Making the Positive Decision

My Bike Odometer

Not bad huh? 669 miles ridden. If you drew a straight line from Pawtucket due north, that would've put me close to Lac Coursey in Quebec, Canada. That's up next to the Quebec Hydro dams. Granted, it took me two full months to do this. Still, it's a feat for me.

 

I bought a bike because I've always loved them. To this day, they're still a toy for me. I still feel like I'm flying when I go up and down the dirt trails I can find around here. As a kid, I'd imagine I was flying an F-15...and don't think that hasn't popped up into my head now, at 48!

 

And to top it off I've burnt up 20lbs.

 

Now why am I on a health kick? I suppose hitting the gym up and biking all these miles will improve my heart function, make my arteries more pliable, lower the bad cholesterol and improve my lung function. All of that is nothing but good.

 

But the true motivation? My real reason for hitting the road at 6 AM?

 

Vanity.

 

In the movie American Beauty, a personal trainer, asks Kevin Spacey just what he wants to accomplish from working out. Kevin answers; “I want to look good naked!"

 

And I know, I am not alone at all wanting the very same thing Kevin did, otherwise there wouldn't be millions of fad diets, gym memberships or Soccer Moms begging their Dr's for another script for speed and using it as a diet drug.

 

I have to tell you though. It's not easy. The amount of work you have to put in, day after mother-fucking day, is immense. I have a new found respect for the human body and it's ability to do so much work with just 100 calories. A 100 calories can be found in ONE can of Campbell's Chicken Soup. One! I have to peddle nearly 20 minutes at a good pace to burn that off.

 

Now multiply that 5 to 7 times and that's what I do a day on the bike alone.

 

I can remember one Today Show episode where Laurer was interviewing one of the first contestants who won The Biggest Loser contest. When asked by Laurer for the best advice possible, the guy answered, “Shut your mouth and move your feet.”

 

He's right.

 

You have to pair busting your ass working out with diet change. I have found over the past couple of months it's brought up another realization in me. I can't stop this ever. It's a lifestyle change that you must live day to day in order for it to work.

 

My target weight for someone my age and height is about 165-175. I'm about 10lbs away from that. When I reach it, I can't sit back and say, “There now, I did it, time to order 4 pizzas.” I have to manage the food intake and pair it with the exercise as need be.

 

Believe me, I have gaffed this regimen up good at times. I was invited to a pig roast a week ago that had a giant keg of beer too. What do you think I did? I gorged on pig meat and drank till I was good and silly like everyone else there did. If in a restaurant, my eyes drift to the Colossal Gut Busting Burger Fried in Three Kinds of Butter that's on the menu...and I get it!

 

I slip and trip badly. But I acknowledge this, as I don't eat like this every day and tell myself, “Well kid, you get back on the horse tomorrow and do it again. Hit the bike, gym and portion control your favorite pasta.”

 

It's doable. It's a goal that can be achieved. You just have to realize that it takes months, takes effort and you have to forgive yourself when you trip.

 

Oh, and you do actually feel better overall too, in more ways than one.

88.1

I woke up this morning to the the voice of Umberto Crenca on my clock-radio, tuned to the only station it can get, which is the very closest to me, 88.1 FM. He was speaking about the latest Foo Fest and they cut to a dance, tom-tom troupe pounding away. My dog sits there staring at the radio in disbelief at the sounds he's hearing. He doesn't know whether to bark at it or run away.

After the tom-tom bit, they shift to a folk group called Sugar Honey Ice Tea. As they play in the background, I hear Crenca explaining how they met and what they do. He kept repeating the band's name till I start to wonder about something.

 Sugar Honey Ice Tea 

“Shit?...the first letters spell the word, Shit.” I thought to myself. “Nah, it's a mistake...is it?”

*****

When it comes to art, the big four I'm hooked on is music, literature, movies and stage. The first three I had easy access to but not the fourth until much later in life.

I've been to some plays while in grammar school run by the just then formed Looking Glass Theater. It's hard to sit there as a seven year old and always “get” just what they were trying to do for us. At least I felt so. It wasn't until years later, when my brother was working in the development office at Trinity Theater did I see professionally crafted plays. My brother's job in the development office was to beg the rich and corporations for money.

He would get scads of free tickets for various plays and would just hand them out to people he thought would enjoy them. Then one night, he asked me if I wanted to go see something called Painting Churches, a play about a family dealing with their father's worsening Alzheimer's.

So I'm sitting there, watching this. What struck me, was that the stage was stripped down and only the essential props and clothing was used. One scene set was in a living room and I was about eight feet from the actors. They were engaged in a screaming argument about “What to do about Dad?”

It was so well done that I felt very uneasy about staying there. A family argument had broken out about very personal issues and I felt as if I should leave. This was none of my business and I wanted to get out of there.

I was struck by that reaction later. That's how drawn in you can get with live actors.

As luck would have it, I managed to see about twenty plays for nothing as the years went by.  Actually it was double luck! I saw something I wanted and didn't have to pay the usual $50 to get in.

Here's an inside joke my brother told me about Trinity.

Every Christmas Season Trinity will put on Dicken's A Christmas Carol. The major reason they do this is because it's their largest yearly generator of ticket sales and, of course, the public wants it.

The main lobby at Trinity then was decked out, in Victorian style, with a Christmas tree, garland, lights and an addition of a cheesy cardboard cutout of a life sized Santa. Why that was put in a Victorian setting my brother never found out.

Late in the afternoon a few of the actors were milling about the lobby, talking and making a few jokes before the 8PM Grand Opening of the play. My brother then tells me one of the actors, who was a Screaming Queen, yells out, “I'm gonna give Santa a BLOW JOB!”

The guy then drops to his knees in front of the cardboard Santa and bobs his head like he was auditioning for the most lurid porn film ever made. The other actors start guffawing and then realize they have to get him to stop because people walking on the sidewalk, past the main doors, were snapping their heads around to see this.

My brother then says the theater's director, Oscar Eustis, who was passing by on the upstairs balcony, sees this and shouts down, “Oh for God's Sake! Would you stop that! Everyone's looking!!!”

 

Click on the Picture to Watch the Commerical

 

 

Before I begin on this rant, I'll say the one prior to this probably PO'ed some people. This one will incense a few others I'm sure.

*****

I've run across some people who think they belong with the prosperous. At best, they'll exhibit, what they think, are the values and beliefs of the rich. In doing so, they believe they belong to that cohort just from sharing values alone.

I'm not talking about some loud mouthed brother-in-law or neighbor who can't stop braying about how well off they are, but the ones who are convinced they belong to the wealthy...and VOTE that way.

The above commercial completely shows what I'm talking about. People who feel rich. I hope you aren't like that women in the commercial! The next story can't really outdo that thirty second commercial, but I love telling this one to people.

At a BBQ (and it's always at BBQ's that I run into them) I had a conversation with Bill who ran a very small plumbing business. As conversations drift from one subject to another as they do, we landed on politics. Uh-oh!

So, Bill waxes away on social issues, taxes and in general where he thinks he stands on the economic ladder. I sat there and let him run with it till he was done.

“How much business do you do a year?” I ask him. “How many employees do you have?”

“Oh, I have one guy permanent with me, sometimes I’ll hire this other guy if the jobs requires it. Last year was good, I did about $400,000 in business.”

“Well, that ain't bad.” I say. “How much can you keep?” I'm real nosy by the way.

“This year? After paying for the supplies, the two guys, the truck and all that? I'm guessing $100k.”

I tell him the Small Business Administration defines “small business,” at the top level, as having 500 employees. He barely had 1.5 employees.

“What you have there is a micro-business, Bill!”

*****

One of the things Bill went on about, and agreed with, were the actions and convictions of major business and the wealthy. He would mimic what they thought.

“Bill,” I say “You feel that you and say, Raytheon, are on the same page?”

“Yeah, we both are in business, trying to make money.”

I ask, “Can you call up Senator Reed and have lunch with him down in DC tomorrow, to talk about whatever you'd like to talk about?”

“No! I'd never get past his handlers!” he replies.

“Raytheon can.” I say.

I tell him that the rich, the well off, want nothing to do with him. He can't afford membership in posh country club, and if he could, he'd be rejected as he has not the pedigree. He came from a line of blue collar workers. The Old Money in the Club would be disgusted to be seen around him.

I go on.

“Bill, I forget...you live in West Greenwich...or was it Rumstick Point?”

“I live in East Providence.” he says.

“Not in the Hamptons?” I tell him. Yep, twist that knife just a wee bit deeper.

“You know what the very rich do? They live off of dividends, interest and capital gains. They don't get up every day to go to work. You and I may own some mutual funds, 401k's, but we're not part of that investor class...we can't live off that. They can though.”

“Well, If work hard enough...I can maybe some day.” he says.

“Good, in order to do that, you can't rely on CD interest rates, they suck. You'd have to go for stable, well entrenched company stocks that pay conservative dividend yields.”

“How much would you like to live on..and be realistic...what can you live on comfortably?” I ask.

“Ah, $100,000 a year would be nice.” says he.

So I pencil on a the paper table cloth what he needs in total for this to happen.

“Bill, a conservative, safe dividend rate is about 3%. So take .03/$100,000. You need $3,333,333 to make that happen, and that doesn't take into account, taxes, inflation, nor does it take into account falls in the stock price or if the governing board decides to lower the dividend payout, which they can do as they please.”

Bill just stared at that figure, $3,333,333.00. As if he was staring at ship way off on the horizon.

“Bill, see what happens when you use real numbers, they tend to stare right back into your face. Now I'm not saying don't aim for a dream you have...just don't delude yourself into being something your not yet.”

I go on. “Know what the rich don't do? They don't gauge their assets by “feeling” about them. They look at actual spreadsheets and numbers! They make their money work for them. YOU worked all your life, so have I. Neither of us is rich...period.”

You can ape the beliefs of the rich all you want. But if you aren't one of them, guess what, you AREN'T one of them.

It's Your Wallet.

The following is political so I’m sure I'll piss off many, many people.

One thing to understand about economics is this: All transactions in the marketplace are ADVERSARIAL.

What do I mean? Overly simplified, anyone trying to sell you something wants to charge you as much as they can and you want to pay as little as you can. McDonald's would love to be able to charge you $20 for a Big Mac, you'd love to pay 24 cents for it.

In the workplace it means this. Employers want to pay you as little as they can and squeeze as much work from you as possible, you want to do the opposite.

That's what I mean by “it's all adversarial.” You had better know what team you're playing on and why would you give the opposing team your help?

Business, major or minor, lives by deception. They rely heavily on the “lie of omission” which means they don't give all the information which might make you cast a leery eye on them. Business spends a great deal of time and money trying to create a sense of good will. Believe me, it's not for your benefit. It's all about profit and getting you to buy their service or product.

Business wants ONE thing and one thing only. Your assets. Make NO mistake about how the game is played.

*****

Medicare has come up as an issue in this campaign. The belief amongst the far right wing in the GOP that any type of “socialized anything” is bad. Medicare is a kind of socialized medicine. The Marines are supported by taxes and by definition, are socialized. Anyone and everyone who works pays taxes pays for this upkeep so ALL can benefit from it. The GOP feels this is a sin. They would want the private market ONLY to minister healthcare insurance and don't forget about Blackwater, the privatized army they used in Iraq. To the GOP, privatization is a panacea.

The Ryan Plan calls for giving people $7,000 vouchers (that money comes from taxes) to use towards purchasing a private healthcare plan when we retire, specifically those who are 53 years old or under.

Know this, insurance companies exist to make money. Simply put, they make a profit by charging the customer as hard as they can and cutting all their costs as deeply as they can.

What's a cost to an insurance company? Anytime you make a claim is a cost. It's in insurance's best interests to keep claims to a minimum. Insurance would make out like a bandit if you paid all year long and never used it once.

Now, think on this, your health may be fine now, but what will it be when you turn 65? I can tell you this, even if your general health is stable, you're NOT going to be on the top of your game at 65. No matter what. The statistics on 65 year olds concerning health are far worse than anyone younger. We age and things slowly break down.

 

Do you honestly think, insurance companies are happy with taking on a whole boat load of retirees who used to be on Medicare? The elderly statistically, hit up the medical field more than any other age group.

Again, insurance wants to lower costs, and a bunch of retirees are going to cost them by making claim after claim.

Insurance has an answer though. And I suspect future changes in laws and regulations will help them...and NOT you.

I suspect insurance would love to write policies like auto insurance does now. The higher the risk you are, the more you pay. Who gets the cheaper auto insurance? The married 35 year old guy who has been working at the same job for 15 years and living in the same house for 13 years...or the 22 year old male who has two DWI convictions?

Who do you think will pay cheaper insurance on health? The young 20 year old with no chronic problems? Or the 65 year old who is nursing some cardiac issues, osteoporosis and a hint of diabetes? All those conditions get worse as he ages.

You want to pay for private insurance when you're 65? Do you think now, you'll be healthy then? Are you sure? The statistics will prove you wrong. You age, you break down.

This will make you puke. Blue Cross of RI has a family plan called 5000/10000. The costs are for today and NOT when your turn 65 many years in the future.

Premiums you pay for the year and NEVER get back. $5,904.

Deductible you pay and NEVER get back. $10,000

Add those two up. You have to blow through your deductible before any of the insurance starts paying.

It comes to $15,904.

That's now. That's with today's insurance regulations in place. And since when has insurance ever gone down? Insurance regulations can change with the wind too.

For a lark, let's pretend it stays the same when you hit 65 and none of the regulations are changed. This means that pre-existing conditions can't be used against you. We'll use Ryan's $7,000 voucher too.

You will pay, even with Ryan's voucher, $8,904 per year. Do you have that figured into your retirement plans? If Medicare by then is gone or severely weakened, where will you go for coverage?

But we both know these costs will rise. Also, we both know insurance will lobby gov't for favorable legislation that profits them and not you. Remember when I said “it's all adversarial?”

Insurance wants the pre-existing conditions block back. Now imagine if you turn 65 with some major diabetes issue? Or a cardiac issue? Insurance hates that! It'll cost them profit! If insurance is lucky to bring back the pre-existing clause, you'll have a fun time trying to purchase private insurance if you're sick. Many will outright deny you. Or if you manage to get a plan, I'm sure those premiums will be so high you'll be broke soon. Where will you go then? Remember, Medicare by then will be gone or weakened if Ryan has his way.

You may disagree, but this is how I see America. There are two classes. The Business class and the Consumer class. Which one are you? Are you acting like you are on the team your on? Or are you foolishly helping the enemy?

If you want to pay for private insurance when you hit 65, go right ahead. But I am not going to do a damned thing to help the ones who wish to sell me plans that are not in my best interests.

Business wants ONE thing, your assets. Are you smart enough to know how to keep ahold of them?

Leading Horses to Water

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. We're dumb enough to sacrifice common sense in favor of our pride. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

 

--The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“You know why people bristle at you at times? You shove their face into a pile of reality. Most people don't want to see it.” Jay tells me.

 

“Sigh, I'm only trying to lift them up...” I say.

“They don't want 'lifting up,' they want their dream...and you threaten that. You threaten to wake them up.”

*****

Not too long ago, I was helping this guy find a used car. I had advised him to never set foot onto any new or used car lot as these people are trained in all aspects of getting you to purchase a car. If it's used, they'll get that car running just enough to make it legal and hopefully last past the warranty. Why would any car lot dump more money into a car than they have to? It cuts into profit.

“Get a car off a private seller, they usually don't know how to fix or hide major problems and they're not trained salespeople. You'll get a clearer perspective on the whole thing.” I tell him.

No matter. He went to a dealership.

So, after he buys the car, he's showing me it and then the paperwork. I ask to see his little check book they had given him to send money off every month, for 60 months.

“Not bad huh? $290 a month!” he beams.

“Did you multiply $290 by 60?” I ask him.

“No...”

This car will cost you about, when you're done paying, $17,500.”

“But I'm paying $290 a month.” he says again.

“...and that's what you can afford a month right? OK, fine, but the car ends up costing more than the list price of $14,000.” I say “You are paying them for the privilege of using their money.”

“Did the salesman keep harping on the monthly figure? Asking if the amount was doable for you? Did it start low and keep getting higher?

I got no response.

I did it again. The guy's face sure took a different countenance in a hurry. He wasn't ticked that he had to pay interest, he was ticked because I showed him, forced him, take apart the deal he got and look at it.

To ease things back I say;

“Hey, I said before it was up to you. I told you that if I had your only savings of $7,000,  I would spend half that on a car, and I'd probably get something cheaper too.   But you knew what you wanted, so...”   I let it drift off. There was no point to push this any further.

*****

“You just don't threaten their decision process Ron, you threaten their WHOLE being. If that view of themselves is sort of filled with delusions, fantasies and dreamy hopes that never are built and launched, then having you around is a killjoy.” Jay finally sez.

Years ago, I had heard of an old story about some who had come to finally see Buddha and ask him a few questions, and I'm paraphrasing this.

“Are you a God? They ask.

Buddha replies, “No.”

“Are you a prophet?”

“No.” he answers

“Are you an angel?” they ask

“No” he replies.

Exasperated, the questioners ask finally.

“If you're none of those things. Then what are you?!”

“I am awake.” Buddha says.

"Umm...Who Are You Again?"

I attended my 30^th high school reunion tonight. It was fun and eye opening, and it confirmed ideas I had about myself and others. You learn something about life eventually after piling on the decades.

Two things I noticed happened at the reunion.

The first is that the old cliques/friendships form themselves up at various tables. Jesus, nothing changes. The cheerleaders had their table, the jocks theirs and the jumpers theirs. I was a jumper. We jumpers picked and chose out of each clique people we liked and at least grooved with. The same happened at the reunion, I milled about picking and choosing once again. There were some people I recognized off the bat and others I had to really search my memory for. Someone would tell me about some long forgotten story I was apart of and then the flood of recollections would come back and I'd say...”Damn....now I remember you!”

You can't help but notice the social climbers are still climbing at 48. To this day they're always trying to get into that number one spot still. I'm reminded of that old Simon & Garfunkle song, The Boxer, which tells how we change, but don't.

Now the years are rolling by me
They are rockin' evenly.
I am older than I once was
And younger than I'll be and that's not unusual.
No, it isn't strange.
After changes upon changes
We are more or less the same.
After changes we are more or less the same.
 

What I had to remind myself of was this. This is a reunion and a bit of a stage show at that too. People will put their best foot forward. Also, I have no clue as to the details of their lives and am only hearing what they allow others to hear and that can be colored too. On the other hand, others were pretty forthright in telling the story of their lives w/o the attendant efforts to make it seem wonderful.

I knew one guy, back in my senior year. He was accepted at a major school and had his life's career laid out before him. He came from a well to do family, had the luck of being born handsome and all the adulation that the adults could shower on him, whether it was deserved or not. A life of success and ease was guaranteed.

Tonight, we talked. He opined, without my prodding and with his tell-tale thousand yard stare, that he should have never have started that career he dreamt about so long ago. It was somewhat surprising to hear such candor from some guy I haven't talked to in thirty years. The dream career did not turn out to be the movie version where everything goes right and it's happily ever after. What it turned out to be was the wrong choice.

“Yeah, I pull down $190,000 a year...but I dislike it and I'm getting sloppy about the job. It won't be long before everyone else notices this too.” he added.

“Wow.” I quietly thought to myself.

I never attained that yearly income, nor the prestige of such a career people place a high value on. But there he was, wishing he hadn't.

I hate to say it, but some of the girls weren't the girls I knew when they were eight-teen. Ah, I can't let go of certain memories. One girl I was overly smitten with back then appeared tonight with her husband and I knew it was her in a nanosecond. Yep, that's Nicole. Nicole wouldn't have spit on me back then to put out a fire. But I thought she was the prettiest girl in school then. So, I watched her from about forty feet away and could tell she aged somewhat. I didn't know by how much till I made a beeline to her to spark a conversation.

“Oh my God RON!!! It's sooo cool to see you! Wow! You and I sat together in Brother Dreis's chemistry class!” On and on she went.

I had to remain dead silent. Here's what I was thinking when I got close enough to her.

“Oh-my-God. You got ugly! What happened? You were the cutest thing I ever saw! Jesus H. Christ! You're all dried up!!!”

When I got beyond the skin deep aspects of her and as more time passed, I found out that she had that same upbeat personality that made her attractive to me. The girl I had known was still in there.

The second thing is I saw at the reunion was this.

One of the reasons I go to these things, besides the fun, is I want to see if people have grown at all. After thirty years, you'd hope they would have. After thirty years of life occasionally getting you in it's teeth and swinging you around like a Raggedy Ann doll, it should teach you a few things and temper your ego. All the women I met there grew, but having kids, teaches you how to do it. You had to put the kids lives first, not yours. The men, it seemed, were the ones to watch.

Another guy I knew from then, and wasn't all that thrilled to know him, as I thought he was a ball-busting, stuck-up, smart-ass, spent about 45 minutes talking to me tonight. What surprised me was his benevolence. “How can this come out of a jerk?” I thought. Well, he grew up apparently.

In these reunions, you ask each other...”Where have you been, where did you end up..etc..etc..” He asked me a ton of questions and I started to sense this was sincere interest. It was an attempt to connect as people.

“Where had my life's arc taken me?” He knew me so long ago and was truly curious about this. Good, I thought. This is real. Whatever may have happened in his life sure enough made him more human. There were a few other revelations I had of this kind tonight with some others.

I was glad to find out some came around finally.

On my ride home, I couldn't help but compare my life with the others. Some I met had “made it to the top” and others I found out about were not doing that great or actually dead. Though, if you take a deeper perspective on each of us, none of us can fairly judge our lives against one another as each had it's different starting points, different pressures or Aces in the pocket and a thousand other “differents.”

It's a crime to oneself, and the others, to try to encompass lives in a superficial set of parameters to see who “won.” We may have been kids then with a kid's view of the world. But not now. A lot of the pretensions had fallen away, including mine.

Meanwhile in Camelot...

Once upon a time, there lived a handsome Prince in the enchanted land called Pawtucket. He lived in a modest castle, alongside 4,000 other modest castles. Go figure that one. With him in his castle he had a trusty companion, a magical wolf called Wolfy (The Prince wasn't one for creative names apparently). The wolf had no special powers except to eat food and fart. 

The other magic the wolf could do was howl very late at night and wake the Prince up.

“Goddammit! Would you f'ing shut up! It's 4 AM!!” the Prince would yell, about three nights a week.

This Prince had a lot, and I mean A LOT of free time on his hands as he was no longer employed for any battle whatsoever. He was employed during a great 13 year long war but the Generals lost that one. The Prince and others fought gallantly at the Great Pawtuxet Village War but the Mighty and Great King Medicare stopped sending wagon trains full of supplies, gold and food.

That ended that sure enough.

So, the Prince decided it would be a good time to look for the Most Beautiful Princess that Ever Was. He met many Princesses, but there was a problem, most were beautiful on the outside but horribly ugly on the inside.

Princess Cinnamon Schnapps had enchanting eyes, wonderful auburn hair and the morals of a boozy alley cat. He wondered if having this kind of Princess for one night would be fun but he realized that there was also a Great Evil Plague, called STD, that tended to ravage Over-Friendly Princesses in the enchanted land of Pawtucket.

Next he met Princess Way-To-Young. She had that black Chinese flaxen hair and didn't have the problem of strange afflictions...yet. This Princess was a boat load of fun but she had NO endowment of any kind.

“Take me home to YOUR castle!” she would say. “Princesses really shouldn't work and should live in luxury. I'm tired of living day to day!”

The handsome Prince was too smart for that and he had and out.

“Sorry Princess Way-To-Young, but the Magical Wolf would eat you alive.” The Handsome Prince then realized the Magical Wolf had some decent uses after all.


Then there was Princess Hideous. Princess Hideous pined and pined away for the day when the Prince would ask her to dance and whisk her away. The Handsome Prince thought of the troubadour, J Geils, who sang to him once...”You want her, but she wants him, and he wants somebody else, you just can't win...”

Once, the Prince thought he found her. This Princess made a living, had her own paid-for castle and was pretty. But this Princess turned out to be a witch!

The Witch Princess caste an Evil spell upon him.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt and toe of frog,

Wool of bat and tongue of dog,

Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,

Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Lead him in! Lead him on! Lead him in!

Sap the Poor sucker and Play with him like a Violin!

 

The Poor Handsome Prince was at a loss. Wherever she went, he followed but couldn't get anywhere with her. Promises were made to him, and then always delayed. Always “later” the Princess would say.

“Damn, I really like this Princess. I feel so drawn to her but she won't put out.” Thought the Prince.

Finally, a Great Merlin, an ancient wizard who lived on the ocean near the shadows of the Plymouth Plantation advised him thus...

“You Dumb Fuck! You stupid sucker! Don't you see what she's doing?” he sagely spoke.

“You're being played with! You're a TOY to her! You're a 48 year old Prince and you're finding this out NOW?”

The Great Wizard never did have any tact. He'd shove red hot pokers of Truth through you for fun.

So, the Handsome Prince realized that there was a dearth of Princesses and he and the Magical Wolf went home to his castle.

“You know Wolfy...I suppose I avoided a lot of misery being a Handsome Unattached Prince...what to you think?” he asked.

The Magical Wolf answered with a snort and burp, and went back to licking his paws.

 

Navigating Life

The Deer Hunter is a great flick. It's also pretty brutal, especially those scenes where the the three friends are forced to play Russian Roulette. I saw it when I was fourteen and it took me years to pick up another moral from it. I guess it took some aging and maturing to even spot it.

The three friends, Michael, Steven and Nick show you three distinct responses to stress.

In the first hunting scene of the movie, Stan forgets to bring his hunting boots along an begs Michael for his second pair. Michael refuses and in doing so, changes a friendship. Michael waving a hunting cartridge, as an example, says to Stan, “Stan, you see this? This is this. This ain't something else... This is this.” Those few lines foreshadow why Michael was able to survive the hellstorm he was put through in Vietnam.

Michael could clearly see the situation around him. He didn't taint it with personal preferences or wishes nor did he flee from the facts before his face. Being able to do this allowed very apparent answers and “fixes” to show themselves to him.

Steven, after having his legs shot up and losing them, responds by becoming depressed and childlike. He hands over all his power and responsibility to the VA hospital he is living at. He lets them take care of him. He returns to being a child.

Nick, the one who shoots himself in the end, withdraws completely to numbness and then insanity.

Can you blame Steven or Nick? Probably not as it's damned hard to change your automatic and nearly unconscious response to huge amounts of stress. They panicked, thought emotionally and chose what seemed to always work for them before. These two, due to their knee jerk replies, blinded themselves to the better answers. But, it's a totally human thing to do.

So, which one are you? Which one am I? We're all three of those types. Though, Michael’s is obviously the better choice.

I can lay a safe bet none of us will find ourselves on the Mekong River being prodded by illiterate peasant soldiers to play Russian Roulette. But, we all have daily stresses in our lives, some huge and some chronic. So, how do you deal?

I'm not going to say I am Michael. I am all three. I'd like to be more like Michael and to tell the truth, and it may seem too simplified and naive, but learning “This is this” actually can help train you to see things as they are, which hopefully will allow the obvious answer to rise.

Why did I write this? I was tripping down memory land this morning about a fat, old butcher that I knew in my local neighborhood who would offer up tenderloins and advice. He was many years my senior as well. (Damn, I have a tendency to adopt “Dad's” wherever I go. Well, why not, those ahead of me in life can shout back and say, 'Hey! I've been where you are and can tell you which way to go!')

One day, I was walking by his shop, in a real pissy mood after dropping off my car at the mechanic's about a block from his business. Jack the Butcher spots me and asks, “What's bugging you Ronnie?” I tell him, I hate, just hate blowing money on cars.

“Well, it's part of life isn't it? There are things you must have and one of those things is a car.”

I tell him. “Yeah Jack, I do, but I'm still pissed off that this money has to be blown on that instead of things I would prefer it would be spent on.”

He then tells me, “Please get out of your head and look around you. Your car is BROKEN and you need it. What's the answer? You FIX it. Sure, it's a pain in the ass but what other option do you have? Also, why torture yourself ?”

He was right. Why add to the misery. Accept your circumstances, see them as they are and FIX it.

“This is this, this ain't something else...”

Click the pic and watch the scene till you get it!



Books

I suppose the above is OK, a computer rendered book. I suppose clipping it scott free off of a file sharing website is OK too. I should shut up but nothing beats paperbacks. I can't lug this flat screen around the house or in the backyard. Though the newer Kindle would allow me that. Though I'd still gripe. Kindles don't have that fresh book smell or that ancient, slightly mildewy smell of older books. Kindles out of the box smell like Polyvinylchloride. You know what “new” means to kids today? It means they can smell the out-gassing of the plastic of new, fresh electronics. Ah, pay no mind, this is just more grousing about the digital era from a fairly soon to be Old Guy.

For those of who know, reading is pretty much a calmative.  If you looked at me, while I was lost in a book, you'd see someone at peace, breathing slowly and can't notice the neighbor's kids screaming at one another in their pool across the way. The only noise you'd hear is the occasional paper rustling sound as I turn the page. Or, more so today, the right click sound of a mouse to advance a page, couple that with a CPU fan humming away.

I read in spurts. I can sit down for an hour or two, depending on my mood. I have a tendency to read faster as parts in the book interest me more so than others. But taken as a whole, I “eat” enough of it till I've had my fill and put it down till I am hungry for it again. I can rip through a book in one day or pace it a month; again depending on how interested I am.

There are hundreds of books out there I haven't read but wanted to. I was either too lazy to get them or more probably, too cheap to pay the $ the now defunct Borders Books was charging. More than a few several years ago, my brother had brought home a copy of Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I've had heard that title and the book itself being bandied about. The title of the book sounded alluring. What the hell was this all about? My curiosity was up.

The jist of the book is about a Dad and son taking a motorcycle tour of the US after the author's commitment to a psychiatric hospital for schizophrenia. In the book, he tells of his tenure as a philosophy professor at some Western college and the value of “values,” which drove him batshit crazy (along with some genetic predisposition, I'm sure).

I shot through the book in about 10 hours.

There were many parts in it when Pirsig impaled me discussing dialectics, Socrates and all those other toga wearing brainiacs from ancient Greece. But, even with that, his retelling of his life and his ride across the US with his son was very well written and captivating. Captivating. That's why I couldn't put the book down. Pirsig held nothing back about his life or his son's, he spilled it all. I suppose that was another reason why I was drawn in, he wrote so well about he and his son, you knew them intimately...or I felt I did.

The postscript to the book, added years later, jolted me somewhat. He spoke of how his son was gutted like a deer by a mugger in San Francisco at the age of twenty-two and was left on the sidewalk to die. “Jesus Christ” I thought to myself. “That kid had a topsy turvy childhood and this is how life finally treats him.” Like I said earlier, the book was so well written you felt bad for Chris and learning about his stupid-luck fate.

Most Americans don't read, from what I hear. It's a shame. I have nothing against most tv or movies (yeah I do, most of them suck and always have. Be honest!) but books are still great.



Robert Pirsig and Chris, during happier times.

Too Soon Marr'd are Those So Early Made

“Do you feel anything? Like any emotion? Any warmth to the guy your with?” I ask.

'Nah, usually not. I'm just concentrating on being a good lay.” she responds.

“Is this all your worried about?” I ask.

“Well, I don't want people talking about me.”

I think, “You don't want people talking about you..."

I swear, PTSD comes in many forms. PTSD is about this basically, you continually repeat whatever trauma you had in the past, always reliving it, always trying to find a way to manage it better. In the process, you just relive it and reinfect yourself over and over again. You go nowhere with this tactic.

“Doesn't it bore you? It must. I mean, after so many guys, it tends to become repetitive, doesn't it?”

“Yeah...the difference is that some might do something different. Breath differently, or have a different smell to them. Most times it's pretty much the same. I fake the orgasm most times” she says.

“So what do you get out of it?” I have to ask. “I don't know...I guess because someone wants me, someone pays attention to me...” She drifted off on that comment, staring a thousand yards from the porch we sat on.

You can see it in her face. “Please say “Yes” to me. Please don't abandon me. God forbid you reject me.” The other look in her face, for one who hasn't hit 23, is of a care worn life. “Too soon marred are those so early made,” the old saying goes. It's true too.

The price for getting attention, is giving up your body. I guess to her it's a fair price to pay. To me, it's expensive.

OK, I can see her past right back to when she was high school. Legs open quick for any guy that might show an interest. And to keep that interest, you better offer up some bait to keep him interested. Till one day they get bored and leave, or until you drive them away, or he drives you away.

The back of shampoo bottles have these instructions: “Lather, rinse, repeat.” Now tell me how many people engage in this, no matter what it is. Tonight, I hear the the story of this girl who can't help but to constantly repeat. I swear she thinks, perhaps one day, a situation will arise where it'll stick. Trial and Error? Jesus...that's a hell of a price to pay along the way. If your idea of logic is 2 + 2 = 5, you're way the hell off.

Ya know, as I listened to this, I didn't feel condemnation for her, just pity. There wasn't any way I was going to try to advise her, save her, redeem her; it's too late for that. She's been programmed and that's how she runs.

My brother, who once wrote for the ProJo and other media, sketched a piece for them that dealt with Halloween but he put a very different angle on it. He claimed that he couldn't drive past a graveyard without looking at it. He said that it wasn't out of any morbid curiosity about death, but more about just who was buried there. There were life stories there, that everyone's forgotten about, he told me.

“Think about it” he tells me as he typed away. “How many murderers, alcoholics, sluts, losers, workaholics, depressives, fighters, Mothers, hardworking Dads, sick kids and Saints are buried there? How many of them could live no other way till the minute they died.”

“I guess people are people. They do what they only know how to do, huh?” I say.

My brother goes on, “Ain't that the trick though? To transcend your own demons? I think that's the key to life, to overcome yourself...and if you end up in the graveyard, winning against the worst in yourself...you've won...and the day after Halloween...is All Saints Day...don't forget that! There is redemption, you can go down into the ugliest depths of yourself, but still manage to pull out of a dive like that, if you're aware.”

I'm not sure this Garden Variety Slut I met will ever be aware. Perhaps she will.

OK, that's enough reality I'm dumping on you for now. Perhaps the next story will be about fluffy kittens, or pepperoni pizza. Now there's a subject that nothing could go wrong with..Pizza!