“All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, and always will exist.”

-Slaughterhouse Five

 

 

Across that water there is Seekonk. It's dawn, 28 degrees, windy and my nose is running from the cold. I haven't changed in decades. My nose ran then and will still do so in the cold. In a couple of weeks, I'll wake up with great nosebleeds due to the low dewpoints. I've always have done so. My pillow cases can look like Lincoln's head rested on them.

I haven't been on a health kick since two years ago when I peddled all over this area on a bike and I figured, “Let's see if I can still at least climb over tree trunks, scramble up some hills and down escarpments to the lake.” It turns out I can still. Heart rate and breathing didn't climb as I thought it would. It will one day though.

So, I enjoy it for now.

I enjoy the stillness at dawn, here in these woods, the last vestiges that at one time, covered all of Pawtucket. The only thing you can hear out here is the wind, sparrows, your own foot falls in the leaves and perhaps the occasional plane overhead curving it's way to approach TF Green. Out here, all you have is yourself and if you stay long enough, and I mean long, you lose that too. But for now, the quiet morning is enough. I came out here as a kid probably just for that reason alone, but was unaware of it.

I've walked these woods since I was a kid and fell in love with them. Today as I walked on, I saw fields, paths and old structures I played around when I was a child. The same WPA work project that walled in the river, the old pumping wells for East Providence water and the 1863 railroad that passes through. They are an anchor, a tangible, fixed spot where I can see myself when I was a boy. That past hasn't melted and blended away into nothingness yet. There are markers still.

There's one marker I came across I designed myself then, a rather naughty one but typical of 12 year old boys. I had forgotten it was there as I don't think of it till I come across it every few years or so. You have to navigate some wetlands to get to it. The maker? I had carved a tree with a profanity.

 

 

Thirty-eight years ago (38)..Jesus! I had carved the tree above with the word “Fuck.” The diamond pattern above that? I have no idea now why I carved it. Whoever Tim 'n' Shannon are I don't know. That came not too long after my masterpiece.

1976. I had purchased a small jack knife from Pinault's Pharmacy on Armistice and Newport Ave with a fake bone handle. The blade perhaps was three inches in length. I had no practical reason to have one, except to be like the other boys that owned one. My parents didn't know so it was nice secret to have to myself. Barring your parents from parts of your life means you own that part of you, not them. A burgeoning independence? Sure! So was carving FUCK onto a tree with my secret jacknife. Pre-teen rebellion starting it's career, to be followed by near felonious behavior by us boys in the years to come. Real rebellion comes at sixteen.

In my walk this morning, I searched for this tree. I knew it was hard by a small stream but other trees like it had sprung up over the years. I'm not sure of the type but the bark is thin, smooth and the tree seems to want to live right on high water tables where the mud could swallow you up to your knees. Today it was dry enough to walk on. I kept looking among others that had sprouted up through the years for the one tree. No luck. All these newer trees made things confusing. I then searched for the oldest and tallest and I found one. I scanned the bark and no carving. I began to think that the bark, over the decades, healed itself over. “Ah well, things pass...everything does.” I said to myself.

But, lower on down the stream I found a lone, large tree of the same species. As I moved around it, there it was. My work of art.

I saw that twelve year old boy who carved it. Long, 1976 hair to his shoulders, wearing wire rim Elton John type glasses you'd see from his Honky Chateau album (Yes, I had them) dressed in Sears Wrangler jeans and a LOUD Beach Boys-type stripped button down shirt, tails un-tucked of course, I'm twelve!

I remember that day. It was a brilliantly hot May afternoon. I was with Jimmy and we were enjoying the after school time we had by screwing around these woods. Carving, trying to catch the frogs in the stream and knowing school was going to be over in a few short weeks. Freedom.

That boy...me, as he was carving, never once stopped to think a 50 year old version of himself would be there to look upon it in the future.

But that 50 year old did.

If the tree isn't cut down, or diseased, perhaps it'll last another 38 years...and perhaps that insulting carving will too.

*****

I'm not alone in making monuments to myself. Further south in these woods are large “pudding stone” boulders. Theses giant rocks were pushed by the ice ages past and dropped wherever they may. One I found years ago, that has chiseled into it, “F.R.B. - 1909.”

Whoever FRB was/is I don't know. But he spent some time with his chisel set to let the world know he was there, that he mattered, for a while at least.

And finally from Kurt's Slaughterhouse a bit of advice...

“That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones.”

 

 

Good Grief!

Back in 1999, 60 Minutes Steve Kroft had an interview with Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts. It was one year before he'd retire the 50 year old comic strip and gave a surprising revelation as well. I saw it and Schulz looked and acted like I expected him to, an elderly Midwestern man, with all that simple forthrightness they have there in middle America. What you see, is what you get. Compare that to us Yankee New Englanders, who are as calculating and wary as hell.

Any decent interviewer will play armchair psychologist as he explores his mark. Kroft was no different. Kroft finally asks, after saying most cartoonists are drawing themselves, is Charlie Brown really Charles Schulz? Schulz stalls, his eyes getting glassier and glassier, and with almost that first tear ready to drop, responds with a crackled, “y-yes.”

Kroft gets Schulz to admit he was that Charlie Brown as a kid.

Schulz apparently had no happy childhood. He sucked in school and managed to fail every subject in the 8^th grade. He sucked at sports, but joined the school's golf team and blew the only game that mattered, the season's final, greatest match. Afterwards, he managed to lose the consolation golf match too.

He had relatively few friends in school and once said he'd be astonished if anyone of them said “Hi” to him after school hours, should they meet by chance. He wasn't a bullies target then, just completely forgotten as a dull, nearly transparent mediocrity.

Schulz's only saving grace was that he could draw and even with that, his younger contemporaries thought it uninspired. Well, we all knew what happened after that. He created probably, for it's time, the most popular strip ever.

*****

Nothing changes. As kids and as adults, we're always jockeying for position on that hierarchy of the social ladder. For myself? I've been up and down it and stayed relatively in the middle now for decades.

I once knew, as all of you did, one of those kids who seemed perpetually on the lowest rung. The one I knew back in 3^rd grade was Kevin. It seemed he could do nothing right and when he did manage a “win” and expected laurels for it, everyone else dismissed it as insignificant. Kids are bastards! So are some adults now that I think of it.

As I remember him, he wore to school a lot of those Hanes tee shirts. He didn't have a collared shirt or anything on top of it. Plus, those Hanes shirts weren't white but a grimy gray. I guess Mom or whoever did the laundry never did learn about Clorox. He also wore what we called Janitor's pants. Those old army olive-drab green Dickies. The only guys who wore them were metal machinists we'd see around town. Old WW2 veteran guys with crew cuts, chomping cigars, dirty and their work clothes smelled of 3-in-1 oil.

Add to that, Kevn's skin wasn't too fun to look at either, it was layered with dead skin cells and dirt.

When we all left 3^rd grade and moved onto 4^th, usually the previous class was held together for the next grade. We were surprised to find out that Kevin wasn't with us again. We find a bit later he had moved away. Kevin was forgotten quickly as dead.

I saw him again without recognizing when I was just about to enter high school. This guy comes up to me, holding out his hand and saying “Hi.” He remembered me easily though. He looked well dressed, clean and he had to remind me of who he was.

He had told me he did move away back then and later moved into his Uncle's family. I had asked him why he was in this field where we teens would hang out and he said he was there to scout out locations for the next radio controlled airplane race/contest. He belonged to the Rhode Island chapter of it and was rated in the top ten fliers. He then went onto say he did very well with math and was hoping to join the Air Force one day. He probably did.

As I was talking to him, I did what everyone else does when meeting someone from the past, you pick up where you left off. I was initially scornful but that was melting fast as he told me his story. Inside myself, I felt I was becoming defensive against this rising star, or already risen star who had a list of accomplishments. The kicker was that I realized this kid had crawled out of the pit he was in and was now sitting on whatever top five rungs of the social ladder he belonged too. It was threatening to me. This guy was now a viable competitor.

He left after looking around and I wondered how he went from LOSER to a confident young teen. I was impressed and a bit dumbfounded by his transformation. The feeling inside of me was, “How did he manage that?”

Good for him. Good for Schulz too.

Night Train

Do you drink wine? I didn't for years because the Irish have no history of wine making, just stump whiskey. I grew up around Jameson's and beer, both made from grain. When I first tried wine it reminded me of bad vinegar. Yuck!

To tell the truth, I had no idea how to buy it, what to buy as there were a million brands and all claimed to be the best. The ones I did purchase at times were awful. If I drank half of it, I usually ended up with a whomping headache the next day. I ended up using the rest of the wine for cooking and if I didn't use that, I poured it down the sink.

I finally learned about wine at J&W many years ago. We were required to take an introductory enology class taught by this guy named Bartlett Poury. I have to admit this guy did know his wines as he was a sommelier for high-end restaurants in Europe and the US. He was one of these guys, if you put a flight of varied wines before him, blindfolded, could tell you the variety, vineyard and the maker. It's a hell of a talent to have.

He also was a master at something else. He was excellent at snobbery and contempt. I'm sure he learned that pouring wines for the rich and famous during his career. At times during the class, he'd manage to offer his disdainful opinion on people, ideas or political leanings. with his nose properly turned up. He called democracy “mob rule” once. I figured he missed his calling as a faithful servant to British aristocracy when it ran America back then. The only thing that mattered to him, were Classical music, Classical literature and Old Money. New money was disgusting and any time spent with you was wasted.

We began to tire of his up-snoot ways and started to bust his balls some. One of us asked him:

“Mr Prouty, if wine had no alcohol in it, would you still drink it?”

He fails to answer for a full second when he nearly blurts out, ”yes...YES I would!”

Bullshit.

“Mr Poury, what's the difference between a wine connoisseur and wino?”

He was perplexed by that one

The answer comes: “A paper bag!”

We laughed. I think he was a bit miffed by that one.

Finally, someone nailed his coffin shut by asking...

“Mr Poury, you must've made some money in those Berlin and Parisian restaurants when you did work there? Yes?”

He said he did well.

“But...did you make more money than the people who ordered you around when they came to the restaurant?”

No answer.

“So you were just another working stiff...a peasant...a servant?”

It was sort of fun reminding this guy that was not, nor ever will be, part of that 1%. And that's the joke of it too. This guy aping, believing the views of the very people would never allow him to walk in the front door of their homes. Servants go around back.

However, he did know wines.

*****

During the class we drank some of your better wines as J&W had the cash to buy them. I tried various ones and most were better than the crap I bought. Though, most of the red wines I am not in love with because they do something with it that gags me, the age it in oak barrels. I cannot stand the taste of oak nor the tannin's in them. I do not eat oak trees, cook with them or lick them. If I want tannin, I can drink tea or slurp from one of the motionless ponds by the river that's choked with last year's leaves.

Finally, I came across one I fell in love with and had no idea it had existed, Riesling.

It's a white German wine and before you start going, “Ugh! Yucky sweet,” there are a whole bevy of different Rieslings. The trick to German wine is not the grape, but when it's when it's picked. The later you pick 'em, the sweeter they'll be. The other added perk to Riesling is that they never age it in goddamn oak.

True, there are a ton of sweet, sweeter and insulin-sweet German wines, but there is a regular one too called Kabinett. Kabinett (just like your kitchen cabinet) is a dry white wine that packs a wallop in certain cases. What's great too, it's not expensive.

The funny thing about Rieslings is that when you open the bottle, the first whiff you get is that of a burning tire. It really does have a burnt rubber smell. When you pour it into the glass, that initial scent dissipates and you pick up the flower scent. If you want more of that flower garden explosion in your mouth, go with the sort of sweeter ones. They are ranked according to harvesting times.

The sweetest one, the one that'll rot the teeth out of your head is called Eiswein. They leave the grapes on the vine till they harden with the first freeze. By that time, most of the water in the grape is solidified and all that's left is the sweet syrup and they press that out. When they ferment it, they barely let the yeast do it's job. If you buy some, bring $$$ and realize you're going to get a eensy-weensy bottle.

But what do I usually drink 99% of time if I do? Crap Budweiser. Yep, rice beer. Shitty, watery, no taste at all Budweiser.

I add that as a caveat to my fermented beverage tastes and choices.

*****

There's an old Australian joke about American beers:

“American beer is like having sex in a canoe” an Aussie will say.

“How so?” the other Aussie asks.

“Because it's fuckin' close to water!”

 

 

 

A Sommelier

 

 

 



A Raving Wino

This Ain't a Game of Checkers

Why didn't I get a PhD in history and float over all of the world in the Navy? I would've gotten to see weird foreign places like Helsinki, Minsk and...Moscow? Anyway, here's another piece from Plymouth that gives a cute look inside at the goings on in the Kremlin.

But first, you must be ejemucated and here's how it was explained to me:

 

When the US desires to get rid of a particular cabal/gov't in a country, it tries to use the subtlest means possible. Loud, destructive revolutions that include gunfire, bombs and nightly news coverage are far too messy and invites inspection. It is far more brilliant to do it on the sly and without much fanfare. What you do is find all the unhappy people in the government make it known to them that you're on “their side” and you provide them with all sorts of things like money, frequency-hopping/encrypted cell phones and promises of a nice job in new gov't If you can't entice them, you black mail them into doing your bidding. They might be still unhappy with their homeland gov't but not motivated enough to do much, so you pressure them into action by telling them you have evidence of their contacting Western intell or some other ugly criminal things the gov't there would be very unhappy about if they knew.

“We've been trying to unseat Putin and install a pro-Western guy...but it ain't working. Putin knows the game and he's acted on one part of the plan. He's gutting from gov't those he knows are planning to stab him in the back politically. The guys he's gotten rid people that were, perhaps(wink!) working for us.” says my friend.

**

Putin's Discovered Check Mate: The King Hunt Move.

In recent weeks, rumors that Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev will be replaced have been circulating among Russian media and pundits who watch Moscow. We have been monitoring the Russian government's coherence and the strength of its leader, President Vladimir Putin, as the country faces a series of crises involving its faltering economy and tensions with the West over Ukraine. Although Kolokoltsev is of little consequence as a personality, the office he holds oversees one of the most powerful tools for anyone seeking political power in Russia: a significant part of the country's internal surveillance apparatus.

Analysis

Rumors that Kolokoltsev has been forced to resign first appeared Oct. 29 on Russia's Dozhd (Rain) television and were picked up by Pravda, RIA Novosti and other Russian media outlets before becoming a topic of chatter for Russian pundits. Dozhd cited sources within the Defense Ministry, though the exact status of Kolokoltsev's position was not made clear. Dozhd is one of the last independent television stations in Russia (which is allied with Western intell) and has reported such rumors before. But even when the details of Dozhd's reporting have been off, the television station's coverage of leaks from inside the Kremlin have pointed to actual problems.

Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged the rumors but did not confirm or deny them. However, this week Kolokoltsev attended the Interpol General Assembly in Monaco as Russia's interior minister. There, he acted as if his situation were normal, giving interviews on Russia's willingness to help combat various global issues such as cybercrime. After Kolokoltsev's appearance, the Russian media are now speculating that he will resign in the near future, possibly after Russia's Day of Police on Nov. 10 -- a holiday celebrating the country's police, which Kolokoltsev oversees and from whose ranks he was promoted.

On a technical level, Kolokoltsev has been one of Russia's better interior ministers since taking office in 2012, understanding the operations of the police forces and interior troops. His reforms of the various forces have been viewed positively in Russia. But Kolokoltsev himself is not important, and whether he resigns will have little impact on the country. What is more important is the actual position of interior minister -- and which of the Kremlin's power circles wields influence over that official.

Russia's Interior Ministry is one of the most powerful ministries in the country. As with most European interior ministries, it is responsible for internal security, overseeing local and federal police forces, paramilitary units and investigations. The ministry's paramilitary troops -- which number around 200,000 -- are some of the best-trained and best-equipped armed forces in Russia. They have ample combat experience, with an excellent record of service in various conflicts in the North Caucasus, most notably in the Ukraine. They were exceedingly effective at decimating the pro-western forces that sought to overthrow it. These are the military types you want backing you in you're in power in the Kremlin.

Russian Intelligence Services and Responsibilities

Traditionally, Russia's intelligence services have been aligned with or have overseen the Interior Ministry. During the Czarist era, the ministry controlled the gendarmes and the secret police. In the early Soviet period, Felix Dzerzhinsky -- founder of the feared Cheka secret police, the precursor to the KGB -- became the first Soviet interior minister and head of the secret police.

This arrangement has led the Federal Security Service, or FSB, to view the Interior Ministry's forces as its own armed wing, so it does not have to rely on the Russian military -- which is overseen by competing factions -- for influence. However, the FSB's control over the ministry has wavered in recent years.

Kolokoltsev's predecessor, Rashid Nurgaliyev, was in charge of internal affairs at the FSB before becoming interior minister. Thus, he ran the ministry and its forces with political motivations instead of a domestic security strategy. Kolokoltsev, on the other hand, was a police officer and later Moscow's police commissioner before stepping into the ministry. He was seen as a technocrat who was not involved in the Kremlin clans' power struggle. Because of the change in leadership, the FSB -- and other security factions, such as the Investigative Committee -- have been struggling with the Interior Ministry in recent years over several choice prizes, such as control over the Main Directorate of Economic Security and Anti-Corruption, which comes with more tools for investigating economic crimes. Thus, Kolokoltsev's premature withdrawal could be part of the FSB's efforts to re-exert control over the Interior Ministry.

However, the rumored choice for Kolokoltsev's replacement points to an even more important and dangerous struggle involving Putin. Leaks to the Russian media have indicated that First Deputy Interior Minister Viktor Zolotov will be chosen as Kolokoltsev's replacement. Though Zolotov is already in the Interior Ministry, he is also the former head of the Federal Protective Service, Putin's personal security detail that is the Russian version of the U.S. Secret Service. Zolotov was the personal bodyguard of Putin's mentor, Anatoly Sobchak, in St. Petersburg, where he met Putin. Zolotov is directly loyal to Putin and not part of the other security circles in the Kremlin. He is not known to have been “turned” by Western intelligence and would be difficult to do so, knowing his personality profile.

Such a replacement would put a Putin loyalist directly in charge of one of the most important security forces and mechanisms in the country, keeping it out of the hands of the other various security circles, such as the FSB.

At a time when Russia is facing a series of crises that could erode Putin's popularity and leadership, this possible reshuffle has heightened importance. If more indications emerge of an impending change at the top of the Interior Ministry, they will reveal Putin's awareness over the ability of the security circles, particularly the FSB, to influence the ministry, which, in turn, have been influenced by mostly German/NATO agents. A reshuffle will also highlight Putin's desire to shore up his direct control over some of the country's most powerful tools. If successful, we will have lost a an angle we've been working on that could have given us control over Putin's succeeding elections as President.

**

Another Fly in the Ointment:

Since the US was found to have been directly behind the uprisings in the Ukraine, Putin has responded by dusting off and practicing the country's nuclear response. This has included the restarting of the old “practice runs” at the US by the latest Backfire and older Bear bombers. These planes do not have to get over the US nor reach it's borders in order to be effective. They carry nuclear tipped cruise missiles that can penetrate 2,000 miles into US territory. Shooting down an antiquated Bear bomber is not much of a problem IF it is close enough to the US. If it's 1,100 miles away over the Atlantic, it becomes a major problem then. As for knocking down a hyper-sonic cruise missile, the US has yet to develop technology to do that.

The other and more tangible reason for these flights are that these planes are packed with electronic warfare equipment that is able to collect a ton of useful information (radar station frequencies, locations, communication channels of the US defense network and response times).

A few months ago Putin paid a visit to few Latin American countries. On that trip, Russia wrote off some 90% of Cuban debt. What does he get in exchange of that move? Simple, Russia will restart the Lourdes SIGINT station in Cuba. Yes, a spy station 90 miles away from the US plus refueling stations for the Russian Air Force to continue these flights.

 

 

This isn't one of ours.

 

Ace in the Hole, Lean on Me, I’m Your Guarantee

Once I was crazy and my ace in the hole

Was that I knew that I was crazy.

So I never lost my self-control.

I just walk in the middle of the road and

I sleep in the middle of the bed.

I stop in the middle of a sentence.

And the voice in the middle of my head said

“Hey, Junior, where you been so long?”

“Don’t you know me

I’m your ace in the hole?”

Paul Simon

So what's your ace in the hole? What's your talent that gets you through the day, through your life? What's up your sleeve that works pretty much all the time?

 

Up until I was about eight, I had none. Unless incurable cuteness is considered a talent? That I could use but it was restricted to non-parental adults and that was only if they were in a good mood. Try and get out of trouble on cuteness alone after you've purposely sprayed the cat with a garden hose.

 

Child psychologists stage childhood development along milestones and phases. Erik Erickson's “latency period” is also known as the “5-7” shift. By the time you're 8, you've pretty much know what's right from wrong and you are just starting to understand logic. Even the Catholic church understood this for over a thousand years. You don't give a kid under 8 First Communion...he's not old enough to understand sin yet.

 

Erickson posited a question that kids face at that age: “Can I Make it in the World of People and Things?”

 

Can you? If you're reading this, you must be able to...since you've made it this far. But we all have a few personal tricks up our sleeves that work great.

 

I said I didn't have my Ace in the Hole until I was 8. That's when I finally rocketed off with my brain and learned how to properly use it. Things gelled, fell into place finally. I'm no Einstein but I can be a smarty when in the mood and if I know anything about the problem I face. It's never really failed me. Usually it involves getting out of shitty situations, finding landmines in life. Most of the time at least. It also alerted me to ridiculously profitable situations that I abused silly.

 

Here's what I know of myself today. I know my learning curve, when acquiring knew ways, looks like this: Sorry for the shitty graphics.

 

 

I know myself enough NOT to invest heavily in the beginning where I can lose dreadfully, like learning how to use a band saw the very first time or bet my life savings on a stock I know nothing about. The cost is a bit high if you fail at the start. So I begin very slow with things that aren't going to bite my ass too hard should I fail. As I go along, get confident, I up the ante. Jumping into the deep end of the pool might motivate me to the nth degree, but it does not guarantee I'll learn the skills needed. There's not enough time.

 

The other Ace in the Hole I like I can thank the deaf for and that's watching body language. Since the deaf can't communicate via voice or hearing, they rely heavily on vision. The deaf watch closely! Body language gives away soo much it's amazing really. If you want a good deal from a car dealer, take a deaf person along with you, they'll spot the lies and manipulation in about 2.3 seconds. They're also great for sizing your personality up in the same amount of time too. I've managed to use this when needed and also use it as a needed weapon too. Think I'm evil for using the Dark Side of it? Ha! ALL of you use your personal skills in not-so-honorable ways. I know. You've used them on me!

 

**

 

You've all seen this and women are lucky because this skill is generally theirs, which is the ability to flirt their way though. Since girls, from day one, are taught interpersonal skills in depth, they whip any male out there usually at this game. There are a few of boys who learn this but examples are rare. They're also the cause why a lot women hate men. These guys use that particular male charm to use, abuse and finally burn out women to all men in general. I can think of a particular lawyer I personally know who had a Genie's ability to charm the panties off women. It was like watching a snake charmer play his flute as the cobra came out of the jar. Though, these very women he captivated hated his guts in about one week after they found out how sly he was. But, these guys are rare and most of us boys still have to be reminded to chew with our mouths closed.

 

At 18, I was once drawn into a magazine subscription w/o my knowing it till a few hours later. That's how slow I am at times. The salesgirl looked similar to Kristy McNichol, which meant my brains oozed out my ears and within a few minutes, she had my money and I had a subscription to Hod Rod Magazine. I didn't like Hot Rods. I never even went to Seekonk Speedway till I was 19 and that was to see the fireworks.

Her eye contact, the small and subtly done compliments, the brush of her hand on my arm a couple of times and I found myself cutting a check. Like I said, about an hour later I sat there on my front steps, wondering “how the hell she managed that?”

What a deadly combination, to fall on the Earth pretty and with these people skills. You should be outlawed! No fair in beating up on the weak!

 

 

How's this for an Ace in the Hole? The "Over The Shoulder Glance."

We're All Gonna DIE!

Yep, we're all gonna suffer and die in the most horrific of ways! Again!

 

WJAR probably still has a “comment” section on their weather site. A while back, after RJ Heim ranted on and on about...SNOW for an upcoming forecast, all we ended up getting was a dusting. The reason for this storm was that a warm front had pushed through and at first, they flurry a lot then...nothing occurs as it's as WARM FRONT.

 

This didn't deter Heim who had probably been ordered by management at WJAR to hype the shit out of this event for ratings. So I can't really blame him.

I once commented to WJAR about this and my response was from no other than John Gihorse. He was sarcastic as hell at first about my ranting about the “desperate sounding” forecast. When I mentioned to him that this front had pushed itself all the way to the Canadian border, promising us nothing but warmer temps, he responds with; “Well, I can make no comment about various personalities here at WJAR.” He dumped this into Heim's lap.

 

I gave it up as it wasn't really an issue to push further. I did it out of peevishness about the new tact weathermen were taking. Every weather “event” was a 9-11 now...and it's not done to warn us...is it?

 

Recently, WBZ was great for this. Over the past two summers, every time their radar finds a bit of rotation in a thunderstorm out in western Massachusetts, they pre-empt their regular television so weathermen can scare you with probabilities on tornado growth. It's usually good for thirty minutes of Fright Night television...and the tornado doesn't form. Or if one does, it's an F1 and not those mile-wide F5 bastards that rip across Kansas.

 

Now we have a dreaded Polar Vortex. Guess what? There's always a polar vortex. I come to find out there's one over the North pole...always! It can deform and send an eddy down our way and we get mighty cold...but not FOREVER and EVER!

 

When news cycles get so boring they have to bring in weather doom stories...

 

Whatever happened to the head line: “Man Bites Dog?”

 

 

 

Napoleon Complex?

A few of my friends from way back then managed to turn their craftsman skills into small businesses. Small businesses are defined by having less than 500 employees. The guys I know have less than 20 each. Micro-business would the phrase here.

A couple of them have wanted to Conquer the World as well. I guess images of being Bill Gates or the CEO of Exxon danced in their heads as they expanded bit by bit. Any road block was met with determined will, guts and grit. In some instances, I had to give them credit for getting as far as they did. I wouldn't call them “rich” but managing a million $ enterprise ain't chicken feed either.

God knows I didn't do the same. My idea of getting to Easy Street would involve using your head only and not your hands, unless that was to click a mouse and make money that way. Efficiency! That plus my abhorrence to handing every minute of every day to a task like that. I like my down time. The two I know live their jobs 24/7.

If you ever been through Seekonk/Rehoboth you've seen those mini-mansions or full blown ones that pepper the wooded landscape there. One of my friends jumped the gun, fully believing in his success one day, and built an ostentatious mini-mansion to show off. Everything was great until the housing collapse happened and then suddenly no one wanted his services anymore. Whoops! He had to scramble then to keep the business going and make the note on his castle. He did manage to survive but his brash ego was knocked down a few pegs. Today he's happy enough to keep the books in the black and Empire building can wait.

The other one has yet to have life chew him up yet so he's brave as hell still. He's managed to win a legal battle over adopting an unused factory block and hoping to turn it into a plumbing empire on the level of Gem plumbing based out of Providence. He'll get to wear a larger Crown if he succeeds.

So, like anywhere else, I hear the latest gossip small businessmen like to engage in, the relative success or failure of their competitors and friends.

In order to knock down entire buildings to construct a new one, the City Council gave him 5 months to accomplish that and to come up with workable blueprints for the next building.

The gossiper tells me:

“They're fucking with him! Five months as we're heading into winter? How much can you get done if there's a foot of snow everywhere? How well can they work in a nasty cold snap that lasts a week and half? And what if the ground is frozen to four feet down? Trenchers are great but you also have to send guys into the hole with jack hammers too, the machine ain't that all powerful! Not only that, he has to pull permits left and right and those guys down at City Hall are notorious for blowing you off if they don't like you!”

I ask what if he can't do it in the five months allotted?

“I don't know. I get the feeling they're setting him up for failure by having to re-start the entire legal process all over again if he can't make it. He made some enemies down at City Hall during the legal fight and they haven't forgotten. Or...he'll have to reapply for the variance for another five months and that's an added cost to everything.”

So, being nosey as shit, I have to ask how much money is being bandied about on this new venture.

“He's floating a loan for $600,000 and plowed an additional $400,000 of his own into it. He's up to his neck now... and if this doesn't work...” he says trailing off with that knowing look on his face.

I make the comment that this seems way too much to deal with. You have to rebuild a site that's rotting , fight the government the whole way and then you have to get the business up and going. Where's the pay off?

“He wants to be King. And money, weather, enemies in the business world and government, ain't going to stop him.” I'm told.

King making is great for a younger man. However, this guy is no longer a young man. We're all at or nearing 50 and most of us are just as happy to collect a check and sit a lot of the time. If I were into empire building I'd make damn sure the variables were all lined up and tied off, then or now. But I was never into being Emperor. Being Emperor is a hell of a lot of work and there's always maintenance that never, ever stops. It's a precarious position.

You and I have known jar-headed type guys who just have to be Top Dog all the time. Ok, great, if that's what floats your boat. But I've always noticed those laurels dry up in time. It never lasts. And, as you become older, it gets harder and harder to win and maintain that. I've seen these guys forever repeat their competition again and again and sometimes they win, other times they lose. But, the final prize has always evaporated in time. I sit and think, “What good is that if you can't keep that prize? The effort becomes pointless.”

There was a great scene in George C Scott's “Patton” where he speaks of victory.

“For over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of a triumph — a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeters and musicians and strange animals from the conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conqueror rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children, robed in white, stood with him in the chariot, or rode the trace horses.

And...a slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a Golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning:

'All glory is fleeting.'”

 

 

This guy had it all then lost it all. Today, he's a pile of dried bones.

Besmirching Emily.

The Myth

That's what they called her, The Myth. Emily Dickinson's neighbors in Amherst rarely saw her. She stayed in her father's house or on the garden grounds most of her life. She became so bad that in the end, she'd rarely leave her room. In the very end, when dying, she refused to have the doctor come into her bedroom. He'd have to sit outside her open door and she'd walk by it. He had to do a flying diagnosis on the run. Today we'd call her agoraphobic. Back then they called her something else.

The other odd thing about her was her always wearing white dresses. She had quite a few and that was her entire wardrobe. I can imagine her floating through her home late at night, a white wisp glimpsed in the window by someone from the street.

I've read most of her poems back in school and thought, “Ah Ok, she's flowery 'n' dreamy 'n' stuff.” The problem I found with most poetry, back then, were that the references weren't relevant to me. “Persephone? Who the fuck is Persephone? Jesus, another footnote to read.” And when I read it, it didn't help matters any as I had little grasp of ancient Greed Goddesses nor Egyptian crocodile spirits. Or, other poetry I found was too idiosyncratic. The author thinks it's great stuff but they're the only one able to decrypt it.

 

As I reread a few of hers now I realize they were as dense as European chocolate and not idiosyncratic at all, which is odd coming from someone who had little use nor experience with the world at large. I admit she did have a talent. But is more telling were her love poems. For someone as shy as she,  her desire for it was unbelievably deep.

 

Emily never married and perhaps had an interest in a couple of males, and they in her. The information is scant even for that. But chance meetings and liaisons happened then as now. The truth is we'll never know about her love life. To read some of her love poems, she comes off as desperately wanting to be gang-banged and loving every minute of it. Reading her “Wild Nights! Wild Nights!” makes me wonder a bit. Or this:

Come slowly, Eden!

lips unused to thee,

Bashful, sip thy jasmines,

As the fainting bee,

Reaching late his flower,

Round her chamber hums,

Counts his nectars --enters,

And is lost in balms

The jist of the poem? As gently written as it is, re-read it as: “Oh God...FUCK ME! FUCK ME!” Why do I have the feeling Emily had an 19^th century French tickler well hidden somewhere in her room?

I'm sure the Emily Dickinson Society would have me strung up now.

**

There's an old, wholly inappropriate joke that has a rape defendant on the witness stand answering the prosecutor's accusation thusly:

'Ah, she wanted it!"  Then looks to the women on the jury and says, "You ALL want it!"

There seems to be nothing I won't say on this blog..huh?

Yep, there are times when I just blurt out what I'm thinking and ever since my childhood, I've shocked people.

So.what.

Yesterday, as I was working, these two workmen come in and affix another panel to the ceiling with glue, screws and bitching the whole time they're doing it.  Chuck-or-Loo are the workmen. The Loo part of that team, who I've known for many years, starts ribbing me on the fact I'm not married.

"Hey Ron, how's your wife? Mary Palm? Haw! Haw! Haw!"

From out of nowhere, I say: "Oh, I don't know Loo, but your daughter seems hot enough!"

Another L, who was standing by me, has her mouth drop wide open at what I said.

"Damn, you're vicious" she says. "How come that doesn't come out more often?"

"Yep, sometimes what I'm thinking just pops out." I say.

I really love the First Amendment!



 

Connect the Arrows!

“Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history mankind has been bullied by scum. Those who lord it over their fellows and toss commands in every direction and would boss the grass in the meadows about which way to bend in the wind are the most depraved kind of prostitutes. They will submit to any indignity, perform any vile act, do anything to achieve power. The worst off-sloughings of the planet are the ingredients of sovereignty. Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.”

 

“The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it.”

 

P.J. O'Rourke

**

I did my civic duty and voted, for all the good that'll do. I saw the well-monied Raimondo, Feng and the Cool Moose alternative, Healey. I voted for Healey just because he's a goof. Being a cheap bastard, I shot down most of the bond issues. I did vote for the Arts bill though. Geez, I'm all over the place on the political spectrum.

 

Being that Rhode Island is a fiefdom, not much will change. I suspect Raimondo will win and then she'll have to deal with the Landed Gentry called the RI General Assembly, which doesn't cotton to change that much. Any moves she wants to make will have to include the Nobles in that Assembly and they want their cut. That doesn't include all the Medieval type guilds we have here demanding that they get more too. Plumber's Guild, Doctor's Guild, CVS Guild and the list goes on and on.

 

The Senate either will be GOP or Democrat. Whichever way it goes, the same lobbyists will be there begging, cajoling or bribing the right guys in either party to cut taxes for corps, the rich and make Caribbean tax evasion havens legal. Possibly they'll try to privatize the US Mail for their buddies as well. Know what it costs to send a simple letter from NYC to LA via private FedEx? $4. I looked it up.

 

Party on, Garth!

 

So, expect more of the same.