Pleas and Appeals

(Okay: my flight was delayed last night, so I got into SF late and had to work early this morning. I *tried* to write a post on the plane but gave up. This is the unedited result.)

Stuck on a delayed flight home.  I held out as long as I could, then... I put on an old favorite Tom Waits album and pulled the computer out of the overhead, forgetting altogether that I had no internet.

So, I’m writing this post in Word, for an old buddy.

We’ll see what Microsoft has to say about my grammar. It is curious that Google does not offer to correct me, all things considered, and with their access to information one might think… oh well.

Don’t be vile, says the Google autocorrect.

The buddy I mentioned above, he developed a rather formal relationship with the federal government. Well, the relationship was a thing that they insisted upon. A surprise invitation. They would not have it any other way. They presented it to him such that he could hardly refuse. He was only able to fend them off as well as he could in their relationship demands. He negotiated, I suppose. But once things were settled they became inseparable, for a time.

He was an industrious sort, a true diligent. He had an import/distribution operation with several loose contacts in the Amsterdam area.

Ah, the days… but so much more and again the nights.

(Nothing good happens after midnight... claim some)

Pleas and Appeals. 

Pleasin' an' Pills

Well, it is not my intention to fabricate his story here. He is already crafting his own version of the tale, so… I’ll leave him to it.

I feel awkward writing what might become a post, on a computer, on a plane.

A friend called me a “twat” today. He must be right.

I wish to feel that there is somebody anonymous reading along, a young woman, seated just behind me, wondering what purpose such a thing could possibly serve, neither love-letter nor path to prosperity.

I have a few hundred daily readers, so I should not wish that I have one now, reading as I write; one that will never know how to find me once the darkness is lit and the altitude has been relinquished. 

But I suspect she is there, as I am here. So, there.

It must be Tom Waits, the effect of his music upon me, a forlorn romanticism. 

Why don’t all planes have wi-fi? What bullshit is that? I am ready to spend some money.

Not a lot, but enough, always just more than the thing is worth.

That must be one of the truest signs of age, the feeling that all things are not worth what they cost. It is a begrudging thought that did not occur to me before, ever. 

I only felt that there were many things, some great, which I could not afford.

Now, whatever it is… those bastards are always charging too much.

It is why women aren’t interested in me any longer. What kind of a lover would think such things, or worse, admit to them? 

I once discovered suddenly that I was wealthy, and well beyond. 

You can imagine my disappointment upon awakening.

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Problem Solved

(Disclaimer: I had meant to write more, but time restrictions prevented me from muddling the facts any further.)

My friends have not been able to yet resolve the Palestinian / Israeli conflict by posting to Facebook. I don't understand how these things work, apparently. The images of maimed and dead Palestinian children seem to have no effect, or not the effect that they might have hoped for: the raising of consciousness. 

Denouncing baby-killers is one way to get people over to your way of thinking. I'm amazed that Congress hasn't already passed the Anti-Baby-Killer-Act. ABKA.

There are too many of my friends that should have rightly been involved in various armed global insurrections throughout the 80's and 90's, but instead they were eating ecstasy and dancing at nightclubs. 

Now, of course, they are the true and righteous revolutionaries. 

Only in sports and politics is everybody so self-assured of correctness and eventual victory.

Don't get me wrong... I'm as self-righteous as anybody and love to argue for a cause, even when it's not mine, but... I'm completely befuddled at some people's online responses to the conflict in Palestine, or Israel, or whatever you choose to call the Levant, the piece of land along the South-Eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea.

You know the place (see detail above).

I understand, all too well, how people wish to project their allegiances and grievances online. But the Israeli / Palestinian issue (see how I changed the order there, to be fair?) is far more complicated than anybody would have you believe. Anybody that would attempt to simplify it "for you" is engaged in political manipulation. It is called propaganda and should be recognized for what it is: a rhetorical device meant to persuade. 

Choosing sides is easy. I do it two or three times a day, just to keep Facebook interesting, etc.

I saw a video yesterday in which a scholar attempts to show how easy-to-understand the issue actually is. His reasoning involved a simplification that painted the Palestinians as stateless historical wanderers that refuse to recognize the right of Israel to exist.

Seems simple enough.

Justification for response is the tricky part, though.

There are two groups fighting for the coveted role of victim here, and two groups also violently asserting their right to exist, one more effectively than the other and with greater military support.

A victim never has to morally evaluate themselves. So, it confers great advantage in the justification of any subsequent behavior once the status of victim has been achieved.

Why either of them requires recognition from the other, and the legal and economic possession of the locale where they believe themselves to have this right to exist, seems to be the main points of contention.

Is that simple enough? 

One group will need to cease to exist, or at least cease to do so in their current location.

So, take a guess at who looks like they're most likely to win, make yourself some popcorn, get a beer, pull yourself up to Facebook, choose sides, and fire away.

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Not Safe For Home

(Lower Alberta Falls)

Last day of my mini-vacation. A barbecue in Golden, CO later today. Yesterday, we prepared by buying fancy brat sausages and craft beers. It is what Coloradans do. 

That, and smoke pot.

We went to get some Vietnamese pho yesterday and I browsed through a local newspaper while we waited for our food to arrive. The cover story was about how the federal government was going to try to take away the guns of the honest hard-working, pot-smoking citizens of Colorado.  Think I'm kidding? (see below).

Almost every ad in this newspaper somehow involved the growing, cultivation, distribution, ingestion, or dispensing of... you guessed it, pot.

It makes me want to buy a gun. I've always sort of wanted one, just to help settle unexpected arguments, but now that I'm in a state that has legalized pot I want one even more. I'm not sure if I'll be here long enough to buy one though. I believe there is a waiting period. I feel like I've already waited long enough. 

The word NOW! keeps flashing in my mind in bold red letters, accompanied by bursts of light and deafening pops, sirens.

I also want to start drinking more champagne, or whatever, and wearing tuxedoes on boats. There's something about downing a nice flute of bubbles while you're packin' heat that just seems so fucking cool and righteous. Prostitutes would love that sort of thing, I think.

I don't want to shoot anybody, at first. Eventually though... I can see how the temptation would get to you. You might succumb to it in a moment of unexpected strength, or if you woke up with an erection.

I have some friends who are avid gun owners, and amateur fantacists. I find their stories of self-invented heroics fascinating, though alarmingly repetitive. Their willingness to engage in fantasy role-play is unequaled, except only maybe by those who are heavily into sado-masochism, and a few closet larpers here or there. 

That crowd, etc.

You can't tell them any of this, the gun owners. Or, you can, but they'll just dismiss you and then try to project their gun-use fantasies towards you and your family.

Oh yeah... what would you do if your wife was being raped by a bunch of dirty, uneducated, unemployed immigrants that snuck past the guard house at the entrance to your neighborhood, turned over the file cabinets at the HOA office, then broke into your home without triggering the ADT alarm? What then? Huh? What would you do? Watch your wife get raped? Would you like that? Huh? Look at a picture of her right now and tell me how you could allow such a thing? You fucking disgusting liberal. You're probably on their side, aren't you? You probably want to line girls up at the border, just waiting to be raped by them like their sun bathing. You fucking liberals are all such a twisted bunch.

Why do all their stories involve raping as a launch point, and the singular incident which propels the narrative, a plot which always ends in them unloading a round or two into their belly or face, with just enough time left in their miserable lives for them to lean over and say one last thing to them.

You really wanted to rape my wife, didn't you?

They're like pubescent cops. I've never met a cop that didn't like to use gang-rape as the punch line to every chuckle. 

Ah, yes, Mothers Day, that'll be nice. There probably won't be much gang-raping at brunch. If there is, I'll be there to oversee it.

If we were to know the porn-watching habits of cops we'd never let them back out on the streets armed again, society would be forced to act. 

There must be some mechanism that gets triggered when you restrain people and lock them up together as a regular part of your job. It must trigger some primal fascination with the dynamics of sexual power. The semblance of maintaining order as a masking device to barely conceal the urge to humiliate must really be a powerful, shared voice among them.

That's part of the reason why cops are always trying to convince themselves, and everybody else, that firemen are all just a bunch of pussies. 

They're just itching to lock those guys up.

And this, dear friends, is why I want a gun.  Because there are just too many sickos out there.

I want a Big 9" Black Glock with thick, creamy bullets that can spray everywhere, just like in the video movies.

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Humor should be protected, or at least kept away from the cops

(Rizzo, the wonder pup)

I want a secret life. It's as if everybody has one, except me.

If I had a secret life I would probably write about it on this site, though. That's the surest way to not have one: to be persistently confessional.

Having a secret life seems like it requires a lot of energy, of course, but being able to spring it on your friends who are oblivious seems like it packs such private, personal whallop. 

My life is more like skiing with an inter-tube; it is imprecise, unexpected, fun for a while, and designed for disaster. A rudderless catastrophe. 

I suppose I might be doomed to live the other type of life, the one where secret acknowledgement of deviance plays less of a role, or not at all.

I mean, I do secret things, but Rachel knows about them. So, they fail, at the level of secrecy.

How does one acquire a truly secret life? I want to know, so that I can tell everybody.

Yesterday, as promised, we went hiking. Alberta Falls, in the Rocky Mountain National Park. Fantastic drive into the park and a great trail. We took my buddy's "service dog" and were questioned by every Park Ranger and volunteer we encountered. I believe that by law they are only allowed to ask if it is a service dog and what type. My buddy lied and said that he was epileptic. It always brings me barely contained private pleasure to openly lie to law enforcement officials. 

Always.

Though, admittedly, Park Rangers are about the friendliest law enforcement agents that you will ever find, anywhere. All cops should be trained by the National Park Service. 

I would have told them that he was my service dog and I had diarrhea. I believe that all you have to say is "medical" but we were having too much fun making up faux reasons for the pup's presence in the park.

We let him off the leash to the great astonishment of many hikers. They had never seen anything like it in a National Park, a privately owned animal running free. Clearly seeing an animal off its leash is not the reason they come to a place like that. 

I kid. Nobody at all seemed upset by it. The dog is very well-mannered and friendly. He made many new friends on the trail. 

Then, lunch in Lyon. Local beers and chicken wings and burgers.

Tomorrow, a bbq at an old friend's house whom I haven't seen in many years, perhaps as many as fifteen years, or more. Should be fun. 

A lot of my elderly friends, like CS, question my time spent on Facebook. They miss one simple joy there though, I think: the open opportunity to poke cops in the proverbial eye. 

It's fucking great sport. 

A few of my friends have friends that are cops, for reasons that I don't quite understand. So, inevitably conversations will surround an alleged citizen, you know, where a group of cops accidentally choked somebody to death in the normal line of duty. 

The cops always point out that if the person had simply agreed with their arrest then there wouldn't have been any problems. Because that's what the courts are for, disagreeing with the particulars of your arrest. Things go so much better for arrestees in court, of course, especially for the minorities. 

Nothing warms a judges heart like the phrase "resisting arrest."

I get so tired of hearing how cops are "just like everybody else"... No they're fucking not. Go to a bbq. If a cop shows up there is a distinct and unnecessary sense of something being projected from them. As if at any time the whim to exert control over the situation might just take them, or be required of them, for the safety of everybody involved. The only times cops giggle is if you make a gang-rape joke.

Not all of them, is the common response.

Too many of them, is mine.

Fuck them and everything about them. They are the armed, funded henchmen of the near future. They know it, and they even seem to enjoy it. 

That's just the violence they regularly display. What about the systematic misuse of "probable cause"...?  Of course they believe it's reasonable to trample people's rights. The justification is the result. 

Or, "detainment," which is the law they created to take away your rights and hold you in custody without charging you for a crime, for your own good....

When is it ever in your best interest to have your rights taken away without recourse? 

When they say so, that's when.

So, Facebook is a place where you can safely tell them what witless, petty, corrupt autocrats they are. 

For now...

Don't let the opportunity pass you by. 

It might not come again. 

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... love to always consider

(A mountain or two, maybe, and a lake, some trees)

I finally got some much needed sleep, hours of it. Who knows how many. There was nobody there in the room to count, I hope.

My buddy and I went bike riding yesterday to see what there is to see around Longmont, CO. Pretty standard stuff in a little town not far from Boulder. Great view of the Rockies on one side, great plains just starting on the other.

Today, we go hiking up into the mountains a little bit. I'm a genuine nature boy.

Yesterday, I fucked up the joke about the arrivals and departures. When I looked at it I thought, Wait, that IS how it's supposed to be. The joke was lost. It was the other way, I swear. 

Ah well... the legalized marijuana is already softening my brain.

I don't really smoke pot, or not that much, anyway. I'm not what anybody would consider a pot smoker. I'm not an abstainer, it's just not part of my regular life. Every now and then I'll smoke it when a friend offers it, or if I have the whole day to myself to do with as I wish, without having to interact with anybody else. That happens less and less.

It does not calm my mind the way it does for some. It has never put me to sleep. It has the opposite effect. If I smoke too much I am reduced to a babbling spastic, though many must not even notice a difference. It is my natural-boy nature.

I will take my camera hiking today, so that maybe I will have an original picture for tomorrow's post. A landscape shot that is not nearly as good as any one I could easily find online. 

I chat with Cato often about his love of landscapes and my indifference to them. It is something that I do not feel as much, or understand. There is nothing weird about them to draw my attention. But neither is there in my many pictures of my boy, at least for me. 

So, it remains a mystery. Why does anyone like the things they like? Most of my pleasures are there simply because I burned myself out on the thing that came before it, giving myself no path back to orthodox pleasure. It's a scorched earth policy.

"Spiritual discovery" for an atheist consists mainly in rediscovering simple joys in life, not depending on others for them.

The second part is the trick. Discovering a new tea that you enjoy only goes so far. There is love to always consider. 

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The names have been changed for reasons unknown

I made it, Colorado. The Sunshine State.

I had hoped that we would already be skiing this morning but have since come to find out that this is not the season for it, no matter that altitude, sort of. 

I was encouraged to stop asking questions.

It was a bit of a rough landing getting here. The Denver airport - home to the secret Norad bomb bunkers, and the central point for many, many conspiracy-based operations -  was designed by a child with spectrum disorder. Where you pick up your baggage is the departure floor, rather than arrivals. There are no counters to check in for your flight there, those are on the arrivals floor.

Imbecilidiots. 

I was expecting to get what is known as a "contact high" just from being here and rubbing up against women in the airport, but the state has not yet devolved into Mad Max style anarchy, where the bloodthirsty rule the roads and the night. Not yet.

In fact, I'm already bored, almost. My friend, who I am staying with, sleeps about six times as much as I do. He's like a cat, but not always as lucky.

Well, fuck... I just read that a passenger jet was shot down over the Ukraine. I'm going to take a little morning nap, and maybe dream about flying.

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Pakwan

(Chickens)

Not enough bandwidth today. Yes, I use nerd-speak when that's all I've been able to hear in my own head all day.

I wanted to relay a story about going to dinner with "the guys" last night, but it has escaped me.

There was great Pakistani food at a little place in SF. 

Pakwan.

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Never Enough

I leave Sonoma today, for a little while, a week or more. 

I go into the city and work for two days, then to Denver, then back to the city and work for two days, then home again. It already feels a long time to be gone, but I don't know why, and I know that it is not.

Puddle-jumping, like the days of youth, only without the youth. The first thing to go are your needs.

Or, is it knees?

The friends that I go to visit have several large dogs, perhaps a hundred or more. It is difficult to feel blue near them. They are a happy pack and I love them much. I have posted pictures of each of them here before, though that is not what you see above. That was just one that I found quickly, and was taken just as quickly, obviously.

I will only bring one camera. It is more than enough, but it doesn't feel that way. I have come to understand that that feeling might be part of what has plagued me. If it can be called a plaguing.

I will only bring one pair of shoes also, though that distresses me much less.

Perhaps I have finally stopped dressing for success.

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The dangers of bitterness

I have allowed myself to get too worked up about the past, lately. I have been letting it simmer, dangerously. As it approached a rolling boil... one small act of kindness, just a few encouraging words, seemed to wipe it all away.

So shines a good deed... as Shakespeare's Wonka would say.

Resentments are too dangerous to toy with. They are like jealousy in their scope. They run wide and deep, and move too fast. Then they grow roots where they can, in the darkness, corrupting and cracking the foundation over time.

Just as I was letting a few things start to eat at me, a few simple words of benevolence made them all seem to vanish. It felt as if I was taking a shower made of sunshine.

The future is looking up, the past is the past.

Moving forward has never seemed so easy. 

I feel as light as hydrogen, but not in the Hindenburg way.

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This post is Safe For Work

(Nadar)

Somebody reported me for posting this pic on Facebook earlier.

So, fuck off.... philistines. 

See if you can get Facebook to ask Google to scold me.

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Overwinning voor de Nederlanders!

Another weekend. The final games of the World Cup. 

I want Argentina to win, but when I've joked about Germany winning I've only upset my Argentinian friends. When it comes to international sports one is not permitted to have too many German friends, you see.

I am upsetting people again, lately.

I have lost my sense of humor, I guess. Everything that I am saying seems far too literal. I need to recapture a sense of ironic distance. Detachment.

My ideas concerning The Master Race have not been received as well as one might hope.

Nothing is a given, either team can win at any point in elimination. Yes, it takes a team that is playing well to win four games in a row, against such good opponents, but any reasonably talented team can win a single game against the best team in the world on any given day. 

It's why World Cup elimination games are so much fun to watch, and why the first round is a group stage.

Had Spain or England played differently in the group stages either of them they very well might have made it to the final two games also. Such a thing would have surprised no one a little more than a month ago. But... I guarantee that I will have more than one person comment on the "ridiculousness" of what I just wrote.

Because: sports experts tend to emerge after the facts. Their science is not always so great at making coherent predictions. They want and need certain outcomes, which affects the data set.

I merely like to see teams that are playing well win. That's why I wished for Chile and Colombia to knock Brazil out, and either of them might have done it, but they faltered just so slightly against the mighty, mighty Brazil.

It would not have been at all unfeasible for Costa Rica to knock the Netherlands out, based on the way that Cost Rica was playing. It would have been fun to see America knock Belgium out, or for Mexico to make it to the final four, which brings us back to the Dutch. Robben's dive was almost as popular a meme as Suarez's bite. Robben's dive has nearly made people forget van Persie's header to open against Spain.

Any of those wins or losses were possible and would have been considered very seriously by anybody discussing the games just over two weeks ago. Now, you would have to be a fool to discuss any possibilities other than the ones that unfolded, and now Argentina must also beat Germany.

As the desire to see a certain teams win, the excuses for any loss increase also. It is like a wave that passes; wishes draw you forward, the weight of excuses pull the trail.

To watch the games with floating allegiances deeply disturbs many of my friends. It is unsettling to have a friend like me that picks his team based on how they are playing rather than by a love for a particular culture, language, or locale. There is something sickening about such a person. It is the result of a diseased mind. 

What else could possibly explain it?

There is a sense of, But we invited you to our country, and you came and visited, and enjoyed your stay. Now, you insist on shitting on us, after we have served you so many dinners...

It's silly, but I understand.

At least my pick for today is obvious and made well in advance: Netherlands. It's a no-brainer. Brazil didn't deserve to make it this far (see above), and even though the Dutch made it here by cheating Mexico along the way, they have gained steam in their playing and are almost as much fun to watch as other teams.

It's like watching Germany, but with some recognizable star players. Or, that's what the online pundits would have you believe about Germany, that they are the only true team, and nothing else, a machine made of humans. 

They've all had their names removed, to better reflect The Fatherland. 

Also, I have more Dutch friends than Brazilian.

It is science.

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Horses Gone Wild

Another day, lost long before I had a chance to harness myself to it and ride.

Wild Horses would all too easily drag me away.

I think that they already have.

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Breakdown, go ahead and give it to me...

It is done. Enormous effort went into it. Now my record collection is thinned down to a single shelf, almost. If I can just keep moving towards having an increasingly minimal life, then maybe...

A friend pointed out to me that I'm trying to take on the whole world lately, and that maybe it's not such a great idea, all things considered. He's right, of course. I'm being too defensive. I'm isolating myself, almost on purpose.

Later that same day, my new roommate pointed out that I'm using the World Cup to vent some deeply held internal feelings. I seem a little bit overly "taken" with the matches. 

She's right, also.

The separation with Rachel has taken nine months to wear me down, but it has finally won. I'm having minor meltdowns, silly outbursts, emotions are bubbling up out of nowhere. It's no good.

Yet another friend, yesterday, called me to give me several words of caution.

When three people are all openly addressing your fragile or endangered state then maybe it's time to take a step back, a few deep breaths, and reconsider where you are, where you're going, what you're doing.

So, that's what I'll do next, right after the final game on Sunday.

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The Marathon of Movin'

(The artist, formerly known)

What a strange day I had, yesterday. 

So many of the records I went through I had completely forgotten. I guess this is to be expected. I am retired.

There were thousands of them, many were only played a few times or not at all. Still, others were never memorable to begin with. It is the curse of much electronic music. I know, I know... I will have some fresh new enemies for that one. It's true. Drugs help differentiate many of those tracks. Without the drugs, and now across much time, they are flat. The differences are so minimal between them as to be negligible. It is what contributes to the myth of "smoothness" in some djs' djing.

There was some joy in yesterday, drops of it. The little curious things I found among the records - flyers from parties I had played, notes from label managers written directly on the sleeves, artists wanting to know what I thought of their records, reminders of different cities, countries that I have played. Smiley faces, peace signs, phone numbers.

I was never very good at giving feedback.

Many of the people that I spent my youth with were illiterate, or maybe they just happened to be high when they sent me their records, or both. Some of the writing was indecipherable. Nobody seems to have agreed on how to spell my name. There has yet to be the great "ecstasy movement" in literature, etc. There was a time when promo copies came only in paper sleeves, so the records have long since been destroyed, just after the sleeve was, years ago, being jammed into record boxes, packed far too tightly.

Always in a rush.

Towards the end I got so tired of flipping through records and inhaling the dust that rises that I was just glancing every 10 records or so and setting entire boxes aside to be given away. I'm sure there are some hidden regrets buried in that process.

I could still slim down what I have set aside to keep, and there is much more to do. I amassed double and triple copies of some records, just to be sure. The love of collecting is partly a neurotic habit.

My sinuses this morning are filled with foreign dust.

Some of those records reminded me of times that I shared with old friends, long before cameras were invented, back in the war. I would love to have pictures of some of the things that passed between all of us without ever having been recorded. I suppose that is the paradox of time and fleeting youth, nobody thought about taking pictures of such a thing. To try to record it would have sent the wrong message. It might have suggested that the whole thing wasn't going to last, an impossibility at the time. Though oddly, less likely now.

But this is not the morning for sentimental reminiscence. There was enough of that yesterday.

Now it is time for coffee, the gym, more sorting, more snorting, more boxing, more loading, more Movin'...

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Collection: Records

I will sort through my records today, to determine which ones will stay with me. I've decided on keeping approximately 2000 of them, another 4000 or so will be given away. Perhaps I have my numbers wrong. I have enough to fill four of the shelves pictured above. I'll be keeping enough to fill one of them.

I thought of recording them, but didn't think enough of it, or often enough.

Some people buy houses so they are able to keep their lives, for others it has the opposite effect.

C'est La Vie.

There are a lot of other things I should get rid of as well, like all of my cds now that I've converted them to mp3. Though, I sadly converted them at 192 kbps when the technology was relatively new. A tactical error, one that I will likely never correct.

Oh well, almost everything is available online now. Paid subscriptions are the future of all things.

I have a fair amount of studio gear that might go also. That stuff could get saved, delivered to a place where it could be set up to be used. We'll see.

They are all relics from another time, somehow still occupying space. My life is quaint but stuffed with objects.

One less. I've lost my phone again. That's three times in three days. Suddenly things have changed on me. The world has shifted and I have less to attach myself to this new world.

Moving my stuff out is another ending, of sorts.  I would be lying to say that it doesn't sadden me. We've given ourselves no way back, and neither is resisting it much, or enough.

C'est La Vie.

I don't even look forward to going through all the records today. It's an enormous task. One that I might have enjoyed a few years ago. I suppose that is the way of things. I don't need them. They serve no functional use and as a collective memento they are burdensome, unwieldy. 

It represents a lifetime of something, then that thing simply becoming something else. It is the way of things.

There are albums that will be very difficult to let go of, Talking Heads. I have them all on cd, of course. But these are the copies I bought when they came out, so many years ago. The Clash. What use is the vinyl to me now? I'm not a purist. Or, I'm not as much of a purist to get a storage unit to lock all of this stuff up again for another ten years. I also have two Technics turntables, which seems like such a silly pair of things to own.

I am becoming increasingly minimal.

What comes after minimalism... what tether holds.

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Halfway across another year, my dear

(An entrance to Wolf House)

Well, Christ didn't work out for me. His magical healing powers proved to be ineffective, no match to the task, and I no mere Lazarus.

As if that's bad enough - not having a Christ-shaped life parachute - I find this article, which states that drinking increases your chances of longevity. 

It is science.

I've been recently enduring a period of self-pity. I've recognized it over the last couple weeks and decided that maybe drinking and self-pity are not such a good combination and I should eliminate one. But I wanted to be certain, and not overreact. 

To add to this, I haven't been going to the gym as much as I had been and I've gained several pounds. I eat like a pig with two erections. It's awful. I'm an emotional eater, and drinker. If I stop working out, or even slow down, then it manifests itself in my moods very quickly. I have much less patience for some people and they seem to feel the same.

It's unfortunate and unpleasant. Perpetual sweat seems to be the best counter-balance to inner turmoil and dissatisfaction. 

Under normal circumstances I am able to adequately ignore the folly of others. For some reason this is noticeably less so when drinking, which is what two World Cup matches on the same day, two days in a row, will cause. I very rarely experience withdrawal symptoms from alcohol. But late yesterday and last night I had a headache, and even mild craving for beer, which I recognized as a symptom. It is an unsettling feeling, to know that your body is trying to persuade you to do a thing that you have decided that you won't do. I figured that two days of drinking invites some abstinence once it is over, etc.

But, back to my self-pity... It is finally dawning on me that my idea of a life with Rachel and Rhys, together as a family that lives together, is ending. It will become increasingly difficult to maintain much faith in any healing process between her and I. It's simply not happening, and enough time has passed to acknowledge that. 

It's partially my fault, of course. But it is far more convenient for me to explore how I was a victim in this scenario. That's one of the great things about a relationship: there's plenty of evidence to believe just about anything that you wish to believe. My inner world is like a bad Pink Floyd double album: corrupt with snotty blame and self-involved fantasies of suffering at the hand of historical fate, always on the verge of an emotional outburst that borders on the completely irrational. Spoiled to the center, unable to escape a cartoon version of human interaction. 

God, they are fucking miserable, though I'll still listen to their new album. I owe my childhood at least that much, etc.

Don't get me wrong, Rachel and I are getting along as well as we ever have, nearly. It's because we have reduced our relationship almost down to the exclusive responsibilities involved in being parents to a child. All the other stuff has just evaporated, taking some (too much) tenderness, affection and attraction along with it.

All that remains is the echo of love. It is there, we can both hear it and even evoke it when we wish, but it is most often at a slight remove, a distance that reminds, little else. It is no longer a space that we can enter, but instead one that separates us, though not always unpleasantly so. 

As for recognizing the stages of loss and grief... we have both experienced anger and depression, we've conducted our bargaining with the stars, we are each now being forced out of denial. All that remains is eventual isolation, then acceptance.

I don't look forward to it. I have constructed a life out of not accepting anything that I didn't want to accept. I have magical powers of denial. Witches and Warlocks contact me to get my potions. 

Perhaps a dose of self-pity, after all these months, is what is needed. I will fire up a cauldron of rusty needles and chicken blood, in thunder, lightning, or in rain....?

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Rhys is two and a half years old today. He woke up telling me how much he loves me. It is impossible not to be touched by such an innocent and open gesture of warmth and love.

Maybe he's right, and I've got it all wrong. 

He doesn't seem to feel sorry for me, at all.

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I've found it!

I have just discovered the most wonderful and effective coping mechanism and I would like to share it with all of you:

No matter how heinous my behavior becomes I simply tell people that I have accepted Jesus into my heart and am now prepared to live The Christian Life. 

The Christians are happy for me and everybody else just leaves me alone. Because I have so few Christian friends they are easy to avoid. I might end up going to church here or there, but that no longer seems like punishment. It's what's known as a "content rich" environment. 

Christ's love is truly a get-out-of-jail-free-card.

I'm set free.

Yesterday alone I accepted Christ into my heart three or four times.

I want to find a way to monetize this feeling. 

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Moist Mayonnaise

(Pic by Manu Fernandez)

Both of my teams lost yesterday, France and Colombia.

Today, luckily, I like every team that's playing and have fond memories of every country represented. So, I'll just be content to be happy that somebody has won.

My first choices would probably be Argentina and Costa Rica, but I'd be happy to see Belgium and the Netherlands win also, just don't tell anybody... no true friend would ever be for the opponent.

Nationalism runs deep in these international times.

I don't hate Brazil, I just wish that their winning wasn't such an assumed given. They haven't been playing that well and are lucky to still be in the Cup, though they did play well against Colombia yesterday. It's too bad Neymar is out of the cup now (above). They will have an increasingly difficult time winning their next two matches. But that is what is what will be required of the champions.

I love that every match eliminates somebody. Gripping.

I got in a few arguments on Facebook yesterday, they all ended badly. I have far fewer friends to maintain now. There should be a built-in app that checks your posts for typos, frequency and truculence, then just shuts you down. You can see what others are saying but you can't try to interrupt them.

That would be useful.

Would have been, etc.

Why do Brits always try to correct people's usage of English? No matter how laughably ignorant and grammatically incorrect they are they tend to believe that their misuse trumps anyone else's correct use of the shared language.

It is a fallback mystery that always appears online after a shameful showing in international sports of any kind. 

That, and they will also remind you how they invented the sport of football. They act more and more like Americans as the losses pile up.

Okay. I need coffee and then a good seat for the 9am game. 

Well, I had better charge my phone battery, to prepare for the furious posting that will most likely be a part of my day.

I don't think I ate any food yesterday. No, wait, I do remember having a Chicago-style hot dog. It had everything on it; peppers, tomatoes, all sorts of stuff.

But then that was it, nothing else for the rest of the day. I tried. I looked at sandwiches in a bodega, but they looked awful. White bread and turkey, in need of mayonnaise just to render it moist enough to eat.

I hate mayonnaise, as much as some people hate the word moist.

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... the consent of the governed

(Celebratory Incendiary)

1976, I was getting dressed for a July 4th parade. It was the bicentennial. The big one. I was only seven years old but I had the foresight to get dressed entirely in red, white and blue. 

Those civics classes in school were really paying off.

My family made fun of me. I'm not sure which one it was - it would have been my mother or father - made me change clothes.

The parade was exactly as one would expect, a procession of costumed others, giving normal people a chance to act like Canadians.

Afterwards, they asked all of the kids that were dressed only in red, white and blue to come forward. They had a prize for each of them, a big stuffed bear, or something. 

I stared straight ahead and fought through the bitter anger and frustration, watching others kids go collect my reward. I felt my mother's hand rest gently on my shoulder. She leaned down and assured me that we would stop at the toy store and get me something.

Like what, recognition? 

No. But I remember feeling it, knowing that nothing at the toy store would feel as good as getting to go up on stage to get a free bear and be praised for my unashamed and perfectly appropriately timed patriotism.

You see, luck does not always favor the prepared.

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California Highway Petroleum

I can't get my head together this morning. The day has launched without me, again.

I am so sick of getting speeding tickets. I got one yesterday, again, on my way home from work. That is about four or five in the last year, maybe more. The natural speed that I drive is apparently above the posted limits.

I'd be amazed if my license isn't already suspended.

When I asked the cop if it was he told me that he didn't know, that he didn't look up my driving record. He must have been in a hurry. I suppose I understand how he can write me a ticket without looking up my record. I just wasn't sure why he would ever do such a thing. 

Getting a speeding ticket comforts me in one way, at least I know there's not a warrant out for my arrest. It acts as the poor man's lawyer.

I wield a NY State license. I never bothered getting a CA version of it. I just keep telling the police that I live in NY, also. 

My wife and I keep a modest chateau in the real city, so that the maids have somewhere to rest, you see..... 

Some of them get rather incensed about it. I explain that I am in NY approx. 182.5 days out of the year, but that I've often considered getting a CA license, as the whim takes me... I just don't have the time. It's part of the reason that I am so rushed today...

My air-conditioner works better when I'm cruising about 90 mph, etc.

I asked the CHP if I could see the speed he recorded me at on his radar and he said that I couldn't. He explained that they are encouraged not to store the results, which seemed odd to me. I told him that destroying evidence is a crime.

He laughed at me. I told him that if he really wanted to destroy some evidence of a crime why didn't he start with his copy of my ticket.

Then, I not only denied speeding but I also explained to him that I wasn't even the one driving, that I was somewhere else at the time of the alleged infraction, that he wrote the ticket to an impostor and that I was declared legally brain-dead at several after-parties. 

This ticket would never hold up in court. 

I had a rock-solid alibi. I will see him before the judge, though I will be wearing a disguise, so that he won't be able to identify me for the jury of my peers, which had better be made up of aging ravers.

I claimed to have been born without fingerprints. The doctors had never seen anything like it. It's part of how I am able to maintain dual citizenship between NY and CA.

He gave up and said that he will be looking forward to seeing me in court, or on the road sometime later.

I told him that he should get out of law enforcement and come fight with the rebels. 

We need more people whom are willing and eager to swallow the facts.

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Teen Secrets

There are some inherent challenges to raising a child while also having a roommate.

When trying to use the bathroom, #2, there is a balance one must strike between privacy (in the event the roommate comes home) and monitoring the child's destruction quotas. 

Taking a crap is a thrill that is similar to shoplifting. It is heinous, rushed, shameful, cautious, forced to be out in the open, and always done with a strong sense of getting caught with your pants down.

If I had more sense when I was fourteen years old I might have combined the two joys, shop-pooping: making off with a volume of Robert Frost while dropping a Bob Chocolate in the back aisle of Barnes and Noble.

They frown on that, don't they?

Some will always find a new way of frowning on things.

The formative years are very different for boys and girls, I guess. 

Few girls, I do not think, ever thought things like this: I wonder if I can get that guy to eat my pussy in this bathroom stall, or maybe show me his balls and asshole.

I don't think any of the girls I knew when I was young ever thought anything at all like that.

If they did then they kept it a very well-guarded secret.

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Sides Matter / NSFW

(Mein Unkle Heinrich)

I lost a few more friends yesterday, and am feeling a bit remorseful this morning. I got a little bit too excited about the Germany vs. Algeria game and was perhaps making light of some very delicate continental sausage munching.

Why can't we openly discuss the war-mongering Germans without feeling as if we're doing something wrong? When did they become victims? They always seem so strong. I don't get it.

I blame Oprah Winfrey for this, again, though don't tell them that.  

No, I only kid. But I did receive a few death threats.

I was called a racist, sort of, for not being adequately incensed that somebody referred to France and Germany as having already "met on bigger battlefields"... 

I was reminded that if America was playing Nigeria and a commentator mentioned slavery that they would be fired.

Possibly, but I believe my friend of direct German descent doesn't realize that it is socially acceptable to stereotype blood-loving Teutonic savages as such, but slavery is a very sensitive issue here. I've never seen Fritz cry before. It was really something, like a chilled Riesling.

Sure, we're supposed to celebrate our differences but what if I celebrate through laughter and derision? Why should I be ostracized for my personal preferences when acknowledging other cultures and nationalities.

I'm Irish. Nobody even thinks twice about poking me in the stomach with whiskey.

Okay, ok. I'll stop. I am only kidding, of course. I harbor no ill-will towards any race or nationality, of course. It's just that the World Cup makes bigots of us all. If you really care about the game, that is. The dividing lines are based on nation, land mass, privilege, language, etc. 

I have some friends that will only root for smaller countries, etc.

I just don't see *much* difference between racism and nationalism. Racism is bad, nationalism is applauded and encouraged. I don't get it.

The only difference between the two mindsets is arguably that of the discriminate and the indiscriminate.

If I'm missing something then please send me an email and let me know. It's been a while since I've thought about any of this stuff.

But let me tell you this....

There is a reason that World Cup is bigger and better than the Olympics: Men.

The Olympics are a competition that has institutionalized overt sexism. Nobody seems to notice, mind, or care.

Imagine hearing this: I'm sorry, but we do not allow your gender to compete in this competition at all, and certainly not for a gold medal. 

We award those based on gender.

You'd be rightly pissed if you heard that, wouldn't you? Who the fuck are they to tell you what gender you are... Make them prove it in court.

But, it is a very recognized and celebrated part of the Olympics, Men's and Women's competition. 

That's why people who are truly for equality watch and support World Cup Football. It is based on merit alone. Well, that and national heritage. But you get the idea...

The girls get to play for their countries in World Cup if they're good enough to be on the team.

Oh wait, I just got word that FIFA are a bunch of sexists as well. Jesus, as if they don't have enough problems, now they have to host women's football also.

Has anybody that I know EVER watched women's World Cup? If so, please delete me as a friend. 

Oh well, there is no end to it.

I have learned a valuable lesson though: always claim victimhood. 

It's more difficult than it sounds. There's a lot of competition for the title. 

What do you say to the person pictured below that wishes to compete, and be recognized for their modest athletic accomplishments?

What?

(Don't worry, she's merely a referee)

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