels aboard (he had been on Crusade) to see his wife and child before the endgame. Throughout the film Death cheats, posing as a priest to take Block’s confession, during which Block confesses his chess strategy to beat Death. Death is a tricky bastard and only reveals his true self after Block has given away his strategy. Near the end Block intentionally knocks over the pieces hoping to put off his fate, and save a family of young friends from Death. Claiming he does not remember where the pieces where positioned, Block hopes to avoid being mated. Death replies that he remembers where the pieces were, and begins to reconstruct the game. However, and this is where there is some disagreement amongst film historians, there is a theory that Death cheats with his reconstruction. Either he cheats, or has a remarkable memory for a chess board, regardless of which, Block is mated on the next move, and is sent off to “Dance with Death.”

Clearly, this is what we are all doing everyday, playing chess with Death. Maybe not quite as obviously as our hero Block, but regardless the pieces have been chosen, and it is our move. The wisdom of that move requires a lot of thought, and people have been playing chess, and trying to cheat death for a LONG time. Ever heard of Paul Morphy, Jose Raul Capablanca, or Emanuel Lasker? They were all Grandmasters of chess, guys who are whizs at the massive number of combinations on a chess board, but each of them ended the same way, dead. Remember all the stories of people surviving crashes, etc that should have killed them? We say they “cheated death.” Well remember Death cheats back, so before you use the French-Indian defense or the English opening think very carefully, your next move might end in mate.

You

2011-03-28T18:24:00.000-05:00

This is a post for you, about you, and because of you. You know who you are, and you know what you do to me. You are the sole reason that I eschewed another night of drinking, so I could sit down in this coffin I call my apartment, and write this post for/to/about you. I hope that makes you happy, and I hope it makes you sad. I doubt it will make you either, because you don't read this blog anymore, or at least I don't think you do. You wouldn't tell me if you did, and I certainly learned long ago not to ask you questions I don't already know the answer to.

You enjoyed giving me answers I wasn't expecting, and I loved and hated you for it. You know I don't like surprises, so you would go out of your way to surprise me as often as possible. It drove me mad, but I suspect that was the point. I wanted to know everything about you, and I found out quite a lot, but not all. You never told anyone the whole story, no you preferred to share a bit of your stories with several of us, enjoying being the only one who knew all the details of the plot. And your life, even when seen from a distance, had several plots. You were the only one who knew the whole plot, and I don't think that was very fair to the rest of us.

Not that you give, or ever gave, a shit about being fair. You were one of the most unfair people I ever met. Yet you could do the most complicated favour for people, think nothing of it, and ask nothing in return. How you managed to be both unfair and generous is a mystery that I will never solve. In fact, you are a mystery I will never solve, not for lack of trying mind you, but for a fundamental lack of intelligence. You are much smarter than I ever will be, or aspire to be for that matter. Your kind of intelligence must be frightening to possess. I wouldn't know because I am not that smart, and you did a fairly good job of hiding (for the most part) how super-intelligent you really are.

It was that intelligence that is one of your most endearing qualities, and that makes you an insufferable asshole. Not that you care or cared what I, or anyone else thinks of you. You are your own judge and jury, and I am just beginning to realize how sweet that is. It is the world's revenge upon you. The world you give a shit less about, gets to sit back and watch you attempt to live up to your own expectations, knowing full well you will never be able to. That gives me great joy, and I hope you know that. I could never, ever in my wildest, spite-filled moments damage you as much as you have damaged yourself. I am, when I am in a good mood, sorry for that, but I also think you deserve all the bad things you do to yourself.

You still make me furious, sad, and extremely happy on any given day that I have the pleasure/misfortune to spend with you. I still spend time with you, even if it is only in my head, and I recall the awful things you would say to me, about me, and in front of me with amazing clarity. For that I should thank you, and I should tell you to burn in hell, but I know that I won't do either. It wouldn't do any good even if I tried. Your opinion of me mattered so much that it hurt, and yet I found myself jealous of you in the strangest of ways. When you weren't around I wondered what you were doing, but sometimes when you were around, I wanted you to be on the moon as far away from me as you could get. I sometimes think of you as carrot cake, an abomination that should not exist in nature, and yet here you are, a living, breathing, insult to that idea.

I wonder why we became, how we remain, and why we will always be 'friends.' To give you up would cause me either the greatest pain in my life or would cause be to suddenly becomes the happiest rodeo clown this side of the Mississippi. However, I guess I will never know, because I have no intention of giving you up, and I fairly certain that you, even though you won't admit it, like having me around. Who doesn't like a slave/foil/partner in crime to have around for festive occasions? And so, here we are in this crazy life together, for we are together even if not physically, and we will remain that way. Because we are both to stubborn or too stupid, I am not sure which, to realize that we probably aren't that good for each other. For in spite of your solitary nature, I think you need someone like me around. Someone who spends all this time thinking about you enough to write this epic length blog post about/to you, even though I know you will never read it. I think I hate you.

Missing

2011-03-20T12:33:00.000-05:00

Have you ever been convinced that you are missing something? Something so simple that you have the suspicion that if a passing 4 year old child were to look at your situation, they could solve it with about three words. And the problem, the awful feeling in the pit of your stomach is that you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that somewhere at some time you've known what it is you are missing, and just can't put it together. It might be something as simple as plugging in a cord into the right slot, or remembering someones favourite food, but you KNOW it is important.

So important, in fact, that you've been racking your tiny, little brain for a solution for almost a week, and you, to your despair, realize that instead of getting closer to a solution, you are, in fact, losing ground. You are getting so confused by over-thinking the problem, that the problem, once so very, very simple, has taken on a life of its own. It is now like the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Sitting there in the corner waiting for you to give it attention, because it is not in a mood to go away anytime soon. And as problems go, it isn't something vague that only someone like Thomas Aquinas would be required to solve, but something as plain as the nose on your face. Remember that 4 year old? It hasn't gotten so bad that you are actively trying to find someone with a 4 year old child so that you can bounce the problem off of the child, and hope that 'from the mouths of babe' wisdom will flow.

The other side to this problem is that your mind, who people think is fairly sharp, is as empty as the ocean pictured above. If your mind could be projected onto a computer or TV screen that is the picture that would be on screen, coupled with the lapping of the waves as the only sound. Clearly mental activity has ceased, and you can't seem to kick start it do matter how hard you try. You sit down with the intention of 'getting your shit' together, and solving this problem that has so vexed you, and suddenly something shiny distracts you, and you are suddenly gazing into the middle distance, slack jawed, and mouth agape like the village idiot. And, you don't think you're the village idiot, but the inability to solve (or in many ways even spot) this problem has shaken your faith in your intelligence.

It is that intelligence that you've prided yourself on through all of the other problems you have faced in your life. That intelligence that people remark upon as being one of your greatest assets. Since you are a fairly rotten person otherwise, it is that intelligence that people keep you around for. And here it is abandoning you like a rat leaving a sinking ship. It has disappeared like a puff of smoke on a windy day, and you are left confused as to when, or if, it will return. All you know, as you sit there in your ocean of emptiness is that you aren't really a strong swimmer.

Friendless

2011-03-07T21:18:00.000-06:00

You see us, a group of anywhere from 3-8 people with a fair mixture of males and females, out at a bar, and you see a group of 'friends.' I mean, after all, we seem to be having a fairly jovial time of it, and who goes out to have those type of times if not with friends? Look closely at the group, and ponder really hard on each individual. Because a group is made up of individuals, and is very rarely larger than the sum of its parts. Which one in the group is 'the leader?' Is there a leader? There might not be a clear leader, but there will surely be the ones recognized as followers. The alpha dog may just be the subtle leader type that doesn't like to show off their leadership ability, and therefore it might be hard to spot them.

But, take a step back and listen to (without being too nosy) what the members of this group are saying, and if you're a clever fellow you might even want to listen to what they are NOT saying. A much harder task, but if you're good at it you can learn a lot. You might even learn a few things that the majority of the people don't even know. That is of course, if you are good, and you give a shit enough to pay attention. Which are two big hurdles to clear, but you are good right? And, you don't have anywhere else to be or you wouldn't be getting piss drunk on a Monday night in a bar right?

You might even learn a life's lesson, because life lessons are tricky like that. They show up when you least expect them, and sometime smash you over the head when you are least expecting it. As you focus on this band of brothers what do you see? The one that talks to loud? The one that laughs too much? The tall one, the short one, the fat one, or the skinny one? Maybe there isn't a each one of those types, or maybe one of them is more than one type. You don't know, and you don't really care because you are a stranger to them. Other that the tall one that bumps into things they aren't really a remarkable group, but you are stranded in this joint with them, so you might as well try out some of your powers of observation.

And you have those types of powers, powers of observation that would make Sherlock Holmes proud, and you quickly focus on the one just to the left of the centre. The one who seems to be doing their fair share of talking, but one that (despite his jolly appearance) makes you just a bit nervous. This person seems to be 'one of the group,' but you know better. You've seen this type before, in fact he reminds you of someone you used to know. You've seen this before, this person is the friendless one, the one that is, ever so slightly, out of focus. Sure they are here surrounded by people in a bar, and these other people seem to know this person, and they are talking to this person like friends talk to each other. They even seem to be sharing the occasional joke, and have even had a couple of shots together like friends.

But, and there is always a but, you know better. You've spotted the friendless one, the one you know is going to one day be in a bar, like this one, alone and bitter. The one who is going to be the person at the bar, talking to know one while getting blotto, and making other people wonder why they are there alone all the time. The one who, with any doubt in your mind, has only a small clue as to the bleakness of their future. The one, that even though you know is a total asshole, makes you want to go up to them and say some words of consolation or warning, in the vain hope that you can provide them a life line. It won't work, you know this from experience, and you know you won't try, because it really isn't any of your business. This poor fool has to learn, like most fools, the hard way. Even if you told them, they would probably just tell you to 'fuck off and die.' Which would be fair enough, after all, you don't know this person, and this person doesn't know you. Why should they listen to some total stranger attempt to give them some 'insight' into their future?

And, besides you aren't a charity. Why would you give some total asshole advice on how they are going to end up alone, and bitter one day if they don't change their ways. Let them sort that out if they have the brains, and if they don't well then too bad for them. They will get what they deserve (as most people usually do), and will have to deal with the consequences of their actions. In the zero sum game that is life, it is just exactly what should happen to them, and you are not going to 'save the world' one asshole at a time. Mainly though the reason you don't attempt to rescue this person is because five, ten, or fifteen years ago, no one bothered to try to save you, which is why you are drinking alone in the first place, and misery loves company.

Dear Future Me

2011-02-27T16:06:00.000-06:00

This blog, back in the days of its inception at least, was supposed to be like a journal. Not a diary, or a confession but a journal. In it I, in my wisdom, had planned to write down a lot of things that happened to me, and how I dealt with them. In the (now vain) hope that going back a re-reading my entries would provide the 'present' me, i.e. the one actually sitting here typing this post at this moment, some guidance for how I should act. It was a long shot to hope that 'past' me would be able to write down something useful that would allow 'present' me to be a better person.

That was one of the ideas back in the beginning, and it was a noble idea, but like most noble ideas it all starts to go potty when humans are involved. In particular when I am the human being involved. I look back at the past 5 plus years of this blogs 'life' and I realize I am not one iota better as a person than I was when I started it. In fact, and I pretty sure I would get universal agreement on this, I am almost certainly a worse person than I was back then. Early on I listed a list of 'flaws' that I possess, and when I go back and revisit that list I come to the horrible conclusion that instead of getting shorter the list has gotten lengthier. Which is, in many, many way, quite depressing. One of the main things a journal can be is a way for the past you to give advice to the present you. Sadly, if the present you isn't just not the type to listen, or just doesn't care to heed advice, the journal just becomes a source of angst.

It allows you to go back and re-read all the mistakes you were making back then, and then when you realize you are making those same mistakes plus a few extra, it all ends in tears. You had the hope that you were on the upswing of the 'being a better person' scale, only to come to the horrid realization that you are really on the downswing. It is a real kick in the teeth. After all, now what do you do? You can't trust 'past' you, you can't trust 'present' you, and you aren't 'future' you yet. And as you stand there in the pissing rain, because you don't have enough sense to come in out of it, you begin to realize that maybe you've topped out. Maybe the type of person you are now is the type of person you always were, and are always going to be. Maybe self-improvement, like home ownership, is just a big fat rip off, or some fucking myth created by the self help industry to be able to sell more books.

All the thinking you can do, (and you can do a lot of thinking if you try) doesn't seem to either help, or change things. All the vows to 'do right' and to 'start making some changes' are lies as soon as they leave your lips. Lies you tell yourself to make 'present' you feel better, and to give 'present' you the (vain) hope that 'future' you will be a better person. If only 'present' you puts forth a little bit of extra effort, and tries to start acting 'right.' It was a dream, and as you know from your years of experience with dreams, very few of them come true. Nightmares, now they come true with all too frequent regularity, but dreams, those remain as slippery as goose shit on glass. And it is the dream of being a better future you that was part of the impetus for this blog in the first place. Now, that the clear realization has hit you like a ton of bricks, where do I find motivation now? I would say I am open to suggestions, but I realize I won't get any, and even if I do, I am such a lousy person I probably won't listen to them anyway. A tout a l'heure.

Something Vague

2011-02-26T09:49:00.000-06:00

In the last six months (give or take) I have been told the following things by my 'friends'.

That 'you are really easy to hate.'

That I am 'more emotionally damaging than a brain tumor.'

That I 'am trouble.'

That 'you shouldn't go home with him, he comes with a house.'

That 'no amount of therapy will help you.'

That "I'm going to fuck your girlfriend.'

That 'every woman should get to experience you.'

That I 'am an idiot.'

That 'you don't have feelings.' (this was said twice by two different people)

Now all of these comments are, more likely than not, true. But, that isn't really the point of this post. The point is, if there is a point, that each of them were said by people that I count amongst my friends. If you know anything about me at all, you will know that I am not over burdened with too many friends. By a generous count I have about six friends, and that is being generous and catching both me and them in a good mood. All of the statements above were said both to and about be my members of my 'inner circle.' There is a theory that you should keep your enemies close and your friends closer, but I am sure that is what I am actively doing. It sometimes seems that way when one of my 'friends' starts to remind me (and anyone within a half mile radius) of my multitude of flaws, and my deplorable character traits.

The beauty of it is that none of these comments ended any friendships, and they only caused a small amount of angst. They are, as I said before, mostly true, and probably something that I needed to hear. But, hearing and even agreeing with them only removes so much of the sting. They, if I had feelings, would have possibly hurt my feelings (now you know why I don't bother having feelings). It is closer to the truth is that I do have feelings, and that these comments did not really hurt them over much, but they are beginning to have a cumulative effect. They were said over a period of time, by a diverse group of people (of both genders), and by fairly intelligent people. The law of averages dictates that they probably aren't all wrong in their assessment. They might be harsh, but there is a element of jocularity about a couple of those comments that at least allow me to continue to believe that the speaker(s) can still be counted as my friends. However, given the nature and the amount of these comments is it any wonder that two nights ago I woke up face down on my bathroom floor after a hard night of drinking?

The Chair

2011-02-22T12:55:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the long break in posting but it takes a lot of effort to come up with, and then remember a topic when you are living the Neil Diamond life style. However, luckily for me, I just managed to keep it together long enough to remember the fascinating tale I am about to relate. This tale begins with me reading a book, not that exciting I know, and it is something that I do a lot of, but this book (which is wonderful so far) is written by an absolutely wonderful author by the name of Stefan Zweig. If you have not read him (and few of the people I know have) you should rush out and buy anything by him you can lay your hands on. He is fantastic, he writes sentences that are perfection incarnate. Sentences so wonderfully constructed that it makes you want to weep, or to re-read them over and over again aloud so you get their full effect.

The book's is called 'The Post Office Girl' and it is quite wonderful so far (I have only managed a couple of chapters), but as I was drinking in Herr Zweig's words like fine wine, I noticed a small blip. It is the kind of blip that usually goes unnoticed, and in fact did go unnoticed (or at least I assume it did for it makes no sense otherwise). It is a simple blip, and one that we all make, but one that shocked me nonetheless. It was an easy error, Zweig was describing the room that his main character and her aged mother live in, and was describing the furniture, and how the family had fallen on hard times and as a result most of the furniture had been sold off to a junk dealer. Easy enough, and very well written, and descriptive, good tone setting literature. However, it was during this little passage that I noticed the blip. He describes a chair, an old family 'heir loom' that after being in the family for generations, also had to go the way of the junk dealer. Sold off to help pay the food bills, after all, a girl's got to eat you know. Then suddenly about a page later, the aged mother, upon receiving some shocking news, falls into a faint. And here lies the rub, where does she land BUT INTO THE CHAIR. The same chair that a page or so ago had been consigned to the junk dealer's second hand shop. There was no mention of it being retrieved from hock, and it was just a simple error on Zweig's part. After all, he was writing wonderful story arcs, what did he care about the mis-mention of a chair from one page to the next?

Zweig was also writing to pay HIS bills, and I am pretty sure that is a full time occupation, and he probably had several books 'going' at once. I find it hard to READ more than one book at a time, I can't fathom what it must be like to write more than one at a time. I am sure that he didn't notice the slip, and his editor should have caught it, and I doubt I am the first reader to see it as well, but there it is for all the world to see. This is not a criticism of him in anyway, in fact, it is a celebration of his art. It made me very happy to find that mistake, because it made me realize (as an very untalented 'writer') that even fucking geniuses make mistakes. Zweig took his place on my hero podium on his assigned day, and this little blip only makes him more heroic. As a 'writer' who has been told a couple of times lately that he has talent, but who is full of self-doubt to the point of disbelieve, finding this blip was a godsend. It showed me that sometimes even the best of the best make mistakes, and even with all the editing in the world the mistake is still there.

I have a tendency to put my hero's on higher pedestals that they 'deserve', and I tend to measure myself against them, and being hard on myself, I find that in that measuring I come up very, very, short by comparison. It is a flaw (amongst many) in my character, and I realize it, but have difficulty in repairing it. However, this little 'magic moment' has restored (if that is the right word) a small modicum of self-believe. And self-believe is important it is one of the few things that (in theory at least) the world can't take (or give for that matter) away from you. It is the believe in your 'self' that should fuel your battle against the world. The 'war' we wage each and every day against the world that sometimes seem bent upon our destruction. It is one of the few weapons we possess that allows us to fight off the hordes of people who wish to annihilate us. It is something that is precious beyond price, and something that you should never, ever give up to another living soul. Keep that self-believe, wrap it around you like a cloak of invincibility, and hold on to it like grim death.

Of course, Zweig is (and will always remain) streets ahead of me in the writing 'race', but I can take some comfort in the fact that he was, in spite of his massive talent, not perfect. Not that he claimed to be, his perfection is just me projecting onto him my wide eyed amazement at his ability to turn a phrase. That amazement remain undiminished despite this little blip in his writing. I am certainly not going to stop reading him, and will probably read even more of his writings, because now that I know he isn't perfect it makes him even more readable, and in many, many ways more human.

White Blank Page

2011-01-31T20:50:00.000-06:00

That blinking cursor that we all know and love is torturing me, it is blinking there at me on this white blank page taunting me, daring me to do something, anything to stop it from driving me mad. We have all, at one time or another, been the 'victim' of that devilish cursor. Just sitting there blinking at us, reminding us that we are bereft of ideas, or at least of the words to give voice to our ideas. It sits there on this white blank page slowly, very slowly, driving us mad. It isn't that I don't have ideas, nor do I lack for words. I am failing miserably in my attempt to become laconic. It is just that the ideas I have, the words I possess are bunged up behind a dam of indifference.

I have a couple of ideas for a blog post or three, but each of them are fraught with peril. I have one that might, if the right people read it, get me fired. That would be no fun, I heard unemployment is not an enjoyable experience. Therefore, that idea shall remain still-born, that post shall remain written only in my head. I have another couple of wonderful ideas that might, if (again) read by the wrong person(s) cost me a couple of friendships. Since I am not overburdened with many friends, those posts too shall remain unwritten, except in my head. Those ideas shall not see the light of 'day'. These ~~not so~~ brilliant ideas have to remain in the bookcase of my mind, since I am too big (and not in fat kind of way) of a moral coward to send them out into the wide, wide world.

So in the mean time, that blinking cursor taunts me, daring me to write something detrimental to myself, my career, or my friends. Since, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, I am not a total fucking fool, I have to sit here staring at this white blank page without any idea on how to fill it, or the time before I nod off to sleep. A dearth of ideas coupled with a yellow streak a mile wide have lead me to the desert of un- imagination. The good thing, if there is a good thing, about this trip into the desert is that I know there have been many fellow travelers here before me. Great pioneers have tread some of this same sand, and left behind their foot prints for me to follow. Footprints that have already been here for decades, and will be here for decades to come, long after I stagger by in search of my own 'other side.'

And I hope I will eventually find that 'other side' the side that allows me to 'write' again without fear of unemployment, or angry, angry emails sent to me questioning my sanity, or my fellowship. There is something out there in the middle distance waiting for me, and I can just about make it out. It is hazy, and it isn't very close, but I know it is there, and if I keep on the track of those who have gone before, I know that eventually I will find it. This El Dorado of my mind, the holy grail that holds my imagination is there ever so tantalizingly out of my reach at the moment. However, I also know not to try to hard to obtain it, because the more I reach for it with my grasping hands, the further it retreats into the desert. I have to be patient, and I have to remain calm. It is a game of 'nobody moves, and nobody gets hurts' that I am playing with myself, and I certainly do not want to get hurt. Therefore, I stagger onward into the desert hoping that just over that next hill, or in that next chat I have with a buddy will provide me the key to unlocking the treasure chest of my mind. Let's hope that when I find the key, and open the box it isn't empty.

Incomplete

2011-01-23T12:33:00.000-06:00

A lot of things can be incomplete, passes, roads, paintings, books, and people. The good thing about most of those incomplete things mentioned above is we generally know they are incomplete with just a glance. When the ball hits the ground the pass attempt is over, when you run out of asphalt the road is done, the last pages of a book are usually a surefire way to tell if a book is complete, if there is a big white patch on the canvas, then the painting is probably not finished. However, with people it is virtually impossible to tell if they are incomplete until it is too late to do anything about it.

That was part of the problem with 'number 7' mentioned in the previous post. We all knew him, some of us better than others, and we thought we had a pretty good grasp on his personality. However, as we gathered for that brief, poignant ceremony we realized that we were working with incomplete information. And that is the problem the incompleteness of our information about each other, or anything in the world. We all think, or like to think, that our boon companion, the fellow we have shared so many drunken conversations with, is telling us the (whole) truth. We like to think that he is being as honest to us as we are to him.

After the few of us that were able to attend the farewell left the place it was being held, we went to the local we all used to share, and begin to dissect the tragedy. For that is all you can do, huddle together for 'warmth' or band together against the world, and try to sort out why it all ended in tears. These things do usually end in tears, and you know that (even if you refuse to believe it) on the front end. We sat there on our bar stools (his left empty out of respect), and pondered what it was that he wasn't telling us. We began to realize that he was telling some of us different parts of the truth, but no one of us was getting the whole truth. Perhaps each of us were getting the part of the story he thought we wanted to hear, or the part that he thought we could 'handle.'

He didn't leave some long winded note or ribbon covered diary for us to sort it out for ourselves, and when we drove to the airport to ship him back to the land of his fathers, we just didn't understand why it had to all go so horribly, horribly wrong. Maybe those loved ones that receive him at the other airport understood him better, and maybe one day they will share that understanding with those of us 'left behind'. The ceremony awaiting him, and those wonderful people is bound to be much lengthier, more poignant, and more personal.

The battlefield of his mind remains an almost complete mystery to us, and I have yet to decided who is more to blame for that. Him, for not trusting at least one of us to throw him the life preserver he needed, or us for failing to realize he was drowning, not waving right in front of our very eyes. Truth to be told, there is probably enough blame to go around, but that certainly does not make any of us feel any better. As for blaming him, it just seems wrong in some fundamental way, but I still do it. I blame him, even if I realize how horrible of a person it makes me seem. I blame him because I can't shoulder all this blame myself, and blaming him is the only way I can cope.

I blame him because I am so fucking angry at him that I can barely see straight. I blame him for having the last word. I like to think that if I could just talk to him one more time, I would shake some fucking sense into him, and I wouldn't be having to type these words. I am angry at him for taking the talent he possessed (and he had quite a bit of it), and pissing it away. Taking that talent for so many things, some of them quite useful, out of the world with him when he left. Angry that of all the self centered sons of bitches I know (and I happen to be one of them as well) he chose the obvious way of expressing his self centered-ness. People tell me that 'anger is just a stage' and that I 'will get over it' well, these people obviously underestimate my ability to hold a grudge.

I shall, till my dying day, remain angry at him, even as I eventually forget him, and if I am around long enough I will forget him. He will stop popping into my head on a daily basis eventually, and I will stop remembering all those drunken chats we had. The details, along with the pain will fade, and he will become another ghost that occupies a small cemetery like section of my mind. A place that I visit less, and less frequently because of the pressures of my day, or because of the pain it causes. A place that eventually I will occupy as well for someone else in my group. But, hopefully not for a good long while, because I think that his choice, while having its allure, was the coward's choice. And even though on many levels, I am a coward, I am not going to give into to that siren's song. I prefer to make the Gestapo like demons of my life fight inch by bloody inch for any ground they gain, and so I will abide.

Seven

2011-01-17T13:31:00.005-06:00

There were seven of us at one time, seven fellows drawn together by fate, bad luck, cheap booze, and a common desire to pretend the rest of the world didn't exist. We liked to joke that we were like the seven deadly sins, and even tried to assign one sin to each of us. However, we quickly determined that each of us possessed a fair amount of all seven deadly sins, and we just decided to be what fate had intended us to be. That was a group of fellows that 'were mad, bad, and dangerous to know.' Or at least that is what some of like to say after we were a little to far into our cups to form coherent thought. We were a diverse group coming from 3 different countries, and possessing a wide range of backgrounds. Some of us were clever, some of us were smart, and some of us just were a combination of the two.

There was no real leader of the group, we were a bunch of strong willed individuals, and trying to lead this group would have only led to disaster, or to the hospital for the one of us stupid enough to try. There were no real reason for some of us to even be friends, except for the love of drink, and the ability to tell (and listen to) a ripping good yarn. It was a happy time for all of us, even if some of us were going through some rough times in the 'real' world. That world that existed outside of whichever bar we were gracing with our presence, that world that each of had to totter off to at the end of our wild drinking sessions, that world that contained the day jobs that we each had to hold down in order to pay for our alcohol fueled 'lively times.' And the times were quite lively, we weren't anything special to look at, and I am quite sure that at times we were quite insufferable to the other denizens of our local, but we didn't really care. We didn't start any bar brawl (but did finish a few), and we paid our tab, and even tipped fairly well. In short, we were rowdy, but not rude, and I am pretty sure at least one of our bartenders bought a new jet ski thanks to our patronage of his establishment.

However, like all good things (and I guess bad things) it couldn't, and didn't last. We were each living on borrowed time, and somewhere down deep inside we all knew it. We knew that whatever fate had banded us together against it, would prove to a fickle bitch, and would eventually pull us apart. We only hoped that it wouldn't be too painful, and that it would take just a bit longer before the wheels started to come off. That is the nature of these types of relationships, all is right with the world for the briefest of moments, and you take the occasional pause to look around you at the six other boon companions you are having such a good time with, and realize one day it is all going to have to end. You only hope that everyone one survived the ending, and that it is quick, and painless. However, with seven wildly diverse personalities, and seven different gene pools, there is always 'one at every party' that makes things just ever so difficult. This post is (eventually) going to be about that one.

Before we get to that 'one' we have to at least begin to see the, ever so subtle, disintegration of the group as a whole. None of us really noticed the loosening of the bonds that once held us so tightly together, but it was pretty plain to see. Perhaps the booze made us blind to the obvious decay, or perhaps we just didn't want to come to terms with the obvious. Either way, it was happening whether we cared to acknowledge it or not. It felt sudden, but in fact it was just merely inevitable, and when it came it came with the force of a Mongol Horde. One day we were seven in clover, the next day we were buzzing about the news of one of us 'tying the knot.' It can happen just that quickly. We all knew, the one tying the knot most of all, that we were now going to be six. He wasn't dying, but we knew that things just wouldn't or couldn't be the same. After all, if you have six, and a vote is necessary, a 3-3 tie is quite likely to be the outcome, and we had just lost the tie breaking vote. We were, quite rightly, devastated.

He tried to pretend that things weren't going to change, but we all knew by the shake in his voice, and the look on his face that he was lying. He knew it too, he just didn't want to be the one to say it aloud. We had a fellow for that kind of stuff (not him), and eventually he did get just drunk to say exactly what we were all thinking. "Well, that's him then isn't it?" was the general gist of his summation, and we all knew he was right. But, being stalwarts of the art of comradeship, and drinking, we soldiered on, we even went to the wedding, and afterward placed bets on how long the marriage would last. Then we were six.

Most things that begin to fall apart do so rather quickly, and once we lost our first man, the others started dropping like flies. One moved away to another state, cleaned up his act, and seems to have found some sort of religion. It is a disturbing image for those of us who knew him back in the day, but he seems to be happy. And I guess happiness takes on many forms, even if we don't understand it, or even approve of it. It was quick, brutal, and necessary, but his leaving was still a blow, and it left it mark on us all. Then we were five.

I supposed after that fate sensed the weakness in the remainder of our happy band, and she begin to lob life changing hand grenades at us like kids in a Halloween water balloon fight. The next to go decided to try his hand at his own business ( a bar of all fucking things), and while it wasn't too far from us, the remainder just was too deeply in their 'drinking rut' to be bothered going those miles out to the place. It was not a happy chapter in the history of the group that several of us never even went to the joint to at least have one beer, and catch up on old times. It is a solid black mark against the survivors that we did not do this simple task, and some of us still feel the shame all these years later. It was a roaring success, this new business, until recently when mother nature (the bitch) decided to drop six feet of water onto the place. It was not pretty, and it proved to be a watery grave for the business. But, that is getting ahead in the story, after he left, we all missed him, and talked about 'going to see him' as if he was in Federal prison, but like I said, we never did. Then we were four.

These 'defections' begin to take their toll, like an infection that just keep getting worse, weakening the host before finally finishing it off. We tried our own brand of 'anti-biotics' by trying to bring other people into the group to replace the ones that had left. That was not a success, we made the mistake of trying to go 'co-ed', and, as expected that was a raging failure. We became really good at failures after a while, and anyone with any brains could see that the death knell had been sounded, it was just the remainder of us that were deaf to the bell's toll.

The love bug struck down another one of us pretty quickly after we when co-ed, and the blushing bride (really a lovely girl) was one of the females that had crossed our gender line. It was a bitter lesson, and we learned it the hard way. Women have a tendency (without really meaning to sometimes) to complicate things. It was another wedding that the rest of us were required to attend, and happily enough it is still going strong today. We all are glad about that, and we do not begrudge the couple their perfect life (it is disgustingly perfect in many ways) but there is always that little bit of 'he was ours first you know' feeling that lingers even today. It isn't a pleasant feeling, and it isn't really held with any malice, but it is there none the less. Then we were three.

Marriage had claimed two of us and two of us had relocate, so now relocation decided to take the lead. One of us got a job halfway across the country that he just couldn't turn down, and he had to pack his trash and move. He was in many ways one of the stalwarts of the group, he could always be depended on to just be there, and in this kind of company, just being there counted for a lot. He became incomprehensible to understand when he was deep into his cups, and on more than one occasion I was the only one able to understand a word he was saying. Eventually, he became impossible even for me to translate, and I would have to tell him that "I haven't understand a word you've said in 30 minutes, it's time for you to go home." And, he usually did, muttering something unintelligible, but probably vaguely threatening in our direction, he would stride out of the place like he actually had somewhere to be. He eventually did have somewhere to be, and that was a place about 2500 miles away from the rest of us. He is deeply missed to this day. Then we were two.

The surviving two of us took at look around at the carnage, and came up with radically different solutions to what they thought was the problem. One of us quit altogether, he put down his booze filled glass one day, declared he was 'off the sauce' and has been seen very rarely since. He is trim, and slim, and all healthy now that he doesn't try to poison himself with alcohol four times a week, but he can be quite a bore. He was a loquacious drunk, which is acceptable, but now he is just a sober guy that talks a bit too much, which isn't nearly as much fun. I can not fault him for taking his chosen path, and he seems to be actually enjoying the sober life, which does boggle my imagination, but I guess there is no counting for taste. He seems to be happy, and I suppose happiness is hard to find drunk, maybe if you're sober happiness grows on trees. I don't know, nor do I intend to find out, but I wish him all the best. Then we were one.

As you might have guessed this post is about that one. The one that was left behind. Unlike our sober fellow above this one chose the darker path. I think he chose to attempt to make up for the other six leaving by drinking their share of hooch as well. He did a valiant job of trying, but eventually it became more than he could bear. We didn't fall off of the planet, and the ones of us that stayed around would try to stop his descent down the path of destruction, but we just were not able to. Maybe if we had been around a bit more, or paid just a bit more attention, or just punched him in the mouth a couple of times as a wake up call, things would have been different. But, we didn't or couldn't and things went about as badly as they could have gone.

We couldn't help but feel that, at some fundamental level, we failed him, failed to see what the 'break up' of the group had done to him, failed to realize, that while he may have been the brightest of the lot, he was also the one who had the most demons. And demons are horrible, horrible things. They get inside of your head, and say the most cruel things, things that aren't close to being true, but you don't know, or want to know that. The sauce has clouded your judgment, and your ability to determine which are true, and which are false. None of us realized that was the battle taking place with our buddy on a daily basis, we were either too wrapped up in our own lives, or just too fucking stupid to pay the required amount of attention. And it was attention that was necessary, attention to the war being waged within his mind on a daily basis Attention to the war he was losing step by bloody step. By the time any of us sorted out what was going on it was too late, and we (the ones that could make it) were attending another, much more solemn, ceremony with him. Now there are six of us.

What If?

2010-12-31T15:47:00.002-06:00

"You're haunted by the two most dangerous words in the English language, What If?" Now, I am not original enough to make that lovely line up by myself, but I am also not clever enough to remember from where I nicked it. If you can figure that out, please feel free to let me know. Because not only am I haunted by those two words, but the fact that I don' t remember the source is a bit off putting as well. I figure since this is the last day of this rather undistinguished year, I would toss out some random post to wrap it up in style.

Although style is something that I have rarely been accused of having, and I doubt my vast readership will be sober enough to read this post. However, regardless of readership, I shall press on to the point. If I have a point that is, I am pretty sure I did when I started this post, but that doesn't mean I will have one by the end of the post. It also doesn't eliminate the idea, that the point I had will not be the point (if any) that I make. I write on the 'fly' as it were, and sometimes the beginning, the middle, and the end of my posts aren't always what I had in my (brutish) mind when I begin to type.

Back to the 'what if' dilemma. We have all faced these type of problems in our lives, and the end of the year is just as good a time as any to reflect upon the 'what ifs' of our lives. What if I had asked that question? What if the answer had been different? What if the bank had said no? What if I were just a bit smarter or better looking? What if I could do it all over again? What if she had answered the phone? What if I had answered the phone? What if I had turned left instead of right, would she be alive today? What if I had taken the under on the Super Bowl? There are a million of these little dilemmas that each of us have in our 'luggage.' Shit that we carry around that we can not do one fucking thing about. Things that, barring the use of a not yet invented time machine, we can't not change. However, that doesn't stop us from wanting to, or thinking about the what ifs.

Maybe the results would have been the same no matter what you would have done. That might just be fate fucking with you, sometimes (people say) things are just 'meant to be.' That may or may not be true, and I am not so sure I agree, but it might give you some solace as you lie there awake for what seems like an eternity pondering your life's work. And it is work, your life, it isn't something that is going to come particularly easy, and it is something that you are going to have to get out of bed each and every day, put in your shift at it, and live with the results, no matter what they might be. We can not all be winners at the game of life, in my opinion it is at its core a zero sum game, and quite a few of us are just going to have to accept the fact that we lost. Sometimes the best we can do is to cut our losses, and to hope we get another shot. That is unlikely, but sometimes it is all the hope we can cling to. Everybody gets outplayed once in a while, and even the best of us are beatable given the right set of circumstances.

And, until they call time on the thing you call life you always have a chance to swing the balance back in your favour, unless you just quit trying, which would be a shame. After all that what life is all about, trying. You don't have to have a winning smile or a 'great personality' (though I guess they would help) you just need the grit to keep plugging away. Don't bet on the law of averages, because it is rarely a law, and you are usually going to be determined to be just below average. Just plug away at it, and try to improve your performance, the what ifs will just have to take care of themselves.

Love thy Neighbor?

2010-12-25T18:53:00.000-06:00

Since today is ~~a pagan holiday~~ christmas, I figured I would trot out the old 'love thy neighbor' line, and see if it still makes any sense. Freud thought it was one of the sillier pronouncements of christianity, he thought that for a religion, any religion, to attempt people to some sort of universal love was the height of folly. I have to admit, I am inclined to agree with him. To love everybody as a neighbor is to love nobody very much. My neighbor generally has not proven worthy of my love "I must honestly confess that he has more claim to my hostility, indeed my hatred." (Freud Civilization and Its Discontents).

And if I look at that statement in its most personal of terms, I agree, my neighbors are raging assholes. Both of my neighbors and I have engaged in a 'battle of the trash can.' One neighbor has, on more than one occasion, 'stolen' my trash can. We all have trash cans, and why he feels the need to steal mine, and attempt to foist his trash can off on me, is unfathomable to me. A long time ago, I wrote a post about my trash can (good old number 1947), and clearly I am not the type of fellow to take this theft lightly. Even painting my house number in LARGE letters on the top and side of my trash can, did not stop my 'loving' neighbor from can napping my trash can. A quick visit, and an exchange of some terse words, did eventually lead to 1947's safe return, but really who steals a trash can? Thus neighbor one has proven himself unworthy of my love.

Neighbor number two is also a raging ass hat, that should be taken out, stood up against a wall, and shot like a dog. In fact the source of the trouble I have with number two is a dog. Their dog to be precise, when they moved into the house on the other side of me there was a fence that connected onto my house. It was not my fence, and it was quite, illegally, protruding onto my property. After several warnings, that were ignored, I hired some grim men with chain saws to remove the offending bit of fence from my property. Number two just did not seem to understand the problem, the fence was the only thing that kept their dog 'penned in' their backyard. Tough shit, get your own fence was my reply, and eventually they did, but not before trying to 'create' a fence of their own by using THEIR trash can (rolled onto my property ) to close the newly minted gap in the fence line. Not the brightest of ideas, and for over a month I took unmitigated pleasure in coming home, piss drunk, and moving their trash can back to the 'right side' of the property line. They caught onto that trick and tried to built a 'makeshift' fence, I took even more pleasure in drunkenly kicking it down at 3 am. It was a lot of fun, and I miss being able to do it. I miss it because eventually they figured it out and built their own fence along the property line just like a 'good neighbor' should.

Clearly, I am not going to be asked to do a State Farm commercial anytime soon. I am not a good neighbor, nor do I intend to be. I keep to myself, and all I ask is for you to leave me the fuck alone. It is just that simple, but apparently too complicated for people in my 'hood' to understand. I am going to have to take the side of Freud here, and agree that in my neighbors the idea of love is not a popular one. I do not doubt they could regale you with stories of what a crap neighbor I am as well, but that is their problem. I will not be going over with cookies to make peace anytime soon. Universal love is for people who live in ivory towers. I live in a place surrounded by trash cans, it is called reality, and loving thy neighbor is not going to happen. Merry Xmas, happy holidays, God Jul, bah humbug!

Project of the Second Part

2010-12-20T20:18:00.000-06:00

Other than being some important day for a bunch of savages, December 25th is the six month 'turn' on my yearly procession of aging. Meaning I have six months to go before I have to change the second number on my age group list. It makes it for a depressing day all the way around, considering my ~~disdain~~ feelings for 'christmas' (which I have made clear on numerous occasions).

Other than boycotting all sorts of 'parties' that I am, in spite of my scrooge like exterior, invited to attend, I have been trying to find some project to keep myself occupied during this festive season. Other than ~~knocking over christmas trees~~ bringing good cheer to my fellow citizens. The idea that I have hit upon is another type of hero project, and is probably more work than I am willing to do, but I thought I would toss it out here, and see if my ~~vast readership~~ one loyal follower would approve of it. It is a small revisit of my hero posts, except this time I am going to take the hero of the day (whichever day it might be), and discuss what they were doing on their 42nd birthday. Where they were living, where they were in their lives, providing they were still alive, how much longer they had to live, and any other thing I can think of to toss out there.

I suspect that, for the most part, it will be a depressing exercise, but I never claimed to be all sunshine and lollipops. I am at least planning this idea with some sort of forethought. It will not start tomorrow, since it requires some actual research, and I am a lazy, lazy man. I don't know if it is a good idea or not, nor if it is worth doing or not. So I am throwing it open to a vote. If you care, please let me know, if not well then to hell with you.

Secrets

2010-12-17T02:43:00.000-06:00

Sure it is a bit of a 'tool' song, but it is a pretty good starting point for this post. It is, after all, all about secrets and giving them away. I am sure we all understand that we all have secrets, and giving them all away is one fucking dangerous idea. Freud had his secrets, mostly the identity of his patients. I mean who remembers Ernst Lazner, other than his family members (if any are still alive), but mention the 'Rat Man' and you will get a glimmer of recognition. Or at least that is the hope, if you don't, well then Freud secret is lost on the person, and will remain a mystery to them.

You do not have to be the founder of modern psycho-analysis to have a ton of secrets in your luggage, all you need to be is alive, and paying attention. Although paying attention is not strictly necessary. All you really need to do is be in the right place at the right time, and be able to listen closely. You manage that trick, and you have secrets galore being poured into your ear whether you want to know them or not. Did you hear that what's his name, and his wife are separated? Or what about Mrs. Y who is married, but rather enjoying fucking two boyfriends? You didn't know that? Well just be sitting on the right bar stool at the right time, and you will find it out soon enough. What about Mr. X, who is in the middle of a very nasty divorce, and still finds time to have a girlfriend. Oh? You didn't know, well now you do, and now you have some dangerous knowledge to use.

Using that knowledge can be dangerous as well, after all, you have secrets too right? No one alive on the planet can fail to have a couple of things they consider to be a 'secret'. Things they would prefer the general public not be privy to. Like to dress up as a cowgirl, and be tied down in the shower? Pretty sure you don't what that little peccadillo getting out to the world wide web. Like to be covered in peanut butter, and have it licked off by a combination of the family pet, and the pool boy? That is not something you would want the postman to know about you now is it? We all have these secrets, things we would prefer not to have to discuss with people we don't know. However, at some point we told someone, maybe our closest friend, and poof! There goes our attempt at keeping it a secret. Because that is the nature of secrets, they are just so very much fun to share. Usually with the old 'nudge, nudge, hint, hint, wink, wink' don't tell anyone else but I heard so and so about so and so.

In that way secrets become a kind of currency. You know a good bit of juicy gossip about your boss? Trade that little tidbit for an even juicier rumor about the guy in the mail room, and then pass it along later for a kick ass story about the boss's secretary, and midgets. By now you are knee deep in the rumor mill, and loving ever minute of it, unless of course in your wanderings you happen to hear some awful, awful secret about yourself. It doesn't matter if it is true or not, and it may be quite false, and much less damaging that your real secret, but there you are smacked in the face with some piece of information about yourself that is circulating in the world about YOU. Information that is whispered in a low tone, with narrowed eyes, and a quick glance around to make sure you aren't anywhere within hearing distance.

You may laugh it off as absurd, or it might hurt your feeling, or worse yet, you might be able to (based on the content alone) be able to trace it back to its source. Either way it is going to be a shock to the system, and something you have to address. After all, you were just the person that people told secrets to, not the person that gave away their secrets like candy at a county fair. And that is the trick isn't it? Having other people give all their secrets away for nothing. We all want to know stuff, stuff that might be bad, or damaging to other people, but we don't want to give similar information about ourselves away to other people.

If you are clever, or brave, you might feel the need to start a good old fashioned, saw dust on the floor type rumor about yourself, and see how long it takes to get back to you. Also, seeing what form it is in when you hear it again is always instructive. How much has been added or subtracted? Is it the same general rumor, or has it taken on a complete new life of its own? More likely than not, it has changed in some significant way, and you will be aghast at the change, but such is the nature of secrets.

This is the 'secret game' that we all play, and that we all try to avoid as much as possible. The trick to avoiding being a victim of the 'secret game' is quite simple. You have, at least two choices, and which one you choose says a lot about you as a person. Option 1 is that you don't tell ANYONE your secrets, and that means anyone. Your mother, your best friend, your postman, or your priest. NO ONE ever gets the intimate details of your life, that way they can't be used against you. This option is tough, I mean after all if you choose this option is it unlikely that you will get told any secrets about anyone else because you aren't playing the 'game'. It is a tough option, but probably, in the long run, the best option to pick. Option two (and the one that I generally pick) is just the opposite. That is, to tell everyone that will sit still long enough to listen, EVERY little secret you possess. That way you take yourself out of the rumor mill. If everyone knows it, then it really isn't a secret now is it? Since it isn't a secret it really isn't worth knowing or repeating, and therefore will probably remove you from the rumor mill. It is a brave choice to make, and requires you to have nerves of steel, because even if you put the secret 'out there' it is always possible that it gets embellished in a not so good way for you. The trick is to ~~not give a shit~~ to show just enough honesty and indifference where giving all of your secrets away just isn't any fun.

As for me, I will continue to quietly sit on my bar stool and listen. Paying attention is free, and you can find out wonderfully juicy information, by just keeping your big mouth shut. I find having a full beer to wrap your lips around helps to keep them from flapping, and it is quite easy to listen and drink at the same time. Until of course the person pouring out secrets wishes to be paid back in kind, then things get a bit dicey, but alcohol and a stern glance should get you through to the end.

11 11

2010-12-12T17:52:00.000-06:00

There is a line in a song by a band called Something Corporate, that goes "I always check the clock, it's 11:11." Now, I am not sure about two things, first what the hell that line means to the moron who is singing it, and secondly how I came upon such a band. However, I am sure of one thing, and this is going to be a trip into the weirdness that is my mind, so be prepared dear readers.

11/11 as a date is certainly familiar to students of history, and back when I was a younger and more clever lad, I was a student of history, but that is not how the number is important to this particular tale. The important of 11:11 is as a time, at least in the twisted part of the story that I am trying to relate. The date DOES have a significance to me, and people who know me well enough (and where there on that major day in my life), will understand what that importance is, and why the rest of this story freaks me the fuck out a bit.

That day happened a little bit over four years ago, and it was not a date in which I covered myself in glory. It was, upon calm reflection, the day that I made one of the biggest miscalculations of my miserable life. There were a lot of people who knew me there, and in theory they could have prevented my error, but the reality is they really were not in a position to prevent my mistake. And, it was my mistake, and it is one that I should own, and one that I knew, at the time, I was making. The good news, if there is any good news is that the mistake is mostly over. I say mostly, because there are two lingering issues from the fateful day that continue to 'haunt' me to this day.

This post will only deal with one of those two issues, and it is the weirder of the two. I said that the mistake happen on the day 11/11, but the numbers 11:11 are how I am reminded of the date everyday. You see, I don't wear a watch, I check the time by my cell phone, and my alarm clock. And almost everyday for about 2 years with very few exceptions, I check the time on my cell phone at 11:11 (a.m. usually, but sometimes p.m.), and this is NOT intentional. When it first started happening I thought it was a little odd, but nothing too weird. As it continued to happen it started to freak me out a bit, now that it has been happened for almost 2 years it is beyond weird.

It has begun to become a part of my day, like the daily rituals that we all go through just to get ourselves together to get to work, school, or the horse track, it has become something that I have become to expect to do. In fact, if I somehow (rarely) manage to miss checking the clock, and it being 11:11, I almost feel disappointed, like I have let myself down in some odd way. It is almost like a parlor trick, something that I could be local slack jawed gawkers that I could do without trying. I should try it for about a week, and see if I could make enough money to allow me to retire to the south of France. I don't know what this ~~ability~~ curse means to my psyche, mainly because I have too afraid (until now) to think too much about it. I have a feeling that if I did take the time to trundle off to Dr. Kronenburg, he would tell me a few 'home truths' that I would not want to hear.

Those truths might just be more that I can bear, and I don't like taking on more than I can bear. I have not done a particularly good job at explaining how weird I find this little phenomenon. It still creeps me out a bit, and when I try to explain it to people, they look at me like I am a mental patient. As I mentioned I don't know what the line in the song meant to that fellow who wrote it, but I am quite sure that he didn't mean for his line to become such a meaningful part of my life. I hope where ever he may be that he is ~~being eaten by crabs~~ proud of himself.

Disaster

2010-12-03T08:28:00.010-06:00

'I hate you, I hate everything about you, I hate your smile, I hate your laugh, I hate what you make me do, and I hate how you make me feel.' These words were just the beginning, of what would become a tirade of epic length, and proportion, launched at me like a heat seeking missile at an invading jet fighter that has invaded enemy airspace. I say 'at me' but that isn't exactly true (or maybe it is). These words could have been aimed in my direction, or I could have just been handed a letter written by a friend's (so to be ex) girlfriend. That is for me to know, and for you to find out (if you care), and I can't give all my secrets away. After all, they are all just my secrets, but a lot of other people's secrets as well, and I don't have their permission to give them away.

Either way, back to the tirade. After that opening salvo, things got much more interesting, and in spite of everything, quite poetic. 'You make my voice shake when I talk about you. People understand, without knowing you, or our history, what you do to me. They listen, but they don't actually have to hear WHAT I am saying, they can tell by the catch in my voice when I say you name aloud the effect you have on me. You make me wonder about the meaning of life, about the meaning of MY life, about why I am here, and about why you are here with me. I sometimes wonder if you are here on this planet for the sole purpose of enslaving me. I wonder is maybe I was put on Earth for the sole purpose of being your victim. You make me shake. You make me wonder how anyone, anyhow, or anywhere could possibly think they have a grasp on reality. You are a dream and a nightmare rolled into one, wonderfully awful package. I wax poetic about you and yours to people who actually know you, but just don't see what I see in you. They shrug their shoulders at my declamations, and make me wonder if perhaps I have lost my fucking mind. I sometimes envision pushing you down a flight of stairs, just to see how your fall would make me feel. You make me want to board a tramp steamer to Norway, and toss my identity over the side as I sail far, far, away from you.'

'I almost did, I had a place booked on a plane to anywhere but here, I had a whole new life, without you, planned out to the finest detail.' Then you called, and asked for the recipe for my mother's apple pie, and I cancelled it all. I hate you for that with the type of passion than an Ottoman emperor reserves for only the most prized member of his seraglio. I tried blaming my friends for not taking me outside, and beating some sense into me, but they told me I am an adult (despite the overwhelming mountain of evidence to the contrary), and I could "take care of myself." I came very close to "taking care of myself" with the strong desire that maybe, just maybe you would have felt some sort of guilt if I had. I now know that you are incapable of feeling guilt. I am not sure what you are capable of feeling, or if you are capable of feeling anything at all.'

Not a lot one can do when faced with this sort of organized assault upon one's self, but sit there and hope that you are going to be able to salvage some small amount of self respect. I mean Hallmark does not make a card for this kind of thing. Nor should they, this should be an experience that is unique to you, and you alone. If you are lucky, the lashing you are receiving will be written down, placed into a plain envelope, and slid under your door at some bizarre time of the night (while you are dead asleep). Tirades are all well and good if they are heated and short, but a true 'dressing down' should be done in writing. That way you can re-read it over and over again to see if you truly deserved it or not. If you survive it, you will probably (hopefully) be a better person, but survival is the first step. You really have no one to blame but yourself, and that is the point. They want you to blame yourself. That is what the tirade (in many ways) is designed to do, get you to blame yourself. It is a very effective tool in the wars that we wage against each other, and people have been doing it for centuries.

Not that that makes you feel any better, you sit there reading those carefully written lines with an ever growing sense of dread, maybe you let out a nervous chuckle, but that is just for show. A well written, carefully planned 'dressing down' is a dismantling, and if done properly leaves you shaking for days. Both for the now damaged sense of self you possess, and for the person wielding the sledgehammer against that sense of self. Because, at the end of the day, you understand that a reply is necessary, and in polite society (of which you claim to be a member) is expected, and you have just been 'put on the clock' as it were. And like most things in life, the timing of answering a tirade is critical. Good luck, you are going to need it.

The Program

2010-11-23T20:01:00.004-06:00

We are the Program. We have hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly episodes, and not all of them are enjoyable to watch. Some are sad, some are funny, some are tragic, and some, well some are just plain awful. We don't try to entertain, but if we do that is an added bonus. There is a set number of us, but sometimes the actors change, however the character remains the same. We are all, whether we like it or not, interconnected, and we rely on each other quite a lot. We have a limited amount of resources, and a varied degree of intellect, but we are doing our best. Well, at least that what we like to think. We like to think we are doing our best, but sometimes our best just isn't either our best, or good enough.

When our best isn't our best is where the Program loses focus (much like this blog post will soon), and an unfocused Program is a dangerous Program. We need direction, some of crave direction, but some of us don't take direction well. We are a team, but it is hard to notice it unless you pay strict attention, and you are paying strict attention aren't you? Most of the time if you anger one of us, you anger us all, and sometimes our (collective) anger is awful to behold. The Program (despite several attempts to make us) does not play nice. We don't have to, we are the Program. We aren't nice, and we don't really care too much if you are nice to us. Just be aware we have long memories, memories that go back into the mists of time, when the buffalo were still plenty upon the Plains, and we do not have to forgive, because we certainly won't forget.

The Program is defined by its members, and its members are sometimes defined by the Program. It is all very circular, and sometimes quite confusing, but the Program remains immutable. It was here before you, me, or your dear old gran, and will be here after you, me, and your lovely grandchildren have become food for worms. It is just that simple, the Program will never, ever, be canceled. Poor ratings, or lack of commercial sponsorship will not stop the Program. It might retool, it might come under new direction, but it will not stop. Sometimes the Programs takes you, grinds you up into small, bloody, bits that even your mother would have trouble recognizing, and spits you out. You will not be mourned, or remembered by the Program.

Do not attempt to understand the Program, for the Program does not even understand itself. You would be better off attempting to bail the ocean out with a spoon. The Program is ever math, science, historical, and religious problem that has no solution all rolled up into one tight, little bundle. The Program sometimes resembles a Monad, and there is a post on this blog that explains Monads, feel free to it up, and hopefully you will get the idea. If not, well, the Program doesn't care. The Program doesn't care about you, or me or about anyone in particular, and it certainly doesn't care what you think about it. It doesn't have to, it's the Program. What are you in comparison? To the Program, nothing. Once you sort that bit of good news out, and it will take some sorting, you might get a modicum of understanding of or from the Program. Until you do, the Program will roll over you like Patton's Third Army rolled into Germany. Move if you can, but be prepared to be flattened if you don't move quickly enough.

The Program has its lighter moments, but to get to see THOSE episodes you must be invited. It is an invitation only event when the Program 'lets its hair down', and if you are lucky enough to see it, you will enjoy it. The Program will make sure of that, all you need to do is to sit back, and enjoy the ride. That is if you are lucky enough to see it, the Program does not issue invitations lightly, and you would do well not to ignore that invitation. The Program can, and does on occasion hold a grudge. Much like an Albanian cherishes a blood feud, the Program loves holding a good grudge. Grudges are one thing the Program does very well. The Program has its moments of internecine violence, and sometimes those can be quite ugly, but remember this it will always present an united front to any outsiders, even if it is been racked unto death by inner turmoil.

Do not try to take advantage of the Program, and the Program will not take advantage of you. The Program tries, very hard, to be fair, but be warned fair is almost always a relative term. Fair to you is not always going to be fair to the Program, and the Program knows that, and all sorts of other things that you would be appalled that it knows. The Program possess a great deal of collective knowledge, and is also the home of some very serious individual brilliance, it is a dangerous combination. The Program is not unbeatable, or infallible, but it does not claim to be, it does not have to be, it is the Program. Try it, play it, and maybe even beat it, the Program will be there bright and early tomorrow waiting for a rematch, will you?

Dreamer

2010-11-09T18:53:00.004-06:00

I know you, I know you almost as well as you know yourself. I know your habits, you made the mistake of telling me your hopes and dreams, and I have them locked away in my mind, saving them for a 'rainy day.' I know your favourite colour, I know your favourite food. I know that you don't like green peppers, and that you think sushi is disgusting. I know where you've 'buried the bodies,' and I know what you're afraid of. I know the songs that you listen to the most on itunes, and the songs that make you cry. I even turned you on to a few of those songs. I know where you bank, where you buy your shoes, and where you buy your fruit. I know you like honey crisp apples, and not granny smith apples. I know your bra size, your shoe size, and your dress size. I know what length of pants you wear, and what brand of soap you use. I know that you're right handed, and in what country your grandparents where born. I know all of this, and I haven't had to google you, hire a private investigator, or go out of my way to collect any of this information.

I know what languages you speak, and that you are bad at math. I know your mother's maiden name, and if I tried hard enough (but I won't because its creepy) I could probably break your password(s). I know your natural hair colour (even if you don't), and I know the author you read the most, and the one you want to be like (and I know they aren't the same writer). I know where you keep the bottle of vodka that you sometimes need a nip of 'just to get through the day.' I know your birthday, your anniversary (of a lot of things), and the name of the first boy, and girl you kissed. I know what kind of car you drive, and I know how many times you've had surgery. I could probably continue for another twenty pages, but I think you get the point.

I know all of these things, because you've told them to me. Each and every one of these little nuggets you gave to me like an oyster opening wide for the pearl diver that is intent upon removing its treasure. And they are treasures, you know, each of these little tidbits that I have gleaned from you, about you are priceless bit of information. Information that helps me 'know' you, know how you are, how you were, and how you are going to be. That's right, I can predict you, if you were a racehorse, and I could bet on you, I would never have to work again. I can predict your behaviour with amazing clarity, regularity, and accuracy. I say this only because it is true, I am not bragging nor am I demeaning you in any way. I think it is fantastic that I know what you are going to say before you say it, and not for the world would I want you to hold back from saying it.

In the course of our time together you've told me all of these things, and more. While we were inhabiting smoky bars, or walking down crowded city streets, while we were passing the time on a subway ride in Tirana, while boarding a plane in Rome, as we were being mugged in Budapest, or when we were lost in Paris. During all of these times, and more, your hopes, dreams, and fears poured out of you like water out of a punctured gallon jug, and all the while I was there taking them all in, and making a mental checklist that I hoped I would never have to use against you.

I also know you hate suspense, and surprises, and you like to be 'the smartest person in the room.' I know you are way too smart for your own good, and more clever than you let on. I know you think that there is a 'twist in this tale,' and that at some point the tone of this epic is going to change for the worse. I know you can't stand not knowing things, and it is one of your most endearing qualities (up to a certain point). However, I know you, I know you too well, and I know that what will make you the maddest (and therefore, make me the happiest) is letting you ponder all of these things I know about you, and as you lie there in your bed alone, if you are alone, wonder what I am going to do with all of this awful, awful knowledge. For rest assured, I am sitting somewhere, somewhere we both know, somewhere far, far away from you, or any of your numerous minions that are bent upon my destruction. Some safe place from where I can, with impunity, tell you all of these things I know.

Slothful

2010-11-07T16:59:00.003-06:00

The creature above, who appears to be giving the camera his version of 'the finger, is a three toed sloth. I suppose that might just be his/her version of the finger, if you only have three fingers/toes who's to say what is the proper way to express your feeling about having your picture taken by some meddlesome jackass with a camera.

Truth is, I don't like having my picture taken either, which is one of the two things I share with the above animal. The second thing is 'sloth' the animal above, for good or bad, has become a synonym for being a lazy bastard. I am not too familiar with the habits of the fellow above, he might be industrious but just slow. However, I am not industrious, nor slow, I am just plain lazy. Which, in many ways, is a terrible, terrible shame. In my previous post, I expressed my amazement that Krudy was about to churn out 17 pages a day of wonderful writing. In the week or so since I wrote that post, I have been thinking about that amazement, and have come to the conclusion that the number is not as amazing as I first believed.

The quantity is still pretty high, and the quality remains miles ahead of anything I could ever put on paper, but I figure that Krudy had a couple of very important advantages, (besides massive amounts of actual talent, which I do not possess). One of those, and perhaps the most important of them, was motivation. Krudy lived by his pen (for the most part at least, sometimes he lived by gambling, and off of admiring women), I live by having an actual job/career which requires my physical presence in my cube, a certain number of hours a week. Those hours either passed by actually doing work, or whiled away wishing I was somewhere, anywhere, else in the world, have a tendency to cut into my writing time.

This previous shackle on my time, also prevents me from living the dissolute live style that Krudy lived. I am doing my dead level best to live the libertine life, but my alarm jolts me awake at 6 a.m. every weekday. That has a chilling effect on my desire to stay out until dawn, drinking myself stupid, and telling my companions 'to come back, and talk some more.' Most of my companions are also gainfully employed, and would not be out drinking until dawn if I paid them, and that is something I am not quite prepared to do. I don't know how much of his output Krudy churned out during those long nights abusing his body with booze, but I suspect that even if he wasn't physically writing down his brilliant words, he was thinking them. I also suspect, that a great deal of his 'material' was found in whichever den of iniquity he was inhabiting.

The relatively few hours I spend in my own dens of iniquity do provide me with a great deal of material as well, though I have yet to learn the 'write this shit down before you get to drunk to remember rule'. There have been any number of blog posts, and 'characters' that have flitted through my life, and my imagination that have been lost to time because of my lack of ambition. Not that I would be able to do them justice, but at least the material would contribute to the 17 page quota that I should be able to meet. Even though I am forced by my economic obligations, and my lack of courage to just throw it all over, run off to Europe, and write or starve, this does not fully exonerate my lack of output.

The second advantage Krudy possess over me is actually more of a disadvantage to me as opposed to an advantage to him. Krudy did not have ESPN, FOX Soccer Channel, Twitter, Facebook, and a myriad of other external time wasters to distract him from his main task of writing. I am sure that he would have dealt with these distractions better than I do, but the fact that they are they is a huge problem for me. Clearly, being a lazy bastard, I can plop my ass down on my couch for hours, and watch American football, futbol, or women's curling without having a single thought worth writing down in my head. It is something that I despair of, but have been unable to control for quite some time.

Common sense tells me I should take the leap, cut the cable, and then just see if I can manage to increase my 'output'. Reality tells me that would last a week before I went crazy from boredom, or just starting spending even more time at a pub that has a Television. This advantage/disadvantage is entirely a product of my time, but it is something that I should be able to overcome. If, as I mentioned before, I wasn't such a lazy bastard. Since I am a lazy bastard, and I also don't take my writing particularly seriously, I am unable to break out of this vicious circle, and 'create' a blog post in a very sporadic fashion. These two issues aren't solely responsible for my lack of output, there is the argument to be made (and it is quite valid) that since I have not spoken aloud to another human being in two whole days, I should have loads, and loads of time on my hands in which to write something down. It is a very valid argument, and one which I have no valid rebuttal except to reiterate that I am a lazy, lazy bastard.

I am not as lucky, or as good a gambler as he was, nor do I have an army of admiring ladies to offer me financial support (amongst other things), but that is no excuse for being a sloth, and I am sure Krudy had his own set of outside distractions that may have lowered his production. I also suspect that, if he were alive, he would tell me to 'quit fucking whining, and get busy writing, or just give it up altogether.' Of course, he would tell me that in Hungarian, and I would probably look at him like he was as mad as a March hare, but in any language the point would be made. The good news is, if there is any good news to be found here, is that I have somehow managed to have turned being lazy into quite a lengthy blog post. I am not sure, since I am an American, but I am willing to believe that this fits the definition of irony.

Sunflower

2010-11-01T20:06:00.002-05:00

I know, I know, this looks like some hero post part deux, and in some ways it is. The fellow above is one Gyula Krudy, and he is one of the best writers I have EVER read in my life. If you only read one (more) book this year, make it 'Sunflower' by Krudy. It is good enough to make you want want to weep. It is one of his few works that have been translated from the original Hungarian to English, and it worth whatever amount you pay for it. He writes so well that I have considered learning Hungarian just so I could read more of his works. He is quite simply that good, and you won't regret reading him.

If you do regret reading 'Sunflower' then I fear for the state of your soul, providing you have a soul. The book is so good that it doesn't even really have a plot (Krudy wasn't big on plots), and you don't even care. The writing, the characters, and the stories are so good that a lack of an overall plot is hardly noticed at all. Krudy was remarkable, he wrote his first articles for a local newspaper at the age of 16! 16, and published try that on for size. His father wasn't impressed, and attempted to get young Krudy to get some schooling, and learn a trade. That kind of life didn't appeal to him overmuch, so he ran off to Budapest to become a poet.

He didn't become a poet in the strictest sense of the word, but some of his sentences are mind numbingly good. I lack the words to explain to you how good he is, and I can only hope you find out for yourself. It might help to know a few little tidbits about him before you read him, those I can provide because they require very little imagination or writing skill. Feel free to Google him if you wish, because my few tidbits are just that, tidbits, and will not do him justice.

First thing is that he was a drunk, a true drinker's drinker. A man who drank country wine out of a carafe, but a man that few ever saw drunk. He was a nocturnal animal, and vice ridden. His biggest three were wine, woman, and gambling. He loved cards and horses, and with it came to his vices he always chose outsiders. In this way, we are very much alike, I love a good long shot at the track, and I love a good flake in the world of women. I wish I would have inherited 1/10th of his talent instead of 100% of his vices, but I guess the fates were against me. He was the guy who would keep your drunk ass out to dawn, and when you tried to sneak off, he would stop you and tell you to 'come back and talk some more.' And you would because he was Krudy, and you didn't deny him that type of request. He was quite the ladies man, and had a wife and children which he treated shamefully. I doubt he would be overly popular in today's PC world, but this was Budapest in the early 2oth century, and he wasn't overly criticized for his behaviour.

He would tell the numerous ladies in his life that 'he needed to be alone.' That he 'needed solitude' in order to conjure up the wonderful stories that were lying just under the conscious part of his mind. Perhaps the drink, and the solitude gave birth to all those lovely stories he wrote. The admiration I have for his talent is immense, and is made all the greater by the fact that he set himself a quota of 17 pages a DAY! He would write his 17 pages in whatever pub he was drinking on credit, get a cab to the nearest newspaper that would buy them, turn them in to the editor (without corrections) to be published, get his stipend for the pages, and go back to the pub. If only I could do that, just the once.

Times sort of passed him by, but he didn't quit writing, nor did he quit drinking or playing the ponies. He came to a bit of a sad end, one that would be worthy of writing a story about. Which a fellow author (Sandor Marai) did, and published it as a book (which has yet to be translated into English), all he left besides some of the greatest literature in the world, was some shabby clothes, an incomplete pack of cards, some books, and some racing forms that were years out of date. It was a 'good death', it was our kind of death.

Good News?

2010-10-25T19:31:00.003-05:00

As I mentioned in the previous post (quick go read it, and come back, I will wait) last week I decided to 'go off the rails' a bit, and drink like a Roman Emperor. I have yet to total up the damage done either to my bank balance, my liver, or my relationship(s) with some of my fellow humans, but I am sure it is as high as a Georgia pine. People who know me, or people who used to know me know that I have a local. I actually have two locals because one isn't enough to handle the full force of my personality. However, I have been 'branching out' a bit as of late, and have acquired another place in which to drink myself stupid.

I am a man of habit, many talents, and a firm belief that you can never be friendly with too many bartenders. A good bartender is almost, if not more important that a good doctor. I mean you don't have to make appointments to see your bartender, and none of the multitude of the bartenders I know have ever asked me to turn my head and cough. They take it on faith that I have the present ability to pay the enormous tab I am running up in their establishment, and a couple of them have even let me 'bounce' on a tab when I became to drunk, or they were too busy, for me to pay. It is a proud moment in a drunks life when he walks INTO his bar for the first drink of the night only to be told he already has a 40 dollar tab from the night before. 'I knew you would be back, so I just let you go' where the words that my bartender greeted me with on that occasion, my father, rot him, would have been so very proud.

All of this is just a set up for the news I received on my last expedition in my second local that I made on Saturday night. Wing man in tow, I was drinking myself into a stupor when a oddly familiar voice called my name. I was a bit bleary eyed, but when I turned to the sound of the noise I was happily surprised to see one of my 'old' bartenders, one that I had not seen in almost 2 years. I was quite shocked to see him in the place, he had left to start his own bar, and I figured that he was gone for good. Plus, his parting, like most people at this bar, was not on the best of terms. A series of sad events that were beyond his control resulted in him losing his bar, and I was quite excited to hear that he had been re-employed at my bar.

Drinks were ordered all around, and some time was spent 'catching up.' Then a sort of horrible realization hit me like a ton of bricks. I think the major impetus for this moment of horror was I was just wrapping up a six day drunk, but as I sat there and reminisced about old times, I concluded that this news, while joyful for my buddy, might be fatal to me. He is a GOOD bartender, a fair bartender, and (most importantly) an attentive bartender, very rarely did I ever have to wait longer than 7 seconds for my empty drink to be magically replenished.

The 'bad' part to this tale of woe is quite simple, I have been drinking like a fish at this bar with a series of inferior barmen (and women) since this fellow left, now that he has returned I can only imagine that my drunken behaviour will increase fivefold, and I am not sure that my liver (even though I have recently been turned onto the wonderful healing powers of milk thistle), or my bank account will survive. I guess this is a simple problem of be careful what you wish for, because I have bemoaned his absence on more than one occasion. I guess this post is a bit of a drunkard's prayer (which is more than just a cornball song by a band called Over the Rhine), it is simply this let's hope my bank account lasts longer than my liver, because doctor's need to be paid as well, and transplants aren't free.

I'm OK, You're OK?

2010-10-24T11:59:00.003-05:00

"Are you OK?" That was the question one of my fellow citizens directed towards me on the Tuesday night of this week. Generally, that simple question, one that we get asked numerous times in our lives, would not be worthy of commenting upon, but as with most things with me lately it is all about context.

That context is the reason that the question was, for me at least, another low point in my life (seems I have having a lot of low points recently). Tuesday was the night before a legal conference, which I was required to attend, began in my fine city. In other words, I didn't have to go to work the next day, but I did have to attend the conference, since the conference's start time was about 2 hours later than I generally get to work, then I figured I might have a few drinks with some buddies.

That day's drinking began a bit earlier than usual, and it was the first day of a week that has seen me eat, drink, and be merry like a Roman emperor. I figure I have gained 6 pounds this week, so next week, I will be eating like a Roman slave, but at least this week has been entertaining. The drinking was going as planned, and it was looking like another night that would find me bleary eyed the next morning. However, as with most of the plans that I am involved in, things went a bit off script rather quickly. A change of my drinking plans ensued (I asked a question I didn't know the answer to, and my drinking was curtained, serves me right).

The new plan entailed me not drinking like my ship was sinking, and I had to drink all the rum before it was too late, and sobriety began to rear its ugly head. That being said, I am not sure my next career move was a product of my residual buzz, or just extremely poor judgment. Either way it was a piss poor decision, and I was duly punished for it. It is a long story, and isn't worth getting to deep into right now, but it would soon provide me the reason for the above quoted question. Keep it mind, the is TUESDAY! Not generally a day that finds you facing the kinds of life tragedies that make you feel like you need a Greek chorus following you around to help narrate your life.

Again, I was foolish enough to ask a (very lengthy , and important) question that I did not know the answer to, and I was, once again, duly punished. It was this punishment, and my resulting reaction to it, that sent me reeling down the street in one direction while the person delivering the blow walked calmly off in the other direction. I decided that taking one of the convenient seats provided for citizens of my fair city by the city fathers, would be a good idea. A few moments of calm reflection were clearly going to be needed, and I also had to find some sort of cash dispensing machine, because my car was in 'hock' to a parking garage.

As I sat there wondering where that cash was going to be obtained, and feeling a bit like Lupus from 'The Bad News Bears,' a fellow citizen decided that it was imperative to speak to me. Of course, it was my own fault, it was 10 p.m. on a Tuesday in downtown shit city, and I was just begging to be panhandled. In retrospect, I guess I am lucky that I wasn't swarmed by panhandlers like a sugar cube in an ant farm. The one 'bum' that did manage to get his 'handle' on asked me for a cigarette, and wasn't even upset when I informed him of the bad news, that I am a non-smoker. To my surprise he merely thanked me and turned away to try his luck elsewhere. Well, clearly my demeanor must have been awful, because he stopped turned back around, and asked me with dead seriousness in his voice "Are you OK?" I am sure the shock was evident on my face as I replied 'I'm fine thanks.'

Which bring me to the eventual point of this post. The fellow was nice enough, and just because he is what is commonly called a 'bum' he was still human enough to notice that a fellow human seemed to be having a bit of a rough moment. Which was true, but I was unaware that I was so obvious about it. However, while I have grown to appreciate his humanity, it was still a low point in my life. If I look so bad that bums are asking me if I am OK, then my life has clearly taken a wrong turn. It certainly changed the focus of my calm reflection, and perhaps that it something I should be thankful for, it became much more focused on the whole of my situation rather than merely the disastrous episode that had just occurred.

I suppose that is the thing to be thankful for, a polite 'bum' that is willing to take the time to find out if maybe the fellow he just tried to cage a ciggy off of, was going to be a bridge jumper. Maybe he didn't want that on his conscious, or maybe he thought that if he asked, I would find some forgotten cigarette, or some cash for him ( I didn't so unlucky for him), or maybe he just thought that a bit of humanity was called for. I didn't have the heart to tell him 'I am far, far, from fucking OK.' That was the closest to humanity I could come, and I hope he appreciated it.

Over Due Part II

2010-10-23T15:47:00.002-05:00

Of the 366 heroes of the day,

276 or 75% are dead

and 84 or 23% are still alive.

Those who are not still alive died at an average age of 62.9 years, a bit surprising, I figured it would be younger than that.

Over Due Part I

2010-10-23T15:42:00.002-05:00

Since it has been over two months since the ending of the hero parade, this information is long overdue, but I am lazy.

We will start this with the easy part.

Of the 366 heroes

339 or 93% were Male (guess I am a sexist pig, big surprise there)

21 or 5% were Female

and

6 or 2 % were Things (i.e. words, things, animals)

Hiver

2010-10-11T13:51:00.010-05:00

'I do not ever want to speak to you again,' then the loud 'click' of the phone being hung up on me with a fierce determination. The dial tone didn't have much to say to my reply, which was just as well since my reply is not really fit for publication (at least in a non R rated forum). After a few seconds to realize what had just occurred, I hung up, shrugged my shoulders, and crossed her name off of my xmas list. I mean, she sounded pretty serious, and she was usually pretty good at doing what she said, not at all the type to hold in her emotions, which I figured was probably a large portion of our problem.

Being the unemotional type (her words,not mine, but I didn't deny the accusation when it was made), I had sorted out that our 'styles' were probably going to clash eventually, but I didn't figure that it would lead to the complete break down of all communication. Being the optimistic type, I kept her contact information just in case, I mean you never know when you are going to need bail money, and options are good to have just in case. And, if you have true friends, you won't be able to call them for bail money because they will probably be in the same holding cell that you are. Thus, keeping someone's number, who while not a fan of yours, might still feel enough pity for you to get you out of a tight spot (though the cost will be quite high), is not the worse plan to have.

Now the above glimpse into my life would not either be so bad, or so interesting (if it is interesting), if that had been the first time it had happened to me. Sadly, it was not, and it was not even the first time recently. It was the third time such a thing has happened, and since it happened recently, I am beginning to detect some sort of trend where things might just be 'me not them.' Each of them ended under similar circumstances (although a couple of them put more colourful language into their declaration of our relationship independence). All three were lovely girls, and each of them had their reasons for never wanting to speak to me again, the foremost being I am 'a raging jackass' (that seemed to be the underlying theme in each case).

Unfortunately, after a long think, a few Internet searches, and a couple or three beers, I was unable to find a cure for being a jackass that did not include ceasing to exist. Since that route seems a bit drastic for the situation(s) at hand, I figured that I would just have to get out of the house more often and meet 'replacement' people. I quickly determined this to also be a bit of a shit plan, since me and people just seem to have entire day's worth of misunderstandings, and just went out and bought a 1200 page book to fill up my (now free) time, and to hopefully avoid these types of 'misunderstandings' for the near future.

Misunderstandings or not, I took each of these people at their word. They had each, independently of one another, expressed the strong desire, and in no uncertain terms, of never wishing to communicate with me again. Fair enough I suppose, I can not imagine that my presence in any one's life is a necessity, and therefore I figured they would live 'happily ever after.' Therein lies the rub, 'ever after' means exactly that both 'ever' (i.e. never), and 'after' (i.e. again). Saying you never wish to speak to or see me again is fine, I can understand that wish, and in some ways I applaud the decision. To be quite honest, some relationships need to just end without the hope of revival. Years may pass, but the death of those types of relationships should be permanent. There is no need for a reopening of old wounds, or a digging up the corpse of the relationship to determine the cause of death. It died of its own causes, and no further examination is necessary. In my opinion, it is usually best if both parties sign the death certificate, but if one party is really determined, one signature is usually sufficient.

In all three of my above mentioned cases, one signature was enough, though in one case I would have signed if they would have told me that I could have. My signature wasn't there on the other two, and one of them didn't bother me at all. I might not have signed it, but I was pretty indifferent as to the relationship ending. The last one didn't have my signature either, and truth be told, I was saddened by the loss. It was mostly my fault (take that to mean it was all my fault), and maybe one day I will explain that further. However, for our purposes here that is all we need to know. It is the two other 'deaths' that concern us here, and the fact that it seems my relationships have a zombie like quality (meaning they are hard as shit to kill).

Case A (pick a name if you want, it won't be her name, and it doesn't matter), was the one that died over the phone. A fairly impersonal, but quick way of doing things, and one that I accepted. Calling someone that has just hung up on you with that last sentence is very rarely a good idea, and besides she was the 'take the phone off the hook' kind of girl. Fair enough, she sounded serious, she seemed serious, and she was serious, for about six months. Then out of the blue, as I am minding my own business, and not bothering a soul (it does happen once in a while), I get a text from her. 'Hey' that was it just hey, nothing else just three little letters, one little innocent word. No explanation as to why I got it, no apology (if I deserved one is debatable), and no reason why six months later I was suddenly worth talking to again. It was a bit like the six months of silence did not happen, from that 'hey' we just sort picked up where we had left off in our relationship. It was odd, but then again she is odd, and I am odd, so odd is pretty much par for the course.

Case B (again pick a name, any name will do), was a bit more entertaining, and had the 'decency' to tell me to my face that 'I never want to fucking see you again, get out of my sight!' She was also very clear, and used plain English (and a dramatic gesture or two), that she had no desire to ever set eyes upon my person again. Once again, more my fault than hers, and fair enough. I got the message, and slunk away to lick my wounds, and to begin to ponder why it is I do to inspire such passion (and not in a good way).

Two weeks later, guess who shows up in my life? You guessed it case B, it was odd for about 30 seconds (at least for her), but it seems that all was forgiven. It also appears that it is VERY easy to get mad at me, but slightly more difficult to stay mad at me. I am not sure how I feel about that. Since I like a good grudge like an Albanian likes a blood feud, I almost prefer someone to actually stay mad at me for a bit. At least they are sticking to their word. After all, never means never right? Unless 'they' have significantly changed the meaning of the word never without telling me, then something is horribly wrong with both of the 'cases' outlined in this post.

And then what is the protocol here? How do you pick up the pieces of a 'broken' relationship so quickly. I mean if two weeks, days, or months ago it was determined that I was just this side better of cancer, then what happened to improve your opinion of me? I certainly didn't change, and seeing the error of my ways become some 'better' version of myself. I have been working on that, and I can say with some confidence, failing at it. I am not a 'better' version of myself at all, I am the same 'version' just X amount of time older. Nothing about me has improved, and it has only probably gotten worse since you decided that you had had your fill of me. Having enough of me is a decision that I can respect. Coming back after saying 'never again' is something I have a problem with.

Which brings us to Case C, our third, and (so far) final contestant in the get fucking rid of me game. I know I promised not to mention it, but hey its my blog and I will write epics if I want to, you don't have to read them you know. This one was a lot simpler, a lot shorter, and in many ways, a lot sadder. Details of it are a bit fuzzy, and I am sure memories would be vastly different depending on which one of us you asked as to what happened, but the end result is the same. Over and done with, in a slightly less dramatic fashion, but done with nonetheless. I am not sure I wanted this one to be over with, but I understand why it needed to end, and that it was going to have to end sooner or later, but I wasn't quite prepared for it to be the 'sooner' bit.

The major difference with case C, and the reason I have vastly more respect for that person is she meant it. Never meant never to her, and I haven't spoken to her since the funeral rites were read over the casket of our 'relationship.' In many ways that is quite awesome, and in many ways it is quite sad. It is awesome because it shows that at least she was a woman of her word, and is not likely to change her mind, and she shouldn't. If she were to pop back into my life now, I would lose a lot of my admiration for her. It is sad because it shows how, at least on this point (and a couple of others) how truly compatible we were. Not compatible enough to keep the relationship alive, but compatible enough to make it interesting while it was. And that makes it all the sweeter, like apple pie and ice cream on a hot July day.

Case C is, mostly, the point of this epic. If you are going to 'think of someone only in the past tense' then you should stick to it. Expressing the desire to NEVER speak to another person again is the little red button on the console of interpersonal relationships. It is mutual assured destruction, not something to be trifled with, and not something to be used at someone because they bought the wrong type of milk. Not something to be used on a daily basis, but something to be brought out only when absolutely necessary. It should not be used in the heat of passion, but only after calm, icy, reflection. After all, it is some serious shit, and the person you are using it against might just take you at your word. When nuclear winter hits a relationship it taints everything, and if anything survives , it is probably so mutated so as to be unrecognizable. 'C' did that for us, she turned that key, entered the code, and pushed the red button. The resulting mushroom cloud and fallout killed our relationship as dead as dead can be, and it isn't coming back to life ever. Which is in some strange way, the best possible ending of any of the sad tales in this story. I guess the lesson to be learned is that all things end badly, or else they wouldn't end.

Lime

2010-10-09T20:13:00.006-05:00

To quote Coleridge, ". . . this lime tree bower; my prison." It is not quite as dire as that either for Coleridge when he wrote those words over a century ago, or for me, but I needed some dramatic flair for the opening line of this blog post. Although not as dire as prison, I do feel something akin to how Coleridge felt all those years ago. He was forced to stay beneath his lime tree, and watch his companions enjoy a lovely day without him. Hence, the poem, and hence the reason for him writing it.

There are no lime trees where I live, and I am mobile (except for being very sore from soccer practice) so I could just trundle my ass around where ever I wanted to go, if I had somewhere to go, but I don't. I sit here in my own mental lime tree bower trying to sort out what to do with my free time. There are piles and piles of books on a chest next to me that are demanding my attention, and certainly the trees that are still alive on my own little half acre of hell are shedding their leaves like a stripper at a high dollar bachelor party. At some point, they are going to have to raked by my yard staff (i.e. me), but for now I sit here pondering exactly what to do with the time that I have to waste.

Writing this post will pass some of those idle moments which seem prone to led me into mischief, but it can only achieve so much. After all, it is just a little blog post, and shouldn't try to get above its station. It has only a limited purpose, and a limited shelf life. One it shouldn't try to exceed, and the other it shouldn't try to last longer than its 'sell by' date. The problem is that its content is limited by several things, and I will leave it to your imagination (providing you have an imagination) to figure out the limiting parameters. While not a lime tree bower, and not exactly a prison, this post, this forum, this way of 'communicating' my, ever so brilliant, thoughts has severe limitations. Limitations that have shortened this blog post by several pages, much to the delight of my more attention challenged readers I am sure.

Limitations so severe that my inability to articulate them, becomes another limitation, thus making the circle of this particular medium complete. How to best explain, what it is that I can't explain? How to best explain why it is that I can't explain? I am not like Bruno Antony, in Hitchcock's 'Strangers on a Train', a very clever fellow, and therefore cannot explain what there is to explain. Perhaps if I were a clever fellow, or a more talented writer, or a man with more ability to obfuscate, then I could write something that would explain it all, and my equally clever readers would be able to sort it out. However, I'm not, and therefore, the cleverness (or lack) of my readers does not get to be tested. Lucky you, dear reader, you do not have to take the test that I, quite obviously, and with some aplomb, have so spectacularly failed.

Dear Me

2010-10-08T20:40:00.002-05:00

After celebrating Thursday like it was the end of the world, I tottered home to quietly pass out in my bed, and snore away the hours until work forced me to get out of bed. However, it seems that the farce that passes for my life wasn't entirely done with me for the evening. A difficult (at least the parts of it I remember) phone conversation, led me to stagger out of my living room in the bathroom, where awaiting me was a very large mirror image of myself. One dirty look at myself was all it took to set me off on myself. There I was, drunk as a lord sneering at my reflection in the mirror. He (my reflection that is) sneered back, and since I didn't care for that I decided to give him, err I mean me, a bit of a dressing down.

It was a lot of things, but the one thing I am certain of was that it was just fucking awful. Only a person who has reached a certain level of intoxication, and fueled by the recently concluded difficult conversation can give himself the blow dryer treatment. I started with my looks, of which according to me, I should not be proud, I pointed out all the surface flaws, and found quite a few of them, with my person and did so in some very 'glowing' terms. I don't want to repeat what I found these appearance flaws to be, because one look at me (if you happen to see me) will give you a general idea what I focused on (with the limited focus I was able to muster). It was like having on anti-beer goggles. Whereas the women get better looking when I am that tipsy, I seem to get a whole LOT uglier, at least in my own estimation. It was not pretty, and I mean that both as a pun, and truthfully.

Perhaps things would have been better if I had stopped there, I mean a few coarse words about one's slovenly, ape-like appearance might sting a bit, but it isn't something that is going to deal any lasting damage to my psyche. However, since I am in fact, a total jackass, I could just let my appearance flaws be the only flaws of mine that I wanted myself to know about. Emboldened by the hurt look I had managed to make myself have by pointing out my own ugliness, I then proceeded to start at the top and tear myself completely down. It was a demolition job that would have done a stick of dynamite proud.

The worse part about it all, other than the fact it happened, and it happened in the toilet, was that I achieved a minor miracle. One that I am not too sure I should share, and one that I am none too proud of, it seems that while I was gleefully pointing out to me all the awful character traits I possess, I made myself cry. Isn't that just wonderful? I hurt my own fucking feelings. It was both extremely funny, sad, stupid, and pathetic all at once. The other problem, as if I didn't have enough problems already, is/was that this morning when I staggered out of bed, and trundled off to work, I remembered pretty much every bad thing that I said to/about myself. In the harsh (and with my hangover it was harsh) light of day, I was able to revisit all those awful things I said about me to me, and was still unable to deny the truth of any of them.

I would like to say that it was a experience in character building, and if anyone need to build character it is me, but I think the tear down job was so expertly done, and so meekly resisted that any attempt to rebuild is going to have to put on hold for a while. I didn't quite sow the ground with salt, but I certainly came close to replicating the damage that Rome did to Carthage. I guess there is no critic as harsh as yourself, and yourself drunk, and already a bit pissed off at you, is just plain awful. I mean, for fuck's sake, I made MYSELF cry. That is something to both be proud and ashamed of all at once. I had thought about writing some of these flaws down in some self-indulgent fit of pique, but I decided that perhaps that isn't the best idea. Because, after all, I may be sober, but who knows if the same reaction won't happen again, and making myself cry both sober, and drunk on back to back days, is just more than I can bear.

Fair Weather

2010-09-29T07:34:00.004-05:00

There are a lot of snapshots in my mind, moments that are forever frozen in time via a mental image that I am carrying around in my head. Some are good, some are bad, and some are (wait for it) just plain awful. Today's visit to my mental picture gallery is going to focus on two such images. Neither are particularly old, nor is either particularly unique to myself. Both of are myself, and a group of friends, each taken at different times, and in both I am the only common denominator. No one in snapshot number 1 is present in snapshot number 2 except yours truly. This should be a warning sign as to what kind of person I am, and the kind of life I led.

I hesitant to provide too many details of either picture, due to the federal witness protection guidelines, and various other reasons not to give away too many sordid details of my life. Suffice to say that one image is of a group of fellows at a bar (that's not too sordid, but notice I did not say what kind of bar). There are maybe 5 of us, drunk as lords, and drinking like there is no tomorrow, and who knows there might not be. Some of us would have to be up very early the next day, because this snapshot is taken on a weekday, and some of us did not have a job to worry about getting out of bed for. We are at various stages of drunkenness, but none of us would be considered anywhere near sober.

It is late, very late, like 2 a.m. late, and we have been tossing them back for several hours already, and the night isn't quite over yet, but it is on its last legs. It wasn't a special event, or any one's birthday, just a normal night for this groups of wrecks that bonded together over alcohol, and pub grub. Of course, none of us know it at the time, but this night would not be repeated many more times before the demands of "life" would began to weaken the bonds holding us together. It would be a subtle change at first, and barely perceptible to most of us, but for the thoughtful of the group (i.e. me) a pause during this night's revelry would contain the germ of the idea that 'this can not last.' And it didn't, two of the group moved away, one to one coast, one to the other coast, two decided that the charms of the opposite sex were much more interesting that our merry band of brothers, and one decided that alcohol had lost its allure.

That left me, uncharmed by the opposite sex to the same degree that my pals were, unable to pack my shit and just move away to part unknown, and I was certainly not ready to become some dangerous teetotaler. Fair weather comes in all sorts of disguises, and you never know when a spot of it is about to break over the horizon of someone's (some other one) life. You can't really blame any of them for their choices, in some cases they did not really have any choice, but as you sit there on your bar stool, alone now in the bar, you can't help but wonder if maybe you've made some really bad decisions in your life.

The second snapshot has similar issues, except it is taken at a wedding, and not a bar. Though a couple of our smiling for the camera faces are a little flush from the joys of an open bar, and there are similar stories here as well, kids, marriage, and movement tore this group of merry adventurers apart like a hurricane battering an creaky, old sailing vessel. Dashed upon the rocks of other commitments, the bands holding this group together soon snapped like a mizzen mast under full sail in a full on gale. Neither of these groups had any overlap (except me), and both have dissolved like a snail under a fountain of salt, and left me here sitting here in this storm in hopes of my own fairer weather.

The trick to fair weather is knowing it when you see it, it isn't like pornography, it doesn't just shock your system, or bash you over the head with a thunder stick proclaiming itself clearly enough so that any damn fool can see latch onto it. There is no dress rehearsal to fair(er) weather, you have to be in the right place, at the right time, and have to be in the right mind set. I am of the opinion that most fairer weather is a mirage, a temporary illusion that pulls wanderers off their chosen path. It is there in the darkness that it lurks, whispering its siren's song to those of us too drunk to ignore it, or too willing to listen out of sense of hope, promising us all sorts of things that we know, in our heart of hearts, that are just simply too good to be true.

Of course, we have all had this, or something similar happen to us, and perhaps it is just our fate to be left for fairer weather until we, ourselves, find fairer weather and then disappear from the frame like the ghosts that we called friends did before us. Until that day comes, if that day comes, all we can do is ride out the storm alone, but somehow content in the knowledge that somewhere out there this cold rain is lashing down on other people in similar situations, and secure in the thought that above all, misery loves company.

The Third Time

2010-09-24T19:46:00.001-05:00

She was tall, that was the first thing I would always say about her when asked to describe her, and generally the first thing you would notice about her when you saw her swanning into your field of vision. And I say swanning as a joke, anyone with legs that long was just one loose pebble in their path from sprawling head first in the dirt. Graceful in her own way, but a bit gangly in a lot of peoples eyes. Very tall, very pale, thin, and possessing piles and piles of bright red hair. Of course she had the freckles of a redhead, and of course I was quite madly in lust, err love, with her at the time. The time, now that I have mentioned it, was about a decade ago, back in the days when the buffalo were plenty upon the plains, and I was a much younger, smarter, and in many ways better man. Speaking of decades, there was (and still is) about a decade difference in our ages. That probably should have been my first clue that this, to quote Sting, was never meant to be, but did I mention she was tall, and redheaded? If she'd had a foreign accent, then I might still be paying alimony, and living in an a room above my mother's garage. My judgment, never my most sound quality, generally checks out when it comes to tall, thin, redheads of the female persuasion.

Also, she remains one of the quirkiest people I have ever met, which considering the zoo I work in, is quite an accomplishment on her part. We had absolutely nothing in common, (well, we eventually had ONE thing in common), and it was a mystery to the people that knew us both what either one of us saw in the other one. That made our relationship just that much more fun. That the mystery of our, quite mutual, attraction was such a puzzler to our friends, made the two of us feel like we were the sole members of some, deep, dark conspiracy against common sense, and our friends "values." It was a source of great amusement to us both, and was probably a contributing factor to us "getting together" in the first place. Neither one of us were really what you would call conventional thinkers, and as shocking as it may be considering my description of her (and its corresponding effect upon me), she was a pretty original thinker (and by that I mean she thought almost 180 degrees differently than I did) in her own right. Long legs, and red hair are a great way to GET my attention, keeping it, on the other hand, requires some degree of talent, and I am not talking about the pole dancing kind of talent (though, she did once, just the once, treat me to how her life would have been as a stripper, I still get goosebumps).

The fact that our relationship tottered on the brink of disaster was part of the attraction. Part of the joy of our (brief) time together was that I (nor her) ever really knew what the day would bring. If we saw each other, and flushed with the excitement of starting a new relationship, we saw each other a lot at the beginning, it could end in tears, screams, cake being thrown, bed, or us playing cribbage in park amongst all the old men playing dominoes and checkers. We just never knew what our (or the others) reaction would be just to seeing each other. It was just plain awful, and absolutely fabulous all at the same time. She would often, (as she loved to tell me), respond to someone asking her about me with the phrase 'Oh, him, he's great just don't believe his lies." Not the most endearing description I have ever heard of me, but she somehow contrived to make it sound like it was a compliment. The worst thing was, I took it as one after she explained it to me. She was that good.

Each time was different in its own special way, no one could fathom what we saw in each other (or more to the point, what she saw in me, what I saw in her was pretty obvious), and fairly quickly my more enterprising friends created a "pool" concerning the ending date of our relationship. Sadly, I was not allowed to throw my money into the pool, because my friends claimed that I would conspire with her to bring about the end of our relationship just to win the bet. Truth be told, they were probably right, and she probably would have went along with it for half of the dough (which explains a lot about my attraction to her). She was a gamble in her own right, being in a relationship with her was like constantly watching the ball spin on a roulette table. She was not interested in filling space, not concerned with being the one I wanted, or the way I wanted, she was a force of nature. Like a hurricane that blows through town that rips it to shreds, and leaving you standing there, somehow untouched, feeling survivor's guilt.

My group of friends would (eventually) be able to judge whether it had been an April day (their code word for a "good day" since my mood would be as bright and shiny as a spring day, and I would ramble about "birds singing, and flowers blooming" and generally be in a sickening good mood), or a November day (their code word for a "bad day" when I would be as melancholy as a Dane; cold, and distant responding to their queries about "what's wrong" with mere grunts, and dark looks. Spending my time brooding over my beer(s), as they tried to cheer me up, or get me to "snap out of it"). Generally, my April days were more of a pleasure for my friends, on those days I would wax lyrical about all sorts of topics, and keep them entertained for hours, also (and I suspect more importantly) I would stand them rounds of drinks until the barkeep told that "we didn't have to go home, but we couldn't stay there." Once they detected the clouds of a November day on my face, my friends became as scare as a virgin in a Chinese whorehouse, and usually concocted ways (i.e. bullshit excuses) for having somewhere, anywhere, else to be. Sick grannies, physics homework, yard work, or a sudden desire to take the veil would all be trotted out as reasons for my friends to flee my general vicinity on my November days.

In retrospect, I cannot blame them, brooding is an activity that is best pursued alone, and my November days were brooding days. On the bright side, my bar tab, while still steep because who broods sober?, was still much less than if my friends had braved my November day just for the free drinks. There were a few brave souls that, on occasion, would stick out a November day. Whether it was a genuine desire to cheer me up, or keep me from doing something stupid, or just an overwhelming desire for free booze, I never asked. I make it a general rule to avoid asking questions which, upon hearing the answer, will cause me distress. Besides, I was generally indifferent to their company anyway, and also these friends, whom I thought were so together have long since left me in search of fairer weather (but that is the subject of another post).

Our fights while not quite the stuff legends are made of, were not something you wanted your (or any) children to see. She had a remarkably large vocabulary, but when angry (and I made her really angry once or twice), she could swear like a fishwife. Actually, the swearing part wasn't her at her worse. When she was truly mad, she would find ways of making me feel like I was a cross between the Black Plague, and cancer. She was a clever lass, and early in our relationship figured out exactly which sequence of buttons of mine to push that would make me feel just how she wanted me to feel. I considered the word "high strung" to have been invented solely to help describe her, she was not amused when I shared that opinion with her. We didn't really fight that often, but when we did we figured we might as well get our money's worth, and those fair weather friends, if they were lucky enough to witness us savaging one another, would regale those who missed it with lurid tales of our attempts "to insult each other in the most arcane language we could think of." Some of our friends were convinced that many of the insults we hurled at each other in our stormier moments hadn't been used since the Middle Ages.

In the cemetery of my imagination, where I bury the non mortal remains of my failed relationships, each month I shared with her has its own, individual grave. In amongst all of those tombstones that have one name and two dates on them, she has several stones that bear her name. When I am having maudlin moments, which is happening with disturbing regularity in my life, I open the gate to that cemetery, and wander amongst those graves it is the group of graves that bear her name in front of which I linger the longest. Perhaps the fact that those graves exist, and that I continue to revisit them, is the greatest compliment that I can paid her. Standing there, in that deep, dark, place I never fail to wonder if perhaps a little more effort, or less stupidity on my part would have made the difference. It is standing there, in the half light between memory, and reality, pretending that I am not there, and this isn't happening, that I feel just a bit curious as to her present whereabouts. She always told me she was "destined to move away," that the town where we lived was just too small, and that she "refused to be swallowed by it." There was always that hint/whiff of "she's going to leave you standing at some terminal someday" about her that made you check the ticket prices for bargains from the nearest airport. To be honest, there were a couple of times where I almost bought her a ticket myself. I didn't care (when this urge struck me) where she when, just so long as it was away from me.

She was both a source of inspiration, and a great demotivating presence at the same time. When I would be stuck for a topic or for just the right word, I would make her stand (just stand fully clothed even) in front of me for about two minutes, and usually the bon mot would arrive. Other times she would come rampaging into my day, and point out my shortcomings like a contractor trying to refurbish a hovel, and turn it into the Waldorf. On those days she was like gravity, ruthless, impossible to resist, and always bringing me down. Maybe she was just a figment of my over active imagination, maybe I dreamt her after a night of just too much rye whiskey, and pink pills. Or, maybe she was all too real, so real that I just could not comprehend what was expected of me, and by the time I puzzled it out she was gone like water vapour on a spring day.

It was a tragedy on the scale of Romeo and Juliet (at least for me), but I never really expected anything else. Our relationship was destined to end in tears, and it was even money on who would be the one shedding those tears. After all, I was raised by a wolf, and she, well she was just too unpredictable. I never saw her cry, and I was never convinced that she was physically able to cry, to this day that remains a mystery to me. She taught me a lot of things, and most of things she taught me were things that other people would soon wish I did not know. In some small way, she took a hammer to my soul, leaving it shattered for quite some time, and since I am at my core, a rotten person, I exacted a terrible revenge in her name. In many ways, this post is an (extremely) long apology to those people that were in the wrong place and the wrong time (i.e. in my path after the implosion of us).

She was either fantastically wealthy, or dirt poor, I could never really figure out which. She drove an absolute wreck of a car, and would sometimes eat butter and saltines as her dinner, but would then buy the most outrageously expensive purses that I have ever seen (think LV). Like many things to do with it her, it made no sense to me, maybe she was a trust fund baby who liked living rough to see how the other half lived, or maybe she just didn't like food, but loved handbags. To be quite honest, I didn't think or care too much about it, because I knew that, at the end of the day, our finances would not ever be intertwined. I knew this, and yet I still, in many ways, ignored it. Like blowing through a stop sign on a busy street, it was not a good idea. She told me often that if "you don't expect too much from me, then you won't be let down." It was my mistake, my school boy error, to start expecting too much out of people is a sure fire way to have them disappoint you.

Of course, all of this groundwork I have laid wasn't the original point of this post. That point was to explain the third time that I suffered a beating at the hands of a bunch of clowns. I suppose I got carried away waxing lyrical about her, but she was, in some ways, the reason I took the beating, and that beating was the final act in the tragicomedy that was our relationship. It was, so far at least, the last clown beating I have taken, and it was by far the worst, and I don't just mean the physical marks it left. Those eventually healed.

It was her sense of the absurd that led to her purchasing the tickets to the circus, it was my sense of dread that tried everything I could think of to get out of going. I was limited in my excuse making, because who can tell someone that, they, a grown ass man, could not go to a circus because he was afraid he might get beaten up by clowns? You trying saying that with a straight face, and see how well it works for you. So, it was with great trepidation that I agreed to accompany her to the circus. She she "it will be fun, two grown up fools like ourselves, eating cotton candy, candied apples, and acting like we are 12 again." Usually I need no second invitation to act like a 12 year old, in many ways 12 is a bit of an improvement in the way I normally act, but when the circus got mentioned, I had the feeling that it was all going to go horribly wrong.

Even with my misgivings, I went, and at first things seemed to be going well. I managed to stay a fairly safe distance from any roaming clown I spied, and we were having a fairly good time. By that I mean no one had called each other a bad name in almost an hour, and no one wanted to go home early. I foolishly began to believe that maybe, just maybe, I was going to pull off this trip without a hitch. However, as usual, I was wrong. Maybe I had ingested too much sugar, or maybe I was just feeling a bit cocky, but I let my guard down, and followed her into the big top. I knew, somewhere in the 2 percent of my mind that still held onto to good sense, that the big top was NOT the place I needed to be. However, it was still a bit of a surprise to feel a hand on each elbow, and to hear "come with us playboy, we need to have a conversation," whispered so menacingly into my ear. I knew I should not have been paying so much attention to the daring, young man on the flying trapeze.

As I was frog-marched out of the rear exit of the big top by two not so sad looking clowns, I caught a glimpse of her. There she was, off in the increasing distance, smiling up at the human cannonball as he sailed majestically into the net set up for him, and blithely unaware of my "clown napping." I was hustled past the snow cone concession, past the elephant's shit pile, and into the darker, more remote areas of the circus, where you really shouldn't go with a bodyguard or three. My escorts did not deign to speak to me on our little constitutional, but I had a fairly good idea where we were going, and what was going to happen when we got there. I am no James Bond, I did not possess any cool gadgets that were specially designed for being taken prisoner by clowns (I am pretty sure even Q never thought of that as a eventuality).

When they got me to a sufficiently dark place, I noticed about 4 other clowns waiting patiently in a circle, and there in the center was their spokes-clown. It was, to my relief, no one I had encountered before, so for a brief second I thought "hey, maybe I can brazen this out." That was merely wishful thinking on my part, the clown in charge just looked at me and said, "I assume you know why you here?" The crashing noise I heard after was my hope that I was going to get out of this situation unscathed. I did say "I can explain, I promise" but they weren't in much of a mood to listen. I got out a few incoherent sentences about "her" being the reason I was there, and I like to think they helped a little bit. The "clown in charge" did say to me, as I felt a large presence behind me grab both arms and pinion them behind me "Tully says "hi" and that we don't have to break anything." After that, about three quick, hard punches to my solar plexus dropped me to my knees like a hot rock. I did manage to sputter to the main clown "tell him thanks." "Jesus, son" was his reply "Tully likes you well enough, he just wishes you would have listened to him." That was pretty much the last thing I remember, if I had some witty comeback to that line, it was lost in a rain of blows to my soft parts, and to the eventual (blessed) unconsciousness.

I woke up, several hours later, next to a bucket of melted caramel, and a stack of apples. It was clear that the festivities (both the real circus, and the whipping my ass type) were over for the night. I took stock of my situation, and realized that nothing was broken, and said a small "thank you" to Tully for his mercy. I guess you can still trust the word of a clown. Once I was able to, and it took a few minutes, I stumbled to my feet, got my bearings, and got the hell out of there as quickly as my battered body would take me. I knew for a certainty that when I did manage to make it home, that the scene that would occur would be just plain awful for me. That dread proved to be unfounded, once I got myself cleaned up, and presentable (or as presentable as you can be after having lumps kicked out of you by clowns), I trundled off in search of her to attempt to explain my disappearance.

I must confess, that I did not really have a coherent idea formed of how to best explain "clowns beat me up, and this wasn't the first time" to her without appearing to have lost my marbles. I hadn't quite sorted out whether to just tell the truth, or to attempt some extravagant lie (I always held the opinion that if you are going to lie, you should lie extravagantly). It would not, as it turned out, matter what I was going to say, because I never got the chance (until now) to say it. When I looked for her, she was nowhere to be found, not at school, not at work, and not at home. All I found was a note that read "I'm gone, don't bother to try and explain, and don't look for me. We both knew that you were eventually going to disappoint me." Of all the blows I took that night, both physical and mental, that note left the biggest bruise.

Of course she didn't just pick up stakes that night, and head for destinations unknown, that took her a while. The few times that we were unavoidably thrown into a social situation at the same time brought a new definition to the word awkward, and I am the walking definition of the word awkward. I am not sure, and don't really care if those aforementioned friends noticed the frostiness in these encounters, but I certainly did (she did icy with real determination). Those, thankfully few and brief, encounters were brutal at least for me. I never found out how she felt about them, and by the time I worked up the courage to try, she was gone, this time physically and for good. There may have been only four cardinal directions for her to have gone in, but that covers a lot of territory, I should know.

In two days, that will have been exactly 8 years ago. For the first 5 years or so, I would "celebrate" what I liked to call the anniversary of the death of our relationship by getting bombed, and acting a fool. That got old eventually, and cost me a couple of other relationships, and a few friends, it even cost me one night in a drunk tank. A few of those type of nights, and a few sobering hours in that tank were enough for me to realize that all the booze in the world (like all the king's horses, and all the king's men) could not 'put me together again'. That realization was the first step on the road to being able to write this story out without wanting to jump off a bridge.

After five years I sort of stopped 'celebrating' the anniversary as it were, and decided to try and bury her in my 'graveyard'. There she lay for about 3 or 4 years until recent events (never mind which ones, they aren't important to an already overly long story). My primary therapist, Herr Kronenbourg, is both a wise, and a literary man, and has helped me make great strides in my attempts to be the man I want to be, whomever the hell that is. I mentioned Herr Kronenbourg's literary bent because he was able to recognize the quote that almost always use when, in those foolish moments, I remember her aloud. I shamelessly stole the quote from Christopher Marlowe, but it is a good quote, and fairly sums up the, now end, result of our relationship. I will end this massive post with that quote because, quite frankly, this post couldn't end any other way.

Herr Kronenbourg: 'Thou has committed--'

Me: 'Fornication: but that was in another country; and besides, the wench is dead'.

Blurry

2010-09-21T12:53:00.003-05:00

Much like the image above, many things in my life have lost focus. Certain important things, and several things that I feel only seem important have become a bit blurry about the edges. This blog for one, when I was blathering on about my heroes, and forcing myself to post once a day (regardless of quality), I had a focus, a purpose, a reason for continuing it. Now, that the year of heroes has passed, I find myself struggling for topics, I am finding it increasingly difficult to motivate myself to post anything.

I read a few other blogs, not many, but a few. Most of them are quite good, and I enjoy reading them. However, there is one that I read on occasion that I LOATHE. No, I am not going to "name names" and I am pretty sure the writer of the blog in question has NO idea how much I loathe their blog. Part of the reason is that the blogger is a whiny douche bag, and just needs to grow the fuck up, but the other part, the main part, is that the blogger recycles themselves over and over again. As far as I can tell, in my limited reading of their blog, this person writes what is functionally the same fucking post over and over and over again. Nothing new, or different is being said in the most recent post that wasn't said in a post from 4 years ago.

The sad part, if there is a sad part, is that you can sort of tell the blogger has at least some talent, but they are so focused (like a laser) into making their whiny point that they don't realize, or as I suspect, don't care that they are just merely repeating themselves using slightly different words. It grates on the nerves to the nth degree, and, as is my right, I now rarely check the blog in question. Maybe the person has no clue as to the rut they are in, or maybe they don't think they are in one, but it is particularly frustrating to a reader to read the same thing repeatedly (there is a John Grisham joke here, but I don't wish to slander anyone). I guess it is a bit like opening a Xmas present, and getting socks, again for about the 7th year running. It is also an insult to that person's readers (and it appears they have quite a few), to ask your readers to come to your blog, when just having a blog can be seen as the height of arrogance, and then have them be subjected to page after page of the same drivel, is just rude.

This is the trap I am trying so very hard to avoid, and it (and a large streak of laziness) are two the main causes for the dearth of recent posts. Even writing this post, I realize there are probably at least two, or three previous posts of mine that come dangerously close to being this post in different words. "Old wine, in a new bottle" is not something I, nor I suspect my vast readership, is interested in reading. It is a struggle, and I have the handicaps of being lazy (as I mentioned before), and not particularly talented (as is clear by reading the blog). These are tall obstacles in my way, and I am not a high jumper, so it might go badly, or a fit of inspiration might be waiting just around the corner. Petrarch had his Laura, and Robert Herrick had his Julia, but, no offense ladies, I would prefer a more broader source of inspiration (and I am not making a fat girl joke here).

I don't know where, or if that inspiration will come, but I can sit here and wait expectantly for it to arrive. The good news is that this post, when i planned it out in my head, had an entirely different focus, and was going to be completely different. So, at least I now have at least a vague idea for at least one more post. I am sure that will be a cause for celebration amongst my aforementioned vast readership.

They Said

2010-09-08T17:57:00.002-05:00

Picture this, a small(ish) cube in an average office, on an average day, our hero is sitting at his desk struggling to stay awake, err working as hard as possible, when his phone rings. Being a dedicated public servant he answers after about 10 rings, I mean immediately. The voice on the end of the line starts with these famous words "they said . . . . " Our hero hears no more than those three words, because of the suppressed rage ringing in his head has drowned out the rest of the sentence. Gripping the phone receiver very, very tightly, he mutters back through clenched teeth "and who, pray tell, are "they" exactly?" Of course the caller doesn't know who "they" are, all the caller knows is what "they" said, and "they" said that our hero was THE person who could help them. It doesn't matter what their problem is, what their complainant might concern, or what question they need an answer to, "they" said you were the man for the job.

This little mise en scene highlights one of my all time favourite pet peeves. I receive an inordinate number of these types of phone calls during any given week, and it drives me mad. I even get people coming up to me in person, and starting their sentences with 'they said'. It makes me want to hurt someone, anyone, everyone that I can lay my hands upon. Who the fuck are 'they' exactly, and did 'they' mention my name in particular, and why do you think 'they' knew what the sam fucking hill they were talking about? Why couldn't 'they' answer your question? Oh, could it be because 'they' are fucking retarded? Or, it is because 'they' are too bloody lazy to even attempt to answer your question? Or, is it that your question is so fucking stupid that 'they' wanted to pass you along to the next person in line so that person could laugh at your stupid fucking question after they were done talking to you.

Needless to say, but I am going to say it, 'they said' is a VERY unfortunate way to start a conversation with me. A great number of my conversations end badly as it is, starting one with 'they said' is a surefire way to get to a bad ending very quickly. My usual response is (while pounding the desk in front of me) is to shout "WHO! WHO IS THEY! I WANT NAMES GODDAMNIT"! I am like an old, hard line communist I want you to name names. I want to know WHO 'they' are so I can go to 'them' and ask them why in the blue fuck 'they' gave a blue ribbon winning jackass (the person asking the question) my name. Were 'they' having a larf at my expense? Did 'they' think it would be clever to send some village idiot in my direction, knowing that I do not suffer fools gladly?

Whomever 'they' are, 'they' certainly say a lot of shit, and most of it is wildly inaccurate. I am not the answer man, and only about 1 in 10 of the people 'they' send to me can I actually help. The other nine just have to try again, and move on to the next poor sucker in my office. However, I am not a cruel man (in spite of popular opinion), if it is at all possible (and it depends on the level of idiocy of the caller), I gently tell said caller who they need to talk to, and then tell the caller to make sure you give 'them" my name. No need to continue the 'they said' chain to the next bastard in line. After all there is a slim chance that I got it right, and directed the person to the fellow that could answer their question, and if that happens, I look like the genius that I clearly am.

Meal Time

2010-09-06T11:28:00.003-05:00

I am not a skinny man, I have never been a skinny man. I was born fat, raised fat, and only got fatter as I got older. I have only lost any significant amount of weight twice in my life. The first time was about 2 and a half years ago, when a lovely doctor removed about a foot of my colon. That led to a 12 day stay in the hospital, the first 7 of which were without solid food of any kind. That little exercise cost me a foot of my colon and 25 pounds. I recommend it as a way to lose weight, however I don't recommend it as the best way. Unless of course you like having a rather longish scar to show off to people, if you do then go for it.

The second time I have lost significant weight has been more recent. I, and some co-workers joined WW (tm), and I have been following their "plan" for about six months. So, far I have lost about 45 pounds, which is good since I had gained back those 25 I lost earlier, and already had my own gravitational field. The items in the picture above are a close proximity to the food served at my local that helped make me such a tub of lard. They are called smothered tots, and they are the bomb. Especially at about 1 a.m when you have had just enough beer to be hungry for that second dinner you missed earlier. They are a sure fire way to fill you up, and probably make you gain five pounds on the spot. In the last six months I have had them, twice, and both times I didn't eat anything else for the rest of the day. They were my splurge for the week, and god damn they were good. However, since I am still trying to lose weight (though I seem to have leveled off lately), they remain forbidden fruit.

But my longing for the those items has posed to me a question. Have you ever missed out on, or turned down a really good meal? I mean it might be home cooking, or if you are like me raised by a wolf that had the you kill your food theory of kitchen management, it might be something like smothered tots at a bar. Whichever type of food it is that strikes your fancy, have you ever walked away from it? Has it, at any time in your life, just not been worth it? Sure it is good, sure it is tasty, and you sure are fucking hungry, but they remorse you will feel after shoveling it in might just be worse right? I mean, clearly you have bellied up to this, and anything else that wouldn't eat you first, way too many times before. Which is why the seams in your pants are screaming for mercy to begin with.

Your love affair with food is just a bit too passionate, and your doctor can only shake his head in amazement that his scale has numbers that go that high when you lumber into his office for a visit. This relationship you have with food is unhealthy (at least for you), and since you are way too lazy to do any sort of "exercise", walking away from food is the only other answer. Sure it hurts, and sure you will be lying awake at night thinking 'what might have been', but unless you want to reinforce the bed springs, you need to be thinking about how good that apple tasted.

Sure walking away is difficult, but if you want to be able to walk away, and not be wheeled away on a gurney from the heart attack, or stretched off like a futbol player at the World Cup, then you really need to learn to walk away. Sometimes the candle just isn't worth the game, and realizing that, understanding that sure it tastes good, makes you feel good, and makes you happy (for the moment at least) in the long run it is only going to cause you untold amount of grief, and might kill you in the bargain. It is not a happy lesson, and as you munch on your tasteless salad you might curse the "fat gene" which you so obviously possess, but in the long run it is about making the right choice. Eat now, break the sofa when you lie down on it later, or skip the tots and just drink half the amount of calories in beer, that way you won't break the sofa, and even if you do, you will be too drunk to care.

Snowflakes

2010-09-03T19:46:00.003-05:00

In the geographical location I find myself, I see very little of the stuff above, and when it does comes it usually creates utter chaos. But, this is not a post about the weather, or about how my town grid locks when there is merely the IDEA that it will snow. No, this is a different kind of post, one that attempts to explain that after posting at least once a day for a year, I am not regulated back to one a week if I am lucky. Topics, or rather a dearth of them, are to blame, and even that statement is not entirely true. It is remarkable the lies we will tell ourselves, and others to explain our behavior when we really know the root cause, but are just too ashamed to admit to it.

That truth, the one that I don't like to admit to myself because it makes me looks even lazier that I actually am. Is that I have topics to post about. Almost daily I have an idea or a thought (I know that is a shock to some that know me) that I could, if I applied myself, turn into a reasonable blog post (not that a blog post is any great accomplishment). However, like most things that go pear shaped, these ideas usually come at the worst time. Sometimes they come to me in the middle of the day when I am doing about 5 other things that I don't really want to do, and have taken just a few moments to quietly stare off into space, other times they come to me as I am in the shower belting out show tunes at the top of my voice. But, by far, the most frequent time I get "brilliant" ideas is as I am lying (or is it laying?) in bed. Just as I am about to begin to drool the drool of remorse into the pillow of regret, WHAM! The idea lamp is lit, and I have the idea for my next blog post all worked out in my head. I am usually able to postpone sleep long enough to work out a few sentences of the post, but sadly when the alarm goes off in the morning the idea is long gone. Like snowflakes meeting sunlight it has melted away (or is it back?) into my subconscious (a terrifying place), and is as lost as last year's Easter Eggs never to return.

Since I generally haven't the slightly recollection of WHAT the idea was, I can not tell if it is a good or bad thing that the idea didn't survive until morning. All I know (usually) is I had the idea, and it seems like a good idea at the time (how many disasters have started with that phrase), but in the harsh light of the day arriving outside my window I got nothing. It is quite depressing, and I suppose I should keep pen and paper on my nightstand to jot down these earth shattering ideas while they are 'fresh'. However, that would require me having sense, which I clearly do not, and it also poses the (inevitable) problem of me writing some fantastic idea down in the middle of the night, and then being totally unable to decipher what that idea was in the morning due to horrible handwriting (or being drunk). I do suspect that, in the long run, most of these ideas are crap, and are better left in the graveyard of ideas into which they have disappeared, but even if one of them was good, then this blog, and my life is the poorer because of my bad memory.

The Sinful Garden

2010-08-24T06:58:00.007-05:00

There are going to be (at least) two threads to follow in this post, and I will do my best to have them make sense. Let's start somewhere closer to the beginning, and hope that it helps. In my job I get lied to a LOT. On pretty much a daily basis I get told a collection of whoppers that would do a village of fishermen proud. Most of these lies are told to me second hand, and usually, but not always, the person telling me the lie doesn't really believe it themselves. They are just doing there job(s). However, a couple of days (at least) a week I get the pleasure of getting lied to directly to my face. After about 5 and a half years of this, I have pretty much heard them all, and many times I just interrupt the liar and finish their lie for them. I mean, now days it has to be a pretty inventive lie to attract my attention.

It is a glimpse into the human race that does not show them in their best light, and I am quite certain that it contributes a great deal to my natural pessimism. It brings out my misanthropy as well, but hey what can you do? It's a living. It does have a small upside, I can now detect a lie in about four words, and a lot of times when I do this, I just stop the person in mid-lie, and walk away to the next liar err person. It has slightly improved my poker game because I can tell (a little more often) when my crazy friends are bluffing. Not much of an upside, but a little upside is better than none. This is the first thread, and it will (hopefully) make sense why I had to put it down in writing before I continued to the second thread, which is the real point of this post.

The second thread starts in bed, and no it isn't nearly as exciting as it sounds. After I tossed, and turned my way to (eventually) falling asleep last night, I began to dream (and for a change not about crows). I don't really remember much about the content of the dream, but luckily the content isn't really important to this story.

What is important is that I was having this detailed conversation with some fellow, and he was assuring me of something. I am not exactly sure what, but he swore up one side and down the other that he was telling me the gospel truth. No big deal, it is a dream after all, and I guess we can hope. The odd part comes when I woke up, which I did for about 30 seconds, just long enough to process what my dream was about, but not long enough to remember all the details. I fell back asleep, and my dream (oddly enough) picked up where I had left it, sort of like hitting the pause button.

However, sadly for me the second dream was slightly different. In the second dream, I was being presented with incontrovertible proof that the fellow in the first dream was lying to me. It was a grand production, and it was pretty obvious that dude had been lying. He was even there, sheepish grin on his face, not really denying his lies. Needless to say, but I will say it anyway, this upset me quite a bit, this betrayal upset me so much that I woke up from dream number two.

Now, I understand it was a dream, and a hazy one at that, but all I could reflect upon when I woke up the second time was that my life is so sad, that people are even lying to me in my dreams. I think a small part of the child inside me (which was pretty small to begin with) died with that realization.

Crashing

2010-08-20T21:06:00.003-05:00

Have you ever had the pleasure of watching a mirror break? Or have you ever been so fucking mad that you broke a mirror? If you have, then I hope you aren't still mired in the seven years of bad luck that is supposed to "come with" such an event. I haven't broken any mirrors in a blind rage lately, but I have seen someone I know begin to resemble one. Watching this person over the last 6 months or so has been like watching a mirror SLOWLY breaking. First, a few cracks appear, nothing major just a couple of hairline faults along the edges, just a "bad day" or "not enough sleep" easy enough to overlook, and hopefully easy enough to fix. Though people aren't as easily fixed as mirrors, there is no equivalent to the "glass repairman" for people as far as I know. Maybe those cracks do eventually go away, or self repair for some people, however not for the person I know. They soon spread out from the center, got wider, and deeper, and it became ugly to watch. I can only imagine how horrible it was to feel. Must be a bit like Humpty Dumpty seeing those first cracks appear on his shell, and having that horrible feeling that shit is about to break bad. From the outside it was awful, from the inside, I would think, it would be terrifying.

But, what can we do? The people outside aren't really "set up" for these kinds of problems, and we have our own problems to try to solve. The person "inside" (as it were) must feel totally helpless. Of course, that is assuming they realize that they are cracking up, and want to try and prevent it. Maybe they don't realize the extent of the fissures, or don't care. Maybe cracking up, and being sent off to a rest cure is exactly the angle they are playing. Even if a person possess the self awareness to realize they are cracking up (which I would think would be a rarity), what steps can they take to prevent it? Can you go to your pals, and say "sorry to bother you old bean, but I think I am losing the plot."? Even if they believe you, and there might be no reason why they shouldn't, how are they, or how can they help.

Once those cracks reach a certain depth or width, the integrity of the whole mirror becomes compromised. Then, all bets are off, and it becomes every man for himself. The shattering is inevitable, and all we can do now is try to avoid being cut. That is when the helpless feeling reaches its peak. I mean what the fuck can we or they do? The warning signs were there, and they were duly ignored. Now, we are seconds from disaster, and have only our stupid pride to blame. Pride that we, educated people that we are, can surely prevent this shattering from taking place if only we apply ourselves. That is foolish pride, this shattering, this "falling off the wall" is as certain as the sun's rise in the morning, and we are irresponsible idiots for thinking otherwise.

Once a mirror shatters it is a bit like Humpty Dumpty, i.e. "all the king's horses, and all the king's men" aren't going to be able to put it together again. And do we have a duty to try? I'm not a horse, and I am certainly no "king's man", so where does my loyalty lie? It is with my, now crocked, friend, or is it to the greater good (whatever the hell that means), or is it to myself? I would figure most of us would provide one of those three answers, but which one? If we decided on the greater good, and we try to pick up the pieces, then what do we do with them? They certainly aren't going to go back into the same shape they were before, and how can we be sure we found them all? Even if we put it together into something reasonably close to what we had before, how can we ever look into that mirror again without flinching just a bit, and wondering is it going to break again?

The Question

2010-08-18T20:01:00.003-05:00

If you read this blog, and fuck you if you don't, you should probably know what I do for a "living" (carefully chosen word there). As a part and parcel of my job I have to ask a lot of people, a lot of questions. Generally, the rule I try to follow when asking these questions is that I already know the answer. The old saying "don't ask a question you don't know the answer to" is pretty accurate in my line of work, and I don't like surprises. It is something that the people I am asking my questions of just can't seem to grasp. How do I know all of these things, well I could say that I am a hard worker, and do my research in advance, but that would be a lie. I am not a particularly hard worker, but I do manage to figure out the answers to my questions in advance. It isn't magic, but I sure sometimes enjoy making it look like it is. It takes the mystery out of the whole thing, but I am not David Copperfield, I don't need illusion and mystery in my working life.

Of course this habit of mine has bled over into my "personal" life, and I sometimes, to the annoyance of my friends, ask them questions that I already know the answer to. It is, by all accounts, not an endearing quality, and I need all the endearing qualities I can get. The problem that I have noticed lately, and it is a problem, or this blog post wouldn't exist is that I am taking this little habit too far. I have began to notice that the only questions that I DO ask are the ones I already know the answer to, and by default not asking questions that I don't know the answer to. This does take a lot of the mystery out of life, but it also deprives me of a lot of information.

I would suspect this habit of mine makes it somewhat difficult to be my friend, and it might be a part of the reason that I have so few of them. I can only hope that admitting that I have this "problem" is the first step on the road to solving the problem. However, there is one small obstacle on this road to being a better friend, and it is one that must be over come first. It is actually quite a large obstacle, and finding it is only half the problem. This obstacle, this barrier, this wall that I must get around is simply this, I have to spent a considerable amount of time asking the one person in the world that I don't want to ask questions that I don't know the answer to. Of course, you will have guessed by now who that person is, it is myself, and I know it seems silly to think that I can ask myself a question I don't know the answer to, but that is about as clearly as I can put it. Let's just hope that I don't do it aloud in a public place, and get carted off to a rest home for the rest of my life. And, let's hope that if I am able to finally answer myself, that I can live with the answer I give myself.

The "NO" Man

2010-08-15T17:00:00.004-05:00

I go from "The Man with No Name" to the "NO man", we all need a NO man, or I guess in this politically correct world a NO person, in our lives. We all need that one person that we can turn to when what little power we possess has gone to our head, that can tell us "NO". Hopefully, this person is a friend, but that is not a pre-requisite. It could just be a colleague, or an passing acquaintance, though it is more likely to be a friend. It is the person that stops you just short of that ledge, the one that keeps you from walking into your bosses office drunk, and taking a piss on his/her desk. We all have to have one, I figure that if Hitler and Stalin had possessed a "NO" man the history of the world would be a lot different, maybe not better, but certainly different.

The NO man is the one that prevents us from getting so drunk on our own sense of power that we bludgeon someone to death with a package of frozen peas. It is a difficult task to be the NO man, and no many of us are cut out to do it. Most of us will agree with our friends ideas, no matter how insane they might be, because they are our friends, and we realize that they are harmless. Stalin was far, far, from fucking harmless. Few of us have the juice to tell our bosses "NO", and fewer still will try. After all, the economy is in the tank, and getting shit canned because you told the boss something they didn't want to hear is a little risky. Unless you have plans to emigrate to a foreign country, you had best just nod and smile at whatever foolishness your boss spouts.

However thankless the task, the NO man is a necessary character in our own little passion play, we need a sense of balance to keep us from thinking we are much more brilliant than we actually are. Being told Yes all the time has, in my opinion, a chilling effect on our moral fiber. If everyone agrees with us all the time, then why the hell am I not ruling this planet? If my ideas are so "spot on" then why do I need to limit myself to thinking about how best to save money on staples, I should be plotting a coup in the Central African Republic.

We all need to be reined in at one time or another lest we become like a runaway horse and we run ourselves to death. This is the task of the "No" man, the one man, woman, or child, that you can turn to and get that "honest" opinion that brings you crashing back down to earth. The one person that reminds you that you are mortal, and you should probably keep your big mouth shut for a change. Unless the NO man is extremely lucky, their role will not make them overly popular, and they have to be careful not to cross the line between NO man, and doomsayer. It is a fine line, and many a NO man has lost his position by crossing it at the wrong time. A certain, high level of respect is necessary in order to be a NO man, people don't take No as an answer with grace, and the NO man has to be certain that his opinion will be taken into account. It is tricky, it is tough, and it is necessary, but it might not get you invited to christmas dinner that often.

If you are lucky enough to have one, be careful with them. Because a good NO man is nearly impossible to replace, they were probably hard to find, and they will be a bugger to replace. Any damn fool can be a Yes man, but it takes a special type of person to be a NO man. We should all have one in our lives, maybe two, but if you have more than two then you might just be surrounded by a bunch of suicidal maniacs. Remember, NO is a powerful tonic that can cure a lot of problems, but drink too much of it, and you become paralyzed. Trust your NO man with things you wouldn't tell other people, but realize their job, their raison d'etre is to tell you not what you want to hear, but to tell you "NO!", try not to hold it against them.

A Day in the Life

2010-08-13T21:39:00.003-05:00

Woman: "you shouldn't say such bad things about him, he's your friend isn't he?"
Man: "of course he is my friend, I just don't like him very much."
Woman: "what? how can you say that? that makes no sense."
Man: "Oh, it is ok, he doesn't like his friends very much either."
Woman: "Oh"

I won't divulge whether the little chat above was had BY me with someone else, or was ABOUT me, and reported to me later. It does make a lot difference if you are the object of the above conversation, or if you are the subject of the above conversation. Or, at least it should, I am not for certain that in my case that it does. Which, I think, says a lot about my current situation. Of course, I am not fully aware of my current situation, and that says a lot about me. I have been told, by more than one person, that I am "the smartest person they've ever met." Sounds awesome doesn't it? Well, since I am a bit of a cynic by nature (who would have guessed that?) that comment made me think two things. First, they were lying their asses off, or two, they really haven't met that many people, and should get out of the house around adults more often. Because if I am the smartest fellow you've ever met, then the world is in a LOT of trouble. And, I do mean a lot of trouble.

But, if we take these people at their word, and they were quite insistent that they weren't lying, or that they had not spent the last 15 years surrounded by "special needs" pre-school children, then I weep for the world. Mainly because, and I say this with a great deal of confidence, I am an idiot. Not the drooling over himself type of idiot that spends his days near the window in some rest home staring out into space until the staff comes to feed and change him, but a full blown, "should know better, but doesn't do better" type of idiot. I figure on the idiot scale, if such a thing exists, my type of idiot has to be at, or near the top.

My type of idiot skates very close to Einstein's definition of insane. Which is "doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result." That's correct, I am the dangerous type of idiot, both to myself (no loss there), and to others (where the potential for mass destruction lies). The type of idiot that you do not want near sharp object, fire, and/or your children. In my wake, I leave mountains crumbled, milk curdled, crops failing, wells poisoned, and livestock barren. In many ways I am the anti-Bond, stiff, classless, clueless, rude, and coarse. It is quite a burden to bear, but I made it so I have to shoulder it myself. A better comparison would be with The Groke, and if you get that obscure reference (without having to Google it) then you are miles ahead of me in the cleverness race. Of the two choices I would pick The Groke, because, at least as far as I can tell, The Groke isn't to blame for the devastation she causes. I am pretty certain that the devastation I cause is almost entirely my fault.

That is an important difference, and I compound that particular crime by having a certain degree of fore knowledge. I seem to have a knack for creating disasters, and I make it worse because most of the time, I KNOW that I am creating a disaster, and run the risk anyway. That is almost as bad as a war crime, and I should be taken out, stood up against the nearest wall, denied the use of a blindfold, and shot like a dog. There is really no defense (even if I chose to provide one) for this type of behaviour. It is reprehensible, and it makes me one of the worst human beings that I have ever had the (dis)pleasure to know, and I know a lot of really bad human beings.

There are days, and I am sure we all have them I just seem to have more than my share, where everything I touch becomes a disaster. It is like a plane falling out of the sky onto a two trains that have wrecked into each other that happened in the middle of a hurricane. However, I do think that sometime before I passed out, err fell asleep last night (eventually) I may have stumbled upon one of my core problems. At least I think I did, I am hoping that it wasn't one of those discoveries that are just so perfect just before you drift off to sleep, and then look retarded in the bright light of day. I have not had a lot of time to test my idea, since I did actually have to drag my ass into work, and work just has a nasty habit of getting in the way of a lot of things.

I have made the statement before that I believe that one should attempt to see one's life from the outside. It is difficult, and it takes a lot of imagination, but I think it is possible. I believe that you should be like a film director when it comes to your life. That way, you are on the outside looking in rather than trapped on the inside where you lose perspective. And it is perspective that is critical, you have to begin to see other people (certain ones more than others) not as "actors" making a guest appearance, but as "co-stars", people who are going to do more than a one off episode in/of your life. Then you have to realize, you can't "direct" them, they are like free radicals, and are going to make your orderly little "set" experience some major upheaval.

It will be this upheaval that will be your introduction back into life, back into being more than an outsider. Once you break the fourth wall, and start talking TO your audience or co-stars, rather that AT them, or using them as props in your own one man show, then progress can be made. It is going to be difficult, but most things worth their salt are difficult, and you are going to face a lot of change (and you probably fear change). But, it is something that must needs doing. Once you manage it, if you manage it, you can be both star (or at least co-star), and director of your own life. Remember that creative control is about both being creative, and being in control, and sometimes you have to sacrifice one for the other. Just make sure the candle is worth the game before you do.

And whether you turn your life into a sparse production a la Bresson, or some grand epic like DeMille, is entirely up to you (and the number of co-stars you have). Be aware you don't get the 50 retakes that Bresson demanded of his models, and you probably won't have the budget that DeMille was working with. Keeping it on budget, and getting it in one take is essential, in fact, you only get one take, so you had best make it a good one.

P.S. this has been the work of three days or so, and I saved it I couldn't just go another day without posting. I miss my heroes.

The Man with No Name

2010-08-11T16:05:00.004-05:00

Well, this is it, the end of the line of our hero parade. Number 366, and the last in the line. Last in line, but very close to being my number one hero of all time is the hard bitten fellow above. No, not Clint Eastwood, we have already had him as a hero, but the character he is portraying in the above picture. He is "The Man with No Name" but, he does get called three different names in the Dollars Trilogy. First, he is "Joe" then he becomes "Manco" and finally "Blondie." I suppose you can say that he was "born" in 1964, since that was the year "A Fistful of Dollars" was released, but he doesn't really need to have a birthday.

He is not your "white hat" type of cowboy hero, he is not going to save the day, unless saving the day does something for him. He lies, cheats, steals, and kills on his own terms, and while he does do the occasional act of kindness for no reward (such as sharing his cigar with the dying solider in the scene that he obtains the famous green poncho), he is usually morally ambiguous, and he could do with a good shave. Eastwood himself helped to create the visual image of No Name, he bought the black jeans from a shop on Hollywood Boulevard, then had them bleached out, and roughened up a bit. The hat came from a shop in Santa Monica, and the trademark cigars came from a store in Beverly Hills. The cigars are the classical touch, and Eastwood claims they put him in a "scratchy mood" that allowed him to play No Name so well (he was a non-smoker, and hated the smell of the cigar smoke, it also helped to contribute to his famous squint).

He is laconic to a fault, and that is a trait that I am actively pursuing. I have been attempting to be laconic at work for the past two days, and so far it seems to be working, it also seems to make people a bit mad, but what do I care? There is a lot to be said for not saying a lot, and I have even been told that recently I made someone cry with just a look. I am not proud of that fact, nor was it the effect I was going for, but maybe there is something to this whole laconic thing.

Eastwood himself said, about playing the character:

"I wanted to play it with an economy of words and create this whole feeling through attitude and movement. It was just the kind of character I had envisioned for a long time, keep to the mystery and allude to what happened in the past. It came about after the frustration of doing Rawhide for so long. I felt the less he said the stronger he became and the more he grew in the imagination of the audience.

And it works brilliantly, Eastwood took a lot of dialogue OUT of the screenplay, and thank goodness he did. You can't really picture No Name as anything but a man of precious few words. Of his past we learn precious little, unlike Tuco, we don't know if he has any family or not, we have no idea where he came from, or where he is going. We know that "he never found home that great", and we know he likes money, and will do a lot of shady things to make it, but he still has some sort of moral code that determines what lengths he will go to in order to get money. It is HIS moral code, he makes it, and he is probably the one person alive who knows its boundaries. And even more that his laconic-ness it is this trait that I am trying to emulate. I have spent a considerable amount of time in the last few days exploring/creating my OWN moral code, and while I am unsure if I have been very successful, I at least feel the need to try, and to keep trying. I need to define my code, to learn the boundaries of it, so I can figure out what kind of man I am.

He is independent, he calls his own shots, and while he may have partners from time to time, he is always looking out for "number one", and that is important to remember. Loyalty to others is a wonderful thing, but the first person you need to be loyal to is yourself. It must be a wonderful feeling, to be the master of his own destiny, not owing anybody, anything, and being free to walk away when he wants to. These are the traits that usually get him cited as being the prototypical anti-hero. I would suspect he is not the only anti-hero on this list, and that No Name and James Bond would get along like a house on fire. Perhaps it is the type that I am fond of, and I can't say that it is a bad thing. I like John Wayne and Roy Rogers and all, but they are just a little too "heroic" for me. I am a man of many flaws, and I need my hero to have them as well. Without those flaws, he would be too much like a cardboard cut out hero, I need my hero to exist in that grey area between right and wrong.

He doesn't say much, but you get the idea that what he says, he means, and you had probably pay attention to what he says. One line of speech from him is like a soliloquy from someone else. I saved him for last, because of the profound attraction that I have for many of his character traits. I am not skilled enough to "play" him with any conviction, but I am working on the squint, and using as few words as possible (at least while talking, writing is a different matter).

It is for those stirring performances in all three films, that I have made him my last hero of the day. There is unlikely to be another hero post anytime soon, and I wanted to go out with a bang rather than a whimper. I am quite proud of myself that I was able to finish this project, and even though the majority of the writing is dross, that should not be held against the 366 men and women that I picked out to be my heroes. Their heroic qualities should shine through my awful attempts at explaining them. I plucked them out of an extremely large group of people, each for his or her own reason, and sometimes in spite of other people's bad opinions of them. They are MY heroes, the 366 people that I would have dinner with, some more than others, but each one has a special place in my "heart." Not to sound too sappy, but I love them all. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

So to close the circle, for being in many ways the man I always wanted to be, The Man with No Name (1964-present) you are my (366th) hero of the day.