One of those bells that now and then rings

Well, the great eight-tailed mutant kitsune thing that haunts the swamps of this, the centre of suck didn't pull the plane down in a firey cataclysm. I am safe on the ground at CAE drinking Coke and waiting on The Man.

The Coke tasted bad.

This is because the wait-dolt who took my order just ASSUMED I wanted Diet. I said, "Coke," she added a 'Diet' in there and since it's been several years since I inflicted diet soda on myself, I wasn't sure exactly what was wrong and drank the whole thing.

I only ordered Coke in the first place because iced tea wasn't on the menu. Big vat of the stuff at two o'clock, but I didn't notice that until after I'd ordered and I find it best to make as few waves as possible with these poor people going about their little lives while the swamp-fox sucks their souls out through their assholes so slowly that they don't even notice.

The State of South Carolina is a rough triangle about two hundred miles on a side. Columbia, its capitol and largest city, sits right in the middle, where the Santee River meets the Congaree, between the sandhills and swamps to the south, the Atlantic Ocean to the East, and the decayed mountains to the North and West.

Columbia means Land of the Doves, which means a land so covered with pigeon shit that it only makes sense to paint everything white. No wonder some authoritative source named this shithole the second best place in america to come to die.

If I do wind up starting grad school here, be prepared for lots more hate-filled posts on this subject.

Chronocat out.

So. X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Worth seeing. Worth seeing again. But not a great movie.

Marvel hasn't -quite- got that special magic out of the best of their universe and distilled it into something that I'm going to be sticking in my Hero's Journey course twenty years from now.

If I had to draw up that curriculum right now, the only Marvel that'd make the cut is still confined to print: God Loves, Man Kills, Days of Future Past & Past of Future Days, Dark Phoenix (X-Men) Elektra: Assassin, Born Again (Daredevil) Welcome Back Frank (Punisher).

DC's turned in at least one definite and a lot of possibles. The Definite is in fact Superman II with Terrance Stamp. "Now Son of Jor-El, kneel before Zod." Oooh. I get chills.

But I digress.

Wolverine is not a great movie. It starts out in 1845 with a couple of weak child actors playing our two main characters, Wolverine and Sabretooth. These kids are just plain bad. Unconvincing. Not their fault, mind you, just they're both too young to portray the savagery at the heart of their characters. They come off as kittens trying to be fierce and it just doesn't work.

Then it jumps to Gettysburg, with Jackman and Schreiber fighting Johnny Reb side by side, ignoring .60 calibre bullet wounds and even showing Wolvie taking a cannonball in the chest at close range. Then we shift to Verdun, with our gruesome twosome fighting through the trenches and shooting down low-flying aircraft. Then they're coming ashore at Normandy into the teeth of machine gun fire. Here's where we get to see Sabretooth's truly monstrous prowess as he bounds like his namesake up the cliffs to the Nazi machine gunners who're not even slowing him down and he takes their machine gun away from them and kills them all with it. Then we go to Son Tinh province of Vietnam and a mad patch of ground called My Lai #12. Wolvie tries to put on the brakes. Sabretooth kills an officer. And so now we're off to the story.

Unfortunately, that's the high point of the whole stack of pancakes. The rest of it has pretty splosions and highly beautifully choreographed slashies slash and and cheap plot points put in towards no other purpose than to cram every fucking Mighty Marvel Mutant they can. It's a messy, convoluted, plot hole bedecked snarling adamantium reenforced Mutantfest that consistently delivers brain-numbing action sequences at just the moment its credibility gets strained.

Jackman and Schreiber are high points. They really get into it and every moment they're tearing away at each other you barely notice that the blood and gore has been emasculated to the standards of '50s Hollywood western. Whenever they're together, they thoroughly redeem what would have been a complete piece of poorly written shit into pure-d high octane action movie entertainment.

On the Spectrum of Marvel Movies, I put it just ahead of X2, the best of the X-Men Trilogy, and a couple of notches down from Iron Man, which is the best of a lot that has potential that's still not fully realized.

Gee, that sounds like the length of time I spent employed at the Texas Press Clipping Bureau. Bleh. Wish I could say I thought it was time well spent, but it was time better spent than sitting her naked in my pit of despair trying to motivate myself and getting mixed results at best.

I got laid off Thursday and I'm pretty sure that my coworkers aren't far behind. The company's dying, a casualty of the dying newspaper industry.

C'est la guerre.

Know of any jobs for a dde who can write?

I had a weird dream:

Batman wants to retire. He has just married a pretty young blonde and is planning on hanging up the utility belt to travel and fuck her thirteen times a day. He's going to do it. But there's this problem, see? This notorious supervillian, The Creator, has just just been released from prison and is coming into town to kill him on the next train. Nobody wants to help him. Everybody tells him, "Bruce, dude, hang the cape and just get gone. It's not your fight anymore." He's completely alone. Even his wife won't stand with him. The killer's coming on the noon train. High Noon.

Do not forsake me O my darlin'
On this our wedding day.
Do not forsake me O my darlin'
Wait, wait along.

The noonday train will bring Frank Miller.
If I'm a man I must be brave
And I must face that deadly killer
Or lie a coward, a craven coward,
Or lie a coward in my grave.

Do not forsake me oh my darlin'
You made that promise when we wed.
Do not forsake me oh my darlin'
Although you're grievin'
I can't be leavin'
Until I shoot Frank Miller dead.

0

I don’t remember exactly what it was that did it, but I do remember the year. It was 1976, I was finishing first grade, I was about to turn seven, and I decided what I was going to be. I don’t remember the inspiration that tipped me over from thinking, “That’s neat!” to “That’s me! That’s who I am!” There are several likely candidates. Poems, books, movies, plays, it’s a sea of possibility.

The more I think about it, the more I think that it wasn’t the work that looms largest in my imagination now that did it, although I did see it for the first time that I can remember that spring. Peter Blood, a physician and a good honest man, is condemned by evil king James. With a little luck and a lot of pluck, he finds himself with a ship and loyal men to man her. So he becomes, Captain Blood.

A dashing gentleman rogue, one taught fast ship alone on a hostile sea, with a crew of stout mates. That’s the ideal. One ship alone in dangerous waters, a crew without a country, and a good stout breeze. A nation of oak and tar and canvas and hemp at war with all the world.

One ship against the world, let’s attack!

Run out the guns boys! Ready pistol and cutlass! Let fly our colors: black with a grinning skull above crossed femur bones! No prisoners!

Yes. That was going to be me. I was going to be a pirate!


I

It was January of 1988, the beginning of winter term. I was eighteen years old, a Freshman at Hendrix College of Conway, AR, and already enough of a man to know I wasn’t going to be a pirate.

The kind of pirate I wanted to be never really existed. Real pirates were filthy stinking scurvy child raping scum. They lived short and miserable lives and almost all of them died badly. I could put up with an ugly death, but I didn’t want the fucking scurvy.

Scurvy results from a deficiency in intake of Vitamin C. It’s one of the worst ways to die I can imagine. And before death’s sweet release, the disfigurement is worse than any cannonball could do. Your teeth fall out. Your nails fall out. You turn green and get black spots. You bleed from your gums, from your ears, from your asshole, from the pisshole of your cock. Then you go blind. Then you die. No thanks. Not for me.

But the dream proved very strong. Especially that winter. The worst snowstorm I have ever seen dumped eighteen inches of snow upon the town of Conway and shut down the campus like a police state cracking down on protest. That night I introduced my friends Lambchop and Alec to Captain Blood. Lambchop introduced me to shotgunning and I don’t mean shooting skeet.

A shotgun in the parlance of the dope culture is a little trick where one smoker takes a nice deep toke and exhales into the mouth of another smoker. It’s a very intimate way of getting really stoned.

It’s really great when a girl like Lambchop does it for you. She was petite, with big boobs and a tiny waist, lambswool hair, green eyes, and a punky fashion sense. That night she wore thick black tights under jeans that were held together with about six pairs of shoelaces.

The next morning, we were walking down Harkrider to Waffle House, openly smoking a doobie when a cop car trundled past us and slowed dramatically. The cops smiled, waved, made toking motions, wagged their fingers, and kept right on going. No way they were getting out of the car to arrest us.

That night, my ears bright red from the cold, I asked Lambchop to pierce my ear, which she did with a safety pin. I didn’t feel a thing, but remember a loud ‘pop!’ when the pin pushed through.

It took a while to heal, but the piercing healed into a perfect little tunnel of scar tissue I’ll have all the days of my life.

One time I was working for some evil corporation who didn’t allow earrings in their male employees and I left the hole open for eleven months. When I left that job, I celebrated by buying the earring I’m wearing now. It took a little effort and more than a little pain, to work the fourteen gauge hoop through the hole, but there wasn’t any blood.

For more than twenty years it was my only piece of body art.


II

It’s August 15th 2008, I just got paid, and tonight I’m gonna do it.

After getting through college, getting out into the world, working for the man, I suffered a little more than ten years of chronic underemployment.

It finally took going to The State and getting my Asperger’s Syndrome diagnosed, but I finally got a job I don’t totally hate and I just got paid.

Tonight I’m gonna do it.

The wheels of The State turn slowly and I spent some several months with nothing better to do than to take refuge in white magic and so I folded 1000 cranes.

The Japanese teach that folding 1000 paper cranes, stringing them and hanging them will evoke the favor of Sen, the crane, the spirit of luck and fortune. It’s a labor of love and devotion and took me six months.

And it worked. I got a job I don’t hate. And if nothing else, the craft energized me a little on the interview.

In any event, I never want to forget it. Even if my left arm’s the only thing left of me, I want the world to know that I folded 1000 cranes, completed the rite of Senbazuru, and achieved his favor.

So I go over to Hold Fast Tattoos on Greenville, make an appointment with Mike, and get him to tattoo a scarlet crane with green kanji on its wings and back.

Actually getting the tattoo is an almost pleasant sensation, like when good sex just passes the pain threshold. The needle penetrates less than ¼” and the whole thing feels like a very mild electric shock, a friendly stinging sensation.

The next day, however, feels like I got a very bad sunburn localized to my left bicep.

It was worth it.

For twenty years, I had one piece of body art. Now I have two.

If you're a reasonably well-informed American voter, I can sympathize with you if you're having trouble making up your mind on who to vote for this November.

Both candidates have their good points. Both have reasoned and nuanced stances on the issues. Both have positions that I disagree with, but if I wanted to vote for my clone, I'd vote for him. He's running on the National Clone Party ticket and is polling pretty well among other clones, or Replicated Americans as they prefer to be called. The point is, both McCain and the O are thinking men, devoid of the sort of knee-jerk jingoistic bullshit that's polluted our collective unconsciious for the past eight years.

Both candidates have their off points too. The O is indeed less proven than I would find ideal in a candidate. He hasn't served in the military and that is also a black mark in my book. McCain is severely tained by the Bush administration. He's backed too many of their bad plays to give any real confidence that he'll make a real break from them should he get elected.

But there's only one candidate who has the experience and judgement necessary to fix one of the biggest problems that's going to be handed to him by the anti-president.

That problem is the complete absence of a functioning Justice Department. You're a very partisan Bushie indeed if you won't acknowledge that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his underlings completely gutted one of the most extensive and important sattelites of the Executive Branch.

Only one candidate has the training to personally take stock in what has been done and what needs to be done to fix the problem.

Only Obama holds a law degree.

If it was to Bush's successor to address a crisis in the White House kitchens, you'd want a president who actually knows how to cook, wouldn't you?

Hope that helps.

Chronocat out.

So. There's been what I hope is a big change in my worthless life: I started a job last Monday. I started a job hunting through newspapers for a press clippings service and after doing it for a week, I'm beginning to get a little confidence that it's not just another false start.

Needless to say, this is a huge boost to my overall perception of general well being. food tastes better. The heat bothers me less. My creative juices are simmering again.

All this and I'm still fucking broke, a state of being which tends to sink my psyche into a low ebb.

The job's not ideal. The pay's not very good and I really would be doing other things with my time. Plus, the industry's a dying one. Twenty years ago, there were twenty companies doing what we do in Teas alone. Now there are two. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of potential for growth here.

But the company itself seems to be in halfway decent shape. We got new chairs Friday. I put them together.

My coworkers seem to be reasonably decent. They don't get in the way of doing the job at least. Some of them may well be worth getting to know and none of them have really put me off yet. And after a week? That's not too bad.

The job requires a level of contact ith the general public that I consider perfect: none.

The hours and location are pretty much optimal. One bus takes me right there and the train takes me right back. It's a thirty minute trip. So I only invest nine and a half hours of five days a week on this job and I don't have to waste more time than I absolutely want to outside of the office.

Once I can discipline myself to get up at 500, I'll have two hours to write before work.

Things are looking up.

Okay. Assume you're a swing voter, having trouble deciding who to vote for. You find out that both your candidates like to gamble.

Nothing problematic, mind you, it really is if not exactly a low-stakes hobby, at least a hobby well within both candidates' means.

One likes to play craps.

The other plays poker.

Who do you pick?

Retired General and Obama surrogate (and probable future Defense Secretary) Wesley Clark said that he didn't see how flying around in a fighter jet and getting shot down was a qualification for the presidency.

He's right.

We've had two presidents who trained as aviators. One of them never served a day in combat, never fired a shot in anger, but he did check out on the F-102 Delta Dagger and that's more than I've done. That's George W. Bush. Anybody who doesn't think he's been worse than Nixon has an inflated opinion of Nixon.

The other flew 58 combat missions with VT-51 off of USS San Jacinto during World War II, was shot down and rescued, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and three Air Medals, and left military service with an honorable discharge just after the war was over as a Lieutenant Junior Grade. As a president, George HW Bush, Bush 41, did better than his asshole son has, but still was mediocre at best.

Donald von Rumsfeld, who served Ford and this Bush as Hinterarzschbannfeurher, was also an aviator.

So was Sam Johnson, who was my Congressman at my last address.

So, aviators have a pretty piss-poor track record as civilian leaders in my opinion. Need I mention Hermann Goering?

But John McCain is a lot more than some asshole stick-jockey who got his ass shot down and came back home to a long political career. John McCain has endured more imprisonment than all 43 US Presidents combined. John McCain has survived more torture than all 43 US Presidents combined. John McCain has triumphed over more severe injures than any US President with the exception of FDR and possibly JFK. John McCain is one tough monkey. This could be a great asset to any presidential candidate.

Unfortunately, McCain seems to have learned all the wrong lessons from his wartime experience. Like most of the other "tough prisoners" who did a significant portion of their wartime service as guests of the Hanoi Hilton, one of the things that kept him going was the firmness of his belief that the US was right, the SRVN was wrong, it was good guys vs. bad guys and that enduring what he endured was his way of fighting the war. It seems he still has this attitude.

The truth is that we deserved to lose the Vietnam war. Both Johnson and Nixon handled the war very badly and a lot of good men and women on both sides died badly. Vietnam is a cautionary tale for any president and I don't think that McCain knows that.

...someplace that doesn't exist yet. Home is a wooded estate with fields and streams and rocks, daytrippable from a major US city. There is a New Henge carved from native rock, preferably visible from the highway, a mead hall, a barn for horses, and a modest castle where I, the Lord, reside. The place is a cat utopia. There are cats all over the place. The place is very nearly at the cat saturation point. All of them are well-fed and well cared for, most of them neutered, but enough of them are intact to keep the place in kittens. There is a small village populated by living historians needing to forget the pressures of the real world. There is a dedicated rail line that runs to a parking lot off the main property because the park is free and open to the public and I don't want cars fucking up my mojo. The place is a full-time 24/7 free admission Renfaire and I am its king. Hail to the king baby.

I'm a long way from even being able to think about starting to build it, but build it I will. Someday.

When the Supremes hand down a decision and Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito are on one side and Stevens, Souter, Ginsberg, and Breyer are on the other, it's almost certain that I'm going to favor the second set. But not today.

I am not a progressive. I believe that to be a weak and spineless term. I believe in social justice, equal rights, diversity, affirmative action, freedom of thought, and freedom of the press. I believe in consensus and compromise. I almost always vote Democratic. I am a liberal. But I am not a namby pamby, knee jerk, tax and spend liberal. I believe in personal responsibility and I believe that the second amendment means what it means and I believe that is a damn good thing.

I believe that, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed[,]" means what it means. I believe that "well regulated" must be balanced with "free State." I believe that "Militia" does not necessarily mean a state sponsored, state organized body. I believe that "The right of the people," means that responsible citizens have an individual right "to keep and bear arms."

I believe that when the saints go marching in, when the sun refuse to shine, when the king give up his crown, and when the dead begin to rise that it falls upon the ordinary responsible citizens to take up arms and take it upon themselves to defend their homes and their families.

I believe that the lawful possession of basic firearms: pistols, hunting rifles, and shotguns should require a permit that's about as hard to get as a driver's license. You want to keep a gun in your home or your car, you should have to go down to the State Police, pass a written test and a basic (very basic) background check, and then pass a live fire practical.

I believe that a concealed carry permit (the ability to be armed when walking the streets armed) should require a somewhat higher demonstrated level of competence: a deeper background check, a more difficult written exam, and a practical that demonstrates that you possess the basic judgement to determine exactly whom you may shoot.

I believe that a permit to obtain and possess infantry and infantry support weapons should be readily obtainable by people who can demonstrate the training and responsibility that should be required of reserve cops in good standing.

I do not necessarily think that cavalry and supercavalry: gunships, strike fighters, and panzers must necessarily be the sole purview of the government because a well armed populace is one of the things that keeps the sort of shit that's happening in Zimbabwe from happening here.

In short, I applaud the recent decision of the Bush-Bush appointed Court. But that may be the first and only time I do.

Pretty simple answer here. A hero is one whose deeds the bards sing of long after he or she is gone. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. That's how you get into the club. You do something that inspires more than one artist to lionize you at least one generation after you are dead.

A hero who never actually lived has a bit of a leg up on purely real life heros. Superman is easier to sell as a hero than his rough contemporaries, Bonnie and Clyde. But the best heroes are people who probably had at least an historical antecedent, but were almost certainly not nearly as heroic as we tend to want them to be: King Arthur, Robin Hood, Jesse James.

If your eight year old son seems listless and bored, sleeps all day and into the night, loses all interest in everything, and stops eating, you take him to the doctor.

If the doctor runs some tests and says, "Your son has a rare condition. Essentially it's a lethal testosterone deficiency. He's going to die soon. Without immediate treatment, we're talking weeks not months. With treatment, all we can say for sure is that he may get some time. Months, and possibly years. 90% of treated patients your son's age get about six months. Of the remaining 10%, 90% of those get three to five years. In certain special cases, life has been prolonged up to ten years, but that's the most you can realistically hope for.

"With treatment, we can make few predictions about your son's projected quality of life. Some patients are mostly functional, some are nearly vegetative. The one thing we can say for certain is that with treatment, your son is in for a lot of pain. And so are you.

"I'm saying this because the only treatment currently available is to chop off your balls and transplant them into your son. That means no more children for you and possibly other complications. A good deal of men can't live without balls. This treatment might kill you.

"But the choice is yours, it's up to you," the choice is yours and it's up to you.

If you think that it's not just your choice, but indeed your duty, to weigh your life against your son's, consider your entwined futures, and the futures of the rest of your family, and make that decision for yourself, then...

You're Pro Choice.

Dear Dad,

I just saw a movie I think (hope) you'll love.

_The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford_

I'm sure you know the basics of the story as you
played the ballad over and over until I sing it in my
sleep to this day: In 1881, after 20 years of fighting
the Civil War, from the tender age of 14, Jesse
Woodson James (Brad Pitt) although living the good
life in St. Joe under the name of Thomas Howard, is a
burned out wreck. His injuries are catching up with
him, he's barely on speaking terms with his brother
Frank (Sam Shepard) and his gang has been basically
rubbed out in a heist gone bad in Northfield, MN.

Sticking together for one last big score, the James
brothers recruit a new gang of sheepstealers,
peckerwoods, and nouns too unsavory for a gentleman to
use in an informal letter to his father. Among these
are a pair of brothers named Ford, Charles, called
Charley (Sam Rockwell) who's maybe a bit more pleasant
a character than the rest of the crew, and Robert,
called Bob (Casey Affleck).

Bob Ford is a different sort. He's quite a bit
brighter than just about all of these dim bulbs. But
that's not saying much. All his brains do is make him
come across as a real creep. And I know my creeps.
Bob, however, thinks he's destined for Greatness with
full proper noun status. He's got a collection of
Jesse James dime novels under his bed in a shoebox
that would sell for enough to fund a college education
today.

I'm sure you know how it ends up. Man. It hurts just
thinking about it, even though the man was a
backshooting dog. Suicide by Cop has a certain twisted
nobility about it. Suicide by inbred cornfed white
bread psycho stalker fanboy? Such would be the stuff
of farce if it wasn't damn real.

What really sells the flick is the downbeat,
unsentimental tone and some truly amazing acting. Its
watered down colors and Ken Burns inspired narration
gives it an unflinching reality that makes all the
familiar faces seem more like digitally corrected
contemporary film than actors inhabiting roles.

It's the best western I've seen since Lonesome Dove.

In darkness, the queen of the Illini is making love to her consort. The Illini are the Dark Elves who were imprisoned in the vault of the Drow, deep in the frozen bowels or Uranus, at the end of the Second Age. There is a calm pool in front of them and a naturally wrought tunnel behind.

This is the first time they’ve been alone together outside the confines of the palace for many years. And it lends unusual intensity to their coupling. Their sex is energetic, competitive, changing positions frequently, and at times crossing the line into out right violence, but very quiet, as is typical of their people, and indeed all or at least most elves.

Neither is young, but an elf can live for many thousands of years and their skin tends to remain smooth and tight, their limbs tend to stay straight, and their movements tend to remain fluid.

Contrary to the stereotype, Illini have pale dusky skin that would not be far out of place in Athens, New Orleans or Chicago, Illinois (which takes its name from them.) Illini do tend to have fair hair, but it’s almost never actually white. The queen’s hair, however, is very dark, straight and glossy, with only a few stray silver gray hairs. Her hair has never been cut and sometimes brushes the ground when unbound.

Their passion spent, they lie in each other’s arms for only a few minutes before she rises, struts to the pool, and bathes herself while he watches, smiling. She returns to his side and he hands her a floor length robe of silver spider silk. She kisses him fiercely and then strides alone into the tunnel.

At the end of the tunnel is a grotto. In the grotto is a pedestal with a stainless steel bowl upside-down on top of it. The grotto is guarded by a golem resembling Frankenstein’s Monster.

The queen greets the golem formally and pauses to exchange a few brief pleasantries with him. His deep voice indicates he is intelligent and witty.

The queen then resumes the reverent attitude she entered with and turns to the bowl, which she lifts with both hands. Under the bowl is a knife with a serrated edge. It looks like it’s been carved from the tyrannosaurus-sized tooth of some mostly metallic monster.

She takes the knife in her left hand and with her right returns the bowl to its pedestal right-side up.

In a ritualized gesture similar to certain tea ceremonies, she draws the knife across her palm, laying it open clear to the bone. The knife must be very sharp or there must be deceptive strength in her slender limbs or both, because she makes the cut effortlessly. Her serene regal face betrays no visible reaction to the injury she does herself save a minute widening of her dove-gray eyes.

She lets the blood well up in her cupped mutilated hand until the blood just begins to spill over. Then she tips her hand all the way over, spreading her fingers wide. Her hand is nearly double jointed. There is a lot of blood, which gradually slows to a trickle. She lays the knife in front of the bowl, point facing her wounded right hand, doffs the robe, and holds it high over her head, letting it pool in the bloodied bowl.

Then she nods to the golem and leaves the way she came, dripping a blood trail behind her like a wounded deer.

It’s only as the vision fades that I realize that I could see all this in the total darkness as clearly as if it were bright clear day.

I wonder what it means?

I wake up before Weekend Edition at the urgings of Evil Princess Jezebel. One four-hour sleep cycle and I feel lousy. I wish I could sleep eight hours straight, but I have to be pretty sick before my bladder, sleep apnea, or evil cat will let me. So I pry myself stiffly out of bed, empty my bladder, get the paper (the paper people have taken to binding the Gray Lady in her blue bag around the D(e)MorN to make, in essence, one bigger paper out of two big papers) having got the paper; I feed the cats their morning ration of Temptations Treats for Cats. My mind is blank. My head aches. I need more sleep. I plod back to bed and get some.

I sleep straight through Weekend Edition and wake up to Garrison Keillor. This is later than I wanted to sleep. I’ve got things to do today. Today is Mother’s Day.

Mother is out of town this weekend, visiting Dad and her grandkids. She’ll be back today, which means that I’ve got to make it look like her incredibly spoiled cats have been incredibly spoiled while she’s been gone. This is not so much a chore as a duty. It’s one of the few things I can do to show that I am in fact a responsible adult who’s had massive trouble finding a job, not a callow adolescent about to turn 39 for the first time. This is something I do gladly, yes, but the promise of latté and pancakes is what gets me moving.

I can and do make good pancakes and fine coffee at home. But Mom’s stove is better than mine and she has a high quality Krups coffee/espresso station with a milk spritzer. Latté has long been a weekend start the day treat in the Blair household. I do have a working espresso machine with a milk spritzer, but I do not have the stainless steel pitcher that ties it all together. Mom keeps hers in the freezer, ready to use.

I get to Mom’s, feed her cats and pet them, clean out the kitty litter and clean up the cat puke. I discover that she’s out of Bisquick. Shit. No pancakes. I go to make latté, start the coffeemaker, and discover that Mom has hidden the latté pitcher. She’s put it someplace that no doubt makes sense to her. But I can’t find it. No latté. Cold cereal and good fresh coffee fuels my machine but doesn’t significantly buoy my mood.

Lacking anything useful to do here, it’s time to go to get Mom her Mother’s Day present and get on with the rest of my day. Mom’s not the easiest person in the world to shop for. Usually, the gifts I’ve given her that have had the most success have been plants. But plants are out this year and next with her move to SC coming up just after next Mother’s Day. Stuff in general isn’t that great an idea how as cluttered as her place is. That means something consumable. Good thing she likes fine chocolate.

I’ve been avoiding The Corner Market on Greenville and McCommas for a little while now, ever since they put up a sign saying “’Sorry Charlie’ No Public Restrooms.” I know that this is intended to discourage dirty bums from hassling their usually yuppie clientele, but it also repels me. That sign says in no uncertain terms, “We are not interested in providing service. We are only interested in your money. You are not welcome here.” Today, however, I brave this odious sign because they have the best truffles around.

These truffles are really something special. They’re the size of slightly flattened golf balls, sold at peak freshness. Their selection isn’t huge, but who gives a damn? They’ve got the deep deep dark dark high-octane chocolates my mother favors, with enough variety to make a pretty gift box. At $2.25 apiece, a nice little box of four makes just the right gift of chocolate to my fussy little mother from her handicapped son.

It’s crowded in The Corner Market. This does not help my mood. I look at the truffles. My mouth waters. I look up. I see they’ve got a Mother’s Day special, 16 for $19.99. That’s a savings of $4.00, and I briefly consider it while I await service, but discard the idea because savings or no it’s eight chocolates too many for my frugal mother, who rarely orders more than water to drink at dinner and never orders desert. No, I want their small box, three or four chocolates, whatever their small sized box holds. I don’t see the other sizes that are available. I become marginally more aware of my discomfort. I shouldn’t have indulged in that third cup of coffee.

The clerk is like all the clerks here, young, white, attractive, and happy. I tell him that I want their small size box of chocolates for a Mother’s Day present. He tells me that they don’t have what I want, and goes to produce their smallest box for me to see.

While he’s turned away, a hand falls on me arm.

This is a graphic example of exactly how different I am from normal people. I can engage with most people on a mostly normal level most of the time. But, when I engage with people, especially strangers, the rest of the world just goes away. It may be like I’m reading with bifocals, but since I still have perfect or near perfect vision, I don’t know. Ask me in 20 or 30 years and maybe I’ll know.

The point is, when I engage with the clerk, I’ve lost any awareness of the person near me. For all intents and purposes, that person does not exist to me until contact is made. It’s a complete surprise.

I don’t experience surprise, at least not in the way that normal people do. When something surprising happens to me, I tumble instantly into fight or flight mode. With unexpected physical contact, when it happens, my body can’t tell the difference between a hard predatory hand and a warm welcoming hand. A hand is a hand and it engenders the same response.

Adrenaline hits me like a bucket of cold water. My heart rate soars. I turn in my assailant’s direction, ready to run like a scalded tomcat or lunge for the throat.

It’s a little old lady. She looks quite a bit like Rosemary Harris as Aunt May.

“Ooooohh! That’s soooo nice! Doing that for your mother! You’re such a good son!” she says.

It’s only now, hours later, that I recognize exactly what was going on. She’s a lonely little old lady whose kids don’t pay her enough attention. She’s so lonely that she needs to vicariously live through me. Poor thing.
At the time, I’m reacting as if she’s a small aggressive ankle biting dog. I am strongly moved to kick her and not stop kicking her until she goes away and leaves me alone. But I am a civilized human being. I am master of my emotions; they are not the masters of me.

When this happens, the best I can do is take a step away from her and say, “excuse me,” in a tone I hope is not too harsh.

I turn to back to the clerk. He’s showing me a box way too large for my purposes. “No. That won’t do at all,” I say. “It’s more than I can afford and more than she’ll want.”

“Noooo!” The little old lady exclaims. “Do this for your mother! She’s sooo good to you, and the chocolate’s sooo good for her!”

I lose my temper.

My traitor body wants to kill this old bat and kill her really well. I see myself in my mind’s eye snarling like a tiger, leaping upon her, bearing her to the ground and strangling her. I see myself translating that violence into verbiage—my usual strategy—and backing her across the store.

But I am a civilized man.

“I’m… sorry,” I say, “goodbye.”

I turn and leave.

As I work the tumblers and to unlock my bike, I see the clerk’s shocked face frozen in my mind’s eye. He’s holding that box up like a shield, afraid that things are about to get really bad and there’s nothing he can do.

His mouth opens wide, snaps closed. Opens wide, snaps closed.

I ride straight to Whole Foods, whose fine truffles aren’t as good, but good enough. I get the truffles and go back to Mom's place. I put the truffles in Mom’s fridge, on top of the pickles. Crisis averted, I wait there for my stomach to settle before riding home.

If I could pick an era and knew it was a one way trip, if I knew I'd be spending the rest of my life there, I'd have to pick this one. I'm a futurist, but the future's uncertain. I love history, but I am a man of my times. In my opinion, life has never been sweeter in this time of hundreds of channels, hybrid cars, and hot and cold running internets.

But, I would love to visit other eras, meet famous people, get in adventures, risk my life to help to help make my time a better place. I would want to start with a few years before my birth, the 60s. I want to walk the Haight, or Manhattan, or Swinging London when miniskirts, Jimi Hendrix, and LSD were all young and fresh. I'd like to do a tour in Vietnam, probably as a journalist. I'd like to drive a '57 Bel Air Chevy right off the showroom floor. I want to make a small but notable contribution towards the Allied victory in the second World War. I want to drive ambulances with Hemmingway or throw my Hat in the Ring with Eddie Rickenbacker.

Then I'd start with the dawn of the United States and work forward.

And then I'd go back to the Dawn of Man.

Always an adventurer, but more an observer than anything else, I'd traipse across history with a lovely girl companion, disappearing into my magic blue box when my time was done.

As the long flat slow Bataan Death March to the Democratic Nomination plods on, the likelihood of an OC ticket brightens at a slightly faster pace.

The C can't win. And she's starting to eat the crow she needs to stand alongside the O this August in Denver. While declaring victory in Indiana, in the very next breath she said she was going to do what it takes to win the erection for her party in November. THis is a big turnaround from the lead-up to the Penn Primary.

The O is continuing to spread the nice, rather than stomping the life out of the C's campaign.

Their stances on policy are very close. Their strengths and weaknesses compliment each other. The C is a tough fighter, but ain't the most charismatic lady on planet Earth. The O's got Kennedian charisma, but he's at least not seen as particularly tough. The C's got the kind of shrewd calculating judgement that she calls experience. The O's got the vision, but he's awful damn young, younger than the BC when he took the run for the money. The O scores with minorities and youth. The C scores well with women and old.

Together it'll be a rollicking buddy movie of a campaign.

Furthermore, it's pretty clear what the MC's got to do with near 20% turnouts in both Republican Guard primaries and more than 25% of the Evil lining up to vote against him even though he's already won, he's gotta tap a scripture quoting hardcore doesn't believe in science doesn't believe in the 19th amendment doesn't believe in the 13th amendment right wing sociopath. It's his only choice.

With that kind of opposition, the Dems will need both their shining stars in orbit around each other. ANd the VP will still be a first for women in this country.

I think it'll be magic.

OC in '08!

His name was Gumby. He was a 1963 green Volkswagon Beetle. My Mom bought him new to go to grad school. By the time I got him, in 1986, he was cranky but serviceable elder statesman of a vehicle. His horn sounded like a sick cow.

The heat was controlled by a faucet valve on the floor. The AC was controlled by opening a wing window. The dash had no padding. The seats had no headrests. The fuel gauge had no 'E', but an 'R' for reserve. He wasn't particularly fast, agile or safe, but he was easy to park and a great car to learn on. He was very easy to work on. Towards the end of his life, the fuel pump went out. I bought a new one for 20 bucks, and put it on myself in under fifteen minutes.

He met his end near the end of my Freshman year of college. I was stopped, making a left turn into the campus when a big, new white Ford F-150 rear ended us. The pickup missed the rear bumper and hit the engine cover, driving the engine about six inches forward. Both my passenger and I suffered mild whiplash, but were otherwise uninjured.

He was a good and faithful servant and I wish I'd spent the green and the time to fix him back up. I miss him very much, even now, twenty years later.

Me.
If I were a quarter the man I want to be, I'd have organized a general strike, led wide scale mutiny within the armed services, helped form the government in exile, slapped the cuffs on the anti-president myself, and kept him safe from all those who'd take bloody revenge while we awaited his fair public trial.

Instead I blog.

Fucking douchebag wanker.