TOMORROW

 

"People are always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn't believe in that. Tomorrow wasn't getting ready for them. It didn't even know they were there."

Cormac McCarthy, The Road

IF YOU SEE HER SAY HELLO

Back when I first got on FB, and there were all my sisters old pals; Suzi, Carol, Susan S, and Maureen O. And I’d leave a comment now and then about an old girlfriend from 1972 who had moved away. I’d say (imagine a really whiny voice) “Where is Rhonda? Why? Why is Rhonda not here on FB? Y’all have to find her for me.” They would laugh at me and say they lost track of her, maybe she was still in Phoenix, or Utah, and what was her married name?

And for a year or two, I’d ask about her every now and then, in as whiny a voice as I could without whiny voice font. Really, I’d just liked to have known that she was OK, and I wanted them to know I had not forgotten about Rhonda I.

But after two or three years of this, I changed my tack. I started pretending I was mad at her (in my mad whiny voice).
“Forget about us finding Rhonda! Why is she not LOOKING FOR US! We are all right here, just waiting for her to show up!”
And they would all laugh at me and promise they would look for her.

Then-- after six years of asking about her-- about three years ago Susan S sends me a message. She has found her, and there is a pic of her in a white sweater, waving, and she had a black beret on, and I’d have recognized her anywhere.
Susan said “She is still in Phoenix!” and I just got the feeling that was that, and really shouldn’t ask a bunch of questions. I was satisfied to see this pic, and to think that she was doing well.
It prompted me to write this story about her bracelet I gave her, the going steady bracelets all the boys gave to the girls they loved.

So another two years go by, and I’m at a bar last year and Carol is there.
I’m talking with her, and I say “Hey guess what I got?”
“What do you have Steve?”
“I’ve got a picture of Rhonda from a couple years ago! Susan found her!”
I said it like I was bragging, like I was something special.
Carol says “That’s nothing. I see her all the time on Facebook!”

 So now I’m all set for my imagination to start running wild. Why didn’t Susan tell me? How is it everybody is friends with Rhonda except for me? Maybe she's hated me for 49 years.
but no, Rhonda could never have a bitter heart. So I went looking for her on FB. It wasn’t easy. Didn’t know her last name. I can’t see Carols FB page because she blocked me years ago. I’m way too liberal. I voted for Reagan twice and Bush three times, I like less government control mostly and own 4 guns, but I’m a whacked out Liberal. And on Susan’s page, I cant find any Rhonda’s. Finally, I get a brainstorm. I’ve got my sisters log in, so I go to her page and look at Carols page.

 Jackpot!
There she is on Carols page.

So now I have to figure out what I want to do. Should I friend her, even though my overall gut feeling from Susan is that she isn't looking for new friends? Or should I just go ahead and inflict myself upon her!
I went back and forth for a long time. Part of me said, like Rick said in Casablanca “If she can stand it so can I” and another part said “Stop being so weird and overthinking this thing. If she doesn’t want to be friends, she’s a big girl and just wont accept the request. It really is just that easy!”

I tell you what. If it wasn’t for COVID, and all the isolation, it might have taken me a lot longer to contact her. But she accpted the request that same day. She seemed delighted to be found. Its been such fun chatting it up, getting reaquainted, and being able to trade gifts. And a blessing too!
And that’s the story of how I finally came to send Rhonda a friend request months after having located her, and years after whining to her friends that they must find Rhonda for me.

One big question I had for Rhonda was whether she remembered a poster she gave me in 1972. It hung on my wall long after she moved to Phoenix. There is no way she could know how much the poster had burned itself into my psyche, and how it had seemed to be the theme of my whole life, and got me through the numerous heartbreaks I’ve had, and love found and lost, and found again.
It took my breath a little when she replied "I wondered if you would remember"

Amazing. You can still buy the exact same poster after all these years.

I MISSED MY CALLING

In High School they tested me to see what career I should choose. They recommended I be a preacher. I shit you not, that is what they said. You probably should not drop acid before you do such an evaluation.

HE ALLOWS IT

 Continued from “Return To Living”…

...That is how I came to remove myself from a burned out trailer and rejoined the world of the living. Its August of 004 and now I’ve got an apartment and a job. The kids live just a mile away. I'm back in their lives for the first time in almost two years.  I can walk to work at Subway Sandwiches, two blocks. It pays 6.50 an hour, plus a sandwich a day, and all the cookies I can eat. That’s a major move up from eating dry ramen noodles right out of the pack, although they do make a nice crunchy little snack if you are so inclined. Its an end to eyeballing the chickens that run across the Chester Boyer road right up the way from the old trailer and trying to run over one when I would pass by. Dinner. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.

Out at the trailer I did do a little work. An occasional odd job and a couple tile jobs where I didn’t charge near enough. I had a guy’s lot I mowed from time to time. Perhaps my most steady job, that I kept for about 6 months was as a sampler at the grocery store. You’ve seen them; usually little old ladies with a booth set up, sampling little cups filled with the latest Ritz wheat cracker, and maybe she has some peanut butter or a slice of the California Happy Cow cheese to go with it.

Having been a chef for 30 years, it felt a little like being in the old chef’s graveyard, or on Lumpfish Row haha,  but for 3 days a week it let me get out of the trailer and engage with human beings and talk to strangers about food. I had fun. I’m good at being a loner and isolating myself, which I had done at the trailer. But I love people. I love talking to them. It makes me happy to see them. And I was probably the best food sampler ever. Not probably. I WAS. The lady I worked for told me so. At Thanksgiving I sold more Spiral sliced hams than anyone in the nation. I had women lined up around the block to buy a ham. I got a bonus!

Its because I’m loud. And when called upon have no problem calling attention to myself. I remember at  Kroger one day-- I don’t remember what I was selling-- a woman popped her head out from an aisle about 4 rows down.
“Steve Bulletholes?” she says.
“YES!” says I.
And she starts walking toward me. I don’t recognize her at all until she is about ten feet away. I hadn’t seen her in about 5 years.
“Well, I’ll be,  my old friend Terri! How are you Terri!” I say.
“I’m fine. How are you Steve?”
“I’m good. But I have to ask you. How did you know it was me from thirty feet away?”
She says “Steve, I knew it was you when I walked in the front door. Don’t you not have an inside voice?”
And we both just laughed. Dumb question.

Then one day the display lady brought me a chef’s hat to wear. I told her I was not going to wear a chefs hat to sell anything at a grocery store display. It was humiliating enough to be a chef reduced to this, but I had to draw the line somewhere.
“You’re my best guy” she pleaded.
“Not going to happen.”
"Then I have to let you go"
"Fine"

Funny, how you start out to write one thing and something else just falls out. This is what I was supposed to write:

I had the apartment and the Subway job for about three months. But I was still spending a good portion of my paycheck on dope. And I don’t mean pot. I mean serious adult dope that ruins lives dope. And after about 3 months I was far enough behind on the rent that on the 5^th of December I had to go to my apartment manager and tell them they may as well start the eviction process. I still owed for November and didn't have a red cent to give them. Whatever break I’d gotten getting out of that trailer, I had  blown it . And then I had to go to the Ex Mrs Bullets.

She was pretty calm. She said “C’mon, I’m going to take you down to Kelly Girls and they will find you another job.
I said “Kelly Girls? That’s like office work, right? I talk too loud and laugh too hard to work in an office”.
But like before I just did what she said.
We got down to Kelly and the manger, Liz, said “We don’t do walk ins, but I can schedule you for an interview tomorrow morning”. An interview was set for 9AM the next morning.
I worked my shift at Subway, and sometime during the night I got cold feet. I can’t work for Kelly. I don’t know anything about office work. And the next morning I called Liz at Kelly.
“Liz, I ended up having to work this morning. I’m not going to be able to make it in” I lied.
“OK Steve. Would you like to reschedule? And I want you to know if you reschedule, and cancel again, then I cant reschedule another one. Ever”
It was a cusp. I hadn’t trusted anything I’d done in years. But someone was willing to tell me what to do, and I guess I could trust that.
“Sure!  Let’s do tomorrow!”
And I made it to the interview. I could tell Liz liked me. That is always a good thing, when someone likes you. I think part of why she liked me was something I learned at Subway. That it is a good thing for people think YOU LIKE THEM. Smile, say hello, be pleased to meet them.

I told her that I needed a job within two miles of my residence because of transportation issues. This was on Friday 12/10/2004. She called that afternoon. She had a job at the airport. “Too far” I told her.
An hour went by. She called again.
“I have a job at 4510 Blue Jay Way. Its in your zip code. Can you be there Monday morning to interview?”

So duly I arrived Monday morning. Talked with the manager. He said they did communication systems for the airlines industry.
‘I wont have to talk to pilots, and talk them down when something goes wrong up there, will I?” I asked.
“No Steve, we don’t do much of that around here.”
I could tell he had a great sense of humor and he liked me. I liked him. Liz called that afternoon. I started the next morning at 8:00 making 12.50 an hour.

EPILOGUE

I started the next morning at 8:00 making 12.50 an hour. Double my wage at Subway. It was a Tuesday, the 14^th of the month. I managed to get 40 hours in by Friday. I turned in my time, and on Monday the 21^st I got my check. Apparently, Kelly is fast getting you paid. Between that and the check I’d received from Subway on Friday I paid rent in full.
Paid in full.
I’m not real good at saying it, but Someone was sure looking out for me. Through all of this, including those darker days at the trailer, Someone was looking out.  I continued to work both jobs for a few months. It was quite a learning curve between using computers and learning office etiquette. Around May of 2005 the company offered me a job as a full time regular employee. It’s a large corporation with a top-notch benefits package I was no longer the best Kelly Girl ever. (That’s what Liz called me).
And I’m still there now.
Sixteen years later, and I'm still there now. 
Believe it or not but I still talk too loud and laugh too hard. But some people in the company will call me just to hear me say "Good Morning". I give the best good morning in the business.

Its amazing what can happen if you follow some instructions. Learn to say OK, you're right. One thing I think I’ve learned about all this is that we seem to continually mess up Gods plan. God doesn’t always plan it, any more than we plan for the pooch to shit on the living room floor or chew up a new pair of shoes. But He allows it, and then goes to work when you let Him. He uses it, and we learn to use it too. It can become our ministry.

It would be a few more years before I finally quit doing dope. But that is a whole ‘nother story.

See the chef on the pizza box?
Thats the ultimate degradation right there. Being the model for a pizza box cover.
But a mans gonna do what he has to do!

RETURN TO THE LAND OF THE LIVING

I lived for 18 months in a  burned out trailer. Like my son says, I just kinda threw in the towel. Fell out of love with being a chef and got chewed up and spit out trying to be a tilesetter for a few years. It was excruciating, and by the time I got to that trailer with no electricity and no plumbing I didn’t care if I ever worked again. And somehow in Gods good plan, the trailer and Arnold blessed me with blessings that extend to the present.
(follow linky's)

But this part of the story is about how I got OUT of the trailer. Its quite simple really.
I let someone tell me what to do.
My ex wife came out there one day and said “You cant do this. You got two kids that need you. What do we have to do to get you to re-engage?”. She may not have been as pleasant about it as all that. But when she decides the heavens and earth must move, the heavens and earth shall move
I told her I had no drivers license, no social security card, no birth certificate, no prospects, a car that didn’t hardly run, and no telling how many warrants out for my arrest.
I said "Frankly, I have never heard of anyone being quite as lame as I am right now."
When I look back, that right there may have been the finest thing I have ever said.

Well, the first thing we did was go downtown. She pretended to be my sister so that we could get a copy of my birth certificate. We went to the post office and I filled out a voters registration card. With a Birth Certificate and a voters registration you can get a Texas ID Card. I could not get a drivers license. Wouldn’t you know that my license had been suspended for some time? A result of the stack of registration, inspection and no insurance tickets I had piled up.

So when she dropped me off at the trailer, she said she would be back in a few days and we could go get an ID Card. I got out of the car, and the wind was blowing about 40 miles an hour. As she pulled away, my birth certificate blew out of my hand, and I had to chase it a half mile down the railroad tracks. If I’d lost that certificate she would have skinned me alive.

So 3 days later and here she is. We go get me an ID. Then she takes me to her neighborhood, where the kids live. “Your going to find a job today” she says. We went to the grocery, where I applied. We went to an MRI Imaging place, where I applied. We went to an IHOP, where I didn’t want to, but I applied because that’s what she told me to do. I was wanting to ask how I was going to get to these jobs, my burned out trailer being 15 miles away, but figured I'd just follow instructions for now.

Then we went to Subway Sandwich shop. I walked in and found the manager. I said “I was a chef for 25 years, and I swore I would never work food service again, so…HERE I AM!”
She said “Can you close?”
“Yes ma’am, I’m the best closer in the business. You’ll walk in in the morning and wonder why your job just got easier, and your coffee suddenly started tasting sweeter.”
She hired me on the spot.
But the ex Mrs Bulletholes, she wasn’t done. We went across the street to an apartment complex. It was like the cheapest in the city.
She said “Go in there and rent an apartment”
“But I don’t have a deposit. And working at Subway isn’t enough money to rent an apartment.”
“Tell them you do tile too”
“But...” and I started to say my car doesn’t run good enough to do tile, but by the look on her face I changed my mind and just said “OK”
(As an aside here, let me say there are three thing I’ve found to be very helpful things to say in any given situation: “Youre Right”, “I’m Sorry” and “OK”. There's a fourth one too, but it takes some practice knowing when to say it, and you don’t really say it out loud. It is “SO WHAT?” and you say it to yourself.)
So I went in and schmoozzed the nice apartment lady and walked out with a lease in my hand, based on having a job I hadn’t actually, you know, started yet. 

That is how I came to remove myself from living in a burned out trailer and rejoined the world of the living. After almost two years I would be able to see the kids regular again. But that’s only half the story. Its difficult to keep an apartment on Subway Sandwich wages, especially if you are doing dope. And despite bankruptcies, foreclosures, divorces, evictions, being a deadbeat dad, the degrading of basic moral fiber, and 18 months of living in a burned out trailer, I was still doing dope.

To be continued...

A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY REPEATING?

 

Deceased Pope Formosus was impeached by Pope Stephen the 6th and the Catholic Church in 897. Formosus body was exhumed; he was dressed in the papal vestments, seated on a throne and he stood trial, dead as a doornail. He was found guilty of being unworthy of the office.
The damnatio memoriae (erased history) was applied to Formosus, all his measures and acts were annulled, and the orders conferred by him were declared invalid. The papal vestments were torn from his body, the three fingers from his right hand he had used in blessings were cut off, and the corpse was thrown into the Tiber, later to be retrieved by a monk.
Following the death of Stephen VI, Formosus' body was reinterred in St Peter's Basilica and further trials of this nature against deceased persons were banned

I COULDA BEEN A CONTENDER

 Last year I was on pace to pretty much double my blogging production from the last several years. 
Sixty posts in July had me on track for over one hundred post for the year. I hadnt had a year like that in a long time. My best year production wise was when I first got clean in 2009.
340 posts in a 365 day period!

I'm not sure why I fell off last year. COVID Fatigue? Isolation? Politics? Lack of Interest? Probably all of the above. Also, after 15 years of blogging sometimes you just run out of stories to tell, especially if you stop paying attention.

Anyway, I know a lot of people that write about writing but never actually write anything. 
I'm not going to start doing that, but maybe this will help jump start me for 2021.

WE WILL FIX IT

 

Gathered at ALIVE ON ALL CHANNELS

I am inside U Break It We Fix It holding my sons’ shattered iPad. “Hello,” I call out. No one answers. The counter glows white, and the walls are empty. “Hello? Hello?” I wait a few minutes before calling out again. “One minute,” says a raspy voice from the back of the store. Hope swells in my chest. Here We comes. We will fix it. A man in rumpled clothes emerges. I put the shattered iPad on the counter. “Don’t put it there,” We says. I quickly lift it off the counter. We sprays sanitizer on the spot I touched and wipes it dry with a paper towel. I hold up the broken screen so We can see It, and a little shard of glass drops to the floor with a plink. “Yeah, no,” We says. “Yeah no, what?” I ask. We says the soldering work required would cost more than a new iPad. We says it would take weeks. “Possibly months.” To be sure We asks me to read the serial number off the back of the iPad. I read the numbers, and We silently types them into a computer. “Yeah,” We says. “It isn’t worth it.” I just stand there. “But if I break It, it says We fix It.” I point to the sign that is the name of the store. Even if We has to send it far, far away. Even if it takes the handiwork of one hundred mothers with long white beards and God inside their fingertips, We should fix it. We promised. Even if all We ever do is just try to fix It, We should try. But the man is gone. He has already disappeared into the back of the store.

The next week, I return to U Break It We Fix It with a whole entire country. It’s heavy, but I manage to carry it through the parking lot leaving behind a trail of seeds and the crisp scent of democracy and something that smells like blood or dirt. Across it is a growing crack. A child, too young to be alone, is out in front holding a broken country, too. “Store’s gone out of business,” says the child. I shift the country to one arm and try to peer in, but it’s shuttered and dark. “Told you,” says the child. “Out of business.” I text my husband: “U Break It We Fix It is closed. I’ve come here for nothing … again.” When I look up the whole parking lot is full of children holding countries. “Is this U Break It We Fix It?” they ask. “It once was,” says the first child, “but now it’s closed.” The children hold their countries closer, like a doll or an animal. I want to drive them all home but they’re all holding countries and there are far too many of them. “I’m sorry,” I say too quietly for any of the children to hear. I don’t ask them where their mothers are or how they got here or how they will get home.

Instead I walk quickly back to my car. A little shard of glass falls out of my country with a plink. I pick the shard up and hold it to the sunlight. A rainbow, just for a second, falls over the children. Plink! Plink! Plink! Shards of glass are falling out of the children’s countries, too. It sounds like an ice storm, but the sky is blue and the children are dry as bones. I don’t want to stay to see what happens next. I drive away. I leave the children cradling their broken countries. I have no idea where any of them live, or how to fix anything, or what to do with this shard of glass. At a red light, I put the shard in the glove compartment and forget about it for days.

In Exodus, the first set of ten commandments (broken by Moses) is not buried but placed in the Aron Hakodesh (the holy ark) beside the new, unbroken tablets, which the Jews carry through the wilderness for forty years. I imagine the broken tablets leaning against the unbroken ones telling them secrets only broken things know. I imagine the weight of the broken tablets, and the heat, and the thirst, and the frustration. Why didn’t we just leave the broken tablets behind? What good is all this carrying?To know your history is to carry all your pieces, whole and shattered, through the wilderness. And feel their weight.

“Mama,” say my sons one thousand times a day, “can you fix this?” Hulk’s head has fallen off, or the knees of a favorite pair of pants are torn, or the bike chain has snapped, or there is slime on Eli’s favorite polar bear, or the switch is stuck, or the spring broke off, or Superman’s cape is hanging by a thread, or … “What even is this?” “Oh, that?” says Noah, my nine-year-old. “It’s where the batteries are supposed to go.” “But for what?” I ask. Noah and I study it for a whole entire minute. “I have zero idea,” he says.

What breaks most often in fairy tales are spells, and when a spell is broken the world is restored. The beast turns back into a prince, the kingdom wakes up, and a girl’s tears dissolve the shards of glass in a boy’s cold heart. I look up the word “spell.” It means the letters that form a word in correct sequence, and it means a period of time, and it means a state of enchantment. All of these things bind. But there is one last definition I catch, at the bottom. Spell also means a splinter of wood. What binds is also what cracks off. A spell is also what strays from the whole. This splinter of wood feels like a clue to a mystery I hope to never solve. I add the splinter (that is, a spell) to the shard of glass in my glove compartment. I leave them there together in the dark.

We are knee-deep in broken things. I wade through the kitchen, and the news, and our yard. The dryer is making a sound. The country is divided. Tree limbs are everywhere. “How did the switch break off the lamp?” I ask Eli, my seven-year-old. He shrugs. “It’s like a miracle,” he says.

In Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” a demon makes a mirror in which the image of whatever is good or beautiful dwindles to almost nothing, while the image of anything horrible appears even more horrible: “In the mirror the loveliest landscapes looked like boiled spinach, and the kindest people looked hideous or seemed to be standing on their heads with their stomachs missing.” The demon’s disciples travel all over the world with the mirror until there is not “a single country or person left to disfigure in it.” Then they fly to heaven to distort God and the angels, but the mirror shakes hard with laughter and shatters into a “hundred million billion pieces.” The air fills with mirror dust, and the glass blows into the eyes and the hearts of people everywhere. Each shard has the exact same power as the whole entire mirror. Whoever gets mirror in them is cursed with a hardened heart, and with seeing the ugliness of everything.

In Jewish mysticism there is a phase of Genesis called Tsim Tsum that is like the inside-out version of this fairy tale. The glass is not from a demon, but from God. According to the cabalists, in order to give the world life, in order to effect creation, God must depart from the world God created. The creator must always exile himself from the creation for the creation to breathe. God contracts to make space so that the world can exist. But right before the departure, God (like a mother) stuffs divine light into vessels that will be left behind. The vessels cannot contain God’s light, and burst, and shards of light are scattered everywhere. Gershom Scholem explains that we spend our lives collecting the offspring of this light. We spend our lives trying to make what once was broken whole again. This, according to the cabalists, begins the history of trauma.

In “The Snow Queen,” the good widow crow wraps a bit of black woolen yarn around her leg to grieve her dead sweetheart. I feel I should wrap something around my leg, too. It is almost the middle of November. I grieve for the past four years. They were such sick and tired years and so much fell to pieces. There is so much mirror dust in our eyes. “Move on,” texts my mother. “Up and out,” texts my mother. I get up and go to my car. I open the glove compartment. The shard is in the shape of a country that seems vaguely familiar, and the splinter is long and sharp like a tongue. I should’ve stayed with the children and helped them pick up the pieces. Maybe if we had put all our pieces together the pieces would’ve spelled something. Maybe it would have been a word we need, and now we’ll never know. I drive back to U Break It We Fix It. Someone has painted over the sign but the words are still legible like a body under a thin sheet. The store is still dark and shuttered and the parking lot is empty except for a crow who has a bit of black woolen yarn around her leg. The crow stares at me. “Hi crow,” I say. I notice something shiny in her beak. She drops it at my feet. It’s a shard of glass that fits with my shard of glass perfectly. When I put the two pieces together it looks like a transparent hand reaching out to help someone up. I want to jump for joy. We have only one hundred million billion pieces to go.In exchange, I give the crow the splinter. She picks it up in her beak where a tongue begins to grow. “Sit down,” says the crow. And I sit down in the middle of the parking lot. Just me and the crow on a soft autumn night. “Listen,” says the crow. And I listen. And she tells me a fairy tale I’ve never heard before about a whole entire country that almost disappeared.

Sabrina Orah Mark is the author of the poetry collections The Babies and Tsim Tsum. Wild Milk, her first book of fiction, is recently out from Dorothy, a publishing project. She lives, writes, and teaches in Athens, Georgia.


[Paris Review]

ASK BABY TRUMP

The infant Donald Trump tackles tough questions from our readers.

Dear Baby Trump:
I recently bought a case of your steaks. Why do they taste like overcooked ham?
Beefless in Des Moines

Dear Beefless;
Thank you so much for your purchase. Take comfort in knowing that proceeds from all sales will go towards our dream of a racially purified Iowa. Stand Back and Stand by.
In the meantime, have you checked into Trump University?
Baby Trump

The views expressed herein are those of Baby D.T. and are neither shared nor condoned by myself, the U.S.D.A, or the U.S. Marine Corps.

Hmmmm. Looks a lot like Baby Hitler.

NOT FEELING TOO GOOD MYSELF

“You've heard of people calling in sick. You may have called in sick a few times yourself. But have you ever thought about calling in well?
It'd go like this: You'd get the boss on the line and say, "Listen, I've been sick ever since I started working here, but today I'm well and I won't be in anymore." Call in well.”
― Tom Robbins

SNAKES ON A PLANE

"We got to get these Motherf**kin' snakes off this Motherf**kin' plane"
Trumps latest conspiracy theory?
Thugs On A Plane
It has been running through my head all year.
2020?
Snakes on a plane, man.

THE TWO TRUTHS

""The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of today) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also."
 - G. K. Chesterton
Orthodoxy

EMPATHY IS A DIRTY WORD

Watching Trump's speech last night it occurs that he has been giving the same speech for 5 years now. He is consistently loud, angry, jingoistic, belligerent and a boor. 
If you saw his speech you may have noticed he used the word "empathy" twice. Both times he said the word as if he were spitting raw chicken lives from his mouth. And both times in order to belittle Joe biden for having it. Having empathy.
Just when did "empathy" become such a dirty word?

He seems to get through his day as though he is living in the Looking Glass...
"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

"GOING TO DISNEYLAND"

The summer of 1973 I was 16. I would get up in the morning, watch the Watergate hearings, then go to work at Red Lobster. At the end of the summer of 1974, Nixon resigned before they could properly impeach him. Here he is, seeming to claim victory even as he is being whisked away forever in a helicopter. I joined the Debate Team for my last year at Bell.
I wonder if Mr. President Trump will exit with as much style and grace?

THERE ARE SOME STATUES WORTHY OF REMOVAL

 

"I'd like to put it back up, to rebuild it. But I'm afraid I'd be killed."

Kadhim al-Jabbouri, the guy who initially took a sledgehammer to a certain statue in downtown Bagdad, 2003

GETTING HISTORY RIGHT

 

Costa Rica does statues right.

Here we see the bare-breasted women defenders of Costa Rica in pursuit of the defeated American William Walker, who intended to personally colonize the region to himself. Walker is represented by the figure hastily exiting stage right, scrambling over the bodies of his fallen comrades.

The British, who had their own interests in the region would turn Walker over to the Hondurans who promptly executed him by Firing Squad.

If we are going to use statues as history lessons, we need more historically correct statues such as this one. Well done Costa Rica!

COIN SHORTAGE

 
In 1982 while Ronald Reagan was President, I had saved $800 worth of coinS from waiting tables. Thats right, I was a waiter for about 6 months. Kept it in a giant plastic Moosehead Beer Piggy Bank. There was enough to buy a 15 horsepower outboard motor for a boat. No one ran out of change back then.

Coin shortages, Pandemics, Murder Hornets and everything else are the kind of things that happen when you elect an evil ruler. Don't be surprised when it starts raining frogs.

ON HAZELNUTS

I had this squirrel in my backyard. I tossed him a peanut. He just looked the other way. I took another peanut, shelled it for him and gave it a toss. He shot sideways 90 degrees and scrambled up the nearest tree.
A few days later he was out there. I tossed him a pecan. He looked at it, glared at me, and slowly hopped over to the neighbors porch.
Thanksgiving rolled around and I had some nice walnuts. Went to the backyard and tossed him one. He took a half step towards the nut, sniffed the air for a moment, and went back to rustling under the leaves. I said "You must be some high class squirrel to be turning down big fat walnuts" and I went and bought a bag of macadamias. 
Next time I saw him I went and tossed him a macadamia, the most Hawaiian of all the nuts. He hopped over to it, sniffed it, even picked it up in his little squirrel paws and rolled it around a few times. Then he dropped it. This squirrel sits back on his haunches, folds his little squirrel arms across his chest, raises one eyebrow, looks at me again with the glaring.
"Aghhh" I said. "What kind of fucking nut do you want you little asshole?"
And he says "Hazelnuts. I'm holding out for Hazelnuts. Some people call them filberts. How 'bout you fetch me some filberts?"

WE ALL FLOAT DOWN HERE

We have a new ritual. We normally sleep like a baby. Head hits the pillow and we are gone.
But we had some french drains installed last month in our backyard. We thought spending 4000 bucks on our new house would be fun. In our mind the finished product would look like the 12th hole at Pebble Beach.
But it was a nightmare. The drains were poorly installed, and now our backyard looks like Fukushima.
We lay awake, thinking of how we are going to fix them; how much it will cost to bring the guy whose bid we DIDNT go with in to fix them; how much crow we will have to eat to do so; googling up how to properly install a french drain in the dark on the phone at 3:00a.m. , the price of topsoil, sharpshooter shovels, pallets of grass, maybe a flagstone patio; contemplating that water will not drain uphill in that spot we pointed out to the installer; visions of a tsunami erupting from the drains, snakes sewer rats flotsam and jetsam, and a weird clown named Pennywise sitting in my kitchen laughing at me; the flood carrying our flatscreen TV, sofa cushions, Laz-Z-Boy, all our worldly possessions and mineral resources being carried downstream to the east fork of the Trinity river; then looping back into the resentment we have against the SHOEMAKER that SCREWED us in the first place. He broke our fence and stole our baby crowbar. Our dads baby crowbar, worth a couple hundred dollars sentimental value alone.
Do we have the energy to take this on and fix the drains ourselves?
Not if we don't shut off the brain and get some sleep.

BEEP BEEP STEVIE BOY!

DREAM WITHIN A DREAM

I had a weird one last week. I dreamed that an old buddy of mine needed some help on something. Don’t remember exactly what.
I said “I’ve given you enough help. You are going to have to do this on your own”
And he said “But I helped you in in the exact same thing. Why wont you help me?”
I said “When did you help me?”
He said “In the dream you had earlier”
And while I was in this dream I thought back and yes, he was right, I had dreamed earlier he helped me.
And the thing is in real life this guy has helped me a lot. Back in my addiction he tried to help me so much I had to stop calling him for help.
But back to the dream.
I said “When did you help me?”
He said “In the dream you had earlier”
So I said “Yeah, but that was different”.
You should have seen the look on his face. I woke up, LMAO.

That was Thursday last week. He calls me out of the blue on Sunday night.
“Steve, Vickie and I had a fight. I need a place to stay tonight”
Surprised I was not. She’s a bitch.
“Sure Buddy, come on over!”

UNDER SURVEILLANCE

For some reason this reminds me of the family vacation we took to South Padre when I was 17. Two families really, my dads best friend Bruce and his family went with us.
Anyway, here we are on South Padre and I needed to get away from the families in order to score some pot from somewhere. This would amount to approaching some stranger a mile north of the Mexico border and asking where I could get some shit. I guess in 1974 it wasn’t as risky as it would be these days.
So I make some excuse to use the car to drive to a store and buy a book to read. Because what 17 year old freak wouldn’t want to do some summer reading at South Padre right? Bear with me here.
I cruised around and finally found a dude that looked like I might score from him and as luck would have it, I did!
Now I had to find a book.
They had a book rack in an old Skillerns drug store. I spent a long time looking at books and finally found one titled “The New American Revolution; How A French Marxist Society Is Coming To America”. It would go well with my Dick Gregory collection at home, provided that I could figure out what a fucking French Marxist was.
When I got back to the hotel with my stash and that book, Bruce wanted to see what book I’d bought.
I pulled it out of the bag and handed it to him. I thought he was going to shit a brick.
Later, on the beach rolling a joint I turned to glance back at the hotel and I could see Bruce on the balcony with a pair of binoculars, eyeballin’ the shit out of me, a newly born French Marxist.

ON ROUX

"The assistant of the stock, the roux, brings to the brown sauce only a flavor note of little importance, beyond its thickening principle, and it has the disadvantage of requiring, in order that the sauce be perfect, an almost absolute elimination of its components. Only the starchy principle remains in a sauce properly skimmed. Indeed, if this element is absolutely necessary to give mellowness and velvetiness to the sauce; it is much simpler to give it pure, which permits one to bring it to the point in as little time as possible, and to avoid a too prolonged sojourn on the fire. It is therefore infinitely probable that before long starch, fecula, or arrowroot obtained in a state of absolute purity will replace flour in the roux."

August Escoffier

CHIEF WAHOO AND THE REDSKINS

A friend of mine invited me to a church camp back around 2000. I think the idea was maybe I might get saved. I didn’t. But I enjoyed cooking for all the church people. So, I was grilling burgers on Saturday night. I was wearing one of my favorite shirts; a Cleveland Indians shirt with Chief Wahoo on it. I loved that shirt.

So I’m grilling burgers and this guy pulls me to the side. Says “I’m Native American, and you shirt is very offensive to some people. I’m not asking that you take it off. I just want you to know.” He was as polite as a person can be while saying something like that.
I didn’t see anything wrong with my shirt.

So a few years later I’m in my closet looking for something to wear and I see my Wahoo shirt. I start to put it on. And I thought about that guy a few years earlier. I took the shirt off, hung it back up and it went to Goodwill a year later. I don’t know what came over me. Its not like I suddenly thought the shirt was offensive. I just decided I didn’t need to have that shirt. Why wear a shirt that might offend anybody?
The Redskins insignia is a little more dignified than ol’ Chief Wahoo. Or, I should say, was.

I guess on another level my spiritual practice, my sacrament, is not wearing that shirt for a guy I'll never see again. I think about him a lot whenever I have a chance to protect someone else's dignity. I don't expect anyone to be able to relate to any of this, its just my story.

I can see why Chief Wahoo is a little offensive. But he can come to my party anytime!

BEING KING

I like Biden. I guess one of the most important things to me in a president is "Does he like people?" I think Biden likes people.
Trump? Trump likes money. I think he likes money more than he likes people. He seems to have a huge list of people he doesn't like. He's pretty loud about it too.
And even the people he seems to like tend to fall out of his favor very quickly.
I think this is a bad combination when it comes to being King.
Being King.
I have a story somewhere about a King...

"This is the story of a very kind and generous Arab King. The nation did not know hunger during his times.
He would part with anything, but one thing.
One of his horses was very dear to his heart. That was the one thing he wouldn’t let go of. Not for all the money in the world.
A thief decided to scam the king. There was one way to scam a generous soul.
He knew the King took his dear horse out for a ride, same time, same path, everyday. So, he threw himself on the ground, on the kings path, screaming that he’s been hit and robbed by thieves.
The king came down off of his dear horse, and ran to help this man.
He hit the king, and ran to ride the beautiful horse away.
The king asked him for one thing,
“Can you please not tell anyone how you took my horse?
”The thief said, laughing, “Why, are you afraid they’ll call you a fool?”
“No.” The King replied. “I fear people in my kingdom will not be stopping for a man in need anymore.”

Can you imagine Donald Trump saying that?

#1 COVID 19 BUDDY OF THE DAY

I had a weird one yesterday. I left the Dollar Store and a girl came up to my car window and wanted to buy my mask.
Really?
I told her they would give her one in the Dollar Store. So I watched while she went in because, well, she looked kinda nice if you know what I mean.
Then she came right back out with a mask and went to the Liquor Store next door.
Friggen' East Side. This town is a trip.

Image stolen from Peteski @ https://thisisnthappiness.com/archive

ON THE "N" WORD

When I was Garde Manger at the Hyatt I had four little black ladies that worked for me. Panola, Geraldine, Georgia, and Pearl. The Salad Ladies. They loved me and we had a blast. I found if I could get them talking in the morning they would work their ass off for me. They used to use that n-word all the time, threw it around like peanuts at the circus. No, they didn’t use it that much. This was 1985. It was not quite like today where you hear and see it a lot. One day I decided I would try to use it. Panola, she was like the leader, she put her knife down, and the other three stopped jabbering. The look on their faces was surprise and hurt. Panola said you are crazy white boy if you think you can use that word. But it was too late. I already figured it out just by the looks on their faces. That's not my word to be able to weigh in on. they went back to working like nothing ever happened but I never tried that again..

I see the question come up now and then. “Why can’t white folks use that word? Black folks use it plenty.” My first reaction is that any white person using that word is going nowhere in a hurry. Its an ugly word with a horrible past. My second reaction is that black folks own that word, bought and paid for. It was inflicted upon them in the most hateful ways imaginable and often accomanied by physical violence. Its called “appropriation” I think, and probably by making it a term of endearment among themselves, they took its power away.

I think the last time I used it was a couple years ago. I had just seen this Denzel movie "Fences", and its full of the n word. It just kind of slipped out, me mimicking Denzel. Denzel Washington. He can say the shit out of nigger, I tell you what. Luckily I was just with a good friend, who looked at me kinda like Panola did that day. It felt...awkward. I got enough racist history without taking that on.

Way back in HS for a Psyche Class I picked a book off a list to read. The title was “Nigger”, by the political activist and comedian Dick Gregory. Written in 1963. It was basically his autobiography. After I read that I read his other two books. Both had a great effect on me. A few months later when I was 17 I heard that Gregory was speaking at UT Arlington. I talked a buddy of mine into going with me.
I may not have been the most enlightened person in the auditorium that night, but I’ll bet I was the only 17 year old.
And thinking about it, it may be that what we see these days with blacks having taken ownership of the word Nigger is due in large part to Dick Gregory.
He said things like if he ever opened a restaurant he would name it Nigger for all the free advertising he would get.
A few times over the years, on Facebook, I have done a series of posts during Black History Month. Historical informative type pieces.
It was mostly in reaction to friends who would say “Why do we have a Black History Month”.
One year I titled all the posts as “Educate Your Ignorant White Ass On Some Black History Month”.
I had more than one person take exception to my title.
I wonder how they would be trying to handle being called something as inflammatory as Nigger?

TURN IT UP

When I was in the sixth grade the big kid across the street had a reel to reel. He said “Pick out what you want to hear” and handed me a list of songs on the reel. I looked it over. He had Grass Roots, Marty Robbins, Steppenwolf, Jimi Hendrix, Tommy Roe.
About halfway down there was the "Theme to the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". That’s what I picked.
He said “You’re a weird little kid aren’t you?” and handed me the headphones.
Ennio Morricone, Composer extraordinaire, dead at 91.

The Manly Task

I had some drains installed in my backyard a few weeks ago. A big pile of dirt left over to back fill around the house and spread over the yard. I started out with a Home Depot bucket. After about 20 buckets I determined I was going to have about 450 to go so I went on down to Home Depot and got a manly wheelbarrow. It helped considerably.
So with all the dirt spread nicely over the clay in my backyard I turned my attention to my gutter. The one with the low spot. The one that spills tons of water over the edge every time it rains. And every time it rains more of my beautiful topsoil I have spread goes down the drains.
I sent a text to my handyman pal to come over and fix my low spot in the gutter. Low spots in gutters are way too technical for me. I had a low spot in a gutter years ago that I spent a decade trying to correct and all I ever did, all I ever succeeded in doing, was to punch holes in the gutter and the fascia of the house.
But my handyman pal never texted me back. With storm clouds on the horizon and my beautiful topsoil at risk I stopped at Home Depot and bought the big long nails and ferrules that are supposed to correct a sagging gutter. Once more, into the fray. .I watched several YouTube's. I got on the ladder and installed two ferrules. No appreciable difference. I installed another. My God, is my gutter sagging even lower? We are heading the wrong direction here.
So I determined that instead of trying to correct a sagging gutter I would just install a downspout at the low spot. Genius!
But could I actually pull it off? Do I have the manly skills necessary? Of course not. But I was fucking desperate. Back to Home Depot I went. I got the little downspout thing, some pookie (that's like a sealer), and a 2 inch hole saw.
Let me tell you my friend, it's been a long time since I was so determined. A long time since I was so focused. I was either going to succeed or completely ruin my gutter. My gutter that spilled water every time it rained. What did I have to lose really?
And I found myself strangely aroused. I was hard for it. A manly household task. Performed from the top of an 8 ft ladder!
I drilled a 2-inch hole. I took my hacksaw blade and made some slits. I took my needle nose pliers and bent the gutterslits in order to Fashion the oval shape necessary for the downspout thingy. I was into it big time . I didn't even take a break . I applied the pookie and a couple set screws and I think I'm in business! I'll find out tomorrow when I screw up the downspout.

MISSISSIPPI BURNING

"The rest of those who have gone before us will not steady the unrest of those who are to follow"

Mississippi, the last state to ratify the 13th Amendment, will also be the last state to rid itself of Confederate Insignia on its state flag.

BAD ASS SITE OF THE DAY

A friend posted an interesting link last year. I took the first test “How Rational Are You?”
I figured myself to be pretty rational. I was surprised to only score 28% rational. 
That means that 72% of you are more rational than I am!

I told one of my workmates about this. With my arms waving I screeched my complaint:
“They said I was only 28% Rational!”
He looked at me calmly and said “And this surprises you how?”
So I went over three of the questions with him, which he answered perfectly. This guy is so rational I cant believe I even LIKE him. But I do.
With so many people with so much time to kill I’ll provide the link to a pretty cool site. I’ve taken several of their tests, and a couple of their courses.
I just finished the one “How to spot a strong vs weak argument.” I did pretty well overall, and scored low on letting preconceived notions affect my ability to rank an argument.
Again, it’s a great site, not the usual “ What color Teddy Bear are you” kind of thing.

Here is the (click here) How Rational Are You Test. Let me know what you think.

CLEARER THINKING
Clearer Thinking’s mission is to close the gap between insights from research about human behavior and actions in the real world. We start with the best research we can find and perform our own original studies in order to build best-in-class, interactive tools and mini-courses that you can use to change your habits, make better decisions, and achieve your goals.

FEELING GOOD WAS GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME

On his way to teach at the United States Military Academy at West Point, Kris Kristoferson stopped in Nashville and decided to stay and become a big ol’ country star. He pushed a broom at Columbia Record Studio and tried to write some songs. He had some success with “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and “Help Me Make It Through The Night” covered by Johnny Cash and someone else, cant quite recall.
A producer, Fred Foster noticed him and said “Ok, I’ll let you write some songs for me, but first I want to produce an album of you singing.”
Kristoferson said “But I caint sing, I sound like a Bullfrog” and Fred says “Do you want in this business or what?”
The record was a flop.
But Fred Called Kris up one day.

“I got a great idea for a song” he said.
“OK, what is it?” Kris asks.
“Me and Bobby Mcghee” says Fred.
“What?” says Kris.
“Me and Bobby Mcghee” says Fred.
“That’s it? Gee thanks” says Kris, and hangs up the phone.

A few months later Kris writes “Me and Bobby Mcghee”. He and Roger Miller record it, but it goes unnoticed.
Then Janis Joplin records it. The release comes after her death.
Fred Foster calls Kris one night.
“Man, have you heard Janis Joplins version of “Me and Bobby Mcgee”?
“No”
“You better be sitting down when you do”.
The rest is history. Janis made it her own, and Kris gave equal writing credit to Fred Foster, who had supplied the title.

YOU NEVER KNOW

My son just got to Alaska to work in the fishing industry. I have a cousin in Costa Rica that has worked a Sports Fishing boat for years.
He said “That’s the great thing about being on the water. You never know what the day will bring”

THE SHOPPING CART LITMUS TEST

Do you return the cart? What kind of person are you?
It's a pretty good indicator of my spiritual condition. When I'm feeling slovenly, and it's a dark November in my soul  I leave the cart. Wherever. I don't even look back. Just drag my sorry ass to the drivers seat and go.
But when I'm in tune with the universe, birds are chirping and the sun shining brightly, and people everywhere seem to shine, then it is my delight to return the shopping cart, whistling "Rhinestone Cowboy as I go. You should see the spring in my step as I do so.

THE LEAST RACIST PERSON I KNOW

Back about 1999 I was living off Lancaster Ave. Largely colored community. I had my kids for the weekend and I was taking them to the Children's Museum downtown. We were going to ride the bus. I’d never ridden the city bus before. It pulled up and we got on. Nothing but black people on this bus. I’m ushering the kids down the aisle. Looking for a seat and I see a Fort Worth cop sitting there, an empty seat in front of him. I ushered the kids into the empty seat and announced “Here we go kids, we’ll be safe here”.
I’m not sure if anyone other than the cop heard me, but I’m not known for being soft spoken. I didn’t even realize until later what I’d said and how it must have sounded. Any one that heard me must have thought “What kind of cracker we got here?”.
I like to think I’m one of the least racist people I know.
Race in America.  Its like a Greek Tragedy. The more you try to run from it, the more you run into it.

Somewhere there is an upside

I've learned two things:
1) I have got to stop touching everything all the time. Everywhere I go, everything I see, I have a need to touch it. I walked in a restaurant for an order pick up a few days ago and started to run my hand 50 feet down the counter to the register. No, Bulletholes! Stop!
2) I got to stop crowding people. When I step in line somewhere, I'm usually right on top of whoever is in line with me. When this is over I need to try to give them at least 18 inches.