THE LOVES OF MY LIFE PREPARE TO LEAVE…
…I fear I shall never see them again…anguish and despair overcome me, no idea what I’m going to do without them…well that’s pretty selfish, nothing new there with me always thinking of me me me as I drift off into one of my many simpering, self-pitying harangues…well, it soon passes and life is still good even if it’s not as good as it was…there's an unfillable void where they stood...
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
I'm not exactly a great role model...
…unless how-not-to is the template…cracks me up; wears me down too, the weight of life is sometimes enervating but often as not fun and exciting…you get knocked about quite a bit before you get it right then it comes as a shock like it happened over night…meanwhile six and a fucking half decades have come and gone, now: chickens come home to roost, pay back, time is up…in the words of my buddy Killer, ‘You’ve cheated the hangman for a long time…’
THERE'S NOTHING I DON'T KNOW...
...about drinking. Nothing…and you can give me any test you like and I will prove my, ah, boast; well, it's not a boast it's true. In actual fact, since my first beer around 1957-58, being conservative in my estimate, I have probably drank up (using 55-gallon drums as a benchmark) about - GOOD CHRIST!- 5 of them. How can it be?! I should be dead long ago and we haven't even tossed in a couple barrels of Jameson's and a variety of other rotgut liquors, not to mention a half-barrel of Kahlua…I don't do it anymore, drink to excess, rarely even drink although I like Michael's homemade Dogbolter and/or a Guinness occasionally, but no more by the case lot and no liquor either...well (whisper, whisper) more or less, but I do love those Mudslides...
…if you drink too much you're going to get wet brain and babble on like a bloody fool (ahem), your liver will fail you - don't think it won't, and you'll stumble and fall, get battered and bruised, smash up your car(s), go to jail, go to the morgue. Diminished capacity as a way of life…as a drunk the route is necessarily circuitous so you'll have lots of laughs along the way but all in all you're the big loser; in the main, though regrets I have a few, I think I learned more from those wasted years than I ever could have picked up in a classroom but how valuable these lessons are who is to say?
…these are some of the things awaiting you with each bottle you decant, and don't be misled into thinking that because you drink expensive wines from Bordeaux from your very own wine cellar beneath your chateau, and not Old Duke from a cheap tin flask, that you're any less of a drunk.
THERE'S NOTHING I DON'T KNOW...
...about drinking. Nothing…and you can give me any test you like and I will prove my, ah, boast; well, it's not a boast it's true. In actual fact, since my first beer around 1957-58, being conservative in my estimate, I have probably drank up (using 55-gallon drums as a benchmark) about - GOOD CHRIST!- 5 of them. How can it be?! I should be dead long ago and we haven't even tossed in a couple barrels of Jameson's and a variety of other rotgut liquors, not to mention a half-barrel of Kahlua…I don't do it anymore, drink to excess, rarely even drink although I like Michael's homemade Dogbolter and/or a Guinness occasionally, but no more by the case lot and no liquor either...well (whisper, whisper) more or less, but I do love those Mudslides...
…if you drink too much you're going to get wet brain and babble on like a bloody fool (ahem), your liver will fail you - don't think it won't, and you'll stumble and fall, get battered and bruised, smash up your car(s), go to jail, go to the morgue. Diminished capacity as a way of life…as a drunk the route is necessarily circuitous so you'll have lots of laughs along the way but all in all you're the big loser; in the main, though regrets I have a few, I think I learned more from those wasted years than I ever could have picked up in a classroom but how valuable these lessons are who is to say?
…these are some of the things awaiting you with each bottle you decant, and don't be misled into thinking that because you drink expensive wines from Bordeaux from your very own wine cellar beneath your chateau, and not Old Duke from a cheap tin flask, that you're any less of a drunk.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
IT AIN’T ILLEGAL, OR EVEN BAD, UNTIL YOU GET CAUGHT…
…then, can you believe it, the accused suddenly is filled with remorse - it was a mistake…very remorseful your honor, isn’t the real me…had I only known I never would have done it, etc – but only once ‘they’ (I/you/we) get found out, then in sets the regret, the restitution, the oily and sycophantic pledges to reform, etc. to dodge the truth of the matter, which is guilty, guilty beyond all get-out, there was guilt, however, only because (I/you/we/they again) got bagged…I shan’t speak for you, so you’re excused, I mean me of course, it’s always me me me in my world…hmmm…where was I…o yeah, banging on about time spent in another life - the money was good, if I hadn’t got caught I’d still be doing it…
“ONLY THROUGH GUILE…”
…I exclaim to The Fool In The Mirror, “…have you gotten this far!” Hmmm…I wonder, is guile what I mean? I’ll leave it to Merriam-Webster and with a hoot bark out a laugh, “Just what I had in mind,” I say, deceitful, cunning…too funny and, also of course, not funny at all…
A TOMASO ALBINONI OBOE CONCERTO…
…is so so pretty I am weak in the knees like a young fellow gets just before he gets to kiss his little girl friends lips for the first time, first for both, a sweet moment that lasts nearly 60 years…that kiss and this concerto are inextricably entwined…
HOW COULD IT HAVE COME TO THIS…
…I holler and instantly follow it with a shouted, ‘HOW COULD IT NOT!!?’
O, o, to have known then what I know now.
…then, can you believe it, the accused suddenly is filled with remorse - it was a mistake…very remorseful your honor, isn’t the real me…had I only known I never would have done it, etc – but only once ‘they’ (I/you/we) get found out, then in sets the regret, the restitution, the oily and sycophantic pledges to reform, etc. to dodge the truth of the matter, which is guilty, guilty beyond all get-out, there was guilt, however, only because (I/you/we/they again) got bagged…I shan’t speak for you, so you’re excused, I mean me of course, it’s always me me me in my world…hmmm…where was I…o yeah, banging on about time spent in another life - the money was good, if I hadn’t got caught I’d still be doing it…
“ONLY THROUGH GUILE…”
…I exclaim to The Fool In The Mirror, “…have you gotten this far!” Hmmm…I wonder, is guile what I mean? I’ll leave it to Merriam-Webster and with a hoot bark out a laugh, “Just what I had in mind,” I say, deceitful, cunning…too funny and, also of course, not funny at all…
A TOMASO ALBINONI OBOE CONCERTO…
…is so so pretty I am weak in the knees like a young fellow gets just before he gets to kiss his little girl friends lips for the first time, first for both, a sweet moment that lasts nearly 60 years…that kiss and this concerto are inextricably entwined…
HOW COULD IT HAVE COME TO THIS…
…I holler and instantly follow it with a shouted, ‘HOW COULD IT NOT!!?’
O, o, to have known then what I know now.
Monday, December 8, 2008
A concatenation of conflicting events...
…and POOF! – 65 years pass in a heartbeat eliciting a withering stare from the Fool In The Mirror, a look that would freeze the nuts off a steel bridge…’This what you end up with…’ Two rooms in a pre-nursing home facility, a very nice one mind you for which I am decidedly more than grateful but, like most of us here, would rather be in what were our homes elsewhere, when we were young…well, this is what we’re left with, two rooms half full and a small storage facility, all of it not worth $5000, so from the fiscal standpoint it ends up not so good, but Dude! I’ve spent a fortune, hardly any of it mine…in some cases I’m still getting bills, some of which money could pay off but moral debts born of character flaws cannot be repaid in my considered opinion…
…later, I leave home at 9:22 and @ 2:30 I am back here after a very nice dinner and visit with my/our Dear Old Mom - in a dining room with at least 25 people, maybe more...there was an undercurrent of cluttering plastic teeth, ancient people murmuring nonagenarian doggerel and the clanging of dishware and waitresses and families darting in and out but it was fine...I get here and see that they are having a celebration in the lobby, I figured it wouldn't be over for awhile so for an hour and a half went and sat watching the river flow...but I wanted to get home so I came back and came up here going by - all mashed in together in this diminutive lobby, 15 or so people chowing down and Happy Thanksgiving-ing me and me them and I strode on thru to the elevator and made it back; this may not be home in the sense of home is where the heart is but it is where I live and I was plumb happy to be back amongst my Friends & Neighbors...
…still later…I was just looking over the seven deadly sins and I think I got ‘em pretty well covered, here they are in case you want to research yourself: 1. Lust, check; 2. Gluttony, check; 3. Greed, o yeah; Sloth, been there, am there; Wrath, o please don’t go there; Envy, one of my lesser sins and Pride too, I am not prideful, at least I don’t think I am…but I am guilty in varying degrees of all.
…so then we turn to the seven virtues…hmmm, 1) Chastity…did not remain chaste very long and really haven’t been since until illness struck me down and I now flaunt my new-found medically-necessary chastity as a good thing; don’t believe it…then there’s, 2) Temperance of which I’ve never been accused, and 3) Charity which I will say I am that, charitable, so there’s one in my column, quickly superceded by, 4) Patience of which I have little, 5) Kindness which I have in abundance if I do say so myself, 6) Humility which I am anything but humble - I am always – including here – looking for praise or remuneration or something for my efforts…which may be just being a little hard on myself. And lastly, 7) diligent, it depends, I can be.
…still later…I was just looking over the seven deadly sins and I think I got ‘em pretty well covered, here they are in case you want to research yourself: 1. Lust, check; 2. Gluttony, check; 3. Greed, o yeah; Sloth, been there, am there; Wrath, o please don’t go there; Envy, one of my lesser sins and Pride too, I am not prideful, at least I don’t think I am…but I am guilty in varying degrees of all.
…so then we turn to the seven virtues…hmmm, 1) Chastity…did not remain chaste very long and really haven’t been since until illness struck me down and I now flaunt my new-found medically-necessary chastity as a good thing; don’t believe it…then there’s, 2) Temperance of which I’ve never been accused, and 3) Charity which I will say I am that, charitable, so there’s one in my column, quickly superceded by, 4) Patience of which I have little, 5) Kindness which I have in abundance if I do say so myself, 6) Humility which I am anything but humble - I am always – including here – looking for praise or remuneration or something for my efforts…which may be just being a little hard on myself. And lastly, 7) diligent, it depends, I can be.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Change is all there is...
…in more ways than one, like change in the geologic sense, i. e. with the passage of time things change - someday the pyramids will be dust in the Sahara and the mountain peaks of Katmandu will be valleys and deserts, victim of inexorable time, and of course then there’s no change, as in broke, no change, no money not a friggin’ farthing and don’t you know everything is either due or past due.
…how was that for a disjointed opening salvo? As usual NFTD is streaming consciousness, updating the Dharma Bum in cyberspace. To that end, oyez, hold on while I burn one and down a stout soz to get right into character. Ah yes, much better even though it’s probably not good.
…how was that for a disjointed opening salvo? As usual NFTD is streaming consciousness, updating the Dharma Bum in cyberspace. To that end, oyez, hold on while I burn one and down a stout soz to get right into character. Ah yes, much better even though it’s probably not good.
…much of what feels good or tastes good isn’t good for you; living for the moment has severe and irreparable long-term consequences as I am finding out at 65 years of age (Today! How can it be!?) so believe me NOW I am REALLY living for the moment @ the speed of light Dude, it’s all over too quick!? Get with it…quickly I open another Guinness and drop a perc and a couple of Mother’s Little Helpers…so much for leaving the house today on an exhilarating walk through the park…
Friday, November 14, 2008
Behind every great fortune...
…there’s a crime – think Oliver and Oakes Ames…say what? Who? The Ames Brothers? The ones who sing?
…nope, wrong part of the family tree, these two - Oliver and Oakes Ames, made their fortune on the backs of slave labor, for these Ames Brothers of Easton MA made shovels, shovels since the late 18th century up to today even, but along about the time of the Civil War they were so busy turning out shovels they couldn’t fill the orders; those shovels were worn out digging graves, while when the railroads were crossing the nation to meet in Utah, 100s of thousands of so-called Coolies were imported from China to dig a trench to lay steel rails on - up, over, across and through, the hottest and the coldest and the most treacherous places Mother Nature had to offer in the lower 48, all dug with an Ames shovel…millions of them.
…here in Townshend’s Oakwood Cemetery lies among many others the grave of Alexander M. Cushing who was from Newfane and got shot and killed at Antietam and whose grave no doubt was dug with an Ames shovel.
…here lies Alexander M. Cushing, shot dead at 39 and next him his dear Caroline, widowed at 39 and come to think of it she probably got buried thanks to an Ames shovel too…they didn’t have any competition…
…I move on, it’s Veteran’s Day, there are lots of Civil War vets in this cemetery and at least one from every war since…I check in on them now and then, we talk…well…ok, ok, I’m not that crazy – they talk, I listen…
…nope, wrong part of the family tree, these two - Oliver and Oakes Ames, made their fortune on the backs of slave labor, for these Ames Brothers of Easton MA made shovels, shovels since the late 18th century up to today even, but along about the time of the Civil War they were so busy turning out shovels they couldn’t fill the orders; those shovels were worn out digging graves, while when the railroads were crossing the nation to meet in Utah, 100s of thousands of so-called Coolies were imported from China to dig a trench to lay steel rails on - up, over, across and through, the hottest and the coldest and the most treacherous places Mother Nature had to offer in the lower 48, all dug with an Ames shovel…millions of them.
…here in Townshend’s Oakwood Cemetery lies among many others the grave of Alexander M. Cushing who was from Newfane and got shot and killed at Antietam and whose grave no doubt was dug with an Ames shovel.
…here lies Alexander M. Cushing, shot dead at 39 and next him his dear Caroline, widowed at 39 and come to think of it she probably got buried thanks to an Ames shovel too…they didn’t have any competition…
…I move on, it’s Veteran’s Day, there are lots of Civil War vets in this cemetery and at least one from every war since…I check in on them now and then, we talk…well…ok, ok, I’m not that crazy – they talk, I listen…
Memory Lane is nowhere to hang out...
…there’s nothing left there; in many cases there was never anything there even when then was now…I race away from the past and return home to the present, the here, the now…I am on automatic pilot with tunnel vision my accompanist, looking neither backwards nor left nor right; I continue through the infinite mindscape at the end of which there is no light.
…say, how was that for a gloomy paragraph? Nice, no? - and verbose too, huh!? It’s what I do, Dude, I’m not really a gloomy guy at all, nobody likes to have a good time more than me, but neither am I one of those whistling grinning-ninny cheerio hey hey goody-goody two shoes…there’s little more annoying than a happy-go-lucky so and so to spoil the bittersweet melancholy of a lugubrious moment…
…say, how was that for a gloomy paragraph? Nice, no? - and verbose too, huh!? It’s what I do, Dude, I’m not really a gloomy guy at all, nobody likes to have a good time more than me, but neither am I one of those whistling grinning-ninny cheerio hey hey goody-goody two shoes…there’s little more annoying than a happy-go-lucky so and so to spoil the bittersweet melancholy of a lugubrious moment…
Friday, November 7, 2008
Random "...NOTES..." From Wrinkled Scraps...
I OFTEN WISH FOR NOTHING…
…it’s all I really want, nothing, nothing in the sort of difficult to comprehend philosophical/physical nothing, like to have never been, to not be, to UNbe, not even a void where I was because I wasn’t…
…ah Nothingness, how I yearn for you…meanwhile, since I still do be, I decap a stout, spin and burn one and push the boat out; the closest I can get to Nothing is to drift in the hazy ephemeral cloud which is called Life…
AS A CALLOW YOUTH…
…my idea of academia was turtle-neck wool sweaters with leather elbow patches, herringbone tweed jackets, Florsheim wingtips, a tam, a pipe and an Austin-Healey Sprite…
…who knew there was a lot of work involved, which ultimately I did not take to so my academic life was brief if sartorially resplendent…from there it was all downhill for about 40 years, then as I approached the nadir of my non-intellectual pursuits and the end of my life suddenly I righted, took a look around me and corrected the course, sort of, color me a slow learner…
THE CLOSER TO DEATH I GET…
…the more uncomfortable I am with life; I was a recalcitrant neophyte and didn’t realize until this end of the cycle how much I had missed/am missing. Decades ago Curt said to me, ‘You don’t know what you’re missing…’ Waaay too late I realized how right the old boy was…
PLUS IT’S A MISERABLE MORNING…
…no two ways about it; fogged in meteorologically and metaphysically; from neither is escape sure. What life turned out to be is nothing like what I had in mind, and it is not a refreshing spring-like mist cooling me but rather a thick miasma I am caught up in like a fly in a web (“…help me, help me…”)…I haff ta laff at this ridiculously verbose take on poor, poor pitiful; me…well, it’s how we (I) make (don’t make) a living…
…it’s all I really want, nothing, nothing in the sort of difficult to comprehend philosophical/physical nothing, like to have never been, to not be, to UNbe, not even a void where I was because I wasn’t…
…ah Nothingness, how I yearn for you…meanwhile, since I still do be, I decap a stout, spin and burn one and push the boat out; the closest I can get to Nothing is to drift in the hazy ephemeral cloud which is called Life…
AS A CALLOW YOUTH…
…my idea of academia was turtle-neck wool sweaters with leather elbow patches, herringbone tweed jackets, Florsheim wingtips, a tam, a pipe and an Austin-Healey Sprite…
…who knew there was a lot of work involved, which ultimately I did not take to so my academic life was brief if sartorially resplendent…from there it was all downhill for about 40 years, then as I approached the nadir of my non-intellectual pursuits and the end of my life suddenly I righted, took a look around me and corrected the course, sort of, color me a slow learner…
THE CLOSER TO DEATH I GET…
…the more uncomfortable I am with life; I was a recalcitrant neophyte and didn’t realize until this end of the cycle how much I had missed/am missing. Decades ago Curt said to me, ‘You don’t know what you’re missing…’ Waaay too late I realized how right the old boy was…
PLUS IT’S A MISERABLE MORNING…
…no two ways about it; fogged in meteorologically and metaphysically; from neither is escape sure. What life turned out to be is nothing like what I had in mind, and it is not a refreshing spring-like mist cooling me but rather a thick miasma I am caught up in like a fly in a web (“…help me, help me…”)…I haff ta laff at this ridiculously verbose take on poor, poor pitiful; me…well, it’s how we (I) make (don’t make) a living…
Monday, November 3, 2008
No one has the right...
...to feel as good as I do today.
Or perhaps, everyone has the right to feel as good as I do today but hardly anybody really does, and why I do is beyond me except that it has something to do with the silence beneath the trees I'm sitting under, the slate gray of the sky, the lean of my gleaming black & silver Triumph, the robin's song, the mourning dove cooing.
Plus I got a pocketful of money which, let's face it, helps.
...and I'm a realist so I understand that at a moment's notice I could be
plunged into an abyss of despair, but meanwhile...what can I do with this new-found wealth? - out of nowhere appears 28 hundred bucks! (Well,not quite out of nowhere - I've had to sell this beautiful motorcycle which has me spellbound, staring at it as one might Manet's Olympia). Still, it's what I do - sell bikes - so if I miss this one after just having my last ride on it, I welcome the cash from it and I'm off to buy another.
So far my gambit to not sell bikes to younger people (with all due respect kids) has paid off; I wait until a young-old geezer like myself comes along and then I snare (her)him into my net, but I'm reluctant to sell these classic motorcycles to young people because young people tend to do everything at fast forward and I don't want her/him to wipe out and ruin my bikes, I mean I don't want them to get hurt...the older fellows I've sold bikes to - Lynn, Denal and Charlie - might still get wasted on their bikes, unseated and upended by a Peterbilt maybe, or a yuppie scum Volvo, or maybe even run off the road by a pack of shrieking Ninjas, but I don't think these three guys will be burning up the macadam hot patch.
I know, I know - tell that to T. E. Lawrence.
Or perhaps, everyone has the right to feel as good as I do today but hardly anybody really does, and why I do is beyond me except that it has something to do with the silence beneath the trees I'm sitting under, the slate gray of the sky, the lean of my gleaming black & silver Triumph, the robin's song, the mourning dove cooing.
Plus I got a pocketful of money which, let's face it, helps.
...and I'm a realist so I understand that at a moment's notice I could be
plunged into an abyss of despair, but meanwhile...what can I do with this new-found wealth? - out of nowhere appears 28 hundred bucks! (Well,not quite out of nowhere - I've had to sell this beautiful motorcycle which has me spellbound, staring at it as one might Manet's Olympia). Still, it's what I do - sell bikes - so if I miss this one after just having my last ride on it, I welcome the cash from it and I'm off to buy another.
So far my gambit to not sell bikes to younger people (with all due respect kids) has paid off; I wait until a young-old geezer like myself comes along and then I snare (her)him into my net, but I'm reluctant to sell these classic motorcycles to young people because young people tend to do everything at fast forward and I don't want her/him to wipe out and ruin my bikes, I mean I don't want them to get hurt...the older fellows I've sold bikes to - Lynn, Denal and Charlie - might still get wasted on their bikes, unseated and upended by a Peterbilt maybe, or a yuppie scum Volvo, or maybe even run off the road by a pack of shrieking Ninjas, but I don't think these three guys will be burning up the macadam hot patch.
I know, I know - tell that to T. E. Lawrence.
Friday, October 31, 2008
About yours I don't know...
...but my fantasies incarnate would land me in jail. However, illegal though they may be they are human and since we all have them - subject not to derision are they by others; strange they may seem, but with all (y)our pecadilloes -who's left to judge?
...still, knowing the inner self makes it often difficult to deal with the public persona...I mean I sometimes hear myself saying (or see myself writing)
one thing, possibly even very profound, rare though that may be, but midway through my professed profundity I find myself tripping and stammering over what I am saying because the Real Me Inside is saying, 'How DARE you say that knowing how you are behind closed doors alone?' So my speech trails off and what I was about to pronounce goes half-said then falls apart at the absurdity of this everpresent, relentless posturing one does to cope...
It's not easy being me.
How about you? Hard to live with yourself? I can relate...but you can't get away so you have to deal with it...nu? Who knew...the truth hurts doesn't it?! Only kidding...only kidding, Friend; you're alright in my book - and never mind your quirks. Say did I ever tell you about...
...still, knowing the inner self makes it often difficult to deal with the public persona...I mean I sometimes hear myself saying (or see myself writing)
one thing, possibly even very profound, rare though that may be, but midway through my professed profundity I find myself tripping and stammering over what I am saying because the Real Me Inside is saying, 'How DARE you say that knowing how you are behind closed doors alone?' So my speech trails off and what I was about to pronounce goes half-said then falls apart at the absurdity of this everpresent, relentless posturing one does to cope...
It's not easy being me.
How about you? Hard to live with yourself? I can relate...but you can't get away so you have to deal with it...nu? Who knew...the truth hurts doesn't it?! Only kidding...only kidding, Friend; you're alright in my book - and never mind your quirks. Say did I ever tell you about...
Sunday, October 19, 2008
I've had a lot of fun today (from NFTD Archives)
...bear with me, let me explain...rewind...at six o'clock yesterday morning (6/28/98) I bought three $3 instant scratch tickets and went to have a coffee with a couple friends. Sitting at the kitchen table I scratched first one, a loser, and slid it across the table to Larry, 'Nope Larry, yours is a loser.' Now Joyce's, same thing, sorry Sister you're a loser too...well, your ticket is, you're not...and then...
Then I scratched the third ticket, mine. The instructions read something like match any one of your numbers to any one of theirs and win prize indicated. One of their numbers was a 2, so was one of mine, and the prize for me matching their number was: $50,000. I passed the ticket over to Larry. 'Does this say what I think it says?' 'I think it does...' Joyce? 'Absolutely, you got a 2, they got a 2, the prize is 50 grand!' A flurry of excited activity ensued, then 'I gotta go!'
I flew back to Linda at the Jiffy Mart who only moments ago had sold them to me, her first customer of the day. I gave it to her. 'I'd like to cash this in,' I told her, knowing you can only cash up to 599 dollars without going to the Lottery Commission. She took the ticket somewhat ho-humishly and ran it through the computer which popped up with the information that the ticket was legit and $50,000 with my name on it was in a vault down in Concord! Then things got a little animated...I can't stand still but neither can I go to Concord to claim my prize because it's Sunday and they don't open until Monday at 8 - 24 hours I am walking around with a $50,000 ticket in my pocket so of course I can't sleep nor eat and feel that somehow there's been an error and tomorrow my little balloon will burst...a restless night…as happens, morning came and by 8 I was standing tall at the lottery office where I said to Fran, the woman at the front office, 'I'd like to cash this in...' and she looked at it, eyes agog and said, 'Yes, yes, I should think you would,' and began the process of shelling out 50Gs to me!
Then I scratched the third ticket, mine. The instructions read something like match any one of your numbers to any one of theirs and win prize indicated. One of their numbers was a 2, so was one of mine, and the prize for me matching their number was: $50,000. I passed the ticket over to Larry. 'Does this say what I think it says?' 'I think it does...' Joyce? 'Absolutely, you got a 2, they got a 2, the prize is 50 grand!' A flurry of excited activity ensued, then 'I gotta go!'
I flew back to Linda at the Jiffy Mart who only moments ago had sold them to me, her first customer of the day. I gave it to her. 'I'd like to cash this in,' I told her, knowing you can only cash up to 599 dollars without going to the Lottery Commission. She took the ticket somewhat ho-humishly and ran it through the computer which popped up with the information that the ticket was legit and $50,000 with my name on it was in a vault down in Concord! Then things got a little animated...I can't stand still but neither can I go to Concord to claim my prize because it's Sunday and they don't open until Monday at 8 - 24 hours I am walking around with a $50,000 ticket in my pocket so of course I can't sleep nor eat and feel that somehow there's been an error and tomorrow my little balloon will burst...a restless night…as happens, morning came and by 8 I was standing tall at the lottery office where I said to Fran, the woman at the front office, 'I'd like to cash this in...' and she looked at it, eyes agog and said, 'Yes, yes, I should think you would,' and began the process of shelling out 50Gs to me!
HERE IS HOW THAT GOES…
You don't get 50 grand. They take out Uncle Sam's right off the top so you don't forget to mention it to the IRS, and after they had done that Fran and someone else from a big suite office came out, shook hands all around and presented me with a certified State of New Hampshire Lottery Commission check for (be still my heart!) 36,000 dollars, a good return on a three dollar bet.
I am directed to the Bank of New Hampshire in downtown metropolitan Concord and when I get there and present my check, once again the camaraderie and pleasantries begin, everybody in the bank is watching what's going on. The teller - her name was Leigh, told me after punching up a few keys on the word processor and consulting with a couple bigger wigs, 'We don't have enough money to cash this...'
I was thunderstruck - I've broke the bank! The esteemed Bank of New Hampshire doesn't have enough money to cash a $36,000 check!? Whatever will I do? I had to borrow 20 bucks to get here...they graciously come to terms and it went like this: they gave me $9,000 in cash and one of their checks for $27,000 which I can deposit in my bank and spend three days hence when it clears...no sweat...and then they are kind enough to count out 90 - can you believe it, 90 $100 bills, new ones, all in sequence and this done said to me, 'If you would like to count it again we have a private room for you...'
I am directed to the Bank of New Hampshire in downtown metropolitan Concord and when I get there and present my check, once again the camaraderie and pleasantries begin, everybody in the bank is watching what's going on. The teller - her name was Leigh, told me after punching up a few keys on the word processor and consulting with a couple bigger wigs, 'We don't have enough money to cash this...'
I was thunderstruck - I've broke the bank! The esteemed Bank of New Hampshire doesn't have enough money to cash a $36,000 check!? Whatever will I do? I had to borrow 20 bucks to get here...they graciously come to terms and it went like this: they gave me $9,000 in cash and one of their checks for $27,000 which I can deposit in my bank and spend three days hence when it clears...no sweat...and then they are kind enough to count out 90 - can you believe it, 90 $100 bills, new ones, all in sequence and this done said to me, 'If you would like to count it again we have a private room for you...'
I seem to have moved up a tax bracket...
...and a caste in one $36,000 check - suddenly a bank which yesterday would have wanted me deloused, today fetes me as if the sudden acquisition of money was validation of one's true worth. I had to laugh. In I went...I am absolutely astonished at my good fortune and everybody who has heard has been wonderful about it, and such comments: 'Tuffy, can I have a beer?' 'Sure you can, they're in the van; you may be rich but you still gotta go get your own...' From Frankie who I owed a lot of money for a long time as I walked into his garage, 'I heard you'd be coming to see me...' From my dear Aunt Gogi, 'Dear Terry, I want you to know I am sorry for the time you had a penny in your mouth and I made you do a somersault and swallow it. I think you were 3 years old...your loving Aunt Gogi' - or, as I walked into Town Hall to license my new-to-me 1978 Triumph Bonneville, Earl Luther followed me to the Town Clerk's office holding a chair, 'Would you like to sit down Mr. Ward...here have a seat...' How sweet is Lady Luck realized? Very.
…O, o, o, I tell you I am having so much fun! I am debt-free for the first time since about 1957, it is an extraordinary feeling I never thought I'd experience and I mean to be very careful about getting into that five decades long situation again...fast forward several days...so many many times in the last, let's see how long has it been now, today is the 6th of July, I'm way late in publishing this issue but winning like this is a serious distraction, anyway I can't tell you how many times in the last few days since hitting this pot of gold I have heard people say 'It couldn't have happened to anyone more deserving' or variations of it but in MY mind it couldn't have happened to anyone LESS deserving, however...it's your basic simple twist of fate & like I said, I'm having a ball!
...and incidentally, long-time readers might recall one of my daydreams has been to have an inch-thick stack of crisp $100 dollar bills? Well, I had it, actually I had (have!) several and the thrill of riffling through it and knowing it was mine, however circuitous its route to me, put a five-inch smile on my gap-toothed puss, and - and - you are not going to read: 'Sorry, only kidding...'
...because I am not kidding. In a millisecond (however long it takes to scratch a ticket) my life went from poverty to wealth and a week later I am still dumbfounded, dazed, elated, saddened & gladdened and I expect I shall be shaking my shaggy head in bewilderment the rest of my life.
…O, o, o, I tell you I am having so much fun! I am debt-free for the first time since about 1957, it is an extraordinary feeling I never thought I'd experience and I mean to be very careful about getting into that five decades long situation again...fast forward several days...so many many times in the last, let's see how long has it been now, today is the 6th of July, I'm way late in publishing this issue but winning like this is a serious distraction, anyway I can't tell you how many times in the last few days since hitting this pot of gold I have heard people say 'It couldn't have happened to anyone more deserving' or variations of it but in MY mind it couldn't have happened to anyone LESS deserving, however...it's your basic simple twist of fate & like I said, I'm having a ball!
...and incidentally, long-time readers might recall one of my daydreams has been to have an inch-thick stack of crisp $100 dollar bills? Well, I had it, actually I had (have!) several and the thrill of riffling through it and knowing it was mine, however circuitous its route to me, put a five-inch smile on my gap-toothed puss, and - and - you are not going to read: 'Sorry, only kidding...'
...because I am not kidding. In a millisecond (however long it takes to scratch a ticket) my life went from poverty to wealth and a week later I am still dumbfounded, dazed, elated, saddened & gladdened and I expect I shall be shaking my shaggy head in bewilderment the rest of my life.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
AND SPEAKING OF '...a world of rest beyond...'
...you're not being taken in by the gimcrack-brained televangelists passing themselves off as emissaries of god are you? They're a hokey lot of mostly honky monkeys aren't they? $300 blow drys (and jobs, the hypocrites) plus $1000 suits and $500 alligator shoes they'd have you believe are made from scraps of Jesus Christ Almighty's own goddamned sandals fer Cris'sakes...
Many people do believe these charlatans, these fake fakirs; their shrill hyperbole nets them millions annually; their pontificating peurilisms redound with absconded funds in the name of some non-existent god. They babble ridiculously on like zealots from Babylon in their zeal to convert you and your funds to their accounts and they prattle and blather stupidly away in an idly twaddling manner reminiscent of yours truly.
Religion is by far the sleaziest of pyramid schemes - you reap zero
benefitsuntil you die, according to its lights - and its multitudinous and
nefarious proselityzing (and wealthy) acolytes are the most unctuous of snake oil salesmen.
I only wish I had got in on it earlier myself so I coulda cleaned house.
'Brother Terry Speaks Tonight, All Are Welcome...$15 offering'
'Brother$ & $i$ter$, Plea$e Hear The Word From Brother T Bob...'
'Lord Have Mercy!', he cried, and the congregation fell to its collective knees, bound under the spell of Brother Terry's ringing oratory exhorting sinners one and all to heed the word of the Lord as defined in paragraph two of Bro T's spellbinding autobiography as only he can tell it, ten bucks at the door on the way in,$15 on leaving...get it while you can and
praise god when high, hallelujah...
Many people do believe these charlatans, these fake fakirs; their shrill hyperbole nets them millions annually; their pontificating peurilisms redound with absconded funds in the name of some non-existent god. They babble ridiculously on like zealots from Babylon in their zeal to convert you and your funds to their accounts and they prattle and blather stupidly away in an idly twaddling manner reminiscent of yours truly.
Religion is by far the sleaziest of pyramid schemes - you reap zero
benefitsuntil you die, according to its lights - and its multitudinous and
nefarious proselityzing (and wealthy) acolytes are the most unctuous of snake oil salesmen.
I only wish I had got in on it earlier myself so I coulda cleaned house.
'Brother Terry Speaks Tonight, All Are Welcome...$15 offering'
'Brother$ & $i$ter$, Plea$e Hear The Word From Brother T Bob...'
'Lord Have Mercy!', he cried, and the congregation fell to its collective knees, bound under the spell of Brother Terry's ringing oratory exhorting sinners one and all to heed the word of the Lord as defined in paragraph two of Bro T's spellbinding autobiography as only he can tell it, ten bucks at the door on the way in,$15 on leaving...get it while you can and
praise god when high, hallelujah...
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
NFTD PATS ON THE BACK, SORT OF...
Wardster,
It's always good to read your drivel. I enjoy having my mind clogged with your wordsmanship like I've been clogging my arteries for the past 58 years. What's another blockage? Anyway, I just returned from 39 days/nights in a tent in the southwestern deserts and mountains. You can view some (I haven't had a chance to process them all yet) of the photos at my website. www.MikeDiRenzo.com I'll attach a couple for your viewing pleasure. Stay well, keep doing what you do.
Regards, Mike
Northern Foolish,
Haven't had a minute to keep in touch which is something I promised myself I would not do with any of my friends. My busy season just ended with Labor Day. Weekends will stay busy but mid week is now slow with a few exceptions like October Bike Week and a Golf Convention. I am now getting ready to experience Hurricane Season. I guess I don't really understand all the worry about it. We have the weather channel. If a hurricane is coming, fucking leave. How difficult is that?
Anyways, I am writing to tell you that I have finally had a moment to pack up another package for you. AGAIN, nothing in it will get you locked up. Some lager libations, some pickles for "miss pickles", some Bloody Mary Mix that will satisfy your exquisite palette, it is Vodka Free and a few more local delicacies along with a letter and some pictures. Let me know when it arrives, it will be coming via UPS. Enjoy and keep in touch.
Southern Foolish
Hey Terry
Checked out your blog and read the newsletter you gave to me when I took your picture - looks good on the blog. Love the stories man. You have the clear honesty of a true artist - and the angst to go with it. You can make me laugh - sometimes to keep from cryin - right?
I wish I could make a movie about some of your tales - they do read like scenes for me. Little vignettes from the Zen of the moment. And your writing style and persona really brings it through.
Hope things are good in beautiful VT. The CERN atom smasher is in the news lately. Some scientists are afraid it might create a black hole, or strangelets and end the world. That sounds like something you would make up. "The strangelets have arrived".
Anyways the Mayan calendar ends in 2012. See you at the party.
Stan
(Dear NFTD READER - Stan, above, is Stan Sadowski from somewhere in PA who is responsible (I mean Thank You Stan) for the photograph of me above, hard at work in the Thrift Shop in Townshend VT 802/365-7234
It's always good to read your drivel. I enjoy having my mind clogged with your wordsmanship like I've been clogging my arteries for the past 58 years. What's another blockage? Anyway, I just returned from 39 days/nights in a tent in the southwestern deserts and mountains. You can view some (I haven't had a chance to process them all yet) of the photos at my website. www.MikeDiRenzo.com I'll attach a couple for your viewing pleasure. Stay well, keep doing what you do.
Regards, Mike
Northern Foolish,
Haven't had a minute to keep in touch which is something I promised myself I would not do with any of my friends. My busy season just ended with Labor Day. Weekends will stay busy but mid week is now slow with a few exceptions like October Bike Week and a Golf Convention. I am now getting ready to experience Hurricane Season. I guess I don't really understand all the worry about it. We have the weather channel. If a hurricane is coming, fucking leave. How difficult is that?
Anyways, I am writing to tell you that I have finally had a moment to pack up another package for you. AGAIN, nothing in it will get you locked up. Some lager libations, some pickles for "miss pickles", some Bloody Mary Mix that will satisfy your exquisite palette, it is Vodka Free and a few more local delicacies along with a letter and some pictures. Let me know when it arrives, it will be coming via UPS. Enjoy and keep in touch.
Southern Foolish
Hey Terry
Checked out your blog and read the newsletter you gave to me when I took your picture - looks good on the blog. Love the stories man. You have the clear honesty of a true artist - and the angst to go with it. You can make me laugh - sometimes to keep from cryin - right?
I wish I could make a movie about some of your tales - they do read like scenes for me. Little vignettes from the Zen of the moment. And your writing style and persona really brings it through.
Hope things are good in beautiful VT. The CERN atom smasher is in the news lately. Some scientists are afraid it might create a black hole, or strangelets and end the world. That sounds like something you would make up. "The strangelets have arrived".
Anyways the Mayan calendar ends in 2012. See you at the party.
Stan
(Dear NFTD READER - Stan, above, is Stan Sadowski from somewhere in PA who is responsible (I mean Thank You Stan) for the photograph of me above, hard at work in the Thrift Shop in Townshend VT 802/365-7234
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
In those days...
...I WASN'T VERY STREET-WISE...
...so as I walked through the dark, labrynthine warren of the Combat Zone to my own garret along Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, a toney part of Back Bay I lived in light years & many fears ago, a naif to the world and very as-yet untried & unenlightened...
...I well recall throwing half-finished cigs into the gutters and watching the down and out scabrous bums of the day practically club one another to get to the smoldering butt in the filthy street, as I walked away laughing, an 18-year-old know-it-all with an attitude and a lot to learn, and learn that lesson I did as, fast forward 25 years, it was I - ME - scrambling for the butts in the gutter tossed by show-off kids!
...turnabout being fair play (this too I had learned) I had to laugh.
...at another point in this embryonic period of my life, we are talking 1961 and 1962, I in my unworldly ignorance was cruising afoot when I saw a man walking briskly along alone in the early Fall evening, through the Common which runs down the middle of Commonwealth Avenue, an easy mark I think as I draw alongside him, he stepping lively in his three-piece herring-bone tweed suit, pointed-toe boots, pale blue shirt, fancy Brooks Brothers tie, and a walking-stick umbrella tapping along beside him.
This should be good...
(I am not going to apologize for this, I have paid in many ways for decades, and - as you will see - I also paid for it immediately and have remembered the lesson all my life and become much enlightened since this incident, but not alone because of it; one grows and comes to know.)
Anyway...he looked like a pushover.
"Give it up," I said to him, "...gimme your wallet or else..."
...he grinned bigly...
...then went to work on me with the brolly! I created a monster! He was like Johnny Depp fer Cris'sakes, jabbing and poking that goddamned thing into my ribs and the next one was in my ass Jack because I was running away from this crazy bastard as fast as I could go and he was just as fastly hitting me with that umbrella and finally tripped me from behind and put the dukes to me without ever mussing up his fuckin' vest...
...you could call it an object lesson in crime control.
HANDEL'S OVERTURE TO 'THE ALEXANDER FEAST'...
...plays an unending loop in my mind...
It is so beautiful a melding of instruments and sound that I am held speechless, spellbound.
It is, in my humble estimation, one of the best pieces of music to ever
come down the pike and for myself, think it should definitely be my going away
music, but not yet, not yet...o, listen to it...it is so beautiful...you can
almost hear the encomiums pouring down on your anointed head as your ashes are
strewn willy-nilly over the back 40, or is it opprobrium being heaped upon my
poor mortal's earthly remains?
I'm sorry already, sheeesh...get a Handel on it. I make light of it but
it is a glorious work of art and I can listen to it as often as I can view a beautiful painting and never tire of it...
Yet, something about it is so bittersweet it breaks down every false
courage I ever had, leaves me...how could I explain...I SLAP my forhead!? How
explain indeed. There's no explaining some things.
Violins counterpoint to cello to bass to winds...it is all too much.
...then again it could be the Kahlua...
'THE REASON I HAVEN'T INFLICTED MYSELF ON YOU MORE FREQUENTLY,'
...I have been meaning to tell a Friend of mine, '...is because I come with a lot of baggage, sort of a goyisha Woody Allen, mayo on my angst; he's got his klezmer/jazz clarinet, I got Hank Williams Jr. "...nobody wants me, I'm nobody's child..." Do you need the grief?'
And besides I would say, 'I'd probably bore you in no time at all; I mean yawn/ho-hum boredom; I've been told I'm much better on paper than in real life and having been around me for so long I can attest to that.'
Withal I require fealty unbound almost to the point of mouth agape at every pithy remark I utter and a sort of 'Yes, my liege' look at all times on your pretty, heart-shaped face. And all too soon what I now consider your o-so-clever repartee, I would be calling your bitter invective and a harangue against all that I stand for! (Huh? Duh?)
Then there's the cooking you'll have to do and my entree with dinner is...well, I could go on, but all in all you see it's better I don't call, come over or write very often. Please try to control your anxiety at this sad turn of events and don't do anything rash. It'll be tough for awhile but you can get by without me.
AFTER RED-DOTTING A FRIEND...
...who was doubling as a recalcitrant subscriber I sent a second red-dot reminder - six blank pages titled "Not From The Dump" and sure enough the prod worked because a few days later, there in the incoming was a 20 dollar check and once again a reader was euchred, ah, ushered into the fold...
I put the check in my wallet and thought no more of it until today when I
signed it and put it in my checking account and noticed that in the place where you put what the check was for he'd written 'Junkmail'...
...so as I walked through the dark, labrynthine warren of the Combat Zone to my own garret along Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, a toney part of Back Bay I lived in light years & many fears ago, a naif to the world and very as-yet untried & unenlightened...
...I well recall throwing half-finished cigs into the gutters and watching the down and out scabrous bums of the day practically club one another to get to the smoldering butt in the filthy street, as I walked away laughing, an 18-year-old know-it-all with an attitude and a lot to learn, and learn that lesson I did as, fast forward 25 years, it was I - ME - scrambling for the butts in the gutter tossed by show-off kids!
...turnabout being fair play (this too I had learned) I had to laugh.
...at another point in this embryonic period of my life, we are talking 1961 and 1962, I in my unworldly ignorance was cruising afoot when I saw a man walking briskly along alone in the early Fall evening, through the Common which runs down the middle of Commonwealth Avenue, an easy mark I think as I draw alongside him, he stepping lively in his three-piece herring-bone tweed suit, pointed-toe boots, pale blue shirt, fancy Brooks Brothers tie, and a walking-stick umbrella tapping along beside him.
This should be good...
(I am not going to apologize for this, I have paid in many ways for decades, and - as you will see - I also paid for it immediately and have remembered the lesson all my life and become much enlightened since this incident, but not alone because of it; one grows and comes to know.)
Anyway...he looked like a pushover.
"Give it up," I said to him, "...gimme your wallet or else..."
...he grinned bigly...
...then went to work on me with the brolly! I created a monster! He was like Johnny Depp fer Cris'sakes, jabbing and poking that goddamned thing into my ribs and the next one was in my ass Jack because I was running away from this crazy bastard as fast as I could go and he was just as fastly hitting me with that umbrella and finally tripped me from behind and put the dukes to me without ever mussing up his fuckin' vest...
...you could call it an object lesson in crime control.
HANDEL'S OVERTURE TO 'THE ALEXANDER FEAST'...
...plays an unending loop in my mind...
It is so beautiful a melding of instruments and sound that I am held speechless, spellbound.
It is, in my humble estimation, one of the best pieces of music to ever
come down the pike and for myself, think it should definitely be my going away
music, but not yet, not yet...o, listen to it...it is so beautiful...you can
almost hear the encomiums pouring down on your anointed head as your ashes are
strewn willy-nilly over the back 40, or is it opprobrium being heaped upon my
poor mortal's earthly remains?
I'm sorry already, sheeesh...get a Handel on it. I make light of it but
it is a glorious work of art and I can listen to it as often as I can view a beautiful painting and never tire of it...
Yet, something about it is so bittersweet it breaks down every false
courage I ever had, leaves me...how could I explain...I SLAP my forhead!? How
explain indeed. There's no explaining some things.
Violins counterpoint to cello to bass to winds...it is all too much.
...then again it could be the Kahlua...
'THE REASON I HAVEN'T INFLICTED MYSELF ON YOU MORE FREQUENTLY,'
...I have been meaning to tell a Friend of mine, '...is because I come with a lot of baggage, sort of a goyisha Woody Allen, mayo on my angst; he's got his klezmer/jazz clarinet, I got Hank Williams Jr. "...nobody wants me, I'm nobody's child..." Do you need the grief?'
And besides I would say, 'I'd probably bore you in no time at all; I mean yawn/ho-hum boredom; I've been told I'm much better on paper than in real life and having been around me for so long I can attest to that.'
Withal I require fealty unbound almost to the point of mouth agape at every pithy remark I utter and a sort of 'Yes, my liege' look at all times on your pretty, heart-shaped face. And all too soon what I now consider your o-so-clever repartee, I would be calling your bitter invective and a harangue against all that I stand for! (Huh? Duh?)
Then there's the cooking you'll have to do and my entree with dinner is...well, I could go on, but all in all you see it's better I don't call, come over or write very often. Please try to control your anxiety at this sad turn of events and don't do anything rash. It'll be tough for awhile but you can get by without me.
AFTER RED-DOTTING A FRIEND...
...who was doubling as a recalcitrant subscriber I sent a second red-dot reminder - six blank pages titled "Not From The Dump" and sure enough the prod worked because a few days later, there in the incoming was a 20 dollar check and once again a reader was euchred, ah, ushered into the fold...
I put the check in my wallet and thought no more of it until today when I
signed it and put it in my checking account and noticed that in the place where you put what the check was for he'd written 'Junkmail'...
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
I s'pose you had to be there, but...
…I’m parked on top of the dam, to my left the wooden covered bridge a 100 feet above the gorge across which is jogging a Fox (sorry for the reversion to MCP 70s lingo) but she was so pretty and as she ran along was doing arm stretches and taking in the breathtaking view, then veered and stopped 15 feet from me and started leg exercises on the guard rail – be still my heart – and after a few of these goes by my open window and politely says, ‘Good morning,’ and begins more leg stretches at the other guard rail, now only ten feet away from me – the thrill of being privy to this youthful beauty is nearly more than I can bear and I practically swoon from the rush - suddenly she comes over to my window and says, ‘Do you know where there’s a good bakery?’
‘Bakery,’ I barked laughing, ‘…you’re doing all these exercises to keep looking as good as you do and you want to know where there’s some donuts?!’
‘It’s why I exercise,’ she said, ‘...so I can go to the bakery…’ I filled her in on the nearest jelly donut and she disappeared down the bleak road…
‘Bakery,’ I barked laughing, ‘…you’re doing all these exercises to keep looking as good as you do and you want to know where there’s some donuts?!’
‘It’s why I exercise,’ she said, ‘...so I can go to the bakery…’ I filled her in on the nearest jelly donut and she disappeared down the bleak road…
Monday, August 18, 2008
Now, where was I...
…BEFORE THE SHOTS RANG OUT…
…o yes, going on at length about life, I mean what else is there? And how can I not rattle on about my life if I’m going to prate on about anybody’s, for how could I rattle on about yours? You know you I don’t, and even if I did I don’t know you as well as I thought I did or maybe I know you more than I wanted to, or…ad infinitum…I only know me and not very well at that; I tend to keep an arm’s length from myself and The Fool In The Mirror, both of whom have caused/are causing me no end of problems…it wouldn’t be right of me to write of you, fact is – not really having much to do and not quite yet ready to leave the comfort of my new nest and get an actual job – I sit around writing all my life, making things up; most of NFTD is made up of people who don’t exist and friends I don’t really have, believe me, the imaginary lovers, the instances and incidents which took place only in the mind, stories of places I’ve never been about people I never knew doing things that didn’t happen, anything just to get out of this miasma I DO live in…NFTD, the apotheosis of apocrypha…the apogee of exaggeration and the penultimate (the ultimate but one) in plagiarism, all in all a package deal. Hey, you get what you pay for…
…SPEAKING OF WHICH…DON’T READ THIS…
(Dude, look here, this is gotta be sorta sotto voce, small print know what I’m saying…don’t want just anyolebody to know I’m tapped and I was, ah, like wondering if I could, you know Dude like touch you up for like, you know, a handout, help with my drinking, I mean printing costs…any amount would do, from George Washington to Ben Franklin or a fistful of both would be nice…I once won $50,000 in a scratch ticket lottery, big pay days like that are few and far between for the hoi-polloi but man I mean I had lots of fun with that windfall and yes I know I shoulda tucked some away for a rainy day but hey, I didn’t, who knew…besides, every day is a rainy day…anyway Brother, anyway Sister, can you spare a dime? A c-note? Six Guinness? A bone Dude?! Many heartfelt thanx from me…I mean I know I joke about it but I am so greatful to you, without you NFTD would have ceased to exist long ago – what is world-class writing without world-class readers? Instead in January it’ll be 21, I will be three times older than that, neither of us anywhere near quitting!)
…o yes, going on at length about life, I mean what else is there? And how can I not rattle on about my life if I’m going to prate on about anybody’s, for how could I rattle on about yours? You know you I don’t, and even if I did I don’t know you as well as I thought I did or maybe I know you more than I wanted to, or…ad infinitum…I only know me and not very well at that; I tend to keep an arm’s length from myself and The Fool In The Mirror, both of whom have caused/are causing me no end of problems…it wouldn’t be right of me to write of you, fact is – not really having much to do and not quite yet ready to leave the comfort of my new nest and get an actual job – I sit around writing all my life, making things up; most of NFTD is made up of people who don’t exist and friends I don’t really have, believe me, the imaginary lovers, the instances and incidents which took place only in the mind, stories of places I’ve never been about people I never knew doing things that didn’t happen, anything just to get out of this miasma I DO live in…NFTD, the apotheosis of apocrypha…the apogee of exaggeration and the penultimate (the ultimate but one) in plagiarism, all in all a package deal. Hey, you get what you pay for…
…SPEAKING OF WHICH…DON’T READ THIS…
(Dude, look here, this is gotta be sorta sotto voce, small print know what I’m saying…don’t want just anyolebody to know I’m tapped and I was, ah, like wondering if I could, you know Dude like touch you up for like, you know, a handout, help with my drinking, I mean printing costs…any amount would do, from George Washington to Ben Franklin or a fistful of both would be nice…I once won $50,000 in a scratch ticket lottery, big pay days like that are few and far between for the hoi-polloi but man I mean I had lots of fun with that windfall and yes I know I shoulda tucked some away for a rainy day but hey, I didn’t, who knew…besides, every day is a rainy day…anyway Brother, anyway Sister, can you spare a dime? A c-note? Six Guinness? A bone Dude?! Many heartfelt thanx from me…I mean I know I joke about it but I am so greatful to you, without you NFTD would have ceased to exist long ago – what is world-class writing without world-class readers? Instead in January it’ll be 21, I will be three times older than that, neither of us anywhere near quitting!)
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
I've noticed that (we) fat people...
…pile on the clothes no matter the weather; on the hottest of days – it could be noon in The Mojave fer cryin’ out loud – on they go – undergarments, shirt, pants, sweater over shirt, vest over sweater, jacket over vest, add a scarf – thinking for some odd reason that somehow people will think, ‘Well (he/she) is not fat they are really Twiggy under all the canvas and are merely making a fashion statement…’
AS WE RODE HARMONIOUSLY ALONG…
…thru the dazzling night I remarked to my Good Friend Wisdom how enraptured I was of her and how blissed-out I was in her daunting presence; I waxed rhapsodically so eloquently in my aching-hearted soliloquy that I nearly wept myself, touched as I was by my own sincerity and so filled with love and affection for my Dear Friend, when she turned and beamed those amazing apple-green jade eyes at me and said, ‘Sorry, I had Hendrix cranked under the earphones…were you saying something?’ I withdrew into my shell; Turtle Man departs.
WHAT I HAD FIGURED ON DOING…
…with my sagacious, Sephardim amanuensis was that me and her would celebrate my erudition and literal/literary genius as she dutifully transcribed 35 years of my journals onto a disk from which, in a perfect world, I was to extrapolate the gems, discard the awful offal and get published to become the latest darling of the jet-setting literary world, traveling far and worldwide together to spread The Word, my word(s), but they – the journals – wrought forth only her most acerbic wrath (‘…you were such a drunk, wasting your whole fucking life…’) and my dream cum nightmare quickly dissolved into what has turned out to be a verbal burning of me in effigy as I am skewered by her caustic barbs, light years away from the adulation and praises I had envisioned, to wit: ‘…the work isn’t stimulating…’) Excuse me? What a blow to my already low self-esteem. What happened to my approbation? This egg on my face was supposed to be the jewel in my crown…
AS WE RODE HARMONIOUSLY ALONG…
…thru the dazzling night I remarked to my Good Friend Wisdom how enraptured I was of her and how blissed-out I was in her daunting presence; I waxed rhapsodically so eloquently in my aching-hearted soliloquy that I nearly wept myself, touched as I was by my own sincerity and so filled with love and affection for my Dear Friend, when she turned and beamed those amazing apple-green jade eyes at me and said, ‘Sorry, I had Hendrix cranked under the earphones…were you saying something?’ I withdrew into my shell; Turtle Man departs.
WHAT I HAD FIGURED ON DOING…
…with my sagacious, Sephardim amanuensis was that me and her would celebrate my erudition and literal/literary genius as she dutifully transcribed 35 years of my journals onto a disk from which, in a perfect world, I was to extrapolate the gems, discard the awful offal and get published to become the latest darling of the jet-setting literary world, traveling far and worldwide together to spread The Word, my word(s), but they – the journals – wrought forth only her most acerbic wrath (‘…you were such a drunk, wasting your whole fucking life…’) and my dream cum nightmare quickly dissolved into what has turned out to be a verbal burning of me in effigy as I am skewered by her caustic barbs, light years away from the adulation and praises I had envisioned, to wit: ‘…the work isn’t stimulating…’) Excuse me? What a blow to my already low self-esteem. What happened to my approbation? This egg on my face was supposed to be the jewel in my crown…
Far Away & Long Ago...
...how could it be?
With the shimmering, blinding brightness of the red sun rising over the Aegean Sea while I crawl from under my goatskin blanket into the gleaming September morn as fishermen in brightly colored boats toil away offshore it might have been 480 B.C. and I a messenger enroute to warn Leonidas of the approaching Persian army of Xerxes on its way to Thermopylae…
It might have been except for the Dylan Highway 61 Revisited album I slipped onto the tiny tinny Phillips portable stereo (perfect for Dylan’s raspin’ and rheumin’) and notwithstanding the Zippo I lit my Marlboro with as I hitched up my tattered jeans and began packing my stuff onto the back of the little 2-wheeled BMW I'd rented back in Marathona a few days ago when this odyssey began after a week of projectile drinking/dope smoking on the Acropolis and in the Plaka, listening to bouzoukias ringing through the dizzying star-lit nights and watching the dusky Mediterranean maidens strut their peasant, pleasant selves in sensual, supple native dancing...groooan…
Nearly five decades ago! Those young lovelies of yore, if they've managed to survive the passing years, today are all my age more or less, for I was barely 20 then and invincible. Now I am almost 65 and no longer invincible.
MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT…
…Hillary Clinton won’t be VP but she will become Secretary of State; the new Vice President under President Obama will be Nancy Pelosi. I feel sure for I’ve been watching & reading the body English and listening to what isn’t said, never mind what you see & hear in politics; the deals are cut where no one sees nor hears and the gloves come off…courtly diplomats’ Pecksniffian rhetoric quickly gives way to the vernacular, neither side trusts the other, any rapprochement is a façade & temporary…so there you have it Dear Readers - time will tell but I’d bet on it…No telling what the honorable Sen. McCain might do, but with Senator Clinton on deck for Secretary of State, a relieved Condoleeza Rice might like the idea of VP in her resume, for when she finally gets back to UCLA to play her Mozart. Both sides of the aisle playing the race card and the gender card…
With the shimmering, blinding brightness of the red sun rising over the Aegean Sea while I crawl from under my goatskin blanket into the gleaming September morn as fishermen in brightly colored boats toil away offshore it might have been 480 B.C. and I a messenger enroute to warn Leonidas of the approaching Persian army of Xerxes on its way to Thermopylae…
It might have been except for the Dylan Highway 61 Revisited album I slipped onto the tiny tinny Phillips portable stereo (perfect for Dylan’s raspin’ and rheumin’) and notwithstanding the Zippo I lit my Marlboro with as I hitched up my tattered jeans and began packing my stuff onto the back of the little 2-wheeled BMW I'd rented back in Marathona a few days ago when this odyssey began after a week of projectile drinking/dope smoking on the Acropolis and in the Plaka, listening to bouzoukias ringing through the dizzying star-lit nights and watching the dusky Mediterranean maidens strut their peasant, pleasant selves in sensual, supple native dancing...groooan…
Nearly five decades ago! Those young lovelies of yore, if they've managed to survive the passing years, today are all my age more or less, for I was barely 20 then and invincible. Now I am almost 65 and no longer invincible.
MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT…
…Hillary Clinton won’t be VP but she will become Secretary of State; the new Vice President under President Obama will be Nancy Pelosi. I feel sure for I’ve been watching & reading the body English and listening to what isn’t said, never mind what you see & hear in politics; the deals are cut where no one sees nor hears and the gloves come off…courtly diplomats’ Pecksniffian rhetoric quickly gives way to the vernacular, neither side trusts the other, any rapprochement is a façade & temporary…so there you have it Dear Readers - time will tell but I’d bet on it…No telling what the honorable Sen. McCain might do, but with Senator Clinton on deck for Secretary of State, a relieved Condoleeza Rice might like the idea of VP in her resume, for when she finally gets back to UCLA to play her Mozart. Both sides of the aisle playing the race card and the gender card…
Monday, June 23, 2008
I'm @ work if you can call it that...
…sitting motionless in the searing heat, waiting for a consumer to breech the door and buy up half the store, the Thrift Shop in Townshend in which I while away a few hours per week trying to be of some use…a doleful Edward Elgar elegy saps my positive attitude and strength; drained I slump deeper into the chair, deeper, deeper in thought…
…at this instant in time there’s nowhere else I’d rather be and no one here but me is good for my melancholy mood but not for business…
…a sadness as palpable as fog enshrouds me as I see my poor Mom wracked with Parkinson’s Disease, lurching to and fro, eyes bulging, tongue darting in and out, until now Parkinson’s was something that happened to somebody else – who new what it looked like!
UNLIKE AN AROMATIC HORSE STABLE…
…pig barns stink, they stink and they stink a lot, so I wasn’t too keen when I worked for Buzzard Brothers Construction (Don’t Call Us We’ll Call You) and Zane the boss contracted to tear down a pig barn and build it elsewhere as a house…’It’s gonna stink Dudley,’ I said to Zane – I once asked him what kind of a name Zane was and he growled ‘I’m an Arabic-Jew from New Jersey, what about it…’ I let it pass – ‘…just ‘cause there’s no pigs in it now it still stinks right? Years from now it still will stink…’
…we built it anyway, no one listens to me initially…we built it anyway and by the time we were through the ridge pole was three inches lower at one end and the shingles were all bunched up at the peak; no word of a lie fifteen years later you could still smell Porky Pig…
LOST IN REVERIE…
…dimly aware of dawn and birds and of a sussurant breeze wafting the cool air; it’s like I’m perc-ed out but I’m not, ‘tho stoned I yam…you could almost always say that…I’ve known people for decades who’ve known me no other way, anyway I was lost in reverie revisiting and revising history to no avail…the facts are immutable, irrefutable and the truth hurts.
I stand accused, I plead guilty and I am sentenced to life on earth…
…I yearn for a beer, a couple maybe to take the chill off, to calm down, catch my stride and move on. The past is no place to dwell I tell the Fool In The Mirror, there’s nothing to be done about it & you can’t usually define the whole by a single part…out of nowhere Schubert’s Rosamunde overture comes crashing down around my sensibilities and I am jolted back to the here and now, the only place to dwell.
…at this instant in time there’s nowhere else I’d rather be and no one here but me is good for my melancholy mood but not for business…
…a sadness as palpable as fog enshrouds me as I see my poor Mom wracked with Parkinson’s Disease, lurching to and fro, eyes bulging, tongue darting in and out, until now Parkinson’s was something that happened to somebody else – who new what it looked like!
UNLIKE AN AROMATIC HORSE STABLE…
…pig barns stink, they stink and they stink a lot, so I wasn’t too keen when I worked for Buzzard Brothers Construction (Don’t Call Us We’ll Call You) and Zane the boss contracted to tear down a pig barn and build it elsewhere as a house…’It’s gonna stink Dudley,’ I said to Zane – I once asked him what kind of a name Zane was and he growled ‘I’m an Arabic-Jew from New Jersey, what about it…’ I let it pass – ‘…just ‘cause there’s no pigs in it now it still stinks right? Years from now it still will stink…’
…we built it anyway, no one listens to me initially…we built it anyway and by the time we were through the ridge pole was three inches lower at one end and the shingles were all bunched up at the peak; no word of a lie fifteen years later you could still smell Porky Pig…
LOST IN REVERIE…
…dimly aware of dawn and birds and of a sussurant breeze wafting the cool air; it’s like I’m perc-ed out but I’m not, ‘tho stoned I yam…you could almost always say that…I’ve known people for decades who’ve known me no other way, anyway I was lost in reverie revisiting and revising history to no avail…the facts are immutable, irrefutable and the truth hurts.
I stand accused, I plead guilty and I am sentenced to life on earth…
…I yearn for a beer, a couple maybe to take the chill off, to calm down, catch my stride and move on. The past is no place to dwell I tell the Fool In The Mirror, there’s nothing to be done about it & you can’t usually define the whole by a single part…out of nowhere Schubert’s Rosamunde overture comes crashing down around my sensibilities and I am jolted back to the here and now, the only place to dwell.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Random "...NOTES..." From Wrinkled Scraps...
…it was a good call. As I was leaving Sonya suddenly hollered out the window as I was about to get into my car near which stood half a dozen people each waiting for one of Wacky Willy’s foot long dogs and not-quite-world-famous salsa, she said…’Terry! Wait, come back…’ to which Wacky Willie shouted ‘Bet you don’t hear that much…’ Which of course cracked me up, but it was a bittersweet laugh of irony at just how true it was…
…I can think of no other place I’d rather not be than where I am. Once it was my favorite town in all the world, now I can’t stand it, 15 months I have been gone, it is anathema to me, it has become a suppurating wound which won’t heal and this time when I clear the borders I won’t be back…
…having nearly strangled to death on a thrice daily basis for the last four years I can relate to being hung or sent to the gas chamber; nothing in my cloistered life prepared me for not being able to breathe…nor neither did I have any idea how terrifying the harrowing psychological horrors could be/are…sitting bolt upright at night, gagging, gagging, no air in no air out, gasping, heaving great sobs of airless despair…sweat running in rivulets down my brow, heart beating like a trip hammer, mind racing out of control, fear and dread, fear and dread consuming me as I fumble and grope in the darkness for the air hose, finally, breathe in breathe out, inspire, expire, breathe in breathe out, finally the terror recedes, the heart beats on – takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’ – and I? I continue to live and love and proclaim once for all that life, with a capital G, is Good. Dying not so good…
…It’s been a long time it seems…since last we met; I've been in seclusion, on holiday, took leave of my various jobs and my myriad senses & sensibilities - but I'm back, as you can tell...I’m back and I'm new and improved, although I must agree with the common(wo)man and the public domain that precious little was lacking in my previous incarnation; plus the hue and cry raised because of my prolonged literary absence has been rewarding in every way - egotistically, financially, literarily and literally; I had no idea my supporters, though few in number, were such rabid devotees who brook no opprobrium in re NFTD, readers who have no truck with the ruling class and do not truckle under to the status quo! For them – You! - I forge ahead, carry on, sally forth, go the extra mile, give it my all and my best second effort; in short, knuckle down to work for there's a world of rest beyond.
…I can think of no other place I’d rather not be than where I am. Once it was my favorite town in all the world, now I can’t stand it, 15 months I have been gone, it is anathema to me, it has become a suppurating wound which won’t heal and this time when I clear the borders I won’t be back…
…having nearly strangled to death on a thrice daily basis for the last four years I can relate to being hung or sent to the gas chamber; nothing in my cloistered life prepared me for not being able to breathe…nor neither did I have any idea how terrifying the harrowing psychological horrors could be/are…sitting bolt upright at night, gagging, gagging, no air in no air out, gasping, heaving great sobs of airless despair…sweat running in rivulets down my brow, heart beating like a trip hammer, mind racing out of control, fear and dread, fear and dread consuming me as I fumble and grope in the darkness for the air hose, finally, breathe in breathe out, inspire, expire, breathe in breathe out, finally the terror recedes, the heart beats on – takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’ – and I? I continue to live and love and proclaim once for all that life, with a capital G, is Good. Dying not so good…
…It’s been a long time it seems…since last we met; I've been in seclusion, on holiday, took leave of my various jobs and my myriad senses & sensibilities - but I'm back, as you can tell...I’m back and I'm new and improved, although I must agree with the common(wo)man and the public domain that precious little was lacking in my previous incarnation; plus the hue and cry raised because of my prolonged literary absence has been rewarding in every way - egotistically, financially, literarily and literally; I had no idea my supporters, though few in number, were such rabid devotees who brook no opprobrium in re NFTD, readers who have no truck with the ruling class and do not truckle under to the status quo! For them – You! - I forge ahead, carry on, sally forth, go the extra mile, give it my all and my best second effort; in short, knuckle down to work for there's a world of rest beyond.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Racing to meet a (nonexistent) deadline
…has taken on new meaning and a life of its own; the first time it was ever explained to me was in Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor about the notorious Civil War prison where if a prisoner stepped over a line he stood to get shot, which in a number of cases was preferable to the miseries of Andersonville, a good book to reinforce your anti-war credentials even though it’s an anomaly as you may be reading of these horrors poolside or with a mint julep at hand…well, nobody said life was going to be fair or easy. Your good/bad luck today could change dramatically overnight.
…my deadline is less permanent, hardly carved in stone, I’m just trying to reach the end of a page so I can send it off to you…see how selfless I am? It’s all one to me whether I send it tonight or tomorrow night or not at all…it’s a good read is NFTD but it’s not exactly blood plasma without which you’d croak, whereas for me that’s exactly what it is…my raison d’etre and bete noir rolled in one, best of both worlds…
…I look forward to seeing you, hearing from you, reading your e-mails and looking at the world through your lens then filtering it through mine…in the aggregate all is well…
…my deadline is less permanent, hardly carved in stone, I’m just trying to reach the end of a page so I can send it off to you…see how selfless I am? It’s all one to me whether I send it tonight or tomorrow night or not at all…it’s a good read is NFTD but it’s not exactly blood plasma without which you’d croak, whereas for me that’s exactly what it is…my raison d’etre and bete noir rolled in one, best of both worlds…
…I look forward to seeing you, hearing from you, reading your e-mails and looking at the world through your lens then filtering it through mine…in the aggregate all is well…
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Lest You Mistake the Drunken Lawyer Albee
...for the real thing, ask yourself: could there really be such a person who held himself in such low self-esteem while drunk on white wine, beer, vodka, and a myriad of drugs that he would take a half-gallon empty glass jar of Tropicana and, holding one hand over one end and the other hand over the other end, smash himself so viciously across the forehead that he shattered the jug, and its razor-like shards slit his forehead to bloody ribbons? And who appeared the next day in court (as an advocate not in this instance a defendant) swathed in bandages around his head looking like he'd just survived the storming of the Bastille?
…he could only be fictional.
...in real-life (whatever that is) it's hard to imagine anybody - drunk lawyer or not - drinking six six-ounce glasses of mixed liquors straight and when he passed out 45 minutes later never put his hands out to stop his fall as he tumbled from the Carrie Nation's bar stool to the parquet, slapping his brain-dead head on a railroad tie-cum-foot rest, first thing to hit, WHAM a nosedive...he was his own worst-case scenario.
...at his wedding he instructed the ushers to fleece the coats hanging in the coatroom of the church because he'd drunk up all the money he'd intended to give them for helping at his wedding, so he told them, 'Just plead dumb if anybody says anything...they'll believe it.' We, ah, THEY didn't find much.
...at his wedding reception before anyone got so much as a slice of it someone absconded with a 35-pound steamship round, which so angered the groom he went racing back to his office and, after grabbing a lever action 32.40, ran down the steps (in his tux) and into the streets, dashing into the notorious Nation's where he scattered the dazed clientele when he shattered the quiet by snapping off a few rounds figuring the scoundrel with his - Albee's! - side of beef, had to be in there and if he wasn't, well...this is Carrie Nation's - who's gonna notice? Or care...
…could there be a drunken lawyer Albee who babbled like a fool in the bars but next day sober at the bar of justice was erudite and cosmopolitan, a veritable Solon? Stay tuned to NFTD for the lowdown on the comings and goings of the nefarious denizens of Carrie Nation's...the sleazy dive the state's most powerful politicians couldn't close...the cremma della cremma rubbing elbows with the nastiest of vermin and you often couldn't tell one from the other...
…yes, from the outset I claim Albee the lawyer as total fabrication, absolutely the figment of imagination, no way does he remind me of, nor is he based on anyone I may have known in my life, I hastily add to distance myself from any litigation for libel against me in the unlikely event that he should get un-disbarred and come back at me with a vengeance. Who needs all those dorky shnooks from Lake Woebegone? That goody-goody two shoes, powder puff fluffy yuppie nonsense? Sheeee-it…gimme them hard-drinking, hard-riding, drunken stumblebums anyday!
…he could only be fictional.
...in real-life (whatever that is) it's hard to imagine anybody - drunk lawyer or not - drinking six six-ounce glasses of mixed liquors straight and when he passed out 45 minutes later never put his hands out to stop his fall as he tumbled from the Carrie Nation's bar stool to the parquet, slapping his brain-dead head on a railroad tie-cum-foot rest, first thing to hit, WHAM a nosedive...he was his own worst-case scenario.
...at his wedding he instructed the ushers to fleece the coats hanging in the coatroom of the church because he'd drunk up all the money he'd intended to give them for helping at his wedding, so he told them, 'Just plead dumb if anybody says anything...they'll believe it.' We, ah, THEY didn't find much.
...at his wedding reception before anyone got so much as a slice of it someone absconded with a 35-pound steamship round, which so angered the groom he went racing back to his office and, after grabbing a lever action 32.40, ran down the steps (in his tux) and into the streets, dashing into the notorious Nation's where he scattered the dazed clientele when he shattered the quiet by snapping off a few rounds figuring the scoundrel with his - Albee's! - side of beef, had to be in there and if he wasn't, well...this is Carrie Nation's - who's gonna notice? Or care...
…could there be a drunken lawyer Albee who babbled like a fool in the bars but next day sober at the bar of justice was erudite and cosmopolitan, a veritable Solon? Stay tuned to NFTD for the lowdown on the comings and goings of the nefarious denizens of Carrie Nation's...the sleazy dive the state's most powerful politicians couldn't close...the cremma della cremma rubbing elbows with the nastiest of vermin and you often couldn't tell one from the other...
…yes, from the outset I claim Albee the lawyer as total fabrication, absolutely the figment of imagination, no way does he remind me of, nor is he based on anyone I may have known in my life, I hastily add to distance myself from any litigation for libel against me in the unlikely event that he should get un-disbarred and come back at me with a vengeance. Who needs all those dorky shnooks from Lake Woebegone? That goody-goody two shoes, powder puff fluffy yuppie nonsense? Sheeee-it…gimme them hard-drinking, hard-riding, drunken stumblebums anyday!
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
NFTD DEAR READER PROFILING...
…it reads something like this…(First off, by way of explanation let me tell you that looking like I do I get profiled every day and have for the last 40 years) – that disclaimer laid, this is the breakdown, in my humble estimation, of what an NFTD reader consists of/looks like:
…in the main you are neither male nor female but rather somewhat androgynous, a trait I see as very acceptable; your age varies from…hmm…I know I have had readers as young as teens and a couple octogenarians, somewhere in there is the median age, my guess is you are 35-50, with lots of twentysomethings; you are pretty well homogenized as I have 1,659 readers who come in a variety of colors, live in 28 states and 24 countries, many of you are multilingual…some of you are liberal some of you are not…many of you (us) are intelligent but uneducated, i. e. we got out of high school okay but it was touch and go after that, few are the sheepskins among the small cadre of NFTD devotees…I/you/we/they are hip, speak the language of the street…we have collectively traversed the earth and beyond…know everything worth knowing and always open to new things worth knowing…plus, our resume is impressive, unimpeachable credentials for we have worked from the underground up to the heavens in a myriad of earthly endeavors…from the mines to the moon…from the bottom of the ocean to the Sea of Tranquility…
…in the main you are neither male nor female but rather somewhat androgynous, a trait I see as very acceptable; your age varies from…hmm…I know I have had readers as young as teens and a couple octogenarians, somewhere in there is the median age, my guess is you are 35-50, with lots of twentysomethings; you are pretty well homogenized as I have 1,659 readers who come in a variety of colors, live in 28 states and 24 countries, many of you are multilingual…some of you are liberal some of you are not…many of you (us) are intelligent but uneducated, i. e. we got out of high school okay but it was touch and go after that, few are the sheepskins among the small cadre of NFTD devotees…I/you/we/they are hip, speak the language of the street…we have collectively traversed the earth and beyond…know everything worth knowing and always open to new things worth knowing…plus, our resume is impressive, unimpeachable credentials for we have worked from the underground up to the heavens in a myriad of earthly endeavors…from the mines to the moon…from the bottom of the ocean to the Sea of Tranquility…
MORE OF NFTD NAME-DROPPING...
& PATTING ITSELF ON THE BACK…
(From Mike Gunderloy’s ‘Whole Earth Review’ review)
Acworth is a little town in southern New Hampshire, about fifteen miles due north of Keene. As far as I know, it had no claim to fame until around 1986, when Terry Ward began publishing Notes From The Dump. Terry's approach epitomizes the no-frills end of the publishing spectrum. Every couple of weeks he puts together six pages of memories, ruminations on world affairs, notes on his love life, firewood ads and other drifting thoughts. Then he runs copies off on his computer printer, folds and stamps them, and tosses them in the mailbox -- whence they spread across the world, bringing little bits of New Hampshire to the rest of us…a sample below:
Roseanne was on her way to cop some crank when she flipped her little Sportster on the Cross Island Expressway, tumbled headlong into a concrete road divider and died on the spot probably so high on methedrine she's still high and never knew what hit her. Roseanne was absolutely the ultimate example of life in the breakdown lane.
Like a lap dog I followed her around. We drove taxi together in New York for three years and I would schedule my work day around hers in order to just be able to see her and talk to her -- o that dear sweet voice and that wonderful smile which would light up a room -- and she was gifted, endowed with this uncanny ability to play the piano from the blues of Elmore James to the lilting melodies of Brahms, o I tell you piano was her forte.
(Hey there Terry, - I'm glad I've made it onto your list of newsletter recipients, always great hearing your take on things - keep it coming. If you didn't recognize the name, Dylan here (Lauri's son).I live in Greenfield most of the time these days, but I was wondering if you might be up for another visit, and maybe make a portrait of you in your place. If this is something you'd be interested in let me know, if not I'd still enjoy stopping by again at some point. Hope alls well, take care, Dylan Richardson)
(From Mike Gunderloy’s ‘Whole Earth Review’ review)
Acworth is a little town in southern New Hampshire, about fifteen miles due north of Keene. As far as I know, it had no claim to fame until around 1986, when Terry Ward began publishing Notes From The Dump. Terry's approach epitomizes the no-frills end of the publishing spectrum. Every couple of weeks he puts together six pages of memories, ruminations on world affairs, notes on his love life, firewood ads and other drifting thoughts. Then he runs copies off on his computer printer, folds and stamps them, and tosses them in the mailbox -- whence they spread across the world, bringing little bits of New Hampshire to the rest of us…a sample below:
Roseanne was on her way to cop some crank when she flipped her little Sportster on the Cross Island Expressway, tumbled headlong into a concrete road divider and died on the spot probably so high on methedrine she's still high and never knew what hit her. Roseanne was absolutely the ultimate example of life in the breakdown lane.
Like a lap dog I followed her around. We drove taxi together in New York for three years and I would schedule my work day around hers in order to just be able to see her and talk to her -- o that dear sweet voice and that wonderful smile which would light up a room -- and she was gifted, endowed with this uncanny ability to play the piano from the blues of Elmore James to the lilting melodies of Brahms, o I tell you piano was her forte.
(Hey there Terry, - I'm glad I've made it onto your list of newsletter recipients, always great hearing your take on things - keep it coming. If you didn't recognize the name, Dylan here (Lauri's son).I live in Greenfield most of the time these days, but I was wondering if you might be up for another visit, and maybe make a portrait of you in your place. If this is something you'd be interested in let me know, if not I'd still enjoy stopping by again at some point. Hope alls well, take care, Dylan Richardson)
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Speaking in the vernacular...
…is second nature to me even though I know how to speak correctly; it is impossible for me to just carry on and not get exercised in the matter of the Iraq War; the New York Times, ABC News, Yahoo News et cetera, all the major media, are afraid to talk it up, to get it out in the open in a way the hoi-polloi can relate to and never mind couching the obvious horrors in enigmatic semantics.
…their diatribes got no meat on the bones, they are rants without rage and they rarely have the gall nor the balls to say George Bush brought this evil war on us without rhyme nor reason…that first and foremost - he lied from the start and contrived the whole murderous operation which was/is sleight-of-hand, smoke & mirrors, bald-faced lies, wildly miscalculated, has killed 4003 of our finest young men & women, upended the economy to the point where even the filthy rich are worried and has left our poor, beleaguered country twisting in the wind while the rest of the world rains opprobrium down on us…all predicated on a pack of lies…
…I don’t mean to be seditious in the literal sense (incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority) - but The People, Yes are being taxed in any number of ways - fiscally, physically & mentally and the world-round are in mortal and constant peril…
…because a pompous ass without a clue is calling the shots, aided and abetted by that most charlatan of fakirs, Dick Cheney who makes Tricky Dick Nixon look like a monument to restraint…the violence these two head cases have perpetrated on the world will last a generation…that baby Payton I mentioned on Page One stands a good chance of getting gunned down in Baghdad 20 years from now because of what George Bush and Dick Cheney are doing today…with all due and considerable respect to John McCain, he may be a great American but I’m not too keen on anyone who thinks he’d have us stay in Baghdad a 100 years if that’s what it takes…what what takes? Until we win? There’ll be no such day. Everything that’s going haywire in this world today is a spinoff of the War In Iraq. There’s not one person who can go it alone, he or she will need all the help he/she can get and a stiff backbone to lead us back to where we can lead by good example rather than rule by might.
…I’m more or less ready to throw in with Barack Obama even though I like and admire Hillary; Obama I’ve liked from the start but until recently leaned to Hillary…then to Obama, back to Hillary, back to Barack, but Hillary, coupled with her philandering Significant Other in the White House, would be just more of the same only from the other side of the aisle, whereas I believe Obama will actually change things for the better…so I’m going to bat for him - but he better produce and quickly because we don’t have much time…we’ll have to hold his big feet to the fire…today things don’t look too good for the future no matter who you are or where you live…or this could just be another NFTD Skewed View…
…their diatribes got no meat on the bones, they are rants without rage and they rarely have the gall nor the balls to say George Bush brought this evil war on us without rhyme nor reason…that first and foremost - he lied from the start and contrived the whole murderous operation which was/is sleight-of-hand, smoke & mirrors, bald-faced lies, wildly miscalculated, has killed 4003 of our finest young men & women, upended the economy to the point where even the filthy rich are worried and has left our poor, beleaguered country twisting in the wind while the rest of the world rains opprobrium down on us…all predicated on a pack of lies…
…I don’t mean to be seditious in the literal sense (incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority) - but The People, Yes are being taxed in any number of ways - fiscally, physically & mentally and the world-round are in mortal and constant peril…
…because a pompous ass without a clue is calling the shots, aided and abetted by that most charlatan of fakirs, Dick Cheney who makes Tricky Dick Nixon look like a monument to restraint…the violence these two head cases have perpetrated on the world will last a generation…that baby Payton I mentioned on Page One stands a good chance of getting gunned down in Baghdad 20 years from now because of what George Bush and Dick Cheney are doing today…with all due and considerable respect to John McCain, he may be a great American but I’m not too keen on anyone who thinks he’d have us stay in Baghdad a 100 years if that’s what it takes…what what takes? Until we win? There’ll be no such day. Everything that’s going haywire in this world today is a spinoff of the War In Iraq. There’s not one person who can go it alone, he or she will need all the help he/she can get and a stiff backbone to lead us back to where we can lead by good example rather than rule by might.
…I’m more or less ready to throw in with Barack Obama even though I like and admire Hillary; Obama I’ve liked from the start but until recently leaned to Hillary…then to Obama, back to Hillary, back to Barack, but Hillary, coupled with her philandering Significant Other in the White House, would be just more of the same only from the other side of the aisle, whereas I believe Obama will actually change things for the better…so I’m going to bat for him - but he better produce and quickly because we don’t have much time…we’ll have to hold his big feet to the fire…today things don’t look too good for the future no matter who you are or where you live…or this could just be another NFTD Skewed View…
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
The $500 BILLION SQUANDERED IN IRAQ...
…could have educated a lot of children, filled a lot of potholes, repaired a whole bunch of bridges, physical and psychological; could have been used to build homes, create jobs, clean up the environment, might’ve kept the price of oil down or been used in medical research seeking cures to any number of illnesses…hypotheses of what might have been are endless, everybody’s got one and really there is no proving a negative so we don’t know what might have been, there’s no telling, we’re stuck with what is and what is ain’t good.
…war in Iraq has taken a back seat to the economy, is below the fold of The Times, isn’t in the 1st words of the talking heads; the staggering economy which is about to come crashing down around us has ironically been driven to the forefront of our attention by the Iraq war we now largely ignore, a vicious circle game – our disposable income which would be so useful to us here at home, has been (and is being) thrown mindlessly into a bottomless pit.
…with tens of thousands dead, 4000 of them ours, 29,000 wounded – I can personally attest to a large number of wounded veterans as I often see them – limbless, brain-damaged, listless and lost & roaming the labyrinthine corridors of the VA…the 1,000-yard stare is back…no price can be put on this carnage yet President Bush has said that things are going along just fine, we’re winning the war, $12 billion a month is chump change in his skewed view (easy for him to say, not his money); the President continues to urge us to stay the course...he just doesn’t get it…hello…anybody home? He had better judgment when he was a drunk partying in Putney...
…now we are stuck with a loose cannon run amok in the White House – actually it should be plural, cannons, for the White House and the Bush Administration is full of nut cases and clueless airheads who have besmirched the reputation and lives of America, The Beautiful and smeared it with the blood of innocents.
…I saw one of the innocents yesterday, not yet noticeably touched by the war, a baby named Payton and I said to myself later remarking what a cute kid he was that he’ll be a man grown old before America recovers from this.
…war in Iraq has taken a back seat to the economy, is below the fold of The Times, isn’t in the 1st words of the talking heads; the staggering economy which is about to come crashing down around us has ironically been driven to the forefront of our attention by the Iraq war we now largely ignore, a vicious circle game – our disposable income which would be so useful to us here at home, has been (and is being) thrown mindlessly into a bottomless pit.
…with tens of thousands dead, 4000 of them ours, 29,000 wounded – I can personally attest to a large number of wounded veterans as I often see them – limbless, brain-damaged, listless and lost & roaming the labyrinthine corridors of the VA…the 1,000-yard stare is back…no price can be put on this carnage yet President Bush has said that things are going along just fine, we’re winning the war, $12 billion a month is chump change in his skewed view (easy for him to say, not his money); the President continues to urge us to stay the course...he just doesn’t get it…hello…anybody home? He had better judgment when he was a drunk partying in Putney...
…now we are stuck with a loose cannon run amok in the White House – actually it should be plural, cannons, for the White House and the Bush Administration is full of nut cases and clueless airheads who have besmirched the reputation and lives of America, The Beautiful and smeared it with the blood of innocents.
…I saw one of the innocents yesterday, not yet noticeably touched by the war, a baby named Payton and I said to myself later remarking what a cute kid he was that he’ll be a man grown old before America recovers from this.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The letters I could never seem to write...
…the conversations I have had only in my mind, the paintings I didn’t and won’t get around to painting, the stories that never got written, the songs I never sang and the things I wanted to be but aren’t, have all gathered together to haunt me late in life now that my faculties are failing and my mind is going frail…I’m not unhappy where I am in this world but it is not where I thought I’d be, which actually I don’t know that I gave it much thought at all, certainly there was no long-term planning – who in their right mind would plan to end up a sick derelict in an independent living facility? – hmmm, ’…in their right mind…’ – maybe I’m not in my right mind and have never been, well, what can I tell you, what you see/saw is what you get/got; nowadays, it’s helter-skelter planning, if it’s more than 24 hours from now Dude it’s out of my sphere of reference, cannot relate, I am presently only living in the present.
…ah yes, The Present…’Everything is here and now’ - it was ever thus but I only paid it lip service – maybe today, now! – I will write that letter, sing that song et cetera…ahhh me, if only I had, if only I hadn’t, I could’ve, I would’ve I should’ve…why, why, why didn’t I…why, why, why did I? I would love to trade some of what I have for some of what I missed.
…ah yes, The Present…’Everything is here and now’ - it was ever thus but I only paid it lip service – maybe today, now! – I will write that letter, sing that song et cetera…ahhh me, if only I had, if only I hadn’t, I could’ve, I would’ve I should’ve…why, why, why didn’t I…why, why, why did I? I would love to trade some of what I have for some of what I missed.
Random "...NOTES..." From Wrinkled Scraps...
FOR YEARS I’VE BEEN PRATING ON…
…about how sick I am and how I am at death’s door ready to check out, but still I linger on in this limbo between life and death; I’m sorry not to have croaked already Dear Reader, I’m sure by now you’re totally bored by the subject and in a ‘…come-on already…give it up…’ mode - so I apologize for being so gauche as to continue living…
…that said, I must tell you that relatively speaking my life is good, through no particular effort of mine since I’ve spent 6 & a ½ decades twirling in a lunatic’s sarabande and leading a life of more or less ruinous and debilitating behavior, trying to put asunder what until recently I had considered a life impervious to pain…o well, whatta ya gonna do…
AS A YOUNG MAN…
…I was in a business which had me riding in a lot of police cars, front and back seats; you’re a guest in the front, and of course in the back you’re usually a handcuffed perp…most recently (but years ago) I ran out of gas in the middle of a busy intersection, so there my little Daytona sat waiting to be t-boned @ noon and the nearest gas a mile away…a kindly state-truck driver stopped for me and took me to the gas station where I got gas and began the long trek back only to suddenly have a police car pull up beside me – and ask was I headed to such and such an intersection where they knew a car was stuck out of gas and I said yes so they said well get in the back and off we took, me who’d had a beer for breakfast, with a bag of dope in one pocket and a handful of percs in another, a can of gas on my lap, and two cops in front who, when we got half way there, put the blues on and stopped traffic while I, heart in throat, walked across the road, put the gas in, and left with a big smile thank you wave…too bad for them, they coulda had a bonus…
…about how sick I am and how I am at death’s door ready to check out, but still I linger on in this limbo between life and death; I’m sorry not to have croaked already Dear Reader, I’m sure by now you’re totally bored by the subject and in a ‘…come-on already…give it up…’ mode - so I apologize for being so gauche as to continue living…
…that said, I must tell you that relatively speaking my life is good, through no particular effort of mine since I’ve spent 6 & a ½ decades twirling in a lunatic’s sarabande and leading a life of more or less ruinous and debilitating behavior, trying to put asunder what until recently I had considered a life impervious to pain…o well, whatta ya gonna do…
AS A YOUNG MAN…
…I was in a business which had me riding in a lot of police cars, front and back seats; you’re a guest in the front, and of course in the back you’re usually a handcuffed perp…most recently (but years ago) I ran out of gas in the middle of a busy intersection, so there my little Daytona sat waiting to be t-boned @ noon and the nearest gas a mile away…a kindly state-truck driver stopped for me and took me to the gas station where I got gas and began the long trek back only to suddenly have a police car pull up beside me – and ask was I headed to such and such an intersection where they knew a car was stuck out of gas and I said yes so they said well get in the back and off we took, me who’d had a beer for breakfast, with a bag of dope in one pocket and a handful of percs in another, a can of gas on my lap, and two cops in front who, when we got half way there, put the blues on and stopped traffic while I, heart in throat, walked across the road, put the gas in, and left with a big smile thank you wave…too bad for them, they coulda had a bonus…
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Monday, February 25, 2008
Just about everything I do...
…is done with the thought in mind that I might milk whatever it is - in writing, put it in NOTES, maybe embellish what happened (or didn’t, or even sometimes it is necessary to, ah, shall we say, un-embellish to make ME more palatable; remember, essentially NFTD is by, for & about me me me, - while thee, alas Lad/Lassie, are a necessary secondary…but thanx for being there…how’s that for self-serving gratitude…) to make whatever it was readable; everything going on in my life is a literary device…
…it makes it difficult to love someone and be getting along just fine together all lovey-dovey and happyhappyhappy (boring) - knowing that the inevitable heartache ahead (…one practically swoons for it in yearning anticipation…) will make long suffering a good read – it used to make me wish something along the lines of ‘…how can I soliloquize if you won’t leave or throw me out' – which sooner or later always happened; only a matter of time and bingo!
…here I am again, left with a heart broken and tears like a waterfall flow…abject sorrow 24-7, ahhh, perfect…who could ask for anything more lugubrious?
…it makes it difficult to love someone and be getting along just fine together all lovey-dovey and happyhappyhappy (boring) - knowing that the inevitable heartache ahead (…one practically swoons for it in yearning anticipation…) will make long suffering a good read – it used to make me wish something along the lines of ‘…how can I soliloquize if you won’t leave or throw me out' – which sooner or later always happened; only a matter of time and bingo!
…here I am again, left with a heart broken and tears like a waterfall flow…abject sorrow 24-7, ahhh, perfect…who could ask for anything more lugubrious?
Sunday, February 24, 2008
It went something like this...
…the great Bob Colson, lead singer of The Bob Colson Band, one of the finest bands the world has never known fronted by a voice that knew no equal and was the kind of voice comes along once in a 100 years – had a heart as big as a house; and a heartbreaking voice; Bob Colson’s singular voice could have you crying and dancing at the same time…
…the Bob Colson Band cut its teeth in hard core venues like Whittington’s, The Village, Oscar’s, White Sands, a whole bunch of venues, playing four nights a week to a packed house back in the days when there were no enforced limits on much of anything so the place often went nuts, figuratively and literally.
…often on the off-nights Bob Colson and the band – originally I think it was Bob Colson, Jimmy Kane, Charlie Huntington, Joe Perry, John Finzar and Cliff Maddix – would do pro bono work in the state prisons – on one such occasion in the Big House @ Walpole, now known as Cedar Junction, in the middle of a tune that was rockin’ the whole joint, one of the inmates shanked another and within minutes the place went from very dangerous to VERY dangerous – the alarm system then was not sirens and whistles but rather tape-recorded shotgun blasts played at eardrum-shattering decibel levels and cops were racing everywhere trying to protect The BC Band and its guests from harm as the melee became a riot…
…another time at a concert for one of the Division of Youth Services detention facilities, in Taunton MA I think, on a tour of the place we saw a young black kid naked in a cell and shackled to the floor…we only got in this deep at this place – you weren’t allowed where we were - because Carmen worked here and we knew Carmen so he gave us the inside tour and Bob asked what the kid had done to deserve that and I forget what it was but he was gonna be there awhile, so Bob started talking to the kid and telling him what The BC Band was doing here and the kid said he could sing too so Bob asked Carmen could he sing with him & Carmen unshackled him helped him dress and that young man sang a very sad and soulful song of life in jail…
…in another place with the help of Linda Rooney – speaking of voices which come along only once in a hundred years – at an insane asylum cum school for the insane, the Wrentham State School in which Bedlam lived and hell on earth presented itself no matter where you looked…Linda sang so beautifully that the inmate/patients at first were stunned into a deafening silence as palpable as a conch held to the ear and when she hit that high note in 'Me & Bobby McGee' the place erupted into a shrieking, howling mass of approbation from these poor people who had never heard music before other than Muzak…
…the Bob Colson Band cut its teeth in hard core venues like Whittington’s, The Village, Oscar’s, White Sands, a whole bunch of venues, playing four nights a week to a packed house back in the days when there were no enforced limits on much of anything so the place often went nuts, figuratively and literally.
…often on the off-nights Bob Colson and the band – originally I think it was Bob Colson, Jimmy Kane, Charlie Huntington, Joe Perry, John Finzar and Cliff Maddix – would do pro bono work in the state prisons – on one such occasion in the Big House @ Walpole, now known as Cedar Junction, in the middle of a tune that was rockin’ the whole joint, one of the inmates shanked another and within minutes the place went from very dangerous to VERY dangerous – the alarm system then was not sirens and whistles but rather tape-recorded shotgun blasts played at eardrum-shattering decibel levels and cops were racing everywhere trying to protect The BC Band and its guests from harm as the melee became a riot…
…another time at a concert for one of the Division of Youth Services detention facilities, in Taunton MA I think, on a tour of the place we saw a young black kid naked in a cell and shackled to the floor…we only got in this deep at this place – you weren’t allowed where we were - because Carmen worked here and we knew Carmen so he gave us the inside tour and Bob asked what the kid had done to deserve that and I forget what it was but he was gonna be there awhile, so Bob started talking to the kid and telling him what The BC Band was doing here and the kid said he could sing too so Bob asked Carmen could he sing with him & Carmen unshackled him helped him dress and that young man sang a very sad and soulful song of life in jail…
…in another place with the help of Linda Rooney – speaking of voices which come along only once in a hundred years – at an insane asylum cum school for the insane, the Wrentham State School in which Bedlam lived and hell on earth presented itself no matter where you looked…Linda sang so beautifully that the inmate/patients at first were stunned into a deafening silence as palpable as a conch held to the ear and when she hit that high note in 'Me & Bobby McGee' the place erupted into a shrieking, howling mass of approbation from these poor people who had never heard music before other than Muzak…
Monday, February 18, 2008
Sakis, The Plaka, Athinai, Athens - 1965
...listening to Gay Meyers and her sad songs, and to a huge black dude
Thelonius Monk-ing his way across Europe slapping a big upright bass (I know, I know, Monk played piano, but this guy looked like Thelonius Monk and was certainly cut from the same be-bop cloth) in the dim-red lit, step-down-into cafe in the heart of Athens, The Plaka, a few steps removed from The Acropolis and as such Saki's was an international attraction, many languages every nite...lots of beautiful people - men, women, other.
Cinzano Vermouth all the rage - left you in a daze too after a night of swilling it and Tuborg, eating souvlaki, black bread, olive oil and feta with
tomatoes, much laughter and staggering funnily into the warren of alleys
called streets until there it was: Eekosee threea Othos Panos, 23 PanStreet
dba Our First Home, a tiny room with a broken window (but looking out on the
mountain across town down which one night streamed thousands of pilgrims with
torches held aloft, looking for all the world like undulating lava with feet)
with a mattress on the cold floor, but home is where your heart is and it was
in that room then and is in that room now.
Thelonius Monk-ing his way across Europe slapping a big upright bass (I know, I know, Monk played piano, but this guy looked like Thelonius Monk and was certainly cut from the same be-bop cloth) in the dim-red lit, step-down-into cafe in the heart of Athens, The Plaka, a few steps removed from The Acropolis and as such Saki's was an international attraction, many languages every nite...lots of beautiful people - men, women, other.
Cinzano Vermouth all the rage - left you in a daze too after a night of swilling it and Tuborg, eating souvlaki, black bread, olive oil and feta with
tomatoes, much laughter and staggering funnily into the warren of alleys
called streets until there it was: Eekosee threea Othos Panos, 23 PanStreet
dba Our First Home, a tiny room with a broken window (but looking out on the
mountain across town down which one night streamed thousands of pilgrims with
torches held aloft, looking for all the world like undulating lava with feet)
with a mattress on the cold floor, but home is where your heart is and it was
in that room then and is in that room now.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Dateline: Kosovo, Independence Day 2008
…on a more tentatively positive note, I salute from afar the brave people of Kosovo with a Stout, a shout and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy as loud as it will go…it is a day for rejoicing - but it could well spell disaster too, for the Serbians can be a nasty lot and in collusion with the Russians will try to undermine the declaration and if that doesn’t work it would be no surprise to see Russian tanks clanking down the streets of Pristina vis a vis Budapest 1956 as the Serbs and the Ruskies slaughter the poor bastards…it won’t be the 1st time…meanwhile, Salut!
Be resolute in the face of adversity…I don’t know how that translates with a gun pointed at your head…do your best…the answer lies within…for not entirely altruistic reasons I toast you again and again and again, good people of Kosovo!
Be resolute in the face of adversity…I don’t know how that translates with a gun pointed at your head…do your best…the answer lies within…for not entirely altruistic reasons I toast you again and again and again, good people of Kosovo!
Muggins is my name and Cribbage is my game...
…and I win 90 per cent of the time…
Well, 53.253% of the time, according to my chief opponent, which is this computer with a built-in cribbage game and more statistics than baseball, to which I can say without fear of redress, (or of getting punched-out were it not an, ahem, gentleman’s game…) “Why, you double-dealing son of a bitch! Where’d you get that %$#@&!$ card from?”
When first I discovered I had this Medieval game on my computer I got beat a lot, 2/3rds of the time and more, in lots of a 100. I couldn’t take it, I was solitary & morose, a loser, my self-worth diminished before my tired eyes.
So I started playing best out of three series instead and for some reason I’m way ahead. Now I understand the lassitude, the ennui, which I figure was the end result of the mental stress & strain of this form of intellectual exercise and, yes, physical exercise too, for up and down the room stride I before pitching the next card; it is not a decision to be taken lightly – you could get ‘Fifteen-two’d’ right into another defeat, not a pretty sight, and also it is good for vocal training as I shout & hector and badger & taunt my worthy opponent, this accursed Dell Omniplex 560,the anti-Christ. More about that later…)
I’ve yet to catch it making an error in scoring or anything else, it seems to be the real thing and there are a nearly endless myriad of combinations, are there not? How many different configurations of cards must there be with 52 cards? I suppose the number is actually not infinite being as there are numbers at both ends…what would it be, 52 to the 52nd power is the number of possibilities? I never got past basic arithmetic so I don’t know the answer but it’s a lot, and I’ve yet to see two games alike…(merely finite myself how would I ever remember?) & don’t forget changing the suit is the same thing as changing the number so the possibilities go on…
It’s a very old game is cribbage, I said Medieval and so be it having been put together most thinkingly by one Sir John Suckling – yes poor guy, that was his name and probably how the game came peripherally to be invented as he sat brooding in his lonely stone tower afraid to go out because the neighbor kids called him ‘Piggy’ and said he ‘sucked’: enter cribbage, like about 1542 or something like that?
Is that Medieval or do we have to go back to the Magna Carta for Medieval, anyway a long time ago, and nothing about the game has changed since then except then you played with five cards now you play with six.
...thus ends your cribbage tutorial, something like that…
Well, 53.253% of the time, according to my chief opponent, which is this computer with a built-in cribbage game and more statistics than baseball, to which I can say without fear of redress, (or of getting punched-out were it not an, ahem, gentleman’s game…) “Why, you double-dealing son of a bitch! Where’d you get that %$#@&!$ card from?”
When first I discovered I had this Medieval game on my computer I got beat a lot, 2/3rds of the time and more, in lots of a 100. I couldn’t take it, I was solitary & morose, a loser, my self-worth diminished before my tired eyes.
So I started playing best out of three series instead and for some reason I’m way ahead. Now I understand the lassitude, the ennui, which I figure was the end result of the mental stress & strain of this form of intellectual exercise and, yes, physical exercise too, for up and down the room stride I before pitching the next card; it is not a decision to be taken lightly – you could get ‘Fifteen-two’d’ right into another defeat, not a pretty sight, and also it is good for vocal training as I shout & hector and badger & taunt my worthy opponent, this accursed Dell Omniplex 560,the anti-Christ. More about that later…)
I’ve yet to catch it making an error in scoring or anything else, it seems to be the real thing and there are a nearly endless myriad of combinations, are there not? How many different configurations of cards must there be with 52 cards? I suppose the number is actually not infinite being as there are numbers at both ends…what would it be, 52 to the 52nd power is the number of possibilities? I never got past basic arithmetic so I don’t know the answer but it’s a lot, and I’ve yet to see two games alike…(merely finite myself how would I ever remember?) & don’t forget changing the suit is the same thing as changing the number so the possibilities go on…
It’s a very old game is cribbage, I said Medieval and so be it having been put together most thinkingly by one Sir John Suckling – yes poor guy, that was his name and probably how the game came peripherally to be invented as he sat brooding in his lonely stone tower afraid to go out because the neighbor kids called him ‘Piggy’ and said he ‘sucked’: enter cribbage, like about 1542 or something like that?
Is that Medieval or do we have to go back to the Magna Carta for Medieval, anyway a long time ago, and nothing about the game has changed since then except then you played with five cards now you play with six.
...thus ends your cribbage tutorial, something like that…
Thursday, February 14, 2008
The scummiest of the scum...
…are those no good cloven-hoofed Saudis who try to pass themselves off as friends of ours when in fact they would slit our collective throat in a heartbeat if we weren’t buying their black gold; make no mistake about it, the dirtbag King Abdullah is a sleazeball pig of the lowest order like his cousin Ibn Saud before him…if he didn’t have oil nobody would have anything to do with the unctuous bastard; he’d be hungry and sitting in a pup tent in the desert waiting for some Bedouin to shoot him at the well. Be good if someone did just that.
…we are talking about a country which is about to chop the head off a woman who was gang-raped, and another woman who cast a witchcraft spell on some towelheaded Saudi dude...…
…we are talking about a Stone-Age country ruled by 2000 cousins on camels from whence came the cutthroats who attacked us on 9-11, that much is indisputable. In response we bomb Baghdad…Baghdad? Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 and (aside from its own people) the rest of the world had nothing to fear from them…
..Saudi Arabia is the biggest enemy America has and Dubya entertains the king at his Crawford ranch. George W. Bush claims to have seen Putin’s soul through the eyes, other than dollar signs what on earth does he see in King Abdullah’s bloodshot eyes? You're known by the company you keep, not good credentials for either of these losers.
…we are talking about a country which is about to chop the head off a woman who was gang-raped, and another woman who cast a witchcraft spell on some towelheaded Saudi dude...…
…we are talking about a Stone-Age country ruled by 2000 cousins on camels from whence came the cutthroats who attacked us on 9-11, that much is indisputable. In response we bomb Baghdad…Baghdad? Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 and (aside from its own people) the rest of the world had nothing to fear from them…
..Saudi Arabia is the biggest enemy America has and Dubya entertains the king at his Crawford ranch. George W. Bush claims to have seen Putin’s soul through the eyes, other than dollar signs what on earth does he see in King Abdullah’s bloodshot eyes? You're known by the company you keep, not good credentials for either of these losers.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
From NFTD 20th Century Archives...
THERE'S A CERTAIN STATE I'D LIKE TO RESIDE IN...
...no not a state like Kansas or Utah both of which I've been in and have no desire to return to, no not a state state; I mean a state of euphoria, and actually it is a state somewhere more exactly between euphoria and misery so as not to lean too heavily on either (or be leaned on by; are you with me?)
It would be foolish to hope for a life full of fun and laughter without the occasional tear but too much of either probably drive you nuts - we've all had a taste of both and the fun side is better but life must be leavened by reality from time to time so now and then somebody's got to kick the bucket or lose their job and/or family to get a proper perspective, even a fender bender will do it, like ruin your day - 'O shit! I forgot to put the parking brake on!' - a reminder life is not just good times.
I'm assuming here that as a more or less faithful NFTD reader you know that I can only go on in this vein for so long and then I'll forget whatever it was I was going on about and we'll move on to bigger and perhaps better things to discuss, like maybe this beautiful Chopin piece I'm listening to Phillipe Entremont play.
Phillipe Entremont...
Actually it is on the lower end of the scale I was previously discussing
that Phillipe Entremont fits in because as a young man in Boston 46 years ago I recall hearing him at Symphony Hall and he was something of a young star if not exactly a prodigy and today, ah me...today he's nearly an old man, dead maybe, so while the memory of Symphony Hall is pleasant and offers up a certain nostalgia, the here and now of it is kind of depressing because he's old and I'm getting old, but...
George Dawson out in Nassau County says I have no franchise on old yet and of course he's right. He's a octogenarian and as such may lay claim to old more readily than I - he claims to be a 'certified old curmudgeon' so I cut the guy a wide swath - you been around eighty years you DO have a sense what life is about.
I say it is much ado about nothing, but he may know something I don't.
So okay what was I going on about?
O yeah, fun and misery, the usual fare of "...NOTES..."
Well, I'm (o)zoned out this ayem and as usual forgot what I was going to say, lucky you or we might have been off on a long boring tangential diatribe (speaking of much ado about nothing...)
...no not a state like Kansas or Utah both of which I've been in and have no desire to return to, no not a state state; I mean a state of euphoria, and actually it is a state somewhere more exactly between euphoria and misery so as not to lean too heavily on either (or be leaned on by; are you with me?)
It would be foolish to hope for a life full of fun and laughter without the occasional tear but too much of either probably drive you nuts - we've all had a taste of both and the fun side is better but life must be leavened by reality from time to time so now and then somebody's got to kick the bucket or lose their job and/or family to get a proper perspective, even a fender bender will do it, like ruin your day - 'O shit! I forgot to put the parking brake on!' - a reminder life is not just good times.
I'm assuming here that as a more or less faithful NFTD reader you know that I can only go on in this vein for so long and then I'll forget whatever it was I was going on about and we'll move on to bigger and perhaps better things to discuss, like maybe this beautiful Chopin piece I'm listening to Phillipe Entremont play.
Phillipe Entremont...
Actually it is on the lower end of the scale I was previously discussing
that Phillipe Entremont fits in because as a young man in Boston 46 years ago I recall hearing him at Symphony Hall and he was something of a young star if not exactly a prodigy and today, ah me...today he's nearly an old man, dead maybe, so while the memory of Symphony Hall is pleasant and offers up a certain nostalgia, the here and now of it is kind of depressing because he's old and I'm getting old, but...
George Dawson out in Nassau County says I have no franchise on old yet and of course he's right. He's a octogenarian and as such may lay claim to old more readily than I - he claims to be a 'certified old curmudgeon' so I cut the guy a wide swath - you been around eighty years you DO have a sense what life is about.
I say it is much ado about nothing, but he may know something I don't.
So okay what was I going on about?
O yeah, fun and misery, the usual fare of "...NOTES..."
Well, I'm (o)zoned out this ayem and as usual forgot what I was going to say, lucky you or we might have been off on a long boring tangential diatribe (speaking of much ado about nothing...)
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Friday, February 8, 2008
I've decided to quit writing "Notes From The Dump"
…as soon as I’ve used up all the words I know, so you’re stuck with me for awhile longer which is a good thing for me Dear Reader because I tell you unconditionally and absolutely that I’d be lost without you! If there were no you to turn to I wouldn’t know what to do…I hardly do anyway.
…in youth, if I recall, there was no end to this, there were lots of tomorrows plenty of future nothin’ to worry about - when in fact there are no tomorrows nor future and plenty to sweat…we each have to learn to minimize our solo plight through life because no matter how many people you surround yourself with, you’re on your own; you are not just imagining it, it is you against the world…
…you, Dear Reader, are my doppelganger, the other me, the man/woman I might’ve been; lots of people read “…NOTES…”, indeed thousands around the world, but it is you I am talking to…from here in East Eden to the hills of San Francisco to the Bering Strait to Singapore to Budapest, Paris, Prague and beyond - it is you I’ve always sought.
…in youth, if I recall, there was no end to this, there were lots of tomorrows plenty of future nothin’ to worry about - when in fact there are no tomorrows nor future and plenty to sweat…we each have to learn to minimize our solo plight through life because no matter how many people you surround yourself with, you’re on your own; you are not just imagining it, it is you against the world…
…you, Dear Reader, are my doppelganger, the other me, the man/woman I might’ve been; lots of people read “…NOTES…”, indeed thousands around the world, but it is you I am talking to…from here in East Eden to the hills of San Francisco to the Bering Strait to Singapore to Budapest, Paris, Prague and beyond - it is you I’ve always sought.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Of the 1000 or so paintings...
...I've done, precious few of them have been great but there have been numerous fortuitous artistic accidents I've had and so among the total there are several standouts, lots that are very good, all of them at least cute, and none no-good, because if they're no good I paint 'em over and start anew.
Several of them are very beautiful, beyond description I say - even if I did do them. They will be hard to eclipse; I may have already painted my masterpiece and don't know it. They are marvelous to behold some of them.
`Yes, yes they are,' Hartley used to say, Hartley the kindly tavern owner who ended up owning 26 of my paintings which in those days I traded more or less for drinks & tips and Ole George Hartley he ended up with a passel of them and used to tell me that it was `...nothing personal but the quicker you die the sooner these paintings will be worth enough to make up for your outrageous drinking habits on the house...' - a sentiment while I agreed with it in principle, was too close to home to really applaud.
Only a very few of the really great artists make it to the public eye; some of the best paintings I ever saw in one place were at an art show once in the Acworth Silsby Library some years ago; ya doesn't has to go to the Met to see world-class art, or hear world-class music, read first rate literature or bake bread for cryin' out loud. Our little community is heavy with talent.
Grudgingly, and only because of the accolades and approbation of the masses urging me on, I include myself...I'm an artistic guy, intelligent, witty, cosmopolitan, modest and a bit of a rogue and so on - but right now?
Several of them are very beautiful, beyond description I say - even if I did do them. They will be hard to eclipse; I may have already painted my masterpiece and don't know it. They are marvelous to behold some of them.
`Yes, yes they are,' Hartley used to say, Hartley the kindly tavern owner who ended up owning 26 of my paintings which in those days I traded more or less for drinks & tips and Ole George Hartley he ended up with a passel of them and used to tell me that it was `...nothing personal but the quicker you die the sooner these paintings will be worth enough to make up for your outrageous drinking habits on the house...' - a sentiment while I agreed with it in principle, was too close to home to really applaud.
Only a very few of the really great artists make it to the public eye; some of the best paintings I ever saw in one place were at an art show once in the Acworth Silsby Library some years ago; ya doesn't has to go to the Met to see world-class art, or hear world-class music, read first rate literature or bake bread for cryin' out loud. Our little community is heavy with talent.
Grudgingly, and only because of the accolades and approbation of the masses urging me on, I include myself...I'm an artistic guy, intelligent, witty, cosmopolitan, modest and a bit of a rogue and so on - but right now?
Lemme tell you...right now I'd trade it all for a six pack of Guinness...I kid you not. I need a drink. Sometimes you WANT a drink and others, you need one.
SO MUCH OF LIFE...
...has been lived in a somnambulant daze, that trying to recall some periods of it is impossible and if anything only serves to make it murkier still. Like I know I was in Waterbury visiting with Albee at some of his relatives and it was Thanksgiving or some holiday and I was so smitten by this adorable young girl sitting across from me that I just couldn't stand it any longer; my heart was breaking. I excused myself from the table as though to be right back, like I'd forgotten something outside in Albee's car and I walked out the door and kept going, never went back never saw any of those people again and I know they thought I was strange but this I think stayed with them, and I?
All I recall is being very cold and drunk and otherwise fucked up and stumbling along in the blustery Vermont hills late at night in hopes of a ride which apparently I got because here I still am somewhere else 15 years later...in a way the entire 15-year gap has been still another long daze, and not to make too fine a point of it but all of life in general I may say is hazy in recall, sometimes making more of something than it was, or less, tailoring the memory to suit the needs of today. A minor justification here, an alteration there, shade the truth a little and things don't look so bad in retrospect after all...revisionist history at home, 101...
LIKE SLAMMING INTO A WALL, I AM STOPPED IN MY TRACKS...
Speechless...well wordless anyway, if you can believe a verbose guy like me can't think of anything to write. Sometimes I worry that about the time I hit my stride you'll tire of me and send me sailing into the trash unread and all my consternation over being unable to write will have been for naught.
SPEAKING OF WALLS...
...behind the walls life goes on, I see, as in this letter I receive the other day from an inmate of X prison who sent along part of his rap sheet, to wit, a conduct report in which said inmate was reported to have tried in vain to smuggle in drugs to the prison in cans, well I'll let the report spell it out:
`While corrections officer LeClair was x-raying a food box sent to inmate (X) #172-849-1-c-115, he observed five cans that had odd shapes inside of them. Upon further investigation after opening 4 of the 5 cans, aone oz. balloon containing marijuana was found in each can. The 5th can was opened and it was found to have about 100 valium, 90 xanax, 9 grams of powdered cocaine & 7.8 grams of crack cocaine...'
Seems the guests of the state got nabbed in the act as two of these inmates are ratted out by high tech surveillance and both now doing solitary for quite a spell, plus an additional sentence tacked on to their already long stretches.
Crime doesn't pay. O sure you can make a few nervous bucks for a few years doing things outside the law but sooner or later it'll come home to haunt you and you could end up in Marion or Mansfield, Fishkill, Comstock or Rahway...
Mercy, mercy, mercy I would hate to do time! The noise is never-ending, 26 radios are tuned to 26 stations, all loud; the food sucks, your cellmate is a huge brute going to slap you around, the screws hate you, noise, noise, noise no end to the noise....aaahhhhaaarrrGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!
I wouldn't make a good convict. (`So therefore judge I ask you to set me free...I'm just not the kind of fellow who would do well in prison and I'd appreciate, your honor, the ankle bracelet and a spell of mandatory confinement to home, I'm sure will be sufficient punishment; I've learned my lesson you can believe THAT!...' Thin voice quavering, knees trembling, bowels turn to water, heart in throat etc.
OyezoYES!
IamawfulsorryneverdoiteveragainopuhLEEZdon'tputmeinjailonoonoono...
`What's that you say your honor!? Eight years in the state prison!'
It's scary enough a scenario to make me behave almost.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
In Memory It Is Bitter Cold...
…and the steep, treacherous slope before me beckons; with a rush of adrenalin I run as fast as I can then fall, jumping headlong on the back of my American Flyer sled and racing down the thrilling hill, a rooster tail of snow following, the daringest devil on the block…in reality as I stand here now on the crest of Lawson’s Hill it was but a slight incline, viewed by the passing of six decades, but then, ahhh, then, then when there was a full life ahead…every challenge was met head-on Dude, out of the way I’m headed up! Now it’s sort of come full circle because as sure as I am that it is 2008, a moment ago when I was thinking of those wintry days 60 years ago when I was five, I was there Dude…I mean I was in this chair 2008, yes, but it was also 1948 and I was five…and I was there on Lawson’s Hill…random memories popup, there’s no pop-up blocker on the brain, or is there?
Anyway, probably not that healthy to hang out on Memory Lane. But what else is there? I mean Dude the future is not uncertain the end is very clear and not bright, the present – that here and now we all strived to attain – is here and now alright and, not to put too fine a point on it, isn’t all it was cracked up to be, I mean man at this instant…whoaaa…now hold on here just a doggone minute…I had to rethink this, I was going to burst out in anger and whine and cry like a baby at my personal plight and our universal plight but in fact, including everything past and present, the here and now is okay on a personal level – it’s not like I didn’t know the score…but universally with wars and famine and strife, poverty and crime, with shifting populations and rising tempers along with rising temperatures, the world is fomenting and foaming at the mouth, someone/something has got to come along pretty quick to bear a hand, get us out of this…
Anyway, probably not that healthy to hang out on Memory Lane. But what else is there? I mean Dude the future is not uncertain the end is very clear and not bright, the present – that here and now we all strived to attain – is here and now alright and, not to put too fine a point on it, isn’t all it was cracked up to be, I mean man at this instant…whoaaa…now hold on here just a doggone minute…I had to rethink this, I was going to burst out in anger and whine and cry like a baby at my personal plight and our universal plight but in fact, including everything past and present, the here and now is okay on a personal level – it’s not like I didn’t know the score…but universally with wars and famine and strife, poverty and crime, with shifting populations and rising tempers along with rising temperatures, the world is fomenting and foaming at the mouth, someone/something has got to come along pretty quick to bear a hand, get us out of this…
Friday, February 1, 2008
Excerpts from your ever-lovin' e-mails...much obliged...
Hi Terry; hope all's well.....I'm looking at the list of people you're sending this to...I can't believe I'm included on this august list. Of all the folks on the list there is at least one you can be certain reads every word of NOTES as I've done for nearly twenty years. take care, and *keep writing 'em*! Hoot
Terry; great stuff as always...I can't help but have a stout with you as I read it;)...misfortune hasn't changed your writing much although there are moments when something new seems to be there....your feelings I mean, seem more intense now, coming out in your writing....cuz I've mainly thought of you as an intellect heretofore......
NFTD is a great personal treasure for me Terry. Long may you run with it. Hoot
…once again magnificent, even more so. Susan Mueller
…had to write again as I just got off phone with Kathi and we were visiting about reading the Notes. Then we got laughing so hard about the one (just before this one I think) about the Desitin/Desenex tale!! YIKES !! And, of course Gogi would certainly have been horrified at the story. Altho' perhaps not as when Butch turned 50 she had Jeanie take a photo (from the back)of Gogi standing on her head....NAKED !! Yup, no word of a lie !! Should've kept that one but I think I eventually threw it away !! It wasn't a photo one puts in a frame, in an album, or in a wallet !!
From Peter Diamondstone
I've been trying for a few days to find your address and finally found an old hard copy of "Notes."
So tonite, the 18th, we are 50th anniversary partying at the River Garden at the foot of High St. at its intersection with Main St.in Brattleboro. It's pot luck. No gifts acceptable other than your presence which would be a great gift. Bring some copies of Notes so people get to know you and your writing.
Your admirer, Peter
…thanks for sending me what u wrote. it was very thoughtful of you. you write very well. well i will talk to you later…take care
tabby
Terry; great stuff as always...I can't help but have a stout with you as I read it;)...misfortune hasn't changed your writing much although there are moments when something new seems to be there....your feelings I mean, seem more intense now, coming out in your writing....cuz I've mainly thought of you as an intellect heretofore......
NFTD is a great personal treasure for me Terry. Long may you run with it. Hoot
…once again magnificent, even more so. Susan Mueller
…had to write again as I just got off phone with Kathi and we were visiting about reading the Notes. Then we got laughing so hard about the one (just before this one I think) about the Desitin/Desenex tale!! YIKES !! And, of course Gogi would certainly have been horrified at the story. Altho' perhaps not as when Butch turned 50 she had Jeanie take a photo (from the back)of Gogi standing on her head....NAKED !! Yup, no word of a lie !! Should've kept that one but I think I eventually threw it away !! It wasn't a photo one puts in a frame, in an album, or in a wallet !!
From Peter Diamondstone
I've been trying for a few days to find your address and finally found an old hard copy of "Notes."
So tonite, the 18th, we are 50th anniversary partying at the River Garden at the foot of High St. at its intersection with Main St.in Brattleboro. It's pot luck. No gifts acceptable other than your presence which would be a great gift. Bring some copies of Notes so people get to know you and your writing.
Your admirer, Peter
…thanks for sending me what u wrote. it was very thoughtful of you. you write very well. well i will talk to you later…take care
tabby
Terry Ward - is that really you??? You will probably never remember me but I will never forget you! My name was Karen Hamilton. (Now it is Karen McNamara) I used to hang around the Colson Band many years ago and like you, I had wheels so often would transport some of them ( or all of them) to gigs. I remember sitting in a bar in Norton - maybe the village? - I used to drink a lot - I was at the bar sitting with you and you said "WAR IS OBSCENE" I believed you then and I believe you now. In college I had to analyze our peer group and I remember identifying you as a socio-emotional leader - whatever the fuck that is. It appeared to me that the only immoral thing that was unacceptable to our group was maybe stealing from a friend - or hurting each other intentionally. I did a lot of drugs then too. Anyway I thought of you when I went to DC a few weeks ago to protest the war - wondered if you were there - if figured you would be in spirit anyhow.
So today I live in the White Mountains. I have been hearing about NOTES FROM THE DUMP for a long time... like years......and still haven't been hooked up to be informed. I guess that is why I'm writing you today. Hootie just emailed me. (he still owns my old Gibson) I still have Frank Smith's old Hummingbird) I'm trying to get Hoot to go to Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in NY this summer. Great time of camping and music with LOTS of other folks. I go every year.
I would also be very interested to know if you are selling any art??? I'm not a rich lady but I am looking for something original. Are you by any chance the same Terry Ward who posted some incredible photography online?? I want a subscription to Notes From the Dump Please. Do you accept Paypal?? Let me know please. Sorry if this is too many questions for a Sunday morning. I feel like a puppy dog bouncing around. – Karen
You're a very kind and thoughtful man. I don't mean this as a put-down in any way, but my literary standards are hardly 'severe'; AND I alternate between enjoying, appreciating, and being frightened by your posts…Thanks for sending 'em. Take care of yourself. - Kathleen Taylor http://www.merriam-webster.com/
NOTES FROM THE DUMP ranges from terrible to brilliant…John Tuthill
Thursday, January 31, 2008
While George W. Bush was...
…up here in Putney making a fool of himself as the ill-mannered drunken preppy sot from Texas, with a Vermont familial connection, Vladimir Putin was sharpening his teeth in St Petersburg…in later years as we know, having divested himself of his youthful escapades & peccadilloes, President Bush after meeting his Russian counterpart, claimed to have looked deeply into his eyes and saw his soul…
…in fact if you look at Mr. Putin’s eyes what you see is a frigid stare that would freeze the nuts off a steel bridge and a cold, cold exterior beneath which beats a heart of stone, and no matter how much he, Mr. Putin, may love American Jazz, he has no soul and no love for America nor for would-be soul-mate George Bush, the clown prince from Crawford. While a blissed-out ‘Dubya’ was/is in la-la land, Putin, knowing America was preoccupied with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention a world-shaking bum economy, and spread pretty thin around the globe, returned a rejuvenated and heavily-armed Russia to the world stage with a vengeance.
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