Blogging My Life

 A true comic genius has passed away today. One of the first comedy albums I remember listening to as a child is "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart." His most famous shtick was the telephone conversation where the audience hears only his end of the call. The most famous and best of this is the " Introducing Tobacco to Civilization " skit.

  The balcony in my apartment where I live in Indianapolis offers a decent-ish view of the Fourth-of-July fireworks display the city puts on every year. I can usually see two-thirds of the show, the medium bursts and high bursts; the one-third that I cannot see, the low burst, is blocked by a building between me and where the fireworks are launched from. But that's okay. Its usually a pretty good show. I stand on my balcony and drink a beer and watch as Indianapolis celebrates our country's continued experiment in representative government.  The fireworks we watch today are inspired by the bombardment of Fort McHenry that began on September 13th, 1814 (be honest now, how many of you thought this was a revolutionary war event?). This is, of course, the event witnessed by Francis Scott Key and memorialized in a poem he wrote the next day upon waking to see the American flag still flying above the fort the morning of September 14th. That poem was later set to music and became our...

  The Supreme Court has just ruled that a President of the United States cannot be punished for "official acts." That being the case, President Biden should do the following: 1) Suspend all further elections, at least for the office of President, and declare himself to be "President-for-Life".  2) Proclaim that a successor of his choosing will be named President upon his death. 3) Disband the Supreme Court and replace it with Justices entirely of his own choosing. 4) Declare the Republican party to be an illegal entity. (Fun Fact, the U.S. Constitution nowhere dictates the existence of political parties. It allows for them but doesn't say they must exist.) 5) Arrest Donald Trump for the charge of Treason. 6) Declare that the right to interpret the Constitution of the United States is his alone.  7) Proclaim all these to be "official acts". There will be a lot of protest and rioting in the streets as a result of these official acts, so President Biden s...

 Consider the difference between the two phrases: "Let's eat, Grandma." and, "Let's eat Grandma!"

 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 ...

 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...

Russian athletes, particularly NHL players, who refuse to speak out publicly and loudly against President Putin and his war of choice against Ukraine, should be deported immediately. I am speaking directly to athletes like the NHL’s Alex Ovechkin whose mealy-mouthed “no war” comments are so milquetoast they are meaningless at best.

  Twenty five years ago, Buffy the Vampire Slayer , the greatest ever television show ever made, EVER, debuted on the WB network. I confess that I didn’t get on the Buffy bandwagon until around season three, but once on, there was no going back. And once my ex-wife, Jessica, and I got together we started hosting our friend Rob who came over every Tuesday for Buffy, then Buffy and Angel. We’d order pizza from Piecora’s (my favorite pizza place back home in Seattle) and settle in for two hours of fun. Those were good times, I miss those times. Anyway, I have all seven seasons of the show on DVD (plus they’re on Amazon Prime Video) and it’s become a Halloween tradition of mine to watch the various Halloween episodes that night, but, every five years or so I’ll actually watch them all again, seasons one through seven. So, in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary, I’ve just started season one and it’s kinda like falling in love all over again.  I know that over the years it’s come ...

 I started this blog in 2004 mostly as an outlet for my political rants but also just to talk about my life. But, as so often happens, life got busy and complicated and painful and I only wrote in fits and starts for several years. Frankly I'm surprised Google/Blogger didn't just delete it so someone else could have the title 'Blogging My Life.' But they didn't and I'm glad because now that I'm disabled and have some time on my hands, I've discovered that writing a journal has helped me work out in my mind some of the issues I deal with. I have Ankylosing's Spondylitis, which is an autoimmune disease that causes fusing of the spine and other joints as well as intensely painful inflammation elsewhere in the body. And I have peripheral neuropathy in my right leg as a result of a parachuting accident while in the army. I'm constantly in a good deal of pain and this chronic pain has caused me to lose many things: an active lifestyle, job, wife, among...

   I was walking home from the library this evening, the uneven city sidewalk pavement always gives me trouble. When you walk with a cane you’re frequently looking down to make sure you don’t fall. It makes me feel older than I am, but I’ve felt that way for a long time.  The shadows of the bare trees grew longer as the sun sank lower behind buildings and the air got colder, but the sky was still clear blue. The city where I live has some very nice parks and I stopped to watch a man who was playing fetch with his dog. I don’t know the breed, medium size with black and white markings.  I’ve always been a ‘dog person.’ My ex-wife and I were drawn to the boxer breed and during the course of our time together we had two. Sophie, who was Jessica’s dog, developed hip dysplasia and had to be put down when she was about eleven years old. We mourned like we had lost a child, and in a way we had. After a few years we got Maggie as a puppy and she was definitely my dog. “A boy ...

I’m writing this in order to work out why the film, Let the Right One In, has affected me so much. I kinda/sorta watched it a few years ago, but not really. I didn’t really pay attention to it, I think I may have been put off by the subtitles. But I watched it a few nights ago, really watched it, and was, quite literally, moved to tears. I was so affected I read everything I could find about the movie on Wikipedia, ordered the book on Amazon, and then watched the American remake, Let Me In, on the same night. I was up until the early morning hours just thinking about it. I watched it again for a second time in three nights, and, again, I was up till the wee hours just thinking about it. I had not experienced such feelings from a movie in a very long time. What is it about this story that so touched me that I’m completely obsessed with it? I think it's that the movie, and then the book, (that’s the order I experienced) is just such a wonderfully told love story. Initially, the sto...

What does the word 'awesome' mean? Dictionary.com defines the word to mean: “inspiring an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration or fear.” People always gloss over the FEAR part of the definition. The word 'awe' used to mean 'terror!' Something that is truly awesome is something that makes one feel small and naked and insignificant and afraid in the face of the vastness of the universe. Something that is awesome is something that elicits feelings of fear and terror. Today something that should probably be described as simply good is described as awesome. Here is a short list of things that are NOT awesome: Me. You. Anything you and I have ever done, including reproducing. Anything you and I are likely ever to do. Anyone you and I know, unless of course you just happened to be friends with J. Robert Oppenheimer. He helped create the atomic bomb, something that definitely is awesome. Here is a short list of things that ARE awesome: If there is a ...

So, I just went outside to get my newspaper off the lawn (if you're not subscribing to your local paper, you're wrong. But more about that later), and the way it feels outside right now is very strange. Its humid, almost muggy outside. It's the end of summer but still seventy degrees. At the same time I could still smell the acrid smoke and see it in the air. All this despite it having rained at some point last night. I guess that's what is strange, that its still so smoky out despite the rain. The rain is supposed to clean the air, but evidently we didn't get enough rain to do the job, so its muggy out AND still smoky at the same time. It was just strange.

Well, I'm sure that by now, what small readership I had has dwindled down to nothing. I have ceased to be relevant. I am so tired now-days when I get home from work that I just don't want to do anything but have a drink and "veg" on the couch. My job with Banctec is actually quite stressful. There is a lot of pressure to complete a certain number of jobs per day. In my case, I'm supposed to complete four jobs per day. It doesn't sound difficult, but I cover an area that extends from Everett, WA to Olympia, over to the Eastside, Bellevue, Kirkland and all the way to Maple Valley. Also, there is the issue of parts. Where are they being delivered? When will they arrive? Finally, there is the issue of, do I know what the hell I'm doing? I have recieved hands-on training on some of the printers I service, but there are still quite a few printers where I have no fucking clue what I'm doing and I have to call the Banctec help desk to get walked through how to...

I don't think there's any comment I could make that would add to Ms. Wolf's eloquent essay on just how far gone our country is toward facism. Our Democracy is being taken from us, right under our noses, and we don't notice because we've stopped learning history. Just read the essay.