Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Peppermint Ryder






Okay, this break from politics is really working for me. It is helping. The biking accident has forced me to step out of my routine a bit. No more daily exercising. Now it is all roast chicken and potatoes drenched in animal fats, endless bottles of nice red wine. I've gained ten pounds or so since my crash on Sunday. Appetite is really something, no matter how much it takes in it's still somehow able to catch up with me.  Makes a great jogging partner, always keeps pace perfectly as I slow to a walk and then a stop. It's good to take on some weight when you're feeling lonely. It's festive, helps keep me jolly, gives me something to laugh about. 

The bruises in my shoulder back and rib cage have only become worse since yesterday. Men that are nearly 50 are not meant to be slammed onto pavement without warning. I know that now. Those days were meant to be long over. From this experience I can extrapolate that life is hard, from that observation the conclusion that so easily follows is that I am against immigration.

Nope. I don't even have an opinion on it. I could, but what's the point? It's a constitutional crisis, we're told. I'll let the experts figure it out, at least until it seems that they need my help. My expertise is primarily in the ability to confuse cultural issues with political ones. Nobody even bothers noticing. For many, there must be little or no difference. 


Some friends texted last night after I had drifted off to sleep, encouraging me to find out more about Peppermint Patty. I'm just not in a spot where I can meet a Peppermint Patty and pretend that I'm enthusiastic about it, and just such an undertaking might require enthusiasm to make it through. 


Winona Ryder's face is really something. It has the ability to surprise itself without the aid of a mirror. She reminds me of several people that I have known, a sort of amalgam of neurotic quirks and tendencies all wrapped up into one criminal enterprise. Things seem to sneak up on her mind and then overtake her face, completely without warning. The struggle is real - The Age of Innocence, indeed. 

I don't need a Patty, I need a Ryder, a real shoplifter for the elites, a dark and crazy type with witchy eyes and a penchant for petty crime. If you watch the clip carefully, the way that I always do, then you can almost see which one of her demons has the drug problem.


Today is Pirate Day at school. The boy loves this sort of thing. He lives for it, truly. We pulled out a map of NYC and planted a big Treasure X out off of the coast of La Guardia, within swimming distance from Rikers Island. Then, we put another in the East Village near my old place. Tough to say how much pirate booty I left in those walls, or in the hallways. 

He wore his turquoise shoes because they are the color of the oceans. Impossible not to adore those moments as they occur, little treasures wrapped up inside of themselves. 

Winona would do great at Pirate Day. Kids love all things animated.







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Monday, January 30, 2017

Road Rash





Yesterday morning I set off for a bike ride with the two women who tried to kill me in the swimming pool not so long ago. They wanted to get started at a nice early 8am, which was fine though a bit chilly. I put on a few layers. and we all started off, using Hwy 121 to cut through the hills towards Napa. We rode together at a comfortable pace. It was a route that I don't often take, so there was a novelty factor to it. The views of the bay off to one side are really something from high up in the hills. By 9am I was getting warm so I stopped and took off my light windbreaker jacket, rolled it up and tied it around my waist. About two miles later my back wheel locked up and I slammed down hard onto the roadside pavement, the sound of my helmet making a loud plastic crack as my head bounced from the shock. I skidded off the side of the the road leaving a layer of skin from my elbow in an untraceable smear inside my shirt, whose fabric also tore up the sleeve, in part taking the place of what would have been my skin and bone. 

A 48 year old body landing on pavement at about 15 mph is always an unwelcome experience, the muscles and bones and ligaments and tendons all respond slowly over the next 24 hours in what then becomes a unison of chorused pain messages. I could hardly roll out of bed this morning. I brush my teeth like John McCain now. The entire right side of my body has frozen up with stiffness. 

I've learned the same lesson many times before, though it has been decades. As soon I was able to process the basic fact of having gone over I started trying to piece together the how and the why of it. There was a pvc pipe at the scene of the disaster, resting underneath my bike, that I thought I might have somehow caused the crash, but my riding buddy pointed out that my jacket was bound up in the rear brake. Yet another argument for disc brakes, I guess. I've caused myself misery in this exact same way before many times, as a kid. The remembered pain of previous lessons learned comes right back to the mind to remind and taunt. 

Ah yes, of course... the old jacket in the caliper brakes mistake.

I was able to get my bike back to operational status by loosening the rear brakes which had seized up a bit in the crash. They are still rubbing ever so slightly, but I was able to carry on after about 10 minutes of bleeding and whining. At least my crash happened in front of two women so that I could maintain my cool factor, because nothing says you're tough quite like letting few wet tears break free at the onset of pain, and some hopping around on one foot like a real man. 

One of them had already called her husband to come ambulance me away, but it wasn't really necessary. My brake and gear-change handles were smashed over towards one side and had grass pieces jammed up into the components, but they could be straightened out by hand. Once back on the bike my body started to give me reports on the scope of the damage. Each of the first few pedal strokes caused a series of questions and answers along the right side of the rib cage. The full weight of my body had slammed down along the side up to the shoulder. I must have even bounced once. 

Riding loosened me up a bit, though I knew what was coming, and I was right. Today, everything has caught up with me. Three cups of coffee, two aspirin, some Advil, and an Aleve, just to cover all of my bases and to help verify that my liver wasn't damaged in the crash. 


After we reached the end of an old decommissioned winery road near the Napa river we decided to turn back and head home. This is where one of my friends told me about a "single friend" of hers. She described her as sort of a consistently heavy drinker that has let herself go a bit over the last ten years or so, a little bit mean-spirited but desperate to get laid, even angry about it at times lately. Her physical description was that of a woman that dresses and looks much like Peppermint Patty. 

Tempting, to be sure, though I told her that I'm not quite that ready to date yet. I've already had a Lucy, a Marcie, and even a Sally Brown. I'm just not sure that I'm quite ready for a Peppermint Patty yet. I think I'm still shooting for a woman that wears eye liner every now and then, a lipstick feminist, not an undefeated arm wrestler. 


Part of me has just given up. I don't want to flirt, I don't want to go on dates with women I don't know, I don't want to make plans to do stuff on some future weekend, I don't want to fall in love with anybody. I just want someone to watch Portlandia with every now and then, somebody that's fun to text with.

That made me giggle. There's some truth in there. 

I'm not sure why anybody even has sex any more. It seems to be about the silliest and most unnecessary thing there is. Just go online and watch people. I swear, there are thousands of short documentaries on the subject. It's fascinating after about 10 or 15 seconds, once it becomes a little easier to separate the love from the lust, the friction from the friction burns. 








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Sunday, January 29, 2017

"Have Mercy! Been waitin' for the bus all day...."






I must stay away from news streams. They are driving me out of my mind. Clownigula is at least as bad as predicted. I had thought that it would be funny for a while, but it's not. It's been quite the letdown in that regard, he's a legitimate horror, and not only through incompetence. He seems to have a deep rooted animosity towards every office of government to which he is making appointments. This might only be the result of him not having a grasp of what these offices do. It is nearly impossible to determine from this vantage point. America's dominance on the western stage seems as if it might be coming to a sudden end. There is little evidence to suggest that a paper strongman will help matters much. He is defining himself as a threat to everything, a danger to all standards. His intentions seem clear enough - he wants to go down in history as the guy that turned back the clock. 

It's fitting that the owner of the Miss Universe pageant would usher in the Judgement of Paris.

For all of those who have said, But, just give him a chance. That window of opportunity has now closed. I've said it before: if we're not very careful then we are all going to be written into Trump's biography. I am pushing for our part to be the impeachment chapter, not the thermonuclear exchange with China. Has the CIA invited him to Dallas at all yet? 

Mike Pence seems like such a reasonable fellow, now doesn't he? Take away that get that man off of that man voodoo indoctrination stuff and he's just another stable white guy that believes Jesus' return is nigh, and that the earth was bequeathed to man to exploit for his temporary needs until that time comes. There are a lot of symbolic things to look for so that you'll know it's happening, when the wrath of God is achieving its completeness - multi-headed dragons, goblins, horses in the sky, bridge trolls, and some other stuff along the Dungeons and Dragons narrative. Pence standing there with a mannequin's smile, waiting for Jesus to arrive in a cloud of angel farts to lift him up into the glory of eternity. 

What could possibly go wrong? 

Hillary was going to take your guns, stupid. 

So, as you can probably detect, it's no good for me to keep watching the stream of gibberish scroll by every day. I don't have the constitution for it. I have come to hate The Washington Post. They are only one small notch above The Huffington Post. What happened to them?  

I can't seem to ride it out of my system and I do not wish to become a mumbling man, certain that the newest political arrivals have exceeded all predecessors in the iniquity of stupidity. 

It is written....
From where the sun now stands, I relinquish the hold of political pornography over my mind. 
I renounce Satan and his angels of perversion!

It's fun to speak like a modern Moses. I should grow a nice long beard, a real ZZ Topper. If I took myself just a little bit more seriously then maybe I could have become a backup cult leader, an honest second-string prophet for the times. You don't even have to scare people with the threat of coming plagues, just describe what's actually happening, that'll be good enough. 

That's another window of opportunity that seems to have passed me now. I wouldn't wish to be a fully ordained cult leader at this age, but maybe 20 years ago or so it might have been fun, where it would make sense for me to harvest the feminine bounty of the flock. I think I've reached the age now where I just want the cult money, which isn't nearly as much fun. I'd still impregnate several of the flock, and provide them with adequate firearms, but that would be mostly just to keep the sense of collective spiritual mission at the needed pitch. Because nothing quite whispers Apocalypse... as does a fully armed pregnant woman among many others carrying the same man's baby. 

Mine, probably. 

Ah well, in another life. I'm sure there is some strategy to it all that I have not yet quite grasped, some trick to keep things in order. I would explain to all of them individually that their little behind holes are beautiful mandala invitations to a deeper dimension. People just eat up that spirituality stuff up, like tapioca pudding - echoes in other dimensions, past lives still dance around us for reasons unexplained, saviors riding in on white clouds, mercury in retrograde causes autism, all of it... Truth is only a feeling. They can't get enough gibberish, each addicted to their own personal nonsense, inessential as it all seems. 






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Saturday, January 28, 2017

Alt-Stockings





I don't know what it is that republicans love so much about having retarded presidents. They had the last two months of Nixon where he became completely detached from reality, the entire second term of Reagan in which he ascended to being the drooling retard for the masses, George Bush was born a pathetic simpleton, and now we have a man that has advertised his cognitive disadvantages throughout the entire campaign, yet they've cheered him right up into the White House. He's our Make-A-Wish president.

It's like watching one of those clips where a high school will bring their local retard out onto the field, then let him off his leash to run a touchdown in before the actual game starts. Everybody stands and cheers for him. It's a real feel good moment for everyone, the kid gets to believe he scored a touchdown, but it's not supposed to actually change the score of the game. It's just a way to let the good natured kid know that he can do anything he puts his mind to, as long as it doesn't affect the outcome of something as critical as a high school sporting event. The democrats are supposed to be the sympathetic party, but it's the republicans that seem most willing to let Lenny and George call all the shots. 


Trump isn't an accused rapist, he's an alternative-romantic. 




In seriousness, I have to get out of politics soon. It's making me noticeably unhappy. The more absurd it all becomes as it's unfolding, the more unfolded I am becoming along with it. Everywhere I look I'm starting to see people coming out of the woodwork to declare their support for Trump as well as their assertion that they are also Christians. I'm not sure why these two things need to be claimed in this dual way, but there is some public need to make sure everybody understands that they are stupid on at least these two different levels, possibly more. 

The democrats aren't much better. They have devolved into group hysteria. I tried channeling some of it yesterday for my post, but I drifted too close and was sucked in, I think. I can't tell, but it didn't work. I loved Mary Tyler Moore, truly. She was one of the first women that I remember getting an erection for and wanting to somehow share its sudden existence with her. I used to have dreams about her babysitting me and giving me spankings. This was some time after not having babysitters any longer. My pubescent mind was interacting with some earlier iteration of myself and involving the presence of a foreign woman that allowed slightly different thoughts to arise than those which my mother generally produced within me. 

Moore's spankings did not seem punitive to me as much as they seemed celebratory, delightful, and fun for both of us, which did bring me a few important questions that I have never quite answered. Sure, I may have done something vaguely wrong in the dream, but the punishment was invited by both of us in that liquid place within me. I didn't know what these visions meant, but I knew that I woke up very much liking the feeling, and knowing that this throbbing thing was meant to be kept reasonably secret. I honored Mary Tyler Moore's memory then and for years afterwards by doing just that. She is up there in the permanent spank bank, along with Princess Leia. I've been trying to convince them both to get it on. We go out drinking together but the spark of magic never quite happens. I wake up wondering what's taking them both so long in the bathroom. 

It's safe to tell everybody this now because my genital region has become a subject of disinterest for women everywhere. I keep trying to convince women to either look at it or touch it, but their reluctance is uniform. Friends, strangers, people on buses, the women that walk in front of the window to my apartment; it doesn't matter, they all look on in surprise and horror at the situation as it unfolds. I don't know how to make it any more attractive to them. The thing is truly ugly when swollen like that, only a slight improvement from when it's being shy. I keep looking at it and then looking up at them, as if I'm desperately trying to introduce them in the short few seconds while I have the chance, but too often neither it nor the woman looking at it quite knows how to bridge the gap in understanding and to speak simply to one another in a way that makes sense for everybody. 

There is that age-old communication gap there and whatever version of sign language that I've been using by pointing at it, rubbing it frantically, trying to maintain eye contact with it and them while gesticulating signs concerning its many merits. It all must seem too desperate, too forced. I need to learn to relax about these awkward initial introductions. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Maybe if I had a mattress in the back of a van it might help. That way I could recline, make it all feel so much more natural. 

I remember a time not so long ago when women liked helping me take my pants off. They would oversee the operation with enthusiasm. I'm just not entirely sure what changed, and neither are the cops. One explained that this is just how things go, that I might need to find a different way of making friends. In fact, both he and the judge insisted on it.  They gave me plenty of paperwork which outlines how best to manage these relationships moving forward, with a better understanding of the restrictions that these types of interchanges now require. 

Ok, so that's out of my system for the day. I'm not a registered sex offender. I'm just feeling a little alt-sexy. 




Well, I rode a familiar ride yesterday on my mountain bike, up to the loop of my local little heaven, Lovall Valley. When chatting with a friend from the region I told him that I had been riding up to the speedway lately. He looked at me as if I was out of my mind. On the highway!? he asked in shocked disbelief. I said that Hwy 12 is hardly a highway. He said, Then what does the H-w-y stand for? I agreed that by a farmer's standards it might be a highway, but everywhere else it would just be a two-lane road. I worried that maybe he was a Trump supporter, though he did relay that he had recently eaten acid and had to drive home at night from the city with a carful of like-minded travelers, and how that road had him terrified because the shoulders are so narrow in parts. He was certain that he would have killed me if only the timing of the encounter would have worked out correctly.

So, perhaps it is my choice of roads that is causing me all of the problems.  Something to think about, though there are few options in the region. The highway that goes north is the same that also goes south down the valley. It is nearly impossible to ride any distance without being on it, to escape. I suppose that I could return to riding up the sides of the mountains here, where the roads become steeper and some would say much less fun, and maybe that is true, in a sense. Every bit of forward motion is fought for and hopefully won, but at tremendous costs. The only coasting is dangerously fast and on the return ride after either victory or defeat at the face of the winding incline. 

There must be more to life than this.


The boy and I are still taking instant photos, as the mood takes us. 

I've been improving my sock game a bit also, hoping that the bright colors will attract the curiosity of a woman. That she might also wonder if my underwear is similarly patterned, and as such, suitable to her hopefully peculiar tastes in such things. 





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Friday, January 27, 2017

Make America Gigantic




I don't really wish leukemia on anybody's imaginary child, those were just campaign promises. I took the exact same bike route yesterday and had a fantastic 28 mile stress-free ride. Nobody opted to terrorize me with loud noises, auto-proximity, and sudden fear of my own death, so I was more able to just enjoy riding. No children needed to die to keep the universe in the type of imaginary balance that some people call Karma. It's funny how something like that - not living in fear of death - changes your experience, then your subsequent feelings. People ruin everything. Just look at what they've done with America. You're not going to believe who they've made the president there now. It's a corker. I mean, you'll really just never guess. The more he proved that he was incapable of the job then the more that some people demanded that he was the best one for it. 

It's a whopper, one for the ages.

I have the whole weekend spread out ahead of me. The ex- is taking the boy to Tahoe, which means that I can kickstart my crippling heroin addiction and get it rolling back up into a steady slumber, as long as I'm all clean in the tearful eyes of Christ by Monday or Tuesday.

Jesus, people used to really do that - not just heroin but drugs of all kinds. I'll never understand how. I used to fraternize with people that had jobs. It was weird, because every now and then as you were settling into a nice four day bender they'd start talking about having to return to work. Even some of the women had jobs. I thought that it was maybe because they lacked self-respect, but now I'm told that this is what they wanted all along. I'll never figure it out. People ruin everything. Women working jobs, what the fuck. I know our new president can't fix everything that Sheik Obama destroyed, but I'm pretty sure he'll keep the women from having the choice of ruining their lives with work. Whoever thought that it would be a good idea to fill the world with middle-aged versions of Mary Tyler Moore. She nearly ruined journalism. If it wasn't for Ted Baxter's acuity and keen mind then the entire operation might have collapsed. 

If you examine the two pictures that I have provided below, separated by eighteen years, then the results of employment become more clear:


(Less clothes, more hair)


(The woman who invented Steve Jobs)


If you look into her eyes you can see the recognition of her mistake. She was so much happier in the first picture. There is a pool of soft uncertainty in the eyes of the second. As delightful as her eyes are, they are pained by the burden of employment. Only a baby can remove that faraway stare, that thousand light year gaze. This is science. A childless woman is invisible to the cosmos. 

It is good that we have these types of images to reflect upon as we embark on returning America to its State of Great. 

It's fun to swap the word "great" with some of its synonyms: 

Make America Considerable Again
Make America Significant Again
Make America Appreciable Again
Make America Special Again
Make America Serious Again
Make America Extraordinary Again


A well placed nuclear detonation can accomplish all of those goals in a single flash. One must wonder how long it will take our new El Jefe en Presidente to do the button-pushing math on this non-alternative fact. 

America is plagued by two evils: the machismo of Mexican men and American women. They're both stealing our jobs.

As the honorable and esteemed Supreme Court Justice Joseph P. Bradley once wrote: "The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life." This was upholding a law which allowed Illinois to not be forced into granting women licenses to practice law. Do you see how he ascribes the ownership of delicacy and timidity the the female sex? He must not have dated any of the corn-fed women from that region, as I have. They are anything but timid and the only thing delicate about them are their trigger fingers. 


Okay, I'll stop. Some people will become confused at my ironic sense of detachment and then condemn my sense of humor as being privileged

Irony IS white privilege, you asshole....


I do wonder how long it will take the new president to put those coal miners back into the ground that they so long for, hopefully sometime before the midterm elections. We're being told now that the problem with liberals sits somewhere between education, the electoral college, and their curious desire to live and work in cities. You know, where the jobs are. The truth, of course, is that they're just a bunch of sore losers. We used to be able to call them pussies, but then women marched worldwide last weekend to take that euphemism out of men's hungry mouths and put it in their own. 

It's just so nice to hear everyone saying pussy in public again. It's a word that we can all agree on, pussy. Even my gay male friends are forced into solidarity with it. Make America Pink Again. Pussy has finally changed things for the better. 

Irony IS white privilege, you asshole!


So... the new president, our Erector in Brief... Remember the guy that bought the Miss Universe pageant to recruit wives, then was kicked out because he made disparaging comments about illegal Mexican immigrants crossing the border to be lazy about rape here rather than at home? I know, it seems impossible, that this titan of intellect would have any desire to hold a public office, but it's true. He rose to power on the "Make America Race Again" ticket. Some presidents are remembered for the Space Race, others know how to simplify that message down to the one word that really matters. If you want to fight a deficit then you have to cut corners. 


The next president will be forced to run on the Undoom the Republic Soon! platform.


Undoom us. Undoom us. 

I may have just found a new mantra. 







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Thursday, January 26, 2017

Hwy 12 Is Where I'll Die






Another morning spent writing a post that I tired of before it could go to press. Same as yesterday. Today's ramblings explored the cost of federal surveillance on its own citizens, the number of deaths from religiously motivated terrorist attacks in the last ten years, and where to get special deals on midnight abortions.  

So, it had to go. There's no use in any of it any more. CS is right, there is no way to be right. This doesn't mean that I have given up for good, but only for now. 


The weather seems be starting its turn towards spring. I went for a ride yesterday after work, down the valley into a headwind to the Infineon Speedway, then back up its winding vineyard roads with the suddens gusts of wind pushing at my back. 

It's really something, that ride. 


The main downside of it are the regional dickheads that drive oversized pickup trucks and take pleasure in trying to scare cyclists by driving as close to them as they can and then blasting their horns as they pass. It is illegal here in California, of course, but that changes nothing. Who cares about the law when you can let loose a little steam on someone trapped between the road and quite unforgiving stone irrigation ditches that are anywhere from 6 -10 feet deep. Nothing quite expresses power mixed with joy as does the anonymous ability to frighten someone in a vulnerable position. It's like kicking kittens. 

They've done tests that show how cruel people can be and it must be true, because I imagine the drivers of the trucks having children, then I wish leukemia on those uninsured children. I picture the drivers, kneeling distraught by the child's bedside, unable to help, watching their child drift downstream and away from them into pain, fear, darkness, then death. 

The marriage, of course, failing after that. The wife just not herself after their loss. The child taking what little romantic love was left as part of their escape, their shuffling off of that young and barely used mortal coil

You see? It's very easy to think cruel thoughts. I do it all the time, and why not? I have to envision my own death and disfigurement by being crushed underneath a truck at one wrong move, a slight overreaction or miscalculation to sudden danger. There is that, or alternately there is a headfirst ride into a rocky drainage channel where death, paralysis, or disfigurement awaits. So, why do they get to have all of the fun? I am forced to envision my son's pain and anguish, so why not. I should be able to envision the innocent love of their life withering away in bed at home, uncared for by the medical community, then forgotten by all except those who once mattered. A pathetic gravesite marked with a wooden headpiece, faded and cracked by the elements in time, forgotten by all but two. 

If I get bored of child leukemia then I'll mix it up and have their kids stabbed to death by an undocumented immigrant as part of a botched truck-jacking attempt. This also happens right in front of the driver, of course, to heighten my schaden-joy-freude. 

Maybe I should have them raped by the immigrant also, after the bloody stabbing death of the child, as a sort of cherry-on-the-top finale. There are few things that undocumented immigrants enjoy more than raping white men after killing their children. The blood simply makes them wild with passions. 

Luckily, our immigrant goes on to live a quiet happy life with the wife that witnessed everything, and even helps him craft a defense. She likes strong men, not that pussy-assed dead husband of hers. They sell his truck to a guy that wants to use it to smuggle immigrant cyclists across the border. It's perfect for that type of thing. She puts a "Share the Road" bumper sticker on it as it pulls out of the parking lot, heading South.


See, I'm in a foul mood today, for reasons that remain hidden to me. I shouldn't feel this way, and I probably don't, but I guess a part of me does. My thoughts and feelings rarely work together. They are like American voters, somehow always losing through a technicality which only amplifies their anger. I want to maim and disfigure, but only just a little bit and only just for imaginary fun. It's been said that torture and Trump's inauguration are the only two things now known that can bring Ann Coulter to the squirts. 









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Wednesday, January 25, 2017

"I often dream of trains when I'm alone"






I think I have discovered why I just sit at home and buy things now, it is much easier than traveling. Traveling requires effort, logistical planning, the ability to commit, friends in other cities, etc. Amazon Prime doesn't ask for any of that nonsense. I'm willing to bet that you'll be able to get steamed mussels soon from Amazon also, and good ones! 


I will be traveling soon, though. There are a number of options available to me that I am currently investigating - ski trip to Colorado, Spring vacation to Florida, a NYC / Woodstock trip to retrace Bob Dylan's famous motorcycle crash, making a human mandala in a field with a bunch of stinkin' hippies, maybe London in the Summer. I want to go to Bangkok. 

It's a lot to think about. Then there is the money to consider, which also becomes a lot to think about. I preferred life when others paid for my travel needs and were excited to feed and care for me while I was in their town and consuming their resources. Having to spend my own money to go places feels unnatural. Worse, it feels wrong and stupid, evil.

I want to ride a train again, read a book, and pretend that none of this is happening but rather only that is happening, that train and that passing landscape, ahead of me only the great unbrushed yawn of nothingness.






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Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Love, from a great but safe distance






I thought of ten things or more to write about yesterday while on my late afternoon bike ride. Now, there is nothing and then nothing and nothing - nada y pues nada y nada

I fell asleep around 7pm, woke at midnight, wrestled with wakefulness for a bit in the dark, am now sitting at my kitchen table. I've been casually shopping online for a new kitchen table, though I question the sense in buying one. As soon as I do then I'm sure to get a girlfriend, one who will convince me to get rid of it. It is all part of the beautiful circle of love. Perhaps it is best to keep wasting my money as a way of enticing a new girlfriend to step in and stop the runaway waste, to give it a renewed sense of focus. The direction of romance can be marked by the sudden diverting of dollars spent. I imagine that Visa has a much better grasp of my romantic situation than I do. They should offer a service based on the metadata of spending behavior. A man shopping for a new kitchen table by himself in the dark. What a silly, futile thing to do. 


I wrote a post that I had not meant to publish, then accidentally did, unpublished it quickly, then sent an apology email to the email recipients (a handful of readers get only first drafts here...). It contained some lines that were meant to be removed, though the post was also never meant to be published. In doing this, I realized that for too long my feelings about feminism have been tied up in response to a handful of self-described feminists, most of whom lack the courage of their stated convictions but instead utilize the wide claim of historical victimhood only to terrorize others. 

Is he a man? Then he must be sexist.
Is he white? Oh, then he's a racist also... 
We had better let him know.

Well, perhaps that is a slight exaggeration, but only slight. It is a popular form - feminism without courage, the un-refuted slogan of the times. Some men will gladly accept and praise this form of feminism, because it leaves the woman in the role of either the victim that needs to be saved or one whose actions are pre-justified and deserving of celebration. Meanness towards men is then confused with ideas of the internal strength of womanhood, and then roundly praised as a commensurate response. 

Sometimes you just luck out and you get both versions in the same person - a mean woman that demands to be saved by love. The most recent lesson that I have learned, the hard way: be wary of those who do not protect you, you may be left incapable of protecting yourself. 

It is a long story, one perhaps never worth going into. The lesson astonishes me, that I am now learning it in middle life. The value of the exercise is meant to go both ways. I failed at protecting, also. Once you see your relationship devolve into mutual accusation, mutual acrimony follows shortly thereafter. Few loves recover, there is only a graceless escape to hope for. 

If it happens in your next relationship, then look for a common denominator. It might be you. 


I noticed something with one of the last girlfriends that I had - I had become defensive. Many might claim that particular girlfriend was not right for me, but even if that were the case, I recognized my emotional overreactions. Yellow flags were flipping up left and right, some that became red flags, so I acted accordingly. I walked away, telling myself that I just wasn't ready yet. This was in part true, but not a truth worth clinging to and demanding as exclusive. 

There were other truths, of course. I couldn't separate feelings about women in general from feelings concerning this woman's personality and behavior. I had fallen too deep into the trap of categorical thought. I found myself saying things like, My ex used to do that.... Why do women act that way... Women do this... Women do that.... I had internalized some cheap bullshit slogans that belied and ignored something else important. 

Once embraced, that way of thinking doesn't take very long before you can find behavior in women to regard with suspicion, even as the deportment is charmingly wicked. Part of the allure of women seems wrapped up in this painful mystery. Some seek to dispel it as a subject of inquiry, though not to dismantle it. One can not demand equality while clinging to unequal advantage, not in love anyway. Perhaps there really is no such thing as equality in love, any attempt at asserting it or citing its absence from either side is sure to doom the affair. The sudden application of self-respect is correctly seen as an affront. Once the accusation of inequality has been lofted within a romance there remains only evidence and counter evidence to tussle with. Love shifts from looking at things together to looking at togetherness as a thing. 


I tried to ignore these observations but the behavior kept returning, so much so that I started to blame myself for even noticing it. Though, there was a persistent sentence that kept occurring to me: Would it be okay for me to say the same thing to her? The answer was almost always a No. 

How could this be, and what can be done? I have instituted a personal guide: avoid people who are incapable of accepting apologies, they are usually inexperienced at providing them in any meaningful way. Victims almost always fail at moral self-evaluation. I write this with no individual in mind. I see it nearly everywhere I look. Check the self-righteousness of Facebook every now and then, if you want a taste of this type of sloganeering - the exalting one's self-held values without evidence, with strict unquestioned pretense. The resounding jingoism of liberalism. 

You can't even agree enough with the self-righteous there, because your agreement will eventually show signs of its own unworthiness. It doesn't take very long, just try it.  It is enervating to try to match another's public indignations. It's best just to "Like" them without comment. It's the genius of agreement without the complication of discourse.  No word, just a little blue thumb pointing upwards, holding up the great dam in the sky. It is precisely what a slogan deserves, ironic in its utter meaninglessness, perfect as an unchallenged response in the form of agreement. It's a way of saying, I applaud the surface of your intended meaning in the smallest way possible. 


Women have cried double-standard! for so long and so loudly that one can only take them seriously, and at their word. There is much truth to be found in the claim, no question about it. There are glaring and hideous double-standards, many that we all accept and many of which subject women to unfair treatment as accepted practice. Yet, they have become so comfortable in making the claim that they have lost the ability to recognize any violation of it that is not directed at them. In that way, it has become a single-standard through its own duplicity.

I dare you - accuse anyone of maintaining double-standards. I dare you. 

It's easy to treat people equal to their treatment of you. The results are disastrous, though. To mock someone's values by openly emulating them is as simple as pie, and sometimes just as delicious and fattening. My boy does it without even knowing what he's doing. He is a genuine eye opener in this regard. Everybody can improve, and no one can claim to be above innocent imitation. 


Part of the pleasure of falling in love, for me, has been the private mutual acceptance of gender and relationship roles within the context of love. I think that most men like to be men and most women like to be women, and yet these definitions hardly result in what could be considered equality. They both require some validation of one another's imagination, the affirmation and acceptance of our silly attitudes and beliefs as they shift around us. 

Without that, then what? More cross-examination of how things are, and how things should be.

Living with a feminist must be as tiring as living with a sexist. Everything becomes an analysis or abstraction, a cursed valuation of the dynamic of another's love, of who they really are as a person, a dissecting of the very thing that is meant to be preserved. Too much thought leaves everything smelling of formaldehyde. Sex is dependent upon the mutual suspending of belief. The mutual return is what signifies and creates trust. "Getting there" is easy, and two fools can find a way.

You can always cite non-conformity in gender roles later as needed, like when arguing about something, or when all of your friends are looking. Some unmet and never agreed upon expectation will sneak up out of the rhetoric of love to bite each lover awkwardly, at different and unexpected times. The feeling of love is a fantastic 90-day convenience. 

People tend to get the love that they deserve. I did, and it still stings a bit. 

I have grown tired of bargaining for it, though. It doesn't work that well. Alliances are easily formed, tough to maintain. Treaties are replaced by newer treaties, each an imagined improvement upon the last. 

I just wish some anonymous woman would reach out to me now and let me know that my new dining room table will one day soon need to go. 






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Sunday, January 22, 2017

Women Be Marchin'





I was originally not going to post this, but after removing a sentence or two I've decided that it works, based on a crowd-sourced opinion of it. It felt a little bit "wrong" at the time. It did not adequately reflect the pride that I felt, as did Rhys' mother, at him being able to participate in the march with her.

Have it your way. Enjoy, or hate me:


Yesterday, after a hotel breakfast made from the finest heated fats on the earth, the boy and I packed up and headed home, cutting our northern adventure a little bit short. After explaining that there was going to be a group of people protesting in Sonoma Square, the boy decided that he also wanted to protest. I described, or tried to, what opportunities are, and how governments can function to prevent access to those opportunities in very subtle or overt ways, ways that white people claim to not understand. 

No, everything but the last part. I offered that there were people marching for women's rights, and that Mommy is in fact a woman. That's all it took. He was all in, a tender revolutionary, ready to either hug out our differences or to oust the new president. We stocked up on ammo and headed down to see the fracas, hoping the cops would kick the remaining wits out of a few hippies showing their suspicion of the ob-gyn community. 

Keep in mind that we're just south of UC Davis, where library sidewalks are washed with the tears of enemy infidels: students, sympathizers with education, burdening our great society with their educational loans. 

Trump practically rose to power on this fine mist of pepper spray.


(Feeling blasé?)


The "ammo" I brought was a charged camera battery and the largest memory card that CS has yet to steal from me. I wanted to shoot the event with an eye towards journalistic photography. I reminded myself not to interfere, that I am a spectator here. Within the hour I became wrapped up in the rhetoric of pussy protest. It was everywhere. I became willing to offer my wisdom, a man's true wisdom, on any and all matters pertaining to pussy (and how not to get some). I was prepared to praise the Great Pussy in the Sky, squirting down its presidential bounty.  

I only referred to the earth as Father Testicle once. 

I probably should not have gotten high for something like this, but I have my medical marijuana card, so any criticisms you have are no different than when Trump mocked the disabled reporter. To question my medical need is at least the same, or possibly worse, than that. 

In truth, I was moved by all of the people marching and I was very happy for Rhys to see it and participate in it. Though, he became bored with unarmed insurrections rather quickly, so he and I went and hunted ice cream. He did seem to grasp that all of the people were there because they believe in the concept of equality. Or, I hope that he did, anyway. 

He was happy to see Mommy.  Of that much I am certain.




I kept the usual criticisms of feminists and feminism to myself and was able to support the basic premise - that everybody should be treated equally under the law, that opportunities in education and employment should not favor any one group over another. That is a principle that is easy to agree with. In fact, it's nearly impossible to disagree with, unless you embrace the thought and language of pathetic assholism. Principles are great, it's people that ruin things. Those self-described feminists that use half-grasped concepts of the movement only to berate suckers with broad accusations of sexism. It is why I often self-define as a woman, to avoid the boredom of being anyone's oppressor. 


As we marched along, I thought.... who knowsmaybe I can find a weak-willed feminist here that's willing to grant me some clemency. One simple mistake by a feminist and I could be back in the dating game.


It was easy to criticize feminism when it seemed like Hillary was going to win and that half the work force was willing to work for a fraction of the pay men get, but it's so much more difficult to feel good about all of it now. Maybe I should just try supporting causes without ever talking to anybody about them. I know that it seems counter to the purpose, but people are insufferable, they ruin everything. Just look at what I can do to a subject. 

I opted not to discuss the successes and failures of Hillary for the entirety of my time there. Nobody mentioned her at all, in fact, nobody wanted to talk about it, even when I started screaming: YOU'RE WITH HER! and LOCK THEM UP!!!

I did scream, TRUMP'S A FUCKING STUPID CUNT! a few times. I was hoping I could start a sort of grassroots protest within the protest, but I failed. Nobody could get onboard with my attempts at gender insult irony. 

I got a few giggles out of demanding MATRIARCHY NOW! though nobody would lock eyes with me in solidarity. I probably should have shaved for the event. I was there only to help eradicate gender, or concepts of gender. Which, if followed to its conclusion should also end the protest march. Who cares... I was out there being brave, like my girl, Caitlyn. If only men had not created these constructs of gender roles from which to celebrate and resist... 

Times are tough for clarity. I was there to help them take back control of the means of reproduction. The Marxist in me grasped this important fact: women must share ownership of the uterus. 


One local woman was so old she appeared to just be an apparition once made of dust. She hobbled by, looked at me and said, Fuck Trump! 

I know! I said, Why do you suppose white women did this to all of us? 


As we all marched peacefully along I asked some of the people around me if they really thought there was a chance that congress would repeal prohibition. We all wish to live in a post-prohibition society. This is the real danger, and why dads never ask moms what they think in front of the kids.


Jesus, this is not what I had hoped to write today. I have lost the ability to even feign seriousness. None of what I have relayed here is true, or very little anyway. The boy did want ice cream. 

Feminism is succeeding on terms that nobody can quite agree on. They have accepted the idea that patriarchal societies have defined them poorly, now we need to acknowledge those definitions so that feminists can obliterate them. Then, and only then, will there be nothing left to demand. You'll know the time has arrived when there's nothing left to discuss. 

It is important for the boy to understand why people were jaywalking in the streets, a thing that I was a bit unsure of also. I need to educate myself on what Trump has done in his first day on vacation. I'm reasonably aware of what he will do - appoint a judge to the SCOTUS that will help repeal Roe vs. Wade being a big concern. Changes in insurance that will treat pregnancy as something other than a health issue, a proposition that is as absurd and self-defeating for society as any that I have ever heard. 

Do not think that because I am confused by the spectrum of contradictory claims found in feminism that I am blind to the odious means of some monstrous men. Far from it. I am on the side of the oppressed, whether they want me or not.

Some burdens are also a burden to share. 






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Women's March / Sonoma






I wrote a long post that I could not publish. I treated too lightly a subject which means much to many, and to me. I resist humorlessness to a point. Beyond that, it is not necessary to insist on it as a response to all things.  

I took the boy to the Women's March here in Sonoma yesterday, explaining to him why his mother and I believe in equality of opportunity. We met up with Mommy while we were there. She was very proud to have her son marching with her. We emphasized as well as we could to the mind of a five year old the importance of making sure that everybody has a fair stake and chance in this society we share, that to deprive someone based on them being a "boy or a girl" or any other inherent distinction is wrong. 

We tried to impress upon him that to remain quiet when there is injustice means that you must then share in the guilt of it. 

These ideas must confuse the mind of one who already recognizes Mommy's superiority to all other creatures far and wide. 






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Saturday, January 21, 2017

All The Young Dudes





I picked the boy up early yesterday from Carol, the woman who has watched and taken care of him in part since nearly his birth. He goes to her place one day a week, Friday, with his buddy Sebastian. His mom and I decided that we wouldn't subject him solely to the rigors of pre-school, that his Fridays could be spent to some degree where he chooses, and why not? We only get so much say about things in life. Unshared generosity is not. 

After, we went to what recently ceased being our locally owned supermarket and ate sushi and a smattering of choices from the regular food bar, warm plastic platefuls of our favorites. The diet of non-fugitve wanderers. We looked on the phone and tried to choose a place to call a destination. This is not the type activity that a five year old excels at, or perhaps he is too good at it. He kept picking the center of San Francisco Bay or somewhere far off the coast, drifting out into the Pacific towards Bangkok and beyond. The North Pole. He wants to thank Santa for his presents, but on his own terms, not with the fat man sneaking in and sneaking away. 

After we ate, we went home and threw some important things together in our backpacks. We put our own pillows, blankets and the ever trusty night-night in the car then headed north up the two-lane highway that defines the center of Sonoma Valley - towards Santa Rosa, then Guerneville, Guyserville beyond that, maybe Eureka. Without a destination, just somewhere Unhereville. Practicing for otherness, reminding ourselves that outside there is always a road elsewhere. 

Travelers never know where they're going , tourists never know where they are.... as the old National Geographic Traveler magazine used to claim.

Road life rendered us wearier than we may have guessed at the onset, and much more quickly. Before we abandoned little highway 12 for the interstate, the 101 North, the boy was already gathering intelligence on how much longer it would be. The rain suggested escape more than adventure. Everywhere visible, which wasn't distant, there were low hanging rain clouds, patches of darkness and the glow of what must still be the day's remains of sunlight above. It let through diffuse and distracting smudges of light, circled by deep blemishes of darkness. Beyond that, only twilight and night's arriving. 

We listened to Bowie's "Live," then The Cure's "Faith." What would have been a more perfect lineage-set of albums had it been Bowie's "Stage," instead.  

The boy told me ghost stories about the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, how he and his mother saw a few, they were there floating between them in the "doom buggy." But not to worry, he was able to protect Mommy because he knows ninja-stuff, and that the ghosts probably do not. He must have assumed that I would be worried that he and his mom were in such close proximity to ghosts. The boy is complete in the sweetness of his love.

He and I chatted excitedly and ate snacks, travel permitting deviation from our diets. We also brought carrots, apples and bananas to offset the Haribo Gummi Bears, a bag of cheese puffs, and Pepperidge Farm's Sausalito cookies. (I know, I know. I can read, also. I see the string of damnations. That set has its virtues, redeemed only by its vices.) We ate everything, though not in entirety. There is breakfast to still consider, so we saved some Gummi bears for the cusp of morning soon arriving.

Once at the hotel that we found far off the highway, past the bars and restaurants of Geyserville, I made the tactical error of asking for a room on the second floor, thinking this would entertain the boy some, forgetting that his room at mom's is also on the second floor. Stairs and balconies are all old hat to him. Once inside he immediately started jumping on the bed and bouncing along loudly on the floor a'la Winnie the Pooh's Tigger. This is where my mistake became more audible to our southern neighbors. I encouraged him to jump mostly on the bed and tried to convey the idea of the social contract in its most abbreviated form, granting peace to others through silence. None of it worked, the boy was buzzing. He had the proverbial "ants in his pants" since long ago, back when we had been eating salmon and tuna in our little faraway village under the rains.

I tried to capture his joy in pictures, though it was too boundless to be framed. It announced itself in periodic booms as he jumped from the bed and traversed the floor with squeaks of joy and bursts of laughter. 

I've never met anybody who likes to be tickled more. He currently holds the record. 

In time I encouraged him to put on his cozy onesie pajamas, but he insisted that he sleep in his underwear, like when we're camping. There comes a point where straightforward parenting is just absurd, we had drifted from that shore long ago and under cover of night. How do you insist that a kid wear his pajamas after you've fed him junk food as if it was a virtue of travel. 

We don't need no stinking badges...


Within the hour I was able to calm him down, just a bit. I lured him into the life of a dullard with cookies and cartoons streaming. We watched together until the day could take us no more, we drifted away to the sound of the iPad sliding off the bed to the floor, pulled gently by tomorrow morning's adventure.






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Friday, January 20, 2017

La Jetée



(Joel Sternfeld)


The question on everyone's mind: Can America withstand reality, television, or possibly both? 


I keep telling myself that I should have supported Hillary. She was the great blank hope. Insert check Her. I'm kicking myself now because of, well, you know, Bernie. His slogan should be: Democratic Socialism Yesterday!  

What will the apocalypse look like from out here in the country, I wonder. Everybody is so concerned with the shape of the post-apocalyptic world. I am more curious about the opportunities provided by apocalypsin'. My guess is that the a-bomb generation will make millennials their slaves. So, at least one problem solved there. Though, my generation will likely be fed to the millennials to keep them fit, as strong workers for new Mother-A 'Merica. Anybody older than me will be too gristly. They will be tanned so that their hides can be used as a cheap leather alternative. Sort of a pleather that you don't have to go to the fancy store to get. I suppose some of them will need to be kept for use as radiation canaries. 

Am I the only one that thinks Homeland Security sounds like a mid-western anti-intrusion device? A sort of ADT.com for America's broken windows. What are they doing, guarding a wheat combine? Their agents should be called harvesters from this point forward. Vital to the Organ, their new slogan.  Defenders of The United CORPS.

And why aren't executions public any more? Is there a reason for it, outside of Texas? If not, we should give that some new think. If it was corrupt liberalism that kept us from enjoying the public blade then we should revisit those reasons with our new American eyes.

Who needs a peer-review when you are unparalleled? If advice was meant to swim upstream then it should have arrived by now.

The last person to be executed using the effective apparatus of the guillotine was in 1977, after America's bicentennial celebration. Though it did not happen here in the homeland, of course. Those savage French made off with the detached cranium, never to be seen or heard from again. Why do they get that footnote of glory? Hopefully nobody tells Colossus Little Hands of this historical perversion.

Why does torture have to be effective? Can't it just be for fun?

I bought a bunch of new socks and underwear in preparation for today. Apocalypse or not, there is still a dim hope that I might get undressed with a woman at some point. Maybe in jail, or just as a regular part of camp life. Who knows, perhaps I can trade a pair of socks to keep from being raped, for that moment. Ugh, the image of being gang raped by a group wearing my new socks is too much for this morning.

I have a few things of value that maybe I can tuck away for trade, like the dignity of others. I understand it is the very hottest of internment commodities.


Important tips to get through today: Don't forget to make a backup! Keep wiping until there's no more brown. Drink vodka. Sugar is the new cholesterol. Olestra is the old Ex-Lax. Bacon is bacon is bacon is bacon. Do not Tweet directly at the new president - he will fling feces at you if your eyes meet.

There are plenty of things that won't change. Republicans will still blame black people for all of their problems, for instance.



Thursday, January 19, 2017

Between Scylla and Charybdis




(American Vogue)


My entire kitchen is in the dining room. Today, I hope, I will move everything back where it all belongs. I spoke with a lawyer who specializes in tenant rights yesterday and he advised me on how to move forward on this issue. Advice that I hope to put into effect today. In speaking with him I realized that I am being a little bit of a whiner. I am complaining that the property management company is doing their job so well that it is an inconvenience for me. The lawyer pointed out that most calls he gets are for the opposite dynamic. 

I believe this is known as white privilege - the ability to act as if the burden of being treated well is too much responsibility to bear. Sure it is, but what the fuck... I want peace and solitude where I live, not additional work thrust upon me from the outside. Also, the property manager is a frustrated little douche-bag, so I want to rub his nose in shit a little bit. Hopefully without getting any on my foot.

The lawyer cautioned me to prepare to move, soon. He said that I should write the letter, but that I should expect to have my rent raised or to be served an eviction notice in 60+ days. He told me that they can not "retaliate," but that only lasts for that short period. After that, I am at the mercy of the capitalists and capitalism. Who knows what horrors be that way. 

The boy and I decided that we need a new dining room table. We will go shopping this weekend. He also needs a new bookshelf. I bought one from Target for him and I may as well have just dropped the money in the parking lot. It would have been easier, no assembly would have then been required, no need to walk the money out to the dumpster and hoist it in. If it were not for the consumer slowing down the process these manufacturers would be able to transport their products directly to the landfill. Once they figure out a way of charging customers for this as a mandatory courtesy tax then the impeding middle man will be effectively removed from the beautiful cycle of commerce. 


Well, tomorrow is the nation's big day, where we celebrate the peaceful transference of power. I imagine this must be similar to what it feels like on the eve before your family puts you into conversion therapy. You want to get away from it so badly, but there's nowhere left to run, and screaming about it will change nothing. 

We've just been praying on this over and over. It's for your own good, son, 'cause we love you and we want you to be free. We tried every other approach, even the Catholic ones. We just need to put it over into God's hands now. If God cain't fix it, then it just cain't be fixed. The demon of homosexuality is one of the worst mother-scratchers out there, once it gets down into your loins it just don't wanna let go. 




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Wednesday, January 18, 2017

The Ginger Napoleon




(Savage Tenant)


Disclaimer: No animals were harmed in the filming of the writing of this virtual post.


I feel as if I'm going to punch CS in the eye socket as part of my unorthodox Olympic training. Those are my feelings on the subject. He is busy trying to find ways to squander our retirement funds. I don't blame him - I would do the same. I just need the PIN number and then of course the plastic access to my happiness. He wants to buy me a new camera, and I want to let him.


I have to move everything out of my kitchen and then back again today. Or, I can linger on the return job, though it brings me no happiness to do so. I had to do all of this less than a month ago. It is a long story and one I hopefully do not have to tell here. If I speak to the property manager once more it might result in an eviction or an arrest, or both. I am 100% in the right on this issue, but it is one of those situations where bile rises into the throat because I am being treated unfairly and my desirable options are limited. It is (probably) all within their legal right to force me to do this again so quickly, though I am checking just to be sure, Either way, it is an enormous pain in my ass and is the direct result of their ineptitude. 

So, I have feelings similar to what poor people must have when dealing with the police. It doesn't seem fair and I just wish to be left alone.

Where you live should be a sanctuary from unwanted intrusion, particularly the kind that involves additional labor on your part. Add to this the fact that the property manager is the Little Ginger Napoleon of the Barrio. He has perhaps jabbed the wrong person with his accusations and demands. That remains to be seen. 

Once I know the laws of California a little bit better, which I am currently checking into, then I may have more to write here concerning it. I could use some new material, and moving elsewhere might not be such a bad thing, either. Perhaps my time here has run its course.  


I just got off the phone with Comcast, also, to add to my life experiences for the day. 

We're told that suffering produces growth and I can attest to this. I just grew two fists.





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Tuesday, January 17, 2017

How I lost the Olympics




(Миссия выполнена)


Another day, another dream. Yesterday, I exhausted myself doing stuff after work - a bike ride, the gym, and swimming. I ate sushi and had sake, went to sleep early and rose late. 

Why does rose seem wrong there? It probably is. I should have studied more when that was what life expected most of me. I am currently throwing out books that I'll never read, or never read again. Asking myself the question, Will I live long enough to want to read this? is a very odd domestic ritual, where fears meet dreams and then negotiate my feelings about the future. 

I swam laps in preparation for what will now be a "Sprint Triathlon" rather than the esteemed world class Napa Olympics, the gold standard of athleticism. 

My American teammate and training partner was caught doping, again, so we have been asked to withdraw our team and participate in the un-televised triathlon that occurs a day before the Olympics. We're now in that category, thrown into the basket of satiricals. These Olympic urine tests have become much more stringent in the last week. 

We have been advised by our legal counsel to not publicly discuss this matter as it could negatively impact our sponsorship deals for the Ped-Egg Powerball Bunion Remover. (Please mention this site when purchasing. Much like Ken Rockwell, my family would starve if I wasn't a hardworking beggar that happens to unfairly love Nikon cameras and lenses.) 

The Sprint triathlon is exactly half what the Olympic is - 750 meters swimming (I did 900 last night), 12.4 miles cycling (I did 25 yesterday), and 3.1 miles of running (The oldest parts of the bible instructs that "The foolish man runs when no one is chasing him" so I refuse to train for this portion of the event and instead have paid a Kenyan to chase me a stick on the day of the triathlon, which should cover any biblical compliance needs for the event. We adhere to the strict Old Testicle ways.)


The world is full of crazies, just look around. When I was younger I loved it. I could sit and giggle for hours about it on acid. Now, it just seems that these people should not have a say in anything, ever. Seriously. We're all afraid of totalitarianism, or so we claim, and I know the timing is rather poor for this deeply held personal opinion. I understand that. But... the first thing I would take away from people is their say in things, their vote. I would suppress voting in a much less racially patterned way, nobody would be able to complain on that level, anyway.

If they are not funny then they should not be allowed to participate in the conversation. Power should always be kept from the humorless. These times offer opportunity mostly for the satirist and the cynics among us. The unhappiest have been trying to claim the "death of irony" for 15 years and four months and six days now. I hope they've learned their lesson. Irony just took the White House. 










Monday, January 16, 2017

Minimalizin' and Microtrippin'




(Only in New York... : Golden Gate Park)


I was kidding about Cato, he knows that I'm not gay. I've had to tell him a thousand times. He is probably being heterosexual somewhere right now. 

Well, I had meant to spend a part of the weekend cleaning my apartment - as in: a deep winter clean - but I never did get around to it. I was too busy being a weekend worrier. I did create two stacks of books to get rid of, though boxes and boxes of studio and computer cables from previous years have gone untouched, unused for a decade or more now. They sit, waiting to corrupt the next electrical signal that passes through them, if ever. My plan is to minimalize my life. There is too much clutter filling the closets and rooms. It is overwhelming. I wish now to be underwhelmed by my living conditions. 

I'm being told by Apple's OS that minimalize is not a word. The OS is wrong, again, says almighty I. The word does not mean to shrink the quantity of a thing or the thing itself but to strive towards a more minimal life. I wish to super-ize by simplifying.

One of my favorite SNL skits concerns the Queen's visit to America and the instructions provided to the hotel manager for her visit. She wants an entire room that is shrunken to the relative size of the hotel room's refrigerator so that when she retires she can roam around and feel like a giant.

That is Good Stuff. 


I went for a new ride with a buddy from the SF on Sunday - the "paradise loop," starting in Tiburon. It was great to get out of Sonoma and ride new roads. There is much beauty in Marin if you can stay far enough away from the hemorrhage that is the highway and the type places that such a functional structure invites, and of course the people. Californians are smug, unhappy, sometimes aggressive, and mainly a humorless bunch. Too many of them, anyway, particularly in this region's Narnia, Marin. They would get the shit slapped out of them in New York for dressing that way. Ooops, I mean acting that way. Every one of these men was privately crushed when Lance Armstrong admitted guilt. They didn't give a shit about his doping, the only shame was the admission. 

I agree with them, though for reasons all my own. 

I believe that all sports should encourage drug use, even chess, and that the athlons should then compete "to the death." How else are we going to know which of them is truly a champion. The origin of the word means campus gladiator, I hope. Or, one who refuses to fight for the valor of others. I forget which one it is. 

I am so full of shit. Why does anybody bother reading here? I'm actively trying to reduce thought, as if it's part of a carbon footprint, and am so pro-dope at this point that I think athletes should be tested and only those that test positive should be allowed to die on tv.


I didn't start the tracking app on my watch until we had stopped for an expresso (I know it... I have become the twat that I warned against above), but the total ride must have been about 20 miles. Nice hills that wobbled up and down towards the sky and then away from it, all along the hilly coast of the bay then up to San Quentin, inland and upwards to Mountain View, then back again. 

Well, it was a weekend of doing things, which was great and needed. I had toyed with the idea of getting away but couldn't decide on a location, so two little day-trips it was. 

"Microtripping" with your host and hero, Sean.


I came home and seared a ribeye steak, leaving it quite rare, ate that with grilled asparagus, with just a splash and dash of olive oil, salt, and pepper. I listened to the most beautiful music I could find, soft and inviting notes drifting through the apartment, taking with them concerns that need not be addressed, that need not even be concerns. Drank slowly a tea I had brewed as a reward for a weekend well lived. Retired to bed to read until the dark drew me towards and into the dreaming. 

Found myself here typing in the morn, wondering what next world, what next.







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