BUMMER - GRAY SKY FADING AWAY, SUN COMING OUT...

…s’posed to be a bright sunshiny day which drives a lugubrious, solitary & morose me – around the bend…a lachrymose day made for introspection and reflection and then, done with this melancholy, maybe off to golf or swimming or, not to put too fine a point on it, laying around the shanty with the shades drawn and putting a good package on with choice indica and a bottle or two of Cook’s California Champagne, which I don’t care if they vint it and bottle it in Newark just so’s I get some now and then, speaking of which I’ll have to give my bootlegger a call…bootlegging is an art form the skill of which I do not possess, but he does…in concelebration of all these (no)things, I blast a cork across the room and bounce it off the Holstein on my refrigerator. Quoting seldom-seen Doug Misner, I intone, ‘Let the drinking, belching and fun begin!’

Like a blow on the head from a hammer...

…the news Whitney Houston is dead leaves me dizzy, she was so the star! Everything about her was good; even her bad was good. Another world-class performer bites the dust. Whitney knew what she was doing but she miscalculated the amount she took thus ending her dazzling career.

…it’s like losing someone you actually know. Most everyone over the age of, say, 13 knows drugs and alcohol don’t mix but we do it anyway. From a very early age self-destruction begins. It’s what we do. What’s up with that? I don’t think a dozen Sigmund Freuds could figure it out.

…and if you don’t get you before someone else does you have to dig your bunker deeper and keep your head down so you don’t get caught in the crossfire; please don’t think I’m a mindless twit prattling on after a bottle of wine and a bone, which I am, but rather as a prescient voice from subterranea…which I also am. Whitney, I will always love you…I can’t believe you’re gone!

NOTE FROM A READER…

‘Ahhh, for Christ's sake...get the f**k over it. Your boredom is becoming your readers' boredom. You've been places, you've met people…how about writing 'bout them/there? No one cares about how many sheets of toilet paper you might use daily...nor how much you might drink or smoke each day. Get BACK to being 'interesting' & f**k a bunch of BIG words…just write shit that matters.’

(Well, I can’t please everybody but I will try to do as bade…thanks for taking the time to write me in the vernacular…)

NOTES FROM THE DUMP by Terry Ward

IT'S TROUBLING IN A WAY...

…I’ve written nothing or at least very little for a long time, months; much of last year all of this year. Lots of things come to mind on which to remark but I’m of a mind these days to say, why bother, who cares, indeed - what’s the sense of anything…

…hours pass, blank hours I hide in playing Scrabble, cribbage, cribbage, Scrabble, crabble, scribbage, bibble babble, say, pass that pipe over here and please pour us another glass of champagne Love, do come sit closer…

…in another way it’s not troubling, consider: not taking time out to write has left me many hours available in which to pursue the nefarious pleasures of life in the subterranean breakdown lane, i.e. drink some of (quite a bit of) Cook’s Sparkling Wine (see Page 1), eating until stuporous, running up the phone bill and smoking herb ‘til blue smoke emanates simultaneously from every orifice above the neck.

NOTES FROM THE DUMP

I'm sick of being sick...

…I’m not into it at all. I want to run and jump and play like a kid again, to go and visit, out to eat, just out for the hell of it, but no, I dare not get far from the breathing machine, not to mention Grace Cottage Hospital is right next door and they’ve been tested and proven adept at saving my sorry ass, so there’s that, and I continue to fantasize a one-size fits all pill of the future the swallowing of which will heal all that ails ye, so I guess I have to be patient a little longer although I’m a little conflicted about that…because, if patience is a virtue, why is he who hesitates lost? You can’t have both.

“Ahh, mes amis, quell jour de fe te!” (A loose NFTD translation would be, ‘OK fellow scoundrels let the drinking, belching and fun begin! If you’re gonna be bad be good at it.’

When Jack Kerouac did it it was called spontaneous prose, and a snooty Truman Capotes said of it, ‘That’s not writing, it’s typewriting…’ Which did not endear me to Truman but he too was gifted. With me I wouldn’t say it’s spontaneous but more prattling on and on and occasionally hitting all the right letters on the keyboard and making a modicum of sense, or is that true (he wondered drunkenly…)

Anyway I’ve forgotten what I’m banging on about because I’m most the way down bottle number 2 of Cook’s sparkling champagne in con-celebration of events? What events you say? O please, do you see what day it is? Yes that’s right, January 19th, you didn’t forget did you?

Can’t concentrate on anything…one heart attack, several broken hearts, one lung collapse, prostate cancer and emphysema have ganged up on me, so far I’ve held them off…but the deck is stacked against me.

I was on pretty thin ice...

…and needed to remove myself post haste or get hurt because the guy in the back of my taxi suddenly grabbed me around the neck and jerked me away from the wheel as he raked a serrated knife back and forth across my throat, ‘Give it up,’ he rumbled, ‘I’ll cut your fucking head off……get it up…’ as I fumbled and said, ‘Dude I ain’t even seen you got no idea what you look like, here take the money and go…

Wheeew, he punched me in the head as he left…his second mistake…I went from standing on thin ice to standing on shaky ground which is not much of a stretch and only a miniscule improvement. Do I really want my throat slit to save two hundred bucks, 40 percent of which goes to the company? I don’t think so…I could run him over and play dumb, but a two-way radio is a quick way to get help and in a very few moments red & blue lights were flashing and two cops ran into the tavern the yegg had gone in and dragged him out and away to the jailhouse. They got him but I never got my money back; fair enough because I fingered him and he got a stretch in Comstock, an upstate dungeon out of the 1800s.

…three times I volunteered to go to Vietnam between 1963-1969 but I never made it, instead sent to the Caribbean and the Mediterranean aboard a bird farm – aircraft carrier if you don’t know - and a 2-year stay in Nea Makri, Greece…but whereas once being a Vietnam vet, or in my case a Vietnam-era vet because I was never in–country, could get you cheers and catcalls all at once, now there is a certain cachet to having served during the first war we’ve ever lost…but I made sure there were no VC in the Med and I did a good job because in all those years I never saw a one.

A READER ONCE SAID OF ME…

“You’re a great writer, so glad to hear you are just drunk and stoned and not dead…” Thank you LuAnn, you’re right of course, I totally agree with you that I am a wonderful writer and if anyone dare have the temerity to disagree, well, I offer you a challenge, we’ll have a write-off, you pick the subject, 500 words or less, give or take a hundred and NFTD readers can decide...what say you? Join in the scrum…it’s all in fun, free entry, NFTD will donate $50 to winner…if I am chosen I will donate $100 to Doctors Without Borders…

WE’VE SCARED, ARE SCARING…

…migrant workers away. The law is coming down on illegalos, and the crops are dying in the fields. New laws are scaring the immigrants off and there’s no one to pick the corn. “The government’s decision effects every farmer and every person who hires one or more employees,” says Marc Higginbotham, a commodity director for the Alabama Farmers’ Federation. “The fact is a lot of Americans aren’t willing to do temporary jobs that involve intense work in the hot sun…”

For Weeks I've Written Nothing...

…hours on end I sit here, waiting, waiting, waiting - with a bottle of Cook’s California Champagne in arm’s reach, for if you know anything about life and drinking you know no matter how good it tastes it’s cleverly-disguised poison with which I’ve had/have a 54-year long attachment…in good times and bad times it stays with you. So it accompanies me as I ponder this world, a world running amok…why were our brave Brothers and Sisters killed in Iraq, Afghanistan? What do either of those countries have we can’t live without?


…the Iraqis and Afghanis in the main are dirt poor and we’re over there putting the arm on them, what gives? Where is my beloved America the Beautiful going with this? We got zero business there. And even if we did - money makes a lot more sense than slaughtering our young and theirs and remember – they are home, like it or not they see us as invaders and Afghanistan has never backed down and sent Moscow packing tail between its legs; Afghanistan will outlive us all. And when we’ve finally firebombed all of us back into the Stone Age they’ll be right at home, in my opinion. Give ‘em money…a few suitcases worth of greenbacks are cheaper than the loss of one soldier!


“OKAY, WHAT ARE WE NOT DOING TODAY,” I ask of myself…


…as I wrestle with a broken cork and finally give up and push it in…flotsam and jetsam in my wine…it’s not easy being a lush, there are many hurdles to overcome. That aside I’m having the time of my life because from here on it’s balls to the wall, party ‘til you puke…I pour another cup of Bisceglia Vin Rose, tastes alright I guess, I don’t drink for taste, I first check the percentage of alcohol, this one’s 12% so is fairly potent and I shall be six sheets to the wind before noon…what a success story huh! I haffta laff, life is good usually but you may have a different take on it…


…I can’t quote him verbatim but John Steinbeck once wrote that the first 3rd of the wine bottle was all hail-fellow-well-met hardy har har, midway down the second phase was introspection and thirdly, bottom of the bottle with the dregs, the biggy, emotional, physical and psychological meltdown…just what I had in mind!

A Stop In Rocky Mount...

…the day before Christmas 1970 I find myself (alone and palely loitering) on a highway in Rocky Mt. NC, which then was but a pit stop (where all the sedge had withered from the lake and no birds sing) and where to my chagrin I noted as I passed through town – hitch hiking mind you – o what can ail thee knight-in-arms - trying to get a ride to New York City and back in my taxi cab; meanwhile I’m a rookie cop’s dream come true because I’m stranded after my car broke down and freighted with a suitcase full of evidence to burn…needless to say I’m more than a little nervous, but it was a living and somebody had to do it.

…I’m a bearded, long-haired hippy freak so I keep walking and walking and as I get closer to town there’s a billboard on my left, big sucker, 15 feet high 30 feet long and on it a KKK klansman on a white stallion rearing into the air as the klansman held a burning cross aloft, and above the whole thing in two-foot high letters was written -

“YOU ARE NOW ENTERING KLAN COUNTRY! BEWARE!”

…O man do I need this, I gotta get out of here - out of North Carolina - so I cross over to a Greyhound station and ask the guy how much for a ticket to NYC and he says 40 bucks and I said well look I only got 24 dollars how far will that get me…he looked at me and said, ‘That’ll get you to Richmond…’ the kindly ole gent looked again, ‘’Y’all don’t want to be hanging around here son, better catch the next bus to Richmond and I got a ticket here that somebody left behind and it’s from Richmond to NYC, so get on that bus and, not to be rude dude, get gone ‘fore y’all get hurt.”

In some things I’m a quick study so I immediately jumped on the dog and we left…

LET’S GET SERIOUS… …what are we doing in Afghanistan? What do they have we want that as of June this year is worth the lives of thousands of our favorite Sons and Daughters? And millions of dollars every day…Tom said, “Lithium, what they have is lithium…” So ok, what’s the big big deal? Buy it from the poor bastards; Afghani dope is another thing, multi-billion dollar business right here in the good ole US of A, millions of dollars daily, I mean come on get over it. It’s here to stay and has been a political football too long. You want to smoke dope, fine, certain restrictions apply like drinking, okay that works. The only reason herb got illegal was because at the end of Prohibition all those unemployed cops working for Harry Anslinger and with too much time on their hands needed a new bogey man…but I digress…what’s up with Afghanistan? The only two things I ever wanted from there was an Afghan and some ‘ghani, both of which I got and both of which are now gone. Bring our soldiers home. LIKE A MONUMENT TO RESTRAINT… …I put off opening a bottle of Yellow Tail until 2 in the afternoon? Now I ask you to consider, is that not in and of itself reason to celebrate? I say it is and blast the cork from a bottle of Cook’s champagne bouncing it off the ceiling and ending up in the cat’s water dish…it’s her new toy but every now and then I have to pick them up (ok ok my friend picks them up) because it is also a testimony to my out of control drinking problem…something like that…. DEAR SARAH PALIN…I would write… “What is it we’re not supposed to like about you? You’re alright at least as much as any other person seeking public office and we’ve all got our idiosyncrasies…your speeches are good to listen to and I don’t see you as a wild-eyed maniacally-inclined woman, ergo I wish you the best unless anyone can point out to me a real reason for opposing you…did I miss something? I kinda like you but part of that is mcp – you’re pretty, which is not a good reason. But I also like your style plus I’ve always been a little crazy too, keeps me from going insane.