Blogging My Life

 I hate it here. Indianapolis sucks ass. If you've been paying attention, I moved back to the "city" of my birth, a place I couldn't wait to leave, in order to spend time with my parents before they die. That's the only reason I'm here, there's no love for Indianapolis. I left a vibrant port city, Seattle, a real city, a city of the world with a thriving cultural scene and restaurants of all flavors that are open past 3:00PM, for a provincial shit-town. I don't know which of my parents it will be that dies second, my mom or my dad, but ten minutes after that funeral, I'm planning my move back home to Seattle.

  So, I just finished reading Anne Applebaum's excellent piece  The War Won't End Until Putin Loses  in  " The Atlantic," and I couldn't agree more. Continuing to offer Putin some sort of "off-ramp" should not be the goal because, a) Putin doesn't  want  an off-ramp, and, b) the type of appeasement that such a strategy represents would only serve to encourage Putin to try again at a later date when his army would have had the time to regroup and rearm.  Applebaum makes clear that, contrary to French President Emmanuel Macron's misguided urging, Putin  should  be,  must  be, humiliated. It continues to baffle me how Macron, someone whose country knows firsthand what happens when dictators are appeased, can continue to try to help Putin "save face." Again, something Putin isn't looking for in the first place. Perhaps Macron needs remedial training in his country's twentieth century history.  Applebaum makes reference to comments m

 As anyone reading this knows by now, I moved back to Indiana to spend time with my parents. My mother and father are both still alive but in their seventies and eighties and, so, not going to be around forever. As I was making the decision to move here I thought most about it being nice to be with family, but I didn't give much consideration to the fact that I had absolutely no friends here. All the friends I had growing up here are dead.  Its not like I had more friends than I knew what to do with in Seattle because I didn't. I'm not that kind of person. I don't have lots of friends. If anything I have many acquaintances and a (very) few good friends. I don't call someone "friend" lightly, like many people do, the majority of the people I spent time with were acquaintances. Acquaintances, to me, are the people you know from work, or the club you're a member of. You might spend eight hours a day or more working with them, getting to know a bit about t

 Tonight has been the very definition of "a dark and stormy night," exactly the kind of night the author means when the first line of the chapter is, "It was a dark and stormy night," and supernatural things are about to happen. I've been watching it from the comfort of my deck above the canal for a few hours, nursing one, then another scotch on the rocks, the cold liquid warming me. The rain coming down hard at times is loud as it hits the canal, water on water. And then, in an instant, every leaf on the tree off my deck, every ripple in the water of the canal, and every other little thing to be seen is perfectly illuminated with a cold white flash of light. Seconds later the clap of thunder; it would be loud by itself but now it echoes through the man made canyons of cement and steel and glass that make up the city. My old cat, Danger, does not like any of this, not one bit, and he hides inside the apartment under the seldom used dining table when the lightnin

 Alright, so, if you know me well you know what a hockey fan I am. I'm a die-hard "homer" and whether I'm living there or not, Seattle will always be my home, so, go Kraken! I'm also a fan of the show NHL Now  with E.J. Hradek and the lovely and talented Jackie Redmond. Now, in these days of "woke-ness" and all, I know that it is wrong to objectify women by commenting on their relative attractiveness, especially by highlighting specific body parts. So let me start by saying that I firmly believe her knowledge of the game is unsurpassed by anyone else on the NHL Network. I'd be willing to bet you a shiny new quarter that she could hold her own just fine, thank you very much, against anyone in any kind of hockey trivia, and she's probably forgotten more than I will know about the game. All that being said...holy fucking shit is this girl hot. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I really believe Jackie Redmond has the best legs on tel

 Turner Classic Movies is showing Casablanca this morning. Was there ever more on-screen chemistry than between Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman? But here's what gets me about this movie, the way everyone in Ricks Cafe Americain smokes all the time, and the way they start a drink at one table, take two sips while talking to someone, then leave that table to go to the bar to talk to someone else and order a different drink and take two sips, then leave the bar, go to another table and order yet another drink. Now, I consider myself an experienced drunkard (which makes me, like Rick, a "citizen of the world") but I could only aspire to that kind of drinking! And, fuck me, I want to start smoking again every time I watch Casablanca . Seriously, if the getting of cancer was ever made to look sexier than in this movie, I've never seen it.

  For those who don't know, I moved from Seattle Washington where I've lived for the past thirty years, to Indianapolis Indiana, the city of my birth and where I grew up. The thing is, I've known a few things since I was in junior high, one is that Indianapolis Indiana is not my home. I knew it instinctively. I knew it like one knows if they're gay or straight. It was something that was obvious to me, like one plus one equals two. So when I got out of the Army in 1986 I stayed in Alaska for a few years, even got married up there. But when I decided to go to college my first wife and I moved to Seattle and I completely fell in love with the Pacific Northwest. It's liberal. It's accepting. The vibe is just completely opposite the conservative, overly religious, repressive atmosphere that is Indiana. Washington is green the year round. Indiana is brown and dead once autumn is over and that lasts until springtime. Do you like the desert? If you live in Seattle all y