I just lived in it.
Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
1939 – 2005
1939 – 2005
Lisa’s Legs
I’m trying to blog, make coffee, watch a movie and find my tax documents.
All these activities have to take place in different rooms. So I go in to where the big TV is hooked up to the digital cable box, and there is Clockwatchers, a sad, funny movie about four young women killing time as temps in a huge office. Also, there are the papers I have been sorting through for half of this dreary day, looking for my tax stuff. This stuff has been piling up for months. It has now been separated into three piles: The biggest pile is recycling – mainly flyers from local grocery stores. I don’t know why I didn’t chuck them the moment I saw them. Then there is shredding – the endless junk mail I get that has my real name and address on it. Blank checks I (or anyone who finds them) can write against my credit accounts, subscription renewals that just might tell someone too much about me – have you noticed how personal, how targeted junk mail is becoming? The third pile is stuff I’m pretty sure I have to save, but I don’t know why or where.
So I go to the kitchen to get a paper bag for the recycling and there is the coffeemaker. I am a coffee freak. I buy roasted coffee beans at health food stores (!), organically grown, and unsprayed with poison. Coffee is the most chemically treated crop in the world, you know, so if you’re going to drink as much of it as I do (don’t ask) you don’t want a pesticide cocktail along with it. I mix at least two different varieties of coffee most of the time, and grind the beans one pot at a time. I have been using a glass Melitta stove-top cone-type coffee pot since the Spanish American War, until last Christmas, when someone tried to bring me into the 21st Century by giving me an electric coffeemaker. I had told this person many times that I liked the ritual of the stove-top model – the measuring of the water, the boiling of the water in a separate vessel, “surprising” the coffee with that first brief squirt of hot water, refilling the cone a couple of times until the perfect pot of coffee was there, visible in its’ gorgeous mahogany glory in my glass pot. But I got the electric coffeemaker anyway. “Look,” he said, “it’s a Melitta, and it uses a cone!”
So for a few months a good part of the coffee ritual was gone from my life. Water in this hole, coffee down here, press the button and walk away. Might as well walk away, because the carafe is stainless steel, so you not only don’t have to do anything, but you can’t even see if anything is happening. Also, you can never tell for sure if the pot is clean, because you can’t see through it.
But some of the ritual element is returning, because the electronic mechanism that detects when there is no more water and the coffee is ready has gone haywire, and now the coffeemaker stops brewing at random times during the process, sometimes after only a cup has gone through, sometimes in the middle or near the end. When that happens you have to push the button again to make it start. Lately it has been stopping three or four times before finishing a pot of coffee, each time necessitating a manual restart. It’s not exactly a mystical ritual, but it’s all I have left. When this thing breaks down completely, I’m going back to my ancient glass rig.
But why am I standing in the kitchen with this paper bag in my hand? Oh yes, the recycling, which is on the floor in front of the TV. I leave the coffeemaker and go out to gather up the papers from the floor, and now I am back watching the movie. The four temps are amazed and disgusted that some new girl has been hired on a permanent basis to do a job that any one of them can do easily. There is no justice.
After bagging up the papers to be recycled, I get smart and pick up the papers to be shredded, so my walk back to the kitchen can have a dual purpose. I take the shreddables into where the shredder is, which is also where the computer is, which reminds me that I have a bunch of blogs open in tabs, and these obsessive bloggers will be looking at their site statistics and trying to figure out who was reading their blogs for six hours. So I try to read (and close) a few of my faves while I stuff paper into the shredder, hoping that sorting this stuff while watching Lisa Kudrow’s long, long legs in a short, short skirt hasn’t made me put my tax documents in this pile by mistake, because, hey, it’s too late now. Then I think Well, maybe I’ll type a few notes myself, and I start to do that but then I remember that I want some coffee.
I go in the kitchen, and sure enough, the coffeemaker has stopped. So I restart it and go back to type some more, but while I’m at it I realize the movie will be ending soon and I’ve never actually seen the ending. Do you do that in this era of cable movies? Watch parts of movies here and there, now and then, out of sequence, until you’ve seen the whole thing?
But I have missed the ending, my stuff that must be saved is still sitting on the coffee table and… Coffee table! Coffee!
Back in the kitchen, the coffeemaker needs another restart, and now I can’t find the bag of recycling. Shit, it’s in by the shredder, next to the computer, where the blogs are waiting to be read and written.
I haven’t found the papers I was looking for, and I haven’t had my coffee. But I have filled up a trash can with shredded paper, read some and blogged some, and that’s something.
Oh yeah: And I had a brief video relationship with Lisa’s legs.
Sex in the Back Yard
Right here in the Big City.
I heard a loud ka-thunk in the backyard the other morning, and I went out to investigate. Using my Holmesian powers of deduction, I pieced together what had happened:
A couple of possums (yes, I know they are really opossums, but I just can’t say it – or type it – that way) had been engaged in some hanky panky on top of a six-foot cinderblock wall. They had become transported by their amorous activities and lost their balance, slipping off the wall as one possum and crashing together into the top of a 5o-gallon plastic trash can. This caused the ka-thunk. They must have immediately rolled off onto the ground.
At this point, Ms. Possum evidently decided she’d had enough and it was time to call it a night (this was at 7:00 AM, people). She had managed to wriggle about ten feet from their original landing point. That’s where they were when I came upon them.
As you can see from the picture, the boyfriend (or BF) was not finished with her. They were not cuddling in this picture. They were coupling. About five seconds after this picture was taken, Ms. Possum (the one in the lower right portion of the frame) broke free and the two of them scrambled away into the nearby bushes. I felt bad enough for getting this compromising shot and I didn’t pursue them. For all I know they continued their debauchery in the bushes for the rest of the day.
I like possums. They are the only North American marsupial. They are quite successful. That is, their population is not threatened, because despite their slowness and what sometimes seems stupidity, they apparently have figured out how to get what they need to survive side-by-side with man. Some think they look like giant rats (the two pictured here were probably ten pounds each), but I think they are kind of cute, like an AMC Pacer. This is, of course, in the eye of the beholder. But I’m glad these little guys are in my neighborhood, and I wish them well as they start their family.
I told you I’d be getting back to writing about sex. And there’s more where that came from.
Pollyanna Politics
Getting a little political here at revision99.
This was originally intended to be mainly a political blog, but I got sidetracked somehow. I guess I realized early on that since I didn’t have a real news organization behind me, I couldn’t get inside information. I couldn’t get invited to press conferences by the President or anyone else, and I didn’t have a staff to research anything. In the absence of those capabilities, I have nothing but my opinions, which, it turns out, are a dime a dozen, and of no compelling interest.
Thus freed from having to rant about the government and its insane policies, I was able to turn to more mundane – and fun – topics, like sex, bondage, animals and technology. Some day, however, I intend to make good on my promise to post something that tries to make sense out of the current political climate in the United States in light of the apparent shift to the Right that has manifested itself recently. Some day. In the mean time I need to do a short follow-up on yesterday’s post. This is more politics, folks. Turn it off now if you were looking for sex.
Yesterday I was thinking about the army. The troops, as they are usually called these days, on bumper stickers and in Congress. I don’t support them.
There. I said it. I don’t support The Troops. Oh, I love them like my own brothers and sisters, and my heart goes out to them, and I don’t want any of them to get hurt or killed, and I want them to come home and be with their families, or get back to their jobs or farms or drug habits, whatever it is they want. I wish they weren’t in some far-away desert country where they don’t speak the language, the food is rotten and everybody they see might be sizing them up for a suicide bomb attack. Most of all I weep for the ones who lose their arms and legs, or their minds.
But God damnit, when they do their military jobs, when they drive their armored vehicles, read their radar screens, fire their weapons, conduct their house-to-house searches, when they are soldiering, they are doing the work of the devil. Our troops are in somebody else’s country, somebody who was not a threat to this country, and there are a hundred thousand dead Iraqis because of this. Can we stipulate that this is just wrong?
You might be thinking that our army is merely following orders, and you can’t blame them for that. In light of the monstrous horrors of the 20th century committed by people following orders, do you really want to use that argument again?
Look, I’m not trying to say that any of this mess is the fault of any individual soldier. But when you sign up for an organization that wears armor and carries machine guns as part of its dress code, you have to know that somebody is going to get shot. Maybe you don’t expect that a loco presidente is going to take you adventuring to exciting foreign ports o’ call, but if your training involves the killing of human beings, well, you just gotta figure there might be some killing in store.
Maybe you’ve seen the bumper sticker that asks “What if they gave a war and nobody came?” I know life is much more complicated than that, but I still ask myself, what if…? What if people just didn’t participate in these wars we keep having? After all, it’s just Joe Sixpack shooting Mohammed Hookah Bowl. Guys like George Bush and Saddam Hussein don’t take any chances with their asses, so why should we be so eager to enlist?
At this point it would be pretty easy to bury me in arguments about why we need an army, why everyone needs an army, how freedom isn’t free, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, we can be pacifists, but what if the other guy wants to fight? etc. I’m not claiming I have practical answers to these points. I’m just sadly looking at a world that is increasingly armed and dangerous, and wondering if there’s anything at all we can do to make it better.
OK. That’s all the politics for now. Next week I’ll get back to sex.
Lines
On the playground we were all warriors.
We played many games, all of them designed to replicate real wars. Move the ball, score on the opponent. Victory and defeat. Triumph or humiliation. Attack and defend.
Sometimes we played Capture the Flag, a game that almost exactly mirrors the activities of war: stealth, death, deceit, guard duty, all the highlights. The entire play area is divided into two territories, and two teams, who each hide a flag or an icon of some sort in the farthest reaches of their territory. The object is to find and steal the flag of the other team, and bring it back to your own territory. Along the way you can be captured and imprisoned, or killed, and if you catch the other team on your ground, you can kill them instead.
Sometimes things would escalate beyond gaming. Someone would get pushed too hard, and get too serious about the offense. The undercurrent was always there. At these times you would try to defuse the situation. The parties involved could not back down, and any intervention could lead to greater tensions, and punches could be thrown, shoves administered. Would-be peacekeepers could get bloody noses.
Eventually someone would draw a line. Step over it, and I’ll break your head. Take it any way you want. There it is. A line. You could go for it, if you were tough enough, or if you thought you had no credible choice. You could ridicule the concept as a way of not ignoring it but not having to brave the possible consequences. Some of your playmates might see it your way, and not think you a hopeless chicken.
But one thing was sure: When it got to that point, when the line was drawn, it was too late for intervention. It was past the point of no return. Someone was going to get hurt, physically or psychologically.
What were we doing, with our lines and our threats, and our posturing? Readying ourselves, instinctively, for the Game of Life that we were headed for, a game where the winners take what they want and to hell with everyone else, where you draw a line around your territory and warn all who pass, step over this at your peril, where you penetrate the territory of others, steal their stuff and race with your spoils back to your homeland. Welcome to the Big Game of deception, betrayal and death.
Like children, power mad and run amok, we have marked the whole world with lines, an elaborate system of borders, and we have warned each other in the harshest possible ways do not step over our line. We no longer remember why the lines are there, but we will kill the trespasser, and the killers shall wear medals, and we will honor them and they shall be known as heroes.
Valentine’s Day
Your happiness does not depend on being anyone’s “Valentine,” OK?
I remember in the fourth grade it was kind of a competition. Valentine cards were prepared by the box and delivered to classmates on February 14, and the numbers each receieved were openly discussed at recess. I’m not sure what we thought we were doing, why the teacher sanctioned these shenanigans, so obviously exclusionary and non-academic. What were we supposed to learn from this? That it was good to be loved? No, because we never said “I love you.” It was implied, of course — what else does “Be Mine” mean? — but we never said it.
We were keeping our options open, way back then. Just children, not willing to make a choice, knowing instinctively that in our choice we would lose all other choices. What if we picked wrong? We couldn’t see far enough down the road even to know what that would mean, much less how the horrible error could possibly be corrected.
Or could it be that some of us were ready? Ready to make a decision, make a connection, select a partner. Who’s to say that a fourth-grader is any less prepared than the average twenty-year-old bride and groom? If getting older makes us so much smarter, why do most marriages fail?
And what does it mean to fail in your marriage? Of course the ultimate failure must be splitting up, right? My parents did it, and I was traumatized, mostly by the problems of trying to know who I was in the world. Starting at age 12 I had only a mother. This, I thought at the time, made me different from other kids. If only I’d known.
Then Mom and Dad got back together, and that was even weirder. They didn’t remarry, so my self identity became blurrier still. Who was this guy living in our house, and why was this even allowed? They’re not getting married, so are they really together? My own parents conducted their love life like a couple of fourth-graders.
When I was in fourth grade, I thought I had to get Valentine’s cards from all the girls. And I didn’t get them. I want to say “…year after year, I didn’t get them…” but I don’t remember how many years it was, or if it was just one humiliating incident that now seems like a lifetime, lived a lifetime ago, a longing loveless lifetime of no Valentine’s greetings, secret smiles, walks home from school.
I made up the torture for myself. Made it up, sentenced myself to it, and carried out the punishment, cruelly, as a child can do, turning on myself bleakly and tasting the pain. I was crucified for the sins of Cathy S., Sybille G. Mary D., Annette M. and the others who walked on by, talking and laughing, I was sure at me.
The man I have become walks with this little boy’s fear and pain. Sometimes I feel like a cartoon who hides from the threat, the everywhere fear that I won’t measure up, won’t be presented with a piece of paper that makes me real, that stands me up in the eyes of another, the word made flesh, the flesh made holy, blessed at last by your love.
The world is filled with love and beauty. Love that flows into each us from all of us, because no matter how separate, no matter how distant we grow, we only have each other, and we always have each other, all of us, alone together, the billions, the One.
I have burned my cards. I send no letters. And not just for today, but for all of fourth grade, all of our time here, I love you.
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Update, February 14, Noon – Turns out I did receive a Valentine card. Here it is:
Wet Dream
It’s raining again in Los Angeles.
It started last night, and continues now, on into the weekend. Rescue teams have already pulled someone out of a flood control channel today. They might as well stand by with their equipment, because for sure someone else will fall in tonight. As I have said before, it is a no-brainer to stay the hell away from these treacherous man-made maelstroms during a storm. For background on this, you can check this post.
This has been a wonderful wet winter in Southern California. Those of you who live in other parts of the country, forgive me for rhapsodizing about something so mundane, but this part of the world is a natural desert. If it weren’t for all the water we steal from Northern California and Arizona (via the Colorado River), the amout of rainfall here would support a community of about 80,000, and it wouldn’t be pretty. It would be brown, because we’d be drinking the water, not putting it on our lawns and gardens. I shouldn’t say “we,” because I wouldn’t be here.
I have a window cracked and outside the room where I type this stuff I can hear the rain. It’s a soothing, musical sound, and lulls me, making me dreamy and forgetful that the garage is probably flooding. So what? I have long ago lifted everything important off the floor out there, my spare monitor is resting safely (OK, precariously) on the seat of the excercise bike, the incredible array of cardboard boxes full of useless junk that I can’t throw away has been placed inside of waterproof plastic boxes. Why would I do a thing like that? It was a big job, but I did it because it semed like a big job to actually sort through the stuff and organize it. So I avoided one big job by doing a different, less useful, big job.
At the beginning of this winter I put rye grass seed down on the lawn. I just found out about this two or three years ago. I should have known about it, I guess, because apparently eveybody does it, but, to be generous, I’m a late bloomer. Professional gardeners and deep-rooted homeowners put fertilizer on top of the grass seed, which stinks up the neighborhood and, as far as I can tell, doesn’t do anything for the grass. Mine grows just as well, without the manure. Anyway, rye grass seed goes down on top of whatever grass you’ve got, no fuss, no muss, and it grows lush and green during the winter, then it’s gone. With all this rain, I’ve got me one bright green yard, and in the dead of winter. Sorry, Minnesota. At least you’ve got The Vikings in the Superbowl. Wait, you don’t have that, either.
I love this rainy splashy sound so much. After my jangling, jarring work week, it is a joyful pleasure just to sit and listen and write. This is not Big Storm rain, just a steady, gentle shower that covers everything, and washes away all my sins.
Comment This
Holy shit!
I just left a comment at Kung Pow Pig regarding the Trampoline of Death. You should read that post, but the real shit is that Blogger has improved the commenting section. I’m still not sure exactly what all is new, but one of the biggies is that you, oh Anonymous One, can now sign your comments without signing up for Blogger. You know who you are. Click on “Thoughts on this rubbish” at the bottom of this post, and see what I mean. I’d love to hear from you, and you know you have a lot to say to me.
But it looks like if you are a Blogger member, your picture appears with your comment! Is that cool or what?! I have been saying “more pictures” for months (OK, mostly just to myself, but once or twice here and in comments), and now there will be tons more pix. Those of you who don’t post pictures of yourself in your profile: what are you hiding? Are you a high public official who must maintain the strictest propriety? Are you afraid your stalker will find you (I recently discovered these are referred to as “ex-bf’s”)? Are you just flat out butt ugly? These are not good excuses, people. OK, if you’re afraid, post something clever in place of your mug, like this guy did. But blogs need more pix, folks, and I think you know it’s not going to happen unless you make it happen!
Put a comment here to see how the new comment thing works. This is not a trick to get as many comments as I possibly can going here. It’s not.
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UPDATE: The new commenting system also allows me to make the comments appear in a popup window. This means there will be no further use for Haloscan. Seriously. Click on my comment link. Really, just do it.
In Vino Veritas
I want to go to a bar.
Hang with some guys, shoot some pool, listen to music. Any bar. A little neighborhood dive would be fine, up to and including the Viper Room. Trouble is, I don’t drink.
Well, let me put that another way: I am taking a break from drinking, while my friends catch up. I got so far ahead of them that they weren’t any competition to me anymore, so I stopped to give them a fair chance to equal my intake. But the bastards have been very slow, and after almost ten years, they still haven’t caught up, although to give proper credit, some of them are trying heroically. Thing is, I said I would wait, and I’m a man of my word, so I’m still waiting.
Those of you who aren’t horrified at the idea of not consuming alcohol ( please follow the bouncing double negative) are probably saying “What’s the big deal? Go out, have a good time, drink Perrier.”
I’ll bet not one of you has tried being the Designated Driver for Life. It’s not as easy, or as fun, as it might seem. OK, I know it doesn’t even seem remotely fun, but to me it isn’t a bad thing, either. It just kind of is. I actually have no problem abstaining. I was a drunk, now I’m not. As I say, I’ll be a drunk again when my friends have proven they can keep up.
But when you do something like this, your old friends get uncomfortable. I’m not sure if this is because they are afraid you will be sober and judgmental (sober as a judge, get it?) while they get loose and do stupid things, or if it’s some Fraternity of Drunks thing, where they want you to be on the same level as they are. There is some kind of weird sanction against drinking alone, but A) I never had any difficulty doing it, and B) you’re rarely alone in a drinking establishment.
The world of bars is geared toward serving liquor. The drinking of liquor begets the buying of more liquor, which begets the drinking of more liquor, and, well , you get the idea. The stuff I want to do — pool, hang, music — these are the things bars have going to get you to drink. They are peripherals, not the main attraction. It’s not a temptation thing. I’m just not comfortable being such a square peg in such a round hole. People are not cool with it, no matter what they say, and no matter how badly they might need a ride. They look at you funny.
Once I went to a costume party in the garb of a Catholic priest (Side note: It was literally the garb of a Catholic priest — my date’s brother, who didn’t know I had his stuff.). Talk about looking at you funny. Everyone knew me, and everyone knew I was wearing a costume, but still they treated me differently. Raucous conversations died when I approached. Joints were kept hidden in cupped hands, away from my eyes. No necking took place while I was around.
Flash forward a few years. As word spread that Larry wasn’t drinking, I started to receive that same treatment. I hadn’t changed, but people thought I was not the same, and treated me accordingly. It was like I was wearing a costume, one that was just a little too real for them to ignore.
Thus my dilemma. I know a big part of this problem is inside me — I can’t blame it all on stupid people unable to live and let live, much as I’d like to. But I’ve told you before, don’t psychoanalyze me. Damnit, I’m missing out on a lot of male bonding. Foosball, sports on giant-screen TV’s, waitresses in skimpy costumes — darts, for Chrissake!
Maybe I will try coffee houses. Not coffee shops, like Denny’s or Bob’s Big Boy, but the dark, inviting descendants of beatnik hangouts in North Beach, circa 1955, like the place I went on my imaginary date with Gwyneth Paltrow. I love coffee, and, as with hard liquor, I can drink gallons of it at a sitting. As a big plus, coffee generally doesn’t cause projectile vomiting, the way Kamchatka vodka does. Coffee houses often have entertainment, although I can’t think of any that have foosball tables. Come to think of it, the entertainment is likely to be a “folksinger” or a “poet,” which may not be my exact cup of, uh, tea.
Maybe the thing to do is to go to bars, drink coke from a cocktail glass and act drunk. Bars being what they are, it would be an open secret in no time that I’m not really drinking, but I think the pose might put people at ease. Nothing like loud, slurred speech directly into someone’s ear to make them feel the love. Maybe I will find other people at the bar who are pretending to be drunk, and we can play pool and secretly judge the real drunks.
Ancient Misery, Part One
I figured out that if I take the leather case off my iRiver MP3 player it is a very svelte little package indeed.
I can slip it into my shirt pocket, run the wires up the back of my neck, stick the little earbuds in and I am walking in rhythm. Who needs this thick leather case? Without it, the player even looks better. This only took five months to learn.
The songs (several hundred from various sources, and the thing is like one-tenth full) are mostly upbeat, so it’s supposed to keep me happy. There are a few ballads and nostalgic pieces, but mostly it’s hard rockin’. This is not the soundtrack to my life. I wrote about this little box once before, and someone said “Great, you can create the soundtrack to your life.” The problem is, the music just plays. There is no musical director who senses my mood, or prevailing conditions (horrible monster behind the kitchen door, for example) and adjusts the music accordingly. No matter what happens to me, the music plays.
No one else hears it but me, and with the invisible way I am wearing the thing, few even realize I am musicized. But when I feel kicked in the teeth, I want to hear “Man of Constant Sorrow,” not “Hey Ya.” I carefully chose those titles to be somewhat illustrative of what I am saying, without getting into extremely era-specific material, so you won’t be picturing the real geriatric me, gimping around with an MP3 player hooked up like an oxygen tank. Anyone who cares to find out will know that I am 57 years old. Funny — for the last twenty-eight years or so I have told people that I am one year older than I really am, so that on my birthday, when the actual age catches up, I will not feel so bad. I can’t believe I cared about this when I was thirty. But when I signed up for this blog I dutifully reported my real birthday, and Blogger went ahead and calculated my age and there you go. It’s right in my profile.
I’m a relatively young 57, not that it makes any difference. In the real world I am fitter, smarter and more creative and energetic than most guys I know who are twenty- and thirty-something. I have almost no nose hair. But blogging seems to be primarily the realm of twenty- and thirty-somethings, and in THIS world I feel impossibly ancient when I am reading a blog and the girl says”Eewww, this OLD GUY tried to hit on me at the gym, and I had to like, run.” How old was he? Seventy? Or 57? I make a special point not to hit on anybody, but still. I don’t remember being so mean to old guys or women when I was thirty. Maybe I just didn’t have the venue.
More on that in a later post. For now, you kids should be ashamed.
I have been cut off. By someone who blogs. As I have said here in the past, I read a lot of blogs. I have read many great books in my incredibly long life, written by professional writers like Salinger and Dostoevsky, but these days I am really digging the amateurs, and I mean that in the sense of “volunteers,” the bloggers who are telling their stories, expressing their feelings, telling on themselves, as another blogger put it once. There is something real and powerful about it that the pros often lack. And there’s interactivity, by which I mean that I can comment, and the blogger gets to comment back, and we can find out about common ground, new ideas, stuff like that.
And I was doing this with this other blogger, thinking communication was happening, and then all of sudden she disabled comments and put up a post saying she was writing for herself and didn’t want a conversation. I felt like I had been poked in the eye, since there were only like three people commenting and I was one of them. Funny how I can get to thinking that some kind of connection is happening in cyberspace (I know, but what other word can I use?) when actually nothing at all is going on.
And then before I can even fully wrap my mind around what happened there, or didn’t happen, as the case may be, another woman (not a blogger) who has recently had a perfectly good chance at me and didn’t take it, is heard to say that she needs to get laid, and has felt that way for quite some time. And, without going into all the intimate details, the situation she’s looking for is pretty much the exact one I offerred. What’s a boy to think?
I need no consolation here, people. I just want to know why all the shit has to hit the fan at the same time.
I am a man of constant sorrow.