Are you lost, brother?

My friend has blocked me on Facebook, the one that's suing me, or has threatened to. His team of lawyers must have pointed out to him that if he is going to claim a genuine offense then it might be a good idea to react in such a way as to feign offense. That, or he finally tired once and for all of my anti-christian online hijinks. A recent post of mine read:

It's somewhat sad to think that if Jesus were on Facebook he would only have 12 friends, one of whom would block him, another of whom would report him, then another billion that would keep his page going 2000 years after he died. 

I mean, you can't shoot somebody all the way from Texas, though I believe they're currently working on those type guns. But you can sure-as-shit sue somebody for saying stuff like that. Well that, and other stuff, like quoting somebody. I believe Texas has offered to start putting other states' death-row inmates to death for them, as a courtesy. So, who knows.

The world has lost its mind. 

A friend recently pointed out that, "Stupid people can only win through intimidation and fear."

I would attach his name to that quote but I don't want to lose yet another friend. We'll wait to see if my old buddy is actually suing me. It'll be interesting to catalog the experience here. If I get served papers they become mine, I can post them. Won't that be fun for all of us...?

To restate the problem, my friend claimed that I was not allowed to quote him publicly. He claims that everything that he writes on Facebook is his "intellectual property," though both words that comprise the claim are dubious, at best. He believes that all of his stated thoughts are copyrighted and he has not only the right but the DUTY to protect them, similar to his defending of the 2nd amendment. From precisely what he is protecting them, I don't know, but apparently his thoughts need all the protection they can get. I hope they're wearing a condom now, as they sleep.

It doesn't seem to matter that I took the quotation down when he asked. The main issue seems to be the assertion of power over others, intimidation and fear. Though in truth the suit has probably expanded beyond copyright infringement into slander and libel, if not the arms trade.

Ah well, it was only a matter of time before somebody decided to get a lawyer and teach me a good right-wing lesson. I suppose it's time to reach out to some of my legal counsel. They have been scattered in the winds, but I have a special horn that calls them from near and far.

.

 

A severe case of jet-lag

Yesterday morning I left the house very early, to get some breakfast. Just before the sun came up the slender crescent moon was visible, rising in advance of the sun, soon to disappear, but delicate in what seemed to be an unshared moment between us. 

I like the mornings, the occasional privacy of them. I like sitting here, generating bizarre confessions to this screen, leaving postcards from my life for my friends to read. It often makes me giggle, how fucked up I am. 

Today is the new moon, an occurrence that often coincides with significant events for Rachel and I. If the popular legend of the full moon were true then today should be a pretty quiet day. We'll see.

The thought of the unseen moon crossing the sky in relative proximity to the sun all day long intrigues me. I wonder where... It's up there, as round as ever, slowly making its way across, unseen by all.  There is no difference between it and the clear blue sky that surrounds it. You can try and try but you will never find it. The moon is the first truly stealth galactic event that man became aware of. That's science.

Time zones are meaningless at the North Pole. When you can see the moon from that spot at all, depending on the season, you get to see it for about two weeks straight, uninterrupted, going through half of its phases. It will cross the sky very slowly, but always visible. It will hang near the horizon, making a slow arc from one part of the horizon to another. Then it will disappear for about two weeks. To see every phase of the moon you would have to stay there for a full year. 

That is my dream....

When there, at the North Pole, you are at the convergence of each and every possible hour of the day. Day and night are only meaningful based on tilt, though entirely meaningful then, each one lasting six months. You would have to take several steps in one direction or another before the 24 different zones would separate enough for you to be standing in a particular hour. You could spread your feet at the exact pole and be standing across 12 different time zones at once. You could turn around, do the same and cover the other 12. Yet another dream of mine... to once and for all conquer time in this way. To make my watch meaningless. I would bury it there, if they would let me. I would also piss on this spot if it would not mean losing my best friend to the gangrenous cold. There are no such distinctions as gender at those temperatures. A man's genitals become entirely indistinguishable from a woman's, even to doctors. Though I do harbor some superior pride in the size of my clitoris, comparatively. 

So, there is also that to consider.

If you were to walk in a wide circle around the exact pole then you would suffer terrible, terrible jet lag.  No, wait, that can't be right. Jet-lag gets worse and worse towards the equator though more difficult to effectively accomplish. It takes longer to pass through each time zone, which actually helps you suffer less. Jet-lag strikes the hardest when arriving due east or west from where you departed, midway between the equator and the North Pole, at the 45th parallel. This should throw off your sense of time the most significantly, and affect your body's ability to adapt the most noticeably. Again, I am filled with dreams of breaking the world's current jet-lag records, but to do so with a woman's genitals and claim it as a victory for all women, everywhere. Such is my commitment to feminism. 

I am currently writing a book on my experiences. It will be titled, "Holy Crap, that chick has an enormous clit....!!!"

The season will also bear significance on jet-lag, as the tilting of the arc is in relation to the sun, the length of the day, as well as the amount of time spent in dusk or dawn. These all affect the amount of certain chemicals your body produces, melatonin among them, which helps to adjust your body-clock to produce a sense of day and night within the subconscious. The circadian rhythms are nothing to toy with. I fiddled with mine once and look at what happened to me. It's all in the book.

Once I traveled from Barcelona to New York, to Atlanta, to Tokyo. All in two days. They are only 8 hours apart in time zones, but I took the 16 time zone route, taking a luxurious 48 hours to do so. It was like a ride on the Orient Express, back when you were allowed to say words like Orient, and Constantinople. The strangest thing was making the conversion from being a Spaniard to an American to becoming Japanese, all so quickly, to say nothing of the mystery of the Japanese clitoris. 

I envision strange sexual occurrences in the word Constantinople, if I stare at the word long enough, letting my eyes linger over letters where they don't belong. 

Do you see them there too?

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Victory in the South

(God's mythical wrath)

Arguing with people is exhausting. The only reason I do it is because I enjoy it, I guess. It's not pleasure, but there is a sense of engagement. Then afterwards there comes the question, why? To what purpose am I spending life's energies?

I should probably teach myself to abstain. If not teach, practice. I wonder if Jesus got in fights with other kids when he was younger. He must have. Looking for a shot at the title, then wanting to defend his thrown, The Pummeler of Palestine.

It's not as if he could take the shape of a human and live to become a mortal man, flesh and bones, and not experience childhood as others did. Jesus grew pubic hair. He eventually developed into becoming a messiah, like Muhammad Ali, but thousands of years ago. If this were not true then there would be more significant stories between his birth and his preaching years. The apostles were terrible biographers. One suspects they had not read the Greeks. Plutarch was a contemporary. Who knows, Diogenes might have lifted a few ideas from them. There is no reliable record of this however.

World champion messiah is an idea that might have occurred to him in his twenties, that he had a shot, the field was open, but he began in earnest at thirty years of age, approx. The sermon on the mount being his first major title victory. Three years later his career was over, cut short by a Roman with a Jewish manager.  He's like a UFC messiah.

Boy Jesus.


See? I sat down to write a brief meditation on restraint, and this is the result I get. Perhaps there is something wrong with my soul. It has been recycled too many times. It's on its last journey. I actually like Jesus, and guns, all of it. But I can't find a way to get along with either of those two groups, even if I try to agree with them. The gun crowd or the christians, both find me worthy of condemnation, if not worse. If you combine the two, the temptation is too great for me.

Jesus was very pro-gun, everybody knows that. It is one of his central messages. To properly fire a rifle one often has their cheek turned. It is part of the bladed-off stance of beginner christians. Experienced christians fire in a squared-off stance, even though Christ instructs them not to. When I am firing a gun of any kind, especially at an animal, I have an internal mantra that helps me affix a target, "My God is an angry God... My GOD is an ANGRY GOD..."

It was not possible that the Boy Jesus got everything about gun safety right. We know that now. He gave us a light from which we could follow. It was with this type of training that the pre-christian christians were able to finally take Sodom.

.

Oh, Dear Guinevere....

 (my lawyer, a very tough guy)

Well, I am in another duel to the dense on Facebook. A "friend" has offered to sue me again. Apparently he does not like our disagreements very much. He has criticized my education as well as questioning my ability to pay for further education, suggesting scholarships, etc. So, I have returned the sentiments in kind, mocking his religion as well as his Constitutional dogma.  Well, in fairness, I might have been mocking his religion for some time, though not always directly towards him.

His lawsuit threats stem from a quotation of his that I used, crediting him, then removed at his request. He is having a difficult time letting that go. I would too, I guess, if I made claims that were so absurd and didn't want the public at large to know that I harbored such patently idiotic sentiments, to say nothing of the sheer vulgarity of his mind.... Well, I guess it's too late for me, but he's still holding on to a chance. It is part of his religious nature, I suppose.

The thing that is most odd to me about it is that he continues to threaten me with a lawsuit. He posts controversial posts, seemingly inviting conversation/discourse/argument, then threatens to sue me for thinking enough of his post to quote him elsewhere. The fact that I removed the quotation upon request isn't even the issue any more. It is a person trying to flex a power. If he does sue me I'll be very curious to see what for - disagreeing on Facebook, taking his quote down as he asked me to, mentioning that if he sends me an email then I reserve the right to quote that publicly in the future. He'll have quite a case against me. Maybe he'll have me extradited to a state that celebrates the death penalty.

 A more detailed account of our initial interaction can be found here.

To give you an idea of recent happenings, here are the last three posts of mine, with quotations removed (pending approval):

Oh, you are still struggling with understanding the words you read, or write. As far as you assuming that I am "uniformed"... well, I don't hardly believe that you even know what you mean with that sort of statement. To answer your question: No... you have not made yourself clear, at all. It is a matter of syntax, confusion, and a possible misspelling, in addition to a possible lifetime of misreadings. But I am too tired to respond in full tonight. If it's okay with your lawyers I will have a statement prepared in the morning. I pray for your humbling grace in this and all future matters.


Oops, I responded without even reading your last paragraph. I got bored. I hope that private legal threats differentiate themselves from public ones.   Because you just threatened me with legal action upon "escalation", and odd premise considering the participatory nature of your comments. I'm not sure how or why you could possible deem to do such a thing, but I'm sure your esteemed counsel will let me know. I'll respond in full in the morning. Set your counsel on "stun"...

And here is the morning's response:

_____lot,

I can understand why you wouldn't want your words used outside of their private context here: damage control. You wouldn't want yourself to appear ill-informed on an even larger scale. The article that you posted by your esteemed expert suggests that the reasoning behind, and purpose for, the 2nd amendment was for the eventual overthrow of the American government. Little matter that they took the time to explain the purpose of a militia within the document itself. One that you have largely ignored, preferring instead to focus on what was said by individuals outside the document, in private letters, public debate and the occasional "tavern-talk." It's your choice to do so, but you must eventually feel silly, though there seems to be little silliness on your current legal horizon.

The Constitution is the law, _____. Nothing in it suggests the overthrowing of the government created therein. That is an extemporaneous meaning that you and others like you have adopted. Voting is the primary power created to resist tyranny. Freedom from religion and the freedom of speech would be next. You ignore the very structure of the document that you pretend to admire. I'll get to that later.

Here is an exact quote from the article you posted: "(This quotation has been removed, pending approval.)"

"(This quotation has been removed, pending approval.)"

No definition of the word "train" makes sense in this statement, but who am I to question? As you pointed out, he is your educational hero. Let's ignore for now the fact that he writes much like he thinks, lazily and prone to unfounded assumptions. Where is this DUTY listed? (The author had suggested that it is a duty to overthrow the government, the 2nd amendment being the provision for it.)

Again, I will ask you where this suppositional purpose is listed in The Constitution? The founding fathers make a specific definition of the use of a militia, which I have included in a post above. These are the very words of The Constitution. The 2nd amendment clearly cites the need for a well regulated militia. There is nothing in The Constitution that qualifies that need to bear arms as being a necessary component of overthrowing the very government that they were establishing. It does, however, give citizens the right to bear arms, a right which I support. But to claim that that right is there for the purpose of overthrowing the democracy created is a stretch by any standards. A compiling of random out-of-context quotes by the founding fathers doesn't negate the law that they put into place, or perhaps it does only in your vigilantly arranged mind.

You claim that my Abraham Lincoln quotation is "out of context" even though it clearly addresses the very point that I am making, one that disagrees with yours. That he would have insight into the preservation of the country, arguing against your paranoid preparation for the dissolution of it, is extremely telling. That you miss this meaning is also unsurprising and typical of your reading behavior in general.

I offered to let you apologize for your egregious misreading to me publicly, or in a private email, which I let you know in advance would become my property by virtue of you sending it to me. Your response was unsurprisingly hostile, threatening litigation again, yet without the requested apology being sent, publicly or privately. You then go on to state, "(This quotation has been removed, pending approval.)" Again, you lack an ability to read or understand what I wrote. When it comes to "respecting a friendship" I did so by removing the quote. You have responded by continued legal threats. Your friendship means less and less to me as you have proven unworthy of the term. You seem much more interested in flexing an imaginary power, one that is designed to stifle free and open speech.

That you can not speak without a lawyer, or the threat of litigation, is charming and must come in quite handy in your line of work. I am left to make my own assumptions about the various dealings with which you undertake in this proscribed manner. But threats of legal action do not scare me at all, especially when they are so baseless as to arise from a Facebook conversation/argument. I don't mind that you lack the courage to stand behind your own thoughts and statements and resort to the threat of litigation to intimidate people.

I have a very difficult time believing that Christ would act this way, but perhaps you are not one of those christians that believes much in acting very christ-like. If you ever do develop an interest in standing behind the statements you make, proud to have them discussed elsewhere, willing to support the flimsy ideas contained therein, then let me know. I would love to have a public debate with you, where your threats of legal action need not be used. The impotence of your statements will be forced to bolster themselves, without the aid of a lawyer.

That being said, Being the believer in the 2nd amendment that you claim to be I am somewhat shocked at your apparent lack of awareness of the 1st amendment. I can understand why you might avoid it, as it does make very clear a freedom from religion. Though there is a  much more important attribute of the amendment. The "abridged" version is that Congress shall make no law prohibiting free speech. You seem to understand, in a rather blunt way, the implication of such a right. But you seem incapable of understanding how that right might extend to others. To help you understand: I am able to relay my life experiences and I don't need your permission to do so, nor will I ever. Quoting you in the way that I have was a courtesy, though one that you fail to understand. I have respected your wishes by removing the quote. There is plenty of documentation reflecting this. That you are incapable of acknowledging and supporting your own thoughts and beliefs publicly is both humorous and frightening. It must be trying to live the life that you do, so often in secrecy, being a merchant and money-changer in an imaginary temple. We must assume that your Father is quite proud.

If that seems like a slight on your honorable profession then I apologize, openly and publicly, for all to see. I just don't think that your uber-aggressive legal scare tactics are even up to your own standards, if they can even be called that.

I have called you to speak personally, you have neglected to return my call.  Instead, you chose to threaten me yet again. You have the opportunity to return my call and speak freely, or you can continue to make legal threats because somebody thought enough of your semi-coherent mumblings to repeat them.

"(This quotation has been removed, pending approval.)" - _____ _______...

Make yourself clearer, and stand up for the very words that you profess to believe. I had quoted you, that quote has been removed at your request. I represented your exact words, to make a point and refute your assertions. This is all evidenced by digital technology. When you asked that I take the words down, I complied. I generally enjoy engaging in conversation with you, though this has become an open argument, with continued threats of legal action. I have offered to speak with you privately, but you have not returned my call. Now, I challenge you again to a public debate. Let me know if you accept and we'll determine the terms. I realize that letting go of the threat of legal entanglement will be a difficult one for you,

Do I make myself clear?




End of Facebook post. The last line is an echo of his, for those who were wondering at my new found assertiveness...

This is how I waste my aging days.




You see, my friend has somewhat vaguely claimed that the 2nd amendment is there to allow for overthrowing what he perceives to be a tyrannical government (ie. Treason). Though he has been very reluctant to actually answer the question when it is put to him, for obvious legal reasons. He envisions himself as a defender of the one true patriotic spirit, the one that might be allowed to kill or shoot those who he perceives to be tyrants, engaged in tyranny. If not shoot, then sue, but silence at any cost.

Freedom is the byproduct of orderly democratic governance and the rule of law, not the bozo-brigade armed to the teeth and mumbling about overthrowing the government, if need be, when the time is right. The 2nd amendment, by his presumed reckoning, is like a built-in doomsday device that allows for armed treason against the United States. Like: when voting doesn't work, as he recently must have felt, and witnessed, in the last general election...

The most surprising aspect of all of this, to me, is that neither of us has deleted the other from our "friends" list. Certainly that would have solved all of our problems, right? We both must enjoy it, to some degree. I know I do, in a way, but it is certainly uncomfortable to argue this way with a friend. I had hoped a phone call would help lessen the escalation. Silly me.




Ah, well... I have tried and tried to create a shared rationale with him. Who knows, maybe his lawyers will be a much more reasonable group of fellows.

.

You're only as old as you complain

I don't know what is happening to me. Age, I guess. I have a new malady, before I have even recovered from the last. I can't tell what it is, just a pain emanating from a muscle or nerve-grouping underneath the right buttock. Already, people ask me why I'm limping. This new affliction makes it impossible to sit or stand comfortably, though standing is better. Yesterday I stood and worked, leaning over to type on the computer, putting excess pressure on my dead left wrist. Each new pain forces me to cause another elsewhere; compensating for one forces its related injury. I am tempted to start using a steroid I was prescribed, prednisone. Or, I could induce myself into the haze of pain killers and try to work like that all day, exacerbating whatever is wrong by ignoring it.

If anybody ever wonders how cool it is to get old, how distinguished you'll be, remember me. I'm only 44. Every physical problem I have began in my forties. If I ever hear somebody tell me that I'm only as old as I feel I think I'll use my remaining life force to slap the remaining shit out of them. 

When it's over I'll give them a fine smile and tell them the slap was only as hard as it felt. 

.

In the mighty footsteps of Christ

(Rhys' self-baptism)

It is done. Rhys has entered the fold.

I joke about this baptism stuff. It is irrelevant to me beyond a source of mild humor. But the day before his first birthday, yesterday, he started to walk. He had taken steps before. But yesterday he actually began to put steps in front of one another and move from one place to another within the house. He took as many as seven in a row. The most steps he had taken before, and usually between one place where he could "cruise" to another, was maybe three. So, the magic of baptism really worked out for him. The power of Christ compelled him, I guess.

Coincidentally, yesterday after blaspheming the holy spirit, I wasn't able to post to Facebook. I tried five or six times. It just kept giving me an error and I couldn't see the post on my page. I couldn't see any posts on my page from 2013. I had thought that it didn't post at all. Finally, somebody posted on my wall, asking me why I took away their privileges to comment on posts. I hadn't. But apparently they could see my post and I could only see their's in the "notifications" section. So, then they commented on the blog post I had made and that was the only way that I could get to that, but there were no links for me to comment. Strange behavior. Holy Voodoo. 

Facebook has become the battleground of a spiritual war.

I kid, but there are many on Facebook that treat this as truth. I get it. They feel a responsibility to help save lost souls. It is a benevolent impulse. They don't want anybody they know, or love, to burn in the lake of fire for all of eternity. The message is a little bit confusing: Come to my loving god, through the horrific sacrifice of his only son, Jesus, so that you don't spend the everlasting in torment that my father has already promised that most of you will. He loves you so much that he sent his son to earth to be slaughtered to appease him. There was no other way. He is the Almighty, watch out for Satan...

It is an odd view of the cosmos, to be sure. I've tried to understand it. I think it functions best when people aren't too insistent on the details. Jesus spoke beautifully at times. He seems to have been on bath salts for the book of Revelations, but he had been through a lot, one can not rightly deny him an occasional bender. 

Ok, enough about Christ and christians. 

Our house is full with guests again. We have a semi-complete zoo here. Two dogs, two cats (one indoor, one outdoor), two sisters, a man, a woman, a child, the occasional ant. The place is full. 

Having a child gives relatives the go-ahead to perpetually reduce the amount of living space you have. Every room becomes an additional playroom, filled with the largest gifts available. Every visit reduces our accessible floor space by about 100 square feet or more. I'm longing for the luxuriant old days in NYC when I had 300 square feet to myself. I mean, what is it? That impulse to occupy somebody else's house with large objects whose purpose it is to presumably make a child happy. He has his own room. He doesn't pay any rent. He sort of has it made here already. 

I try to imagine a situation where I would go to somebody's house and unbox a game of Twister, spreading it out on the floor and eating up their living room with it. Smiling, taking pictures of what I had done and how happy it made me, encouraging everybody to play along.  Then spreading the game pieces into the kitchen and up the stairs, for later joy. Expecting it all to stay there from here on out. It would be somewhat of a family insult if we ever came over again and any of it had been put away.

It's absurd. We're going to have to buy a storage unit just to house the gifts that we can't keep at our place. Of course, I'm not allowed to say anything about it, except on here, in private with just you guys listening. The one thing that can not ever be questioned is why we work to pay our mortgage. Is it so that we have a comfortable house to live in, or so that there will always be a place to shelter even more toys?

I only want one toy, and I promise to keep it off the floor.

.

Sympathy and me

(cluttered theologians)

I'm told that we will go baptize our son today. A christening it's called by some. We're going to let the Methodists do it because Rachel likes their methods, of course. It just feels right, it seems sensible. He has no say in the matter; a helpless infant surrounded by those who wish for him to one day believe. I will have fun, of course. These types of events really roll out the waterheads. I hope somebody cries. I mean, other than me this time. 

To immerse him in god's grace and wash him of all his worldly sins... I don't mind that they apply water to him to achieve this goal, and mumble their ordered gibberish. Who knows, maybe the holy spirit will descend upon us and put on a magic show. The pews will start floating, there will be a spinning ghost in the room. I hope they submerge him, seems like the only sure way to really get the sin off. An unchaste pastor that my wife has only met once before holding our baby under water for the purpose of religious conversion. What could possibly go wrong? 

I think that speaking ill of the holy spirit is the one unforgivable sin, one that I have just committed above, again. It is the eternal voodoo. Not even a baptism can save my wretched soul now. I think that I can still accept Christ's love, but only with mitigated results. I will have some answering to do when I come face to face with the other god division. The quarterback on high who calls all the shots for THE BIG THREE.

If we could baptize him in his own afterbirth then I would be a little bit more into it. I could then make the contagious magical leap, a touch of supernatural tea and sympathy. Little does Rachel know that because I am not putting up a fight to this important spiritual event that the next full moon I will demand to take him to see a witch doctor to have his blood let, to allow any remaining sin to flow out of him. Rusty needles, a vat of simmering chicken blood,  howling in the distance, three-legged marmots, etc.

A friend recently posted that while he was relaying the events of Creation to his child he was spirituality renewed by his 5-7 year old son's somewhat antiseptic theological stance, refreshing in its ease and straightforwardness. It struck me as odd, to examine a child's theology and praise it with admiration for its simplicity. When Jesus instructed his followers to be as little children to get into heaven, do you suppose he meant that we should try to remain without developed intellectual curiosity? Or do you suppose he meant that sometimes it's just okay to wet the bed, whenever the spirit strikes?

.

*Like the whiskey rebellion

(taken without permission)

We have more guests in the house, sisters. Rachel's mother and aunt. Rhys' first birthday is Monday, everybody is here to celebrate. Sunday. I have snuck downstairs to write this, where the sisters are sleeping; trying to be quiet. Me, not them.

All the cliches are true: I can't believe it's already been a year. He's growing so fast. Time flies.

All true.

I began reading the Thomas Jefferson book that I was given for Christmas. It's great, as I had hoped. I am dreaming in the mid to late 18th century. As I get older I am drawn more towards history and slowly away from literature. Though if there were more books written like Tender is the Night then this wouldn't be true, I don't think. I need to search again, reignite a passion. I have allowed myself to become too sedentary. 

I am up to 1774, eager to read the next section, of course. The time's they are a changin'... 

I read an article online recently. It reported that there had been a sort of legal convention between English and American lawyers and they had each created studies on whether or not the Declaration of Independence was a legal document with any validity (Thomas Jefferson was a lawyer). Unsurprisingly, the English lawyers found that it was not while the Americans found that it was. Anticipating this the English then showed how American imperialism currently negates any legality that might be found there, that we have turned 180 degrees from whatever noble claims were made. The Americans, also not to be outdone, showed how Jefferson himself had turned approximately 180 degrees from the document within a decade of writing it. Taxation without representation*, all of it. The incredibly short arc from Revolution to Empire.

Just as the Ten Commandments were written by a land and slave owner, so Jefferson became increasingly interested in the protection and expansion of property once he had claimed a nation for himself and his newly-made countrymen. There is really very little difference in the outcomes. They are both doctrines that seek to defend the purportedly egalitarian idea of personal property as embodied in land, one after the fact and one during the taking of it. Little consideration was given to the possibility of land shortage and over-population in either. Those were ideas for a slightly later date. Each silently assumes perhaps that the slaves would simply make more, of both land and children to work the land. Slaves or not, we did one and now seem blamed for not being able to do the other.

But one must never forget that Jefferson's ideas, though they started as noble and democratic in purpose, still assumed the inherent superiority and benevolence of the gentry class. The partial assumption is that these freedoms would serve the ambitious landowners very well for now and perhaps others in the future. He was no stranger to inheriting land, or taking it from others. The Louisiana Purchase completely ignored the supposed natural rights of the people there, rights that he had argued so well for.

Entitlement is the appropriate word for it. There are many in America today who seem to know just enough about him to try and align themselves with his ideology. Many of them not realizing that he hardly aligned very well with his own ideology, in time. There are at least two distinct Jefferson's to choose from. Liberals tend to gravitate towards the early Jefferson, conservatives to the later.

Where did this assumption, so prevalent on the right, emerge: that rich people are basically good and that poor people are basically bad. Not just for society, but as humans. You can hear it in so many of the rhetoric echoes. The vague or pointed assertions that wealth somehow equates to benevolence and philanthropy, if only the government would stay out of the wealthy's business, and that those poor devils at the bottom will do or say anything to take away what is not theirs, that which they will not ever deserve. Like, when they vote. It completely drives them crazy that it's not possible to tax the impoverished right out of existence, as if humans represent far more of a galling economic problem than a societal one.

The poor, on the other side, are entitled to work and pay taxes. Their fair share, as the saying goes. Incidentally, nobody ever argues for giving them a fair piece of land to live on for having done so, a share as it's known. The very concept of equality seems to be more of a curse for some than a blessing. Through democratic capitalism we are all born into a form of slavery and we are each equally enslaved. Some more than others, as Orwell famously noted. A small handful of us, when the time is right, also get to take nations.

I told you that I would be an expert on Jefferson soon. And I'm only 70 pages in!

.

"... sprawling on a pin"

(unknown)

I guess I didn't renounce wickedness quite enough... I will try again, sometime soon. 

I have begun working from home, which is nice. It saves me an enormous amount of time commuting, as well as money. Though the savings on money could not fairly be construed as "enormous," still it is money. Any amount of money begins to seem significant when gaining it is how you disburse all of your your time. Though we are told to spend money as if it doesn't matter. Otherwise, we would be trapped by it. The logic never quite holds, does it... It is what working for a living does to a person. One must exclusively embrace the new logic. What did old Thomas Stearns say about it, "And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin..."

Indeed. 

My point being, working from home has saved me quite a bit of time - as little as two and a half hours, sometimes as much as four, each day.  I've dedicated this time to reading, mostly. I've been reading about a hundred pages a day. I have receded back towards the private life. Now, all that is needed, is a figurative room of one's own, if not a literal one.

We've begun getting the New Yorker magazine again. It is something, at least. The articles are okay, but I just simply love the pictures. Who knows, soon I will be one of those people who starts going magazine crazy and gets subscriptions to Harper's, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, etc. Are all of those still in business, or has the iPod killed them also?

I finally had to eat, small meals. The feelings of hunger were making me tetchy. It is nearly impossible to interact with others on a completely empty stomach. You see the world for what it is, without the veil of food obscuring your sight. It is a hideous vision: people. They all begin to sound as if they are shrieking. I am tempted to act somewhat as Bartleby and respond to all inquiries with, "Computer says no...."

Hmmm, I just realized, there's some more books that are missing. Moby Dick, and the collected writings of Melville. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is gone too. Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. There is a box or two hidden around here somewhere, among all the other boxes, awaiting my discovery. Either that or the meth-heads we paid to move our stuff decided that a few of them should get chucked into the dumpster to keep things fun and interesting. It certainly seems possible. 

Somehow all of Frank Herbert's Dune series made it through the transition from childhood until now, from Florida through New York to California, but Moby Dick gets flushed into a landfill by a crackhead whose lighter finger was starting to itch. If I could just find The Lord of the Rings trilogy then I'd be happy as a dragon in a dungeon. 

. 

Just imagine.

I shouldn't write when I'm angry. 

Nobody likes to hear their baby cry. Rhys has begun waking up crying. Not whining himself awake, as he had before, but crying. Wailing. The impulse is to go and comfort him, and it's a strong one. This is perhaps even more distressing for a parent than it is for the boy. But there is this person there in the room who keeps trying to give me errands to do to get me away from my own child, as if I'm a second-class parent, as if there is only one who is able to comfort the child. The willingness of love is shrugged away, given a chore instead of a chance. 

That being said, I really shouldn't write when I'm angry.

There is so much more to say in this regard, but there is an honesty limit that should be observed, to maintain a sense of decorum. Though I'm quite tired of being told what I should be doing to make this situation better, by a handful of caring people. So far, most every suggestion has been one that makes me a subservient parent, both in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. They implore me to "help," as if that's the only answer, the only possible resolution to an imagined crisis. As if increased action on my part will resolve all that matters. 

My question is simple: How will increased action on my part help the child? That would assume that the child is currently being neglected. 

If your immediate answer is, "Well, you could help the mother!!!" Then this post is for you...

As for those that have offered their helpful advice - I don't think that any of them realize that I will never argue for their equality again, though they might be getting an idea right about now. Little matter what unfairness they may become victim to in life, they have proven that they believe me to be unequal, scant to the task of parenting. Now those beliefs must be given adequate space to grow. Anything less would be unfair to them. It would violate their sense of moral propriety, to counter their illusions. The seed has been planted and nurtured, now the crop must either nourish or perish.

To be overbearing and then raise the question of why I don't resemble that same behavior more fully is a situation in which there is no adequate escape or answer. One can not easily argue against a parent's form of love, mine here included. But by doing little or nothing in this regard a perception develops that is inaccurate, it is bloated by one side. It relies on the idea of error for meaning rather than the imbalance. 

The behavior of retreat is everywhere I look, and just as universally denounced. As if this is "just how they are..." Confusing the reaction for the action. It leaves the impression that the contribution of healthy love is somehow inadequate, and that only the autocratic love of one is to be held in any regard whatsoever. 

Dictating responsibilities is not sharing them. 

Just imagine if somebody acted that way...

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I renounce wickedness

(a stranger's eye)

The picture above is of an old man's eye, I forget his name. He is a regular at the pub that I frequent, oft too frequently. You would never believe this was his eye if you had met him there, or anywhere else. I had been drinking, as one does, and asked him if I could take a picture of his eye. This is the result. Though I have taken several pictures like this before, this one really shocked me. 

I went with Rachel to meet a Methodist pastor. She is eager to get Rhys baptized this Sunday because her mother and her mother's sister will be here in town. The pastor spoke of the significance of baptism and how it is a promise to raise the child within the church. Rachel nodded approvingly, eager to have him agree that this is what is best, and what should happen this Sunday. I neglected to mention that her eagerness had an as yet unmentioned source. I was there to be quiet, nothing more.

He read from the hymnal, the words that would be spoken before we committed ourselves to renouncing wickedness for good, once and for all, hocus pocus...

It all sounded marginally acceptable. I questioned my atheism for a quiet moment, but then determined that I was just hungry. I am, after all, on day 2 of my hunger strike and not in a fortified state of mind. That is when the Christians can get you, when you're hungry.

Not eating today has reminded of twice reading the book "Hunger" by Knut Hamsun. It is a fascinating tale of self-invention and dissolution. I don't think I've ever been quite as entertained at one character's ability to justify their own neurosis to themselves so convincingly. The pure delight with which the central character pursues his own misguided impulses is like no other book I've ever read. It falls just short of Kafka in its inwardly directed otherworldliness, though there is nothing fantastical in its telling. I've only ever read the Robert Bly translation, which apparently missed the shifting past and present tenses of the novel, adding to the febrile neurotic tone. 

In truth the character is much closer to Dostoevesky's Raskolnikov, but without the criminality.

Of that main character Isaac Bashevis Singer says in his introduction, "He is constantly saved by some temporary deliverance." 

And of the author, "To Hamsun, man was just a chain of moods that kept constantly changing, often without a trace of consistency. Man was therefore, as strong as his weakest mood. The hero of Hunger doubted the existence of God, yet he prayed to him. He loved, but he belittled this love and all that it stood for. He strove for artistic revelation, yet wasn't really serious in his approach to art. Doubt, not only the philosophical but the mundane, found in Hamsun its narrator par excellence."

Obviously I have pulled the book from the shelf and am flipping through it. 

For a time in NYC, I left it in my bathroom to read when the urge struck me. I had a party at my apartment in which many of the "club crowd" came over. Towards the end of the party I saw one friend, an attractive and mysteriously toned young woman, looking at it like it was an unflushed turd. Her brow was furrowed and she glanced up at me, worried and curious at its presence. 

She had on that look, the determined renunciation of wickedness. 

.

Matching plans

(my life coach)

Lesson learned. 

I feel as if I had learned this lesson once before, many years ago, but I learned it again yesterday, on new year's day. This time I will try to remember.... Never, ever drink on a completely empty stomach. I decided that I would taper myself down into starvation by having a few beers yesterday. No more than seven, I told myself. 

It seemed like a good idea. Beer is, after all, a liquid. 

Things were going pretty well for me until the beer wore off. I stopped at a friend's house and chatted about my life, disagreeing on many important points, then went home and tried to watch some tv. I must have fallen asleep for an hour. When I awoke I had the worst hangover that I have had in a very long time. I did not vomit but I suspected that was only because there was nothing in my stomach to purge. 

So, I ate a baked chicken breast. It was, as you can probably imagine, delicious. I adjusted the food plan to match the other, thinking that perhaps I should taper myself down into starvation this way also. 

My reasoning, at the very least, had symmetry to it.

The chicken did not noticeably improve my situation. I walked around the downstairs of our house moaning, occasionally trying to lie down to go to sleep. Sleep never came. Well, eventually it did, in a greatly distorted form. But only after adequately punishing me for the timing of my decisions. For the moment, sleep remained a long way off and with much pain advancing and receding between here and there. My head was as a sea of misery, with poison tides to remind in both their flowing and ebbing.

Today I will try a different approach: Slightly less beer. 

No, my new advice to those who wish to starve themselves: do not drink alcohol. There is something about the combined metabolizing of food and alcohol that greatly reduces the pain of processing the latter. I know that now. That will be the wisdom that I impart on others in what future remains. I'm living dog days now, costing 7 for each 1 spent.

I have paid the high price for you, and now we are all wiser for it. 

.

used without permission

(used without permission)

I slept in this morning. I don't know how it happened. A new year's day miracle, I suppose. 

I'm happy for all those who gave their blessings for this new year on last year's social media pages... One must really wonder at such a thing. What sort of a person sees the delineation between numerical years as an opportunity to curse the past and exhort the future. "Goodbye 2012, you can suck my sewer pump, C'mon 2013, Let's rock it tonight like a hurricane in downtown NYC... Woo-Hoo...!!!!"

I could not delete them from my contact lists fast enough. I will try to be more thorough today. If there has ever been more absurd behavior involving a numerical increase in days then I don't know what it is, other than the Mayan thing, of course... I'm certain that these must be the same people. 

But, rather than just mock them, this year I have decided to join them. I'm going to starve myself to death in honor of 2013. What better and fitting tribute? I've thought before of ways to end myself, but this one fits the moment. The wrists in the tub seem to be the best - the most peaceful, poetic, and historical - but what do I really know of such things. As morbid as I am occasionally known to be I've never investigated the various ways, success rates, etc.  But few people choose to starve themselves to death. Very few I would imagine, choose to. It does not seem to be a very pleasant way to go. But I believe it is the only legal way. 

From what I understand, and I would have to check into this, the government can not force you to eat. If I do check into this and find that I'm wrong, remember that I will be checking on a political/legal point and not just reading up on eating disorders like a high school girl trying to make herself seem more interesting, or serious, or worthy of consideration.  

No, I kid. Starvation has none of those effects. 

Also I kid about starving myself to death. I would not make a new year's resolution, though I support those that do. A friend announced that he's going to quit smoking last night. I am happy for him, truly. I've never understood smoking cigarettes, though I do admit that there can be something sexy about seeing a young woman smoking in a bar/nightclub. Can be. It is not a given, and it becomes increasingly less enticing if the young woman happens to have a cold and throws an occasional cough in with an exhale of smoke, etc., etc.

But it has been many, many years since I have deprived myself of food. Too many, really.  I used to enjoy it, in an odd way. It gives one a strange sense of their surroundings. When you remove something that is so vital from your daily habits, and then realize that it is not nearly as vital as you had thought that it was, it is empowering. The first time that I ever fasted I was around 15 or 16 years old. I think I went four days, or so. Life seemed strange through that youthful mind-space, a depriving of the flesh.

Much later in life, probably around the age of 34 or 35, I chose to deprive myself of food once again. This time I went much longer, though I did not deprive myself of nutrients. I conditioned myself for this for a few months, exercising rigorously, supplementing my diminishing diet with almond milk and concentrated phytoplankton. So, my body was still getting its fair share of nourishment - though many of my friends disagreed at the time - but without the calories. This went on for weeks and weeks, then I did an entire week where I ate no food at all, doing a "cleanse", dropping to 169 pounds, though still quite muscular. I believe that I was about as lean and healthy as it is possible for me to be. Then, my father had a heart-attack. I broke the fasting diet which was meant to last two weeks somewhere towards the middle, and went to Colorado to visit him. 

To give you an imaginary comparison, I am approximately 232 pounds right now, maybe more. I haven't been to the gym in a month where there is a scale that taunts me. Try picking up a 63 pound bag of anything, that is how much excess weight I am carrying everywhere I trudge.

I will forego coffee, alcohol, bacon, all of it. Everything that matters, the essentials. Habitually eating bacon might be a hard habit to break. 

But this is not a new year's resolution to lose weight. It is an attempt to gain control over my thoughts, my life; to separate what I have been telling myself from what might be. When I have fasted in the past I have been granted odd insight into various circumstances. Once you remove food from your daily routine your body will begin, after the first stage of hunger passes, to burn off your body's reserve energy as stored in muscle and fat. This can include the release of toxins but it also streamlines your body's process. The body seeks to maintain a homeostatic state, it must be forced to change how it accomplishes this. It can bring a focus to all that you do and think, and can also give a beautiful metaphysical glow to life. 

So, if this site starts to seem plagued with strange visions and hallucinatory incantations... or alternately, troubled with moments of clarity and a newfound conciseness, then you might now know a part of the source. 

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Feces Rising

(My first attempt at reading leaves)

Ooops.

What I meant yesterday was that, in literature, details are often arranged so as to be convincing, to express specific or general truths. As events unfold in the narrative they can become increasingly persuasive, the more connected they are to initial details relayed. Seemingly insignificant events early on in the telling can serve to affect a character's final undoing, or victory. But the author, if careful, has placed these details into the narrative for a reason. It gives the impression, when done well, that all things work towards a central theme or purpose. 

Somewhat likewise, in astrology, human truths and characteristics are spread out as to be general, and slightly opposing, giving the adherent the impression that otherwise unrelated events - the position of a few planets in the solar system against the mighty backdrop of the cosmos - has a direct effect in the believer's life. If one celestial assertion does not quite jibe with their current thoughts about themselves, do not worry, there is always more to read. You will find something to attach to, if you pick and choose at will, as you are encouraged to do. If the astrologers have their way, they will bolster this selection into something to believe in, the final sense of completion being a shared activity. This is all done quite intentionally and is designed to produce a mystical sense within the subject - that they are directly connected to the cosmos and are involved in its perpetually majestic unfolding, like the notes from a giant galactic wallet.

The thing that I was trying to point out was that in literature this effect is created so as to be convincing. Also, in astrology it is part of the scheme to be there, to convince. But one is designed to relay truths while the other is designed to deceive. Just as we can look back into our lives and find what seemed to be insignificant details among thousands at the time, attaching them to the current state of our lives in what seems to be an unbroken lineage, the astrologer can appear to make connections between the rising and falling of planets and our subsequent moods, advising on a preferred course for our lives.

It is a device used, either literary or mystical, but always for the purpose of persuasion. When I discussed a person's inability to distinguish between the linear and the exponent I very much meant what I said, though it was not directed at any specific person. All that it should take to forever dismiss astrology as an interest or belief system is a careful examination of the techniques used to achieve its persuasive effect. Because the "truths" advanced there would prove to be far too general and victim to subjective interpretation to be of much use for any individual that possessed even a modicum of genuine self-knowledge. 

The sole purpose of astrology is to make the subject feel special. Persuasion is the primary device used. It is rather easy to persuade someone that they are special when they have arrived with the specific intent of achieving that feeling. 

The device is not astrology. The device is turning a person's life into a narrative, a plot, for them.

The opposite might be true for literature, for some. While some read strictly for the pleasure of plot they might not wish to understand the devices used. While others, who might wish to read both for pleasure and understanding - carefully studying the tactics employed, measuring their effectiveness against others - accomplish a wholly different thing. A contrast might lie in the acceptance of ambiguity. In one it is there solely with the purpose to deceive and obscure. I'll let you decide which is which.

This is not to say that literary pleasure and understanding are exclusive, mutually or otherwise. It is suggesting the opposite, that they can become indistinguishable. In astrology the goal is to dispense pleasure to the subject with only a burlesque of understanding. This is one reason why those who accept money for their spiritual powers will never discuss with their clientele the actual methods they employ. They will discuss astrology as a gateway to the universe but they will avoid the detailed methods they use to create return customers, the art of persuasive commerce. Their success in this regard is tied directly to the methods they employ, not the position of Venus. Though the position of Uranus is always a consideration, etc.

Writers are a mixture, some will discuss their methods, while others do not. This often depends on book sales. With substantial book sales they have little financial need to speak publicly, with fewer sales it becomes increasingly important to avoid working for a living. They must perpetuate their vital art somehow. 

One wonders at the day jobs held by struggling mystics, how best to unleash the psychic fury that awaits.

Yesterday's post was not written "at" anybody. It was an observation about people and what they choose to believe - more specifically, what they actually do believe based on what they are capable of understanding. Neither was it a slur on those who are not mathematically inclined. This might help, for those interested.

Refuting astrology is easy. Refuting the findings of any astrologer for any of my friends, not quite as simple.... Because the kernel of truth given is the subject's life itself, handed back to them in a way that pleases.

Apparently, all that it takes to renounce all of science is one lone zodiacal possibility, mixed with a generous sense of wonder and fascination, a drop or two of faith, and a few large bills.

In this world, there's one born every minute. 

Those born today are known as Capricorns. As a group they are indistinguishable from every other zodiacal sign. But don't try telling them....

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Tender is the Morning

(capricorn bathing)

I will finish "Tender is the Night" today. I have taken my time with it, extracting what pleasure and life lessons can be respectively enjoyed and endured from literature. This book has almost been too much for me, breaking my heart and scattering the shards liberally for weeks now.

I will likely begin the novel "A Bad Girl" today. An author, Mario Vargas Llosa, whom I know nothing about except that he has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I am looking forward to reading it. I have a very private life again. Though I have agreed to read this along with two friends. We will chat about the novel and sip tea, separated by an armed nation at war with itself.

I do have a very private life now, not one that I exactly wanted, or sought. Reading is a very lonely business. The problem with extracting your life lessons exclusively from literature is that you run the risk of being paralyzed by inaction, stricken with the disease known as caution. If you were to allow all of your life lessons to be learned from novels alone then you would never do anything at all. As all actions, no matter how minor, can serve to be your eventual undoing. 

The butterfly effect - the flapping of the wings eventually becoming a hurricane - those types of ideas work very well in literature. They have somewhat less traction elsewhere, though there are those that argue generously and often for them, often without knowing, confusing the dependence on initial conditions with the dependence on a condition. As in horoscopes and astrology, believing the month of your birth and the positions of a handful of known planets to be in a causal relationship with current and future behavior... It is a case of assuming the linear as the exponent, appearing similar to the non-mathematical mind, and indistinguishable to the ignorant.

Though it is true that stories are useful for padding out your experience-resume when you are young and just bluffing your way through life. The bluffing of youth fades away. I wonder now how many of my life's experiences are just borrowed, how many are just retellings modified to suit the immediate circumstances. Increasingly, literature makes me feel lonely - as I gain, and become naked, by years. 

More and more I share less and less, as scorpios so often do.

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It makes sense to be wrong

Rachel and I tried to go on a date last night. A movie. We never made it. Exhausted and sleepy before we even hit the parking lot of the theater, unable to decide on a film together. One of us wanted to see the new Quentin Tarantino film, the other a romantic comedy. You can guess. There was no argument, just a mutual concession that the film idea was out. I would have fallen asleep long before the movie started.

Instead, we went to have a cocktail together. There is an "Inn" here that fashions itself to be an upscale spa resort. Maybe it is. Who knows. I've written about it before here. 

There is a bar in the lobby. The employees of this bar must be long-time friends of the establishment as they would have been fired from any other bar that had as its stated purpose the intention of making money. After much negotiation we finally got some drinks. A glass of champagne for Rachel - scratch that, a dirty martini - and a whiskey for me. They were out of Jameson so I settled on Bushmills. My Irish-Catholic friends have thankfully stopped reading this site. They would never forgive such a thing, drinking a whiskey from Northern Ireland.

There are yet others who would never forgive me drinking whiskey of any kind. I've changed.

We sat, surveyed, and mildly contributed to the disaster that is humanity. Women who were somewhat incapable of negotiating their way through the place in boots with heels, those that do not know how to dress, the aged, the weathered, the well-off, and the desperate.

There was one couple sitting at the center table of this very small lounge that looked like recovering bikers. He had on a skull cap and a steel-workers t-shirt, leather work boots. They discussed money, life, people, and their many foibles in hushed but gruff tones. I had to strain to hear. She looked like she was trying to forget the many gang-bangs she had never been officially invited to. With a fresh coat of bright red nail polish on, a suggestive color that I have not seen women wear for decades. It somehow made sense with her black leather jacket and its many tassels, her new "wave" hairstyle, new blue jeans, etc. They struck me as an odd vision. 

But they were the exceptions, the anomalies. 

The bar was populated mostly with guests at the hotel, sensibly. We sipped our drinks and sunk deeper into the exhaustion that we both belonged to. An older couple walked in and sat at the bar. From the style of dress and haircut on the man I assumed them to be Italian New Yorker's. A bit of Vinny Sarducci, certain to be talking loudly about his cousin, Johnny Mozarella, while looking around the bar with a toothpick in his mouth, barely sitting on the stool facing outwards with his legs spread, gesticulating with mannered certainty, ignoring his wife unless she's the only one that's willing to argue.

But when I went to pay our check at the bar I was completely mistaken. They were a gentle old European couple. As nice and cordial as they could possibly be - happy to be there, and just as happy to be chatting with me at the bar. Proud to be visiting America. Proud to be in love. I wished that I had the energy to sit and chat with them all night. They were certain to be filled with wonderful stories, and pleased to share. 

Sometimes it's so refreshing to be wrong - like with my bomb-shelter, stocked with canned food, survival magazines, and my armament stockpile, in careful preparation for final and imminent destruction. 

Empty bottles of Jameson littering the place, the enervating decades. 

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Ricky Bobby's

(The Pasta of Ricky Bobby)

I left work yesterday at 3pm, hoping to beat the commuter traffic across the bridge,  then hoping for a fast dash home. Right away I noticed that something was wrong. Leaving the parking lot behind the office there was traffic backed up in both directions. As if life were a only video game I maneuvered my way down to Lombard Street, hoping again that things would be better once I had made it across the bridge. 

Nope. I sat in gridlock for about half an hour. It took me ten minutes to move one block.

Finally, I called Cato and asked what he was doing. Nothing, he said. I cut off on a cross street, re-crossed Lombard with some struggle and headed up his way, along the Presidio, towards the park. We sat at his house and chatted, drinking Mexican beers, listening to music played on shuffle, playing the guitar. Trying to play the guitar. My hand has not recovered and I still have no strength or dexterity in two very important fingers of the left hand. In truth I am not a great guitar player anyway. But now I am reduced to something that can not fairly be used to satisfy the term, guitar player. 

The beer seemed to help, though I know that it is never true, particularly with actions requiring delicacy. I was only aping the act more forcefully. He put his guitars away and we chatted. 

"Let's walk down to the Haight. We'll bar hop until 6 when this new place opens up that I want to try. Are you hungry at all?"

"Sure. I'm always hungry now."

We did exactly as he said. We stopped into a cool little beer bar called Magnolia, then went to another that was practically a sports bar right down the street from the restaurant that was going to open at 6. I had to piss and it was 5:50.  It all made perfect sense.

By the time we were done drinking our beers and independently pissing we walked back to the restaurant and it was almost full. 6:10. There had only been 4 people waiting out front when we were there before. We were lucky to be seated quickly. The restaurant was not yet serving beer and wine due to a lack of license, we were told. I walked across the street to buy our last beers of the night. My last beer of the night. I still wanted to drive home and the beers were piling up on me. Some food would help, though they will always tell you otherwise in driver education classes. Like with most information the state gives you, they are lying. 

The place was named "Ricky Bobby's," presumably after the Will Ferrell film with the subtitle reflecting the namesake. My guess is that it was meant to be making fun of the very food that they were happy to serve and sell, southern-ish and "decadent." (An obligatory word that all readers of food articles must have tired of, but one that was irresistible for the purpose of this post.)

Decadent.

It worked. There were quirky photographs blown up to extreme sizes hung on the wall and two-headed animals mounted over the chalkboard menu. All seating was on shared benches. It is the type place that I have missed since moving from the East Village, a restaurant that can only exist within city that believes itself cool, where it can attract its vaguely reluctant clientele. It was idiosyncratic, with not only a willingness to be eccentric towards concepts of decor, but as a requirement.

We decided that we would share food, in the urbane manner. A Beef and Bacon Burger seemed sensible, of course. The dinner-sized portion of baked Mac-N-Cheese with pulled lobster, corn and spinach... some Sweet Potato Tots, and of course the two tall Sapporo beers that I had secured from the deli that sat diagonally across the intersection.

We chatted about the foolishness of smoking crack cocaine. I imparted my extensive wisdom on the matter. We joked with the couple sitting next to us, pretending to be sharing their food with them as it arrived, relieving her temporarily of his tediousness. We patiently waited for our food to arrive. 

Midway through our beers our sweet potato tater-tots showed up, fresh from the deep fryer. I cautioned against eating them while they were so hot, still wise against crack and its many ravages. But Cato ran his heedless ways... We both dove in. The trick was to completely submerge them in the cream sauce or ketchup before eating them. It helped with the cooling process. A few minutes later we were shamelessly devouring the bowl of them, alternating sauces only as a mild tempering device. Having only been given toothpicks to serve as cutlery we were as the two miniature musketeers, vanquishing for all time this humble southern bowl of fried sweet potatoes.

The main courses arrived. Oh my... did I ever feel foolish for slaying so many tater-tots now. There sat a baked bowl in front of me that had a layer of crusted cheese on top and nature's goodness poking out here and there at ever inviting angles. It was like an orgy of melted cheese and lobster and pasta. I would get to the hamburger soon enough. We both dove in. For a few minutes there was only the sound of two men eating. Forks hitting bowls and the front-facing stages of the very beginning of the digestion process. Slowly, we recovered and remembered that we intended to share. Reluctantly I moved the bowl over to his side of the table. He cut the burger in half and placed a double-layered creation on the plate in front of me. The onset of early digestion resumed. 

Once we started speaking again we each refused to stop stating how good the food was, punctuating our "Amens" and "Hallelujahs" with the crunch of ever more tater tots, to help wash down the burger and lobster-cheese-pasta. Uncharacteristically, I left my beer unfinished on the table. I waited for Cato outside to start the long walk back to his place, already regretting having to shed off any of those delicious calories. 

We talked about old times, working together in NYC, some mutual friends there. I divulged a story that perhaps I shouldn't have. The lobster mac and cheese still had possession of my faculties, its fiery pincers from the deep still working their aquatic mysteries on me. I explained that it was a "different me" that had done those terrible things. Though I relayed the story heroically, with some laughs - not too many - out of a sense of propriety.

Once done, I gathered my stuff from Cato's and said my goodbye, hoping that the bridge would be open and the roads thereafter exclusively mine, having earned them well in advance.

I crossed the bridge into Marin, settling into the sleepy darkness ahead, as the lipids and I became one for the long ride home.

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Born Free

(Hardly Davidson)

Christmas did not stop Rhys from pooping his pants at all. He had a few Christmas miracles here and there. He seemed to like the wrapping paper as much as the presents. Though he has taken a particular shine to the little bike-like device that you see him sitting on top of here, still boxed. It gives him greater mobility around the house. He's not quite walking yet, though he has taken a few steps here and there, but he's getting pretty good at standing.You should see his eyes light up when he's on this little yellow bike though. It's a whole new world now. Destination anywhere.

His first attempt at the bike he just lifted his leg, swung it over, and mounted the thing. Off he went.

Born to ride, ride to live. Helmet laws suck, etc.

Though I've never seen a biker poop his pants so much, and with such natural verve for it.

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