502. In Between

These days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve are a strange mixture of the past’s waves washing over a new beach made of molten lava spewing into the ocean of time, whatever that means. I like the image of change, the cutting edge where energy steams off liquid rock, hardening in cold briny waters. Birth and death meet. Future and past. Hope and history. The sands of time swish back and forth, turning upside down, tumbling over each other, imperceptibly shrinking away. Here and now.

The Romans had a god of doorways, beginnings and endings, named Janus, for whom January was reportedly named. He had two heads in one, looking forward and backward simultaneously. In some depictions one face would be older than the other. But in between these two faces we find one neck, which is where we are today, in this here and now moment. 2017 looks backward into the mists of prehistory; 2018 gazes into the matrix of infinity.

In the therapy business we speak reverently about the here and now, which is where we are condemned or challenged to live. I often point out that depressed folks look lugubriously backward into the past, whereas anxious people peer fearfully into the endlessly oppressive future. Depressives guiltily mutter, “If only I hadn’t done… x, y or z. If only I’d done a, b, or c.” Neurotics nervously sputter “What if x, y, or z happens? And if not, what about a, b, or c?” Neither view appeals to the beholder. The litter box of the past holds all the awful clumps of a sad life like islands built on icebergs of cat pee. On the other hand, the gaseous future comes unglued molecularly, requiring huge expenditures of energy to chase down all potential atomic outcomes. No one can live in either atmosphere. One is not enough, and the other is too much. Balance, equilibrium, centeredness… all get at the same condition of being in the middle, in between, in the neck.

Americans don’t seem to like being in the neck of between-ness. We like the new, the young, exciting and sexy next thing; or else we prefer living in the mythical past, when everyone was happy and healthy and homogeneous. The mythic 1950’s, for example. Or before those glorious years, back in the nearly perfect Currier and Ives or Norman Rockwell eras of American life. What we fail to discern once again is that no one can live in either place because we are either cursed or blessed within the present time and space. It’s all we have access to, folks.

But the miserable among us claim, “There should or must be more!!” In some bait and switch amygdala chamber, a voice clamors for something other than what is.  It’s all too much or not enough. But the rational question is this:  compared to what?  The miserable answer:  compared to what should be or could be or used to be. No matter what you plug into such a simple formula, you wind up with misery.  Kids, society, jobs, spouses, politics, the economy, technology, preaching, music, manners, etc. And it is a simple truth that these factors do change in one’s lifetime. So what?  How realistic is it that fashion or manners or technology would become static and remain so? Not even North Korea or Mongolia can do that.

Life is lived between the real and the ideal, right here in this moment. Idealizing a period of history or some imagined future leads to tyranny. The tyrant says something like, “Make America Great Again!”,  or “Make Islam Great Again”, and away we go in search of imagined greatness in a bottle and convenient scapegoats to punish for our failure to find it. Really, there are three messages imbedded in that one, MAGA. First, America/ Islam was great in the past. Second, it is not now. Third, it will be again…if you follow my and only my precise directions, be it POTUS or Imam, eliminate the non believers. Then we’ll be great again. 

Obviously, there is a comparison to the Third Reich, used by Hitler to describe his German Empire. There had to be a first and second Reich in order to get to the imaginary Third Reich or empire. The first two Reichs were imaginary, sort of. The first was the Holy Roman Empire, which is often noted to have been neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. So strike one against Reich One.  Reich Two was something called the… well, let me scam some Google post…

The Second Reich was the Hohenzollern Germany, from the unification of Germany following the Franco-Prussian War (1870 – 1871) and crowning of Wilhelm I as German Emperor at the Palace of Versailles, with Otto von Bismarck as the first Reichskanzler, to the abdication of Wilhelm II in 1919 following the German defeat in the First World War.  [check out the hat…]

So, strike two on Reich two. Inglorious ending there. Crippling defeat followed by excessive retribution and humiliation of a people. No wonder that the Third Reich was so appealing to the German people. They did not want to strike out of the game of history. It was all or nothing in the 1930’s. Hitler promised a healing balm for Germany’s shameful wounds. Forget facts or history, baby, cobbling together sound bites and mythology, anger and scapegoats made for a great recipe for the resurgent Fatherland. Airing old grievances, building up the armed forces, shutting down intellectuals, gays, gypsies, Jews, and non Aryans turned the world into a simple us versus them game. Victory would be the annihilation of them, the feared and hated Other. The Fuhrer was the father of the Fatherland, not unlike Kim Young Fool is today.

And what a murderous father he was.

World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history in absolute terms of total casualties. Over 60 million people were killed, which was about 3% of the 1940 world population (est. 2.3 billion).  Wikipedia.

That’s all, Folks. Germany was not made great again. Isis will not make it either. Maybe we should just stop with this, “Keep America Great”. It suggests no deficiency or tarnished past in need of a strong man, just a smart one to keep it going strong.

501. Singlets, The Human Fly, Rockets and Railroads

Sometimes I have to search for blog post material, and other times it just comes to me unbidden as opposed to being bidden. Not like bitten by a rabid dog, but like bidding on a painting at an exquisite auction. Can you tell that I played Scrabble over Christmas? Oh, some mighty word combos were played on triple word tiles at un-imagined verbal intersections. Unrequited comes to mind for fifty points. You know that you’re doing well when your family members utter, “I hate you!” as you play the x or z for mega points. I’ve always been fascinated by words and their origins. Does this make me weird? er? est? How about wired? Don’t hate me because I am adept. Also, to help you appreciate big point words in Scrabble, I am bold facing and italicizing them in the text.

But today’s post is a smattering of the Coffee Nation’s morning chatter. After Consiglieri Joel left the group to make more filthy lucre, we were regaling the lately reunited USAF airman, second lieutenant Tyler, who is home on holiday leave, with classic CN stories. (Not CNN, the Communist News Network, as Evil Kevin likes to call them. He’s a Fox Newser if you hadn’t guessed. He eats only rare red meat that still has a pulse.) No matter, when politics are outlawed, only outlaws will have politics. Which is sort of where we are now anyway. This is why religion and politics are forbidden from Coffee Nation. They don’t end well. Someone gets crucified or sued for sociopathic tendencies.

Doug had given me a Christmas card that said, “God Wears Singlets” and referenced Genesis 32:34 where Jacob wrestled with God. Inside the card was a computer generated image of me in a royal blue singlet. Disturbing is the only word that comes to mind. I mean, I expected such treatment from Gary, but Doug? I found it hard to breathe. I exhaled “Is” and inhaled “Real”, “It’s REAl!” Blasphemy was the next concept that shot across my stunned mind like Haley’s Comet or Kim Young Fool’s latest ICBM cruising above Nebraska. For after this most famous wrestling match in history, God renamed Jacob “Israel”, which means “He who wears a singlet while limping in the desert”.  I must burn it after making sure no copies exist.

Tyler was so impressed with our Adult Day Care musings that he said something like, “Wow. Who knew?” Collectively we told him to be proud of his hometown as he flew various planes in Pensacola.  “Don’t let those catheterized fly jockeys intimidate you, kid. It’s all in the technology.” And if he were ever jammed up in the ultimate life or death trivia game as part of his mock POW/survival school experience, right before the USAF dunked him in a plane in a pitch black Canadian fjord, he could extend his life by asking if anyone knew where the Human Fly met his untimely death.

“What, wait? What are you talking about?”

“Oh, you weren’t here when Joel educated us with the story of the final hours of the Human Fly.”

“We’ll have you know that the Human Fly died tragically across the street in 1924 after scaling most of the five story bank building. George Oakley was his name. You can Google it, kid.”

“Nah…”

“His helper/hootchie cootchie girl who was not his wife, failed to haul his tired butt in the fifth floor window with the rubber inner tube that finished all the Human Fly’s previous scalings.”

“He hurtled to his death in front of a couple of thousand onlookers who stood aghast. As if they’d seen a ghost. It was August 31.”

“I am aghast too.”

“I guessed so.”

“Yep, he was pronounced dead at the hospital later that day.”

“No kidding?”

“We don’t kid around, kid.”

“Wow. How did all this come about?”

“The coroner and a doctor said simultaneously in concert, ‘He’s dead’.”

“No, I mean, what was the Human Fly doing here?”

“Chambersburg was an important railroad hub, my son, before planes filled with young airmen skittered above the land. Curds and whey were exported off the likes of Commerce and Grant Streets.”

“What was imported?”

“Air that did not smell like manure.”

“Yeah, Third Street was a rail line back in the day that ran right past the newspaper building, the cold storage, Roy Pitz, the Gear House and Janzell winery.  The old Round House was used to unload trains with teams of horses and heavy ropes before Leonard bought the back room for antiques and hard candies. I mean, it was real.”

“Yeah, I ‘ve been at the Gear House over the past three nights. Going back tonight to catch up with my friends over a few expensive craft beers.”

Doug, “I was just in there for the first time since I remodeled it after the big fire.”

“When was that?”

“When I went in or the fire?”

“The fire.”

“Oh, maybe 1992. It was quite a big deal. The Gear House was the body shop back then, and there were cars parked all over the lot. When the restaurant burned, Grant Street Station it was called back then, one of its huge propane tanks fell over and caught fire. It became Chambersburg’s only known domestic terror rocket attack.

“That tank skittered across the parking lot, and hit a van outside the body shop and broke the front axle. Then it ricocheted across the lot and into the overhead door with such force that it blew out the windows throughout the building.  Finally it came to rest in the back brick wall of the body shop.  It was a helluva mess. “

“Wow. I never knew all these fat facts.  I’m gonna kick butt on trivia night at the POW/Survival school jail! I can’t wait. Thanks, guys”, Tyler ejaculated.

Truly, if youth is wasted on the young, what then is wasted on the old? Let me count… Hair dye. Lip balm. Belly dancers. I-phone updates. Implants. Subtlety. Green bananas. Diet Cola.

 

500. Cilia-ousness Infomercial

So, by the end of this post I’ll have made it to the half million word mark, for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, in madness and sadness, with silli- and seriousness. Or ciliaousness, which is a condition where fine sensory hairs in the nose and ear canals that absorb laughter molecules and the titillating aroma of violets deteriorate, leaving sufferers unable to laugh or smile, wink or grin… and sadly, leads them to a bridge in a black and white Christmas Eve movie, feeling congested and bereft like Jimmy Stewart about to leap out of this skeletal life. Why? Because without cilia, silly rabbits, joy is imperceptible. The result?  Joylessness, Joelyssesness or Joel for short. Don’t let this debilitation happen to you or a loved one. For nineteen dollars a month you can keep this investigative blog blastoma going, like George Costanza’s Human Fund or Bernie Maduff’s Greed Indeed, to help the less fortunate among us, until a cure is found. “Ask not for whom the contributions toll; ask what you can do for your country.”

In this blog’s existence of nearly six years, you have been parallelly exposed to over three million television commercials, putting the ad in ad nauseam, subtly moving you toward ciliaousness. All along I have offered you the other elixir, truth and antidotal anecdotes.

“One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small

And the ones that mother gives you, don’t do anything at all

Go ask Alice, when she’s ten feet tall

And if you go chasing rabbits, and you know you’re going to fall

Tell ’em a hookah-smoking caterpillar has given you the call

And call Alice, when she was just small”

“Just remember what the dormouse said…”

Other symptoms of ciliaousness include depression and a listless, free floating anxiety; projectile vomiting from slow moving cars in crowded tunnels; and intense fear of eczema commercials and all drugs for which no target disease is given. Ciliaously!! It’s time we pushed back against this amorphous morphamontopic before we wind up like Tokyo in the Godzilla movies of the 1960’s. Throughout your declining mental health journey this blog has offered all readers a Bingo Free space to retreat to at no cost and reset your  bridge over troubled water minds. When you have experienced brain salad surgery buffets and verbum non seqitorums, this blog has kept you balanced if not smugly superior by providing you with a front row seat to a twisted mind in search of meaning.

“Feed your head, feed your head.”

And where will your nineteen dollars a month go? Well, first of all… research into the effects of psychedelic drugs, such as ivanka nirvanka, utopian worlds, advanced cryogenics, and intensive banality. When you sign up as a confused brain cell donor, you will continue to get the same high quality gibberish you have come to expect from this blogistician. Complete with weird pictures scammed from all over the Google planet set to song lyrics taken out of context from great lyricists of the past century. Each month you will receive another post that you can return if not fully satisfied. Just e-mail it back to Burritospecial.com along with shipping and handling costs, restocking charges, and a 10 percent carrying fee, and we will rush you another post of equal or lesser value. You simply cannot lose. Believe me. Many people are saying it’s great.

Training diagnosticians is another thrust of our mission at Burritospecial. With your help we will bring another crack team of doctors on line to wrestle with the staggering costs of ciliaousness, estimated to cost the U.S. five trillion dollars a year in lost joy and sick days, suicides and self injury. Roughly the net worth of five Tokyos and three Godzillas.

But our outreach does not end there. No. We have pioneered a lab in Helsinki, Finland, among the world’s most mood disordered and joyless people, the Finns, to find the genetic markers for ciliaousness. Early returns suggest that primeval Laplanders crossed the species barrier and may have mated with the now extinct Giant Arctic Sloth. Research into modern descendants of the G.A.Sloth reveals that they lack the neuronal receptors to sense smells and humor. Thus the suburban myth of slothful smiles being timed with sundials seems to be coming into its own as we scale the very cusp of medical hyperbole. All this for the cost of a cheap meal for two at Applebee’s, where you have to share the appetizer and dessert and main course, which is really one meal with someone who is not that hungry.

In this time of giving and reaching out beyond our comfort zones, isn’t it time for you to touch a life touched by ciliaousness? Wouldn’t you want someone experiencing unbridled joy to find it in his/her brimming heart to fill an empty heart’s stocking with the hope and smells of joy, if you were that downtrodden, Finnish salted herring of a man?  Don’t wait to be haunted by three Christmas spirits before you write that check or pay with a major credit card. Tiny Tim is suffering now and he doesn’t even know it. He smells no roast beast or plum pudding, no turkey or pumpkin pie. His world is an endless stream of humorless damp cardboard and outdated magazines. He buys joke books at the five and dime and doesn’t get a single chuckle. Sad. Tragically so.

But you can make a difference. With matching donors in North Korea, every dollar you contribute will be doubled like yin to yang by high sung bun Kimsters in Pyongyang, making the world a safer place while bringing hope to guards fleeing the demilitarized zone as their countrymen shoot them in their backs. Sort of like the old joke about why cemeteries have wrought iron fences around them; because folks are just dying to get in there. And look, we’re out of time. Like all good fundraisers, this one has to end now. 

499. That Trump Train

Watching the news nightly I’ve had an overload of the Trump troll camp that invaded Washington, D.C. a year ago. The assault was called “The Trump Train”, definitely not “Soul Train” or “Thomas the Train”.  It went hurtling into Union Station like a wrecking ball, intent on draining the swamp that is run by the “Deep Dark State”, whatever that is. When a real train derailed the other day in Washington State, hanging over Route I-5, mangled and helpless, I couldn’t help but juxtapose that image onto the swirling Trumpisms in my mind. 

“Of course it derailed. It was going too fast on its virgin voyage.”

“Of course it derailed. The conductor was distracted.”

“Of course it derailed. The same arrogance that sank The Titanic just keeps coming back to haunt and kill folks. ‘It’s unsinkable, invincible. Smart. Who needs supervision when it practically drives itself?'”

The same week our desperate-for-a-win GOP finished up their corporate and billionaire welfare program known as the tax reform bill. The same folks who were so hawkish against the national debt added an estimated $1.5 trillion to the $20.5 trillion already piled up. If our deficit is bad, then it’s bad no matter which party controls the House, Senate, or White House. Funny how the impending doom that the deficit was during the run up to the election just became a non-factor after the GOP controlled all three. It’s a mere after thought…after the U.S.Treasury candy store is given away and our grandchildren are chained to endless debt; after 10 years 83% of tax relief will go to the top 1% of the population who are already swimming in money. Ah, the one per centers. They can’t help it if they’re lucky.

Yet, there it is…By 2027, more than half of all Americans — 53 percent — would pay more in taxes under the tax bill agreed to by House and Senate Republicans, a new analysis by the Tax Policy Center finds. That year, 82.8 percent of the bill’s benefit would go to the top 1 percent, up from 62.1 under the Senate bill. (Don’t they eventually run out of space to put all this stuff?)

Oh, but it’s all good. The opium pipe dream belief is that all these patriotic corporations and royal honey bees are going to share their new found, government benefits with all the little laboring worker bees. You know, like they do now only more so.  Like they have not done for the past forty years, as working folks’ wages have stagnated in general.  Magically, however if you smoke the hopium pipe, the economy is going to skyrocket, and everyone will have a job with benefits and high wages. And, and, and, wait, wait, this is the super exciting part, we will almost pay for the deficit we create in the tax giveaway. And, if, if we don’t, well, we’ll just cut “entitlement programs”, you know, those tax funded welfare programs that Republicans are always demonizing?  After all, why should I/we real Americans pay for those subhuman lazy butts to collect a check every month? Not military pensions or social security, but disability and welfare and food stamps and such. So it goes in the rabid minds of opportunistic greedsters. Why not just legalize opium and skip all the in between steps? Either way it’s a narcotic dream.

Back to the T.T. conductor, he’s all smiles about driving this runaway, give away train. So fast, why it’s like Santa Claus and his sled coming with bricks of hundred dollar bills to drop on the Hamptons and Manhattan. “Merry Christmas. Here’s your Middle Class Tax Bill Present. Merry Christmas.” Not to your house or mine, mind you, but to the million and billionaire set. In case you didn’t know, about half of our congressmen and senators are millionaires.  Such a nice touch to lie and call this tax cut Middle Class relief. Relief of sanity.  Reminds me of when Reagan called ketchup a school lunch vegetable. It would have been more appropriate for the ketchup to call Reagan a school lunch vegetable.

But it’s all good. Even though wars and real estate crashes and recessions and natural disasters come along, we’ll be okay, right? Our super heated, money gushing economy will float all boats, so they promise. Greed will be forgotten like polio after this massive cut. Soulless corporations will just do the right things for the right reasons, without regulations or mandates. My God! It will be a modern utopia. Like more white on rice. After all, the mantra and battle cry of a good capitalist has always been “MORE!!”

All aboard the Trump Train. “More, more, more, more….” It chugs along, picking up speed. A juggernaut goring sacred cows that stand on the tracks. DACA, deport them. Foreigners, report them. LGBTQ’s, convert them. Regulatory agencies, pervert them. Christian values, invert them. Historical trajectories, revert them. Conspiracy theories, inflate them. Facts and logic, conflate them. Racial tensions, instigate them. Global allies, infuriate them. “Whoo woo, all aboard. Next stop, Bedlam, Maralago, Babylon, Hades.”

Now once the bloated and overloaded Trump Train reaches critical mass, look out for the turn before the overpass.  That bridge over Constitution Avenue, where many crises have been exorcised. The same avenue where WWI soldiers marched for promised but delayed payments during the Great Recession. The same street where minorities and their allies marched for civil rights and human dignity. And anti-Vietnam War protesters swarmed. Each time moving our country toward constitutional crisis.

That Trump Train is no City of New Orleans. Still, some words resonate from the old song,

“But all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still ain’t heard the news
The conductor sings his songs again
The passengers will please refrain
This train has got the disappearing railroad blues”

 

498. I Got the Omarosa Blues

I got the Omarosa blues

It’s a game where you just can’t lose

Omarosa blues, ah no,

She told us all to choose the chump

Got in bed with Donald Trump

Sold her soul to pay her filthy dues.

Omarosa truly

You are a cactus flower in expensive shoes

You were duly untouchable

like make believe power,

but what have you got to lose?

***************************

Lately it seems to me

In a White House full of adversity

That another self inflicted wound

has peeled back the band aid cartoon

erasing any tracing of diversity.

A Black female Republican face

has been shown the door of celebrity disgrace.

But it’s hard to differentiate

What is real and what is fake.

For Omarosa seamlessly bridged

The Apprentice board room

To the White House fridge.

Though she went kicking and bitchin’

Pitchin’ a fit,

Still no one knows her job description

In the almost Cabinet.

How can a person so full of petty drama

Work for someone who hates Obama

Like a snake hates a rat

Or a bald man loves his favorite hat?

Either way it was reported

Off the grounds she was escorted

By the same secret service men

Sworn to protect her pouty rear end.

Loyal as a pirate in a poker game,

Donald dumped her pricey name.

Just like Spicey had to go.

Maybe on another reality show

Omarosa will tell us the blow by blow.

******************************

I got the Omarosa blues

She’s a dame you can’t stand to lose

Omarosa blues, so bad

Get your name in the news

Get in bed with Donald

Sell your soul to pay your party dues.

********************************

“Got a pair of queens and two eights”,

Omarosa claimed.

“Three of a kind”, said Donald Hates

“You’re not fired, just de-famed.”

“But I sold my soul for you,

remember? Racial unity? Charlottesville?”

she cried.

“Thanks for your celebrity…

I gave you this opportunity, don’t be shrill”,

he replied.

“But no one does Omarosa this way;

I’ll be back with Hell to pay.”

But even Robin Roberts said,”We release ya”

In two words, “Bye Felicia”

“I have a profound story to tell.”

For the highest bidder I will sell

options on the sequel.”

Shocker alert: maybe no one wants to hear your dirt.

In this era of consternation

Alternate facts and steady conflation…

I think it would be wise

To end the endless oxygen supplies

Of blow hards and masters of lies

And to stand back and watch their pyrrhic claims

sputter into smoke after dying flames

***********************************

I got the Omarosa blues.

It’s a game I can’t stand to lose.

Omarosa blues, no, no,

Had my moment in the news.

Got in bed with Donald

Just to shine his shoes. 

“You gonna miss me, baby, when I’m gone.

Whose butt will you put your hands on?

Who’s gonna manage your fragile ego

After you make me havta go?”

“I want to thank you for your loyal service.

Though a lot of staffers said you made them nervous.

You’ll always have a special place in Maralago

When our ratings plunge and we have to swallow

The bitter Russian pill of gall

And humility comes to us, one and all.

I really mean this, Omarosa.

Next to Melania, nonverbosa

And Ben Carson, comatosa,

I love you more than a mint mimosa.”

***********************************************************

I got the Omarosa Blues, it’s a new vodka you just can’t lose

Omarosa Blues, the label on my new shoes

Here I am on HSN, this aint no fake news

If  you order in the next ten mins

You can have the Omarosa Blues, shoes and booze.

**********************************

“After I went on The View and gave them my sychophanctic spew

About  how one day the sons of bitches and Russian witches would all bow down to you?

After I was your best homey when you fired Jim Comey.

After I ran through the White House for my wedding blow out

You want to do me like a throw out? That will be the day,

Let me quote you some strong woman Beyonce:

‘To the left, to the left,

Everything I own in a box to the left

In the closet that’s my stuff, yes,

If I bought it, please don’t  touch. 

You keep talking that mess, that’s fine

But could you walk and talk at the same time?

You must not know ’bout me,

You must not know ’bout me.

I could have another you in a minute

Matter of fact he’ll be here in a minute….’

And onward marched our Omarosa

Amazon queen of narcissus nervosa

She didn’t do what she was supposta

But man, one day she’ll make a bangin’ game show hosta.

Until then the Donald must move on

With another  lady Republicon

There will never be a more Pepto Dismalosa

Advisor than our shady lady of Omarosa

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

497. Rancid Red Meat

I was pleasantly surprised last night when the final pieces of the political map of Alabama filled in around 10 pm EST. My brain began to hyper-focus as the returns came in late from eventual blue counties, as if this were overtime in the Steelers / Patriots game. I stopped humming Neil Young’s “Alabama” and “Southern Man” around 9:30 and began singing “Tupelo Honey”. Say what?  Substitute Victory for She in the song… see what you get…

You can take all the hate in Bama
Put it in a big brown bag for me
Sail right around all the seven oceans
Drop it straight into the deep blue sea
Victory’s as sweet as Tupelo honey
She’s an angel of the first degree
She’s as sweet as Tupelo honey
Just like honey from the bee

You can’t stop us on the road to freedom
You can’t keep us ’cause our eyes can see
Men with insight, men in granite
Knights in armor bent on chivalry
Victory’s as sweet as Tupelo honey
She’s an angel of the first degree
She’s as sweet as Tupelo honey
Just like honey, baby, from the bee

The red counties were small in population and uniformly aligned with Satan’s third cousin, Roy Moore. Looked like the Old Order of Stupid was going to prevail once again in the Deep South. Satan’s first cousin, Bannon, had been stoking the crematorium flames in his anti-political insider, drunk homeless guy hunting jacket. What a purveyor of hatred, even against traditional Republicans. But that is how all-consuming hatred is; it starts out there with the farthest them from us, and then it walks closer and closer to home, revealing the narcissist at the eye of the hatricane. In the image below Hatricane Bannon is slamming into Alabama’s coast, trying to suck the dignity out of the state. You can actually see his right eyeball in the center of this storm, like the all seeing Masonic eye on top of the pyramid. You’ve seen it on the back of a one dollar bill. Hypnotic jibberish swirls counterclockwise, trying to turn back time.

Bannon humiliated himself in his attempt to humiliate Mitt Romney, claiming Romney had “hidden behind his religion” by serving as a missionary in France during the Vietnam War. Furthermore, he went on to slander Romney’s sons for not serving in the military. Somehow he was attempting to drive yet another surveyor’s stake to mark off his tribe’s territory– anti- Mormon, anti-pacifists, anti-moderate Republicans, pro cannibals. I don’t even like Mitt Romney, but I found Bannon’s attacks despicably beneath public discourse standards, if any remain.

Like his puppet Trump doll, Bannon did not serve in ‘Nam, but he reserves the right to lambaste others like himself. Oh, and Donald’s sons did not serve in the military either, but that is different if you are the in pot calling the out kettle black. No need to be fair or equal or logical. Just be loud and angry like a bad vendor at a ball game in Hell, “Rancid meat here. Get your red hot rancid red meat here. Rancid meat here. Bloody red rancid meat. Wormy meat, prechewed. Get your rancid red meat here.”

So Roy Boy was running on deeply held, red religious values. Values he thought most Alabamians shared, and he was almost correct. It’s tantalizing how the write-in vote was just enough to decide the election, an election that was framed as either/or. Either you vote for an accused child molester, pompous mad man who misuses religion for political gain, or you vote for a baby killing Democrat who will confirm liberal Supreme Court justices. Turns out it was not a binary choice after all, but the write-ins that determined the outcome, 22,819 folks who could not stomach either man. Most likely these were conflicted Republicans who could not vote for Moore due to something that used to be  known as morality, and could not vote for Jones due to their political doctrine. Had they voted along party lines, Roy Boy and his special brand of crazy would have been loosed upon the entire country. One can only hope that this message resonates across the other 49 states in upcoming elections– the winner is “none of the above”.

CANDIDATE	PARTY	VOTES	PCT.
Doug Jones	Dem.	671,151	49.9%
Roy Moore	Rep.	650,436	48.4
Total Write-Ins	—	22,819	1.7

100% reporting (2,220 of 2,220 precincts)

So, going forward in time but backwards in history, we still have the Donald stampeding his minions toward blind divisiveness and tribalism. He is the master welder whose verbal arc welding torch creates temporary blindness in all his onlookers. By manipulation, deflection, and outright lies, he has managed to shimmy under and through the boundaries of decency and logic. Like a big rat eating Cheerios under your sink, you wonder how in the world something that bloviated could wriggle in through the pipe hole. But there he is, chewing away, shameless, voracious. His beady red eyes blink out, “You are next.”

It’s not over, this political rebuttal to the belching dictator of sulfur and brimstone. The seeds he sowed in the wind are taking root and yielding a whirlwind in the opposite direction. When you consider that a dove’s blood ruby red state like Alabama sent a Democrat to Washington in opposition to Satan’s dictates, well, it’s a Christmas miracle. Donald promised us a big Christmas present with tax breaks for his rich donors that will mysteriously not benefit him or his family. What? No more than Chris Christie closing the New Jersey beaches over the summer would benefit him and his family. Yet there they were lounging on the beach, closed to the public owners. “Well, well, I guess I was mistaken.” No surprise here. Pathological liars are incapable of telling the truth. Sociopaths lack empathy for anyone. Donald Satan Trump is both.

No matter, he will jump like a virulent flea onto the next political dog. He’ll bite down and create problems for which he conveniently happens to be the strong man solution. That’s the dictator playbook, folks. Either stage a horrible event or simply tweak one to your advantage. Never let an immigration story or a race story or an LGBTQ story go to waste. Make political hay with them. Stir up the masses with fear and fury… and then seize more power. The Donald is not merely inconvenient gum stuck on the sole of America’s democracy; he is puncturing its very soul one tweet at a time.

 

496. Sprinting into irrelevance

Never was a sprinter. I ran on my heels or flat footed, slowly.  I’m what is called a heel striker. Neurological predestination, I suppose. Of course, I wanted to run faster in Little League to find out what life looked like from one of the bases without a glove on, with the wild potential of scoring a run for my team. “Get up on your toes”, my coach yelled. Incidentally he was also my father, which may explain what I was doing playing second base to begin with. I’m pretty sure there were kids with more talent who were not on the field when I was. It only took me forty years to arrive at this conclusion.

Second base is the shortest throw in the game of baseball, assuming that you catch a grounder to begin with. In all the other positions you need arm strength and accuracy, or else you need to be a big left handed target at first base. In my memories I see a kid in a baggy jersey with a number 2 on the back over a matching pair of baggy pants that were made for a taller boy. My glove, my beloved mahogany colored, neatsfoot oiled glove, was bigger than my head. Hard hit line drives more than once took my glove with them; so technically I caught the ball until it rolled out of my handless glove as the batter snickered safely on first base. 

No matter, I’d go back to a defensive crouch and join my team mates buzzing like cicadas, “Hey batter, batter, batter, batter, batter, swing”, while hoping secretly that no more balls would be hit anywhere near me, especially pop ups. They would go up into the blue summer sky so dramatically, and I would wave my arms to signal “I got it”, and then the ball would land behind me or hit the heel of my glove and bounce out. Charlie Brown would have been proud. Sadly, there is no place to hide in baseball.

Not surprisingly my offensive talents were commensurate with my fielding and base running skills. I closed my eyes when I swung the bat at anything close to the strike zone. If the  pitcher threw curves like Keevin Carr did, I ducked and backed out of the batter’s box in fear of my life. I knew that my 3rd base coach, my dad, would signal for me to bunt. That was the routine. Since I was hopeless as a hitter, the odds for a successful bunt were better than a walk or a hit. After coming to bat twice in a game, my dad would take me out of the game. He’d walk in from the coach’s box and say, “Look, everyone in the park knows you’re gonna bunt again.” Seriously? Looking back from fifty years of experience, I can see that was a statement of fact not opinion. My options were either to bunt, strike out, walk or get hit by a pitch. No matter how I may have wanted to hit for the fences, it was not gonna happen. Ever. 

In basketball I fared no better. Slow of foot, not much of a jumper, dribbler or shooter. About the only thing I could do well was slap at balls on defense. My hand/eye reactions were okay for playing defense and anticipating where rebounds would wind up, but it hardly mattered when I sucked at all the other aspects of the game. Fortunately there was the B team for some experience, just enough to convince me never to try out for basketball again. It took several years longer to come to this conclusion in baseball. 

In football I made the team. Come to think of it, everyone who practiced made the team and would dress for games if there were enough uniforms. I didn’t figure this strategy out till recently. You see, in football you need a lot of live dummies for the starters to hit in practices. Guys like me filled that need without realizing we were human tackling dummies. It seemed like a good trade off if we dressed for the Friday night game under the lights, even if our game uniforms never needed to be washed. Ever. We tackling dummies played vicariously through the star starters. It was very emotional like a good video game experience. All the pain and blood and bone crunching was on an impenetrable screen, removed from the clean guys on the sidelines.

Looking back I don’t regret the mediocre outcomes really. I participated enough to pass through those sporty gates into manhood. The real benefit, I think, is I have no sports related injuries due to bygone glories. No concussion history, no TBI from a baseball in the face, no torn Achilles, no neck or back injury from football, nope, nothing beyond a scar from getting hit by a golf ball; a broken wrist from the swing in the woods; and a broken thumb from hitting Steve Rice’s thick skull in a schoolyard fight about nothing. Pretty decent outcomes all told.

I recall two natural athletes I played baseball alongside in Little and Pony League. Both suicided later in life. They were sprinters, gifted in hand/eye coordination. Played shortstop and pitched. The complete package back in the day. My dad the coach was very impressed with their skills, and I suppose I might have been jealous if I thought I could even begin to compete with either one, but I could not so I just admired them along with ever other fan.They were the proverbial poets in motion and grace. It would be highly simplistic to draw a causation line between youth stardom and later suicide, as if that were the only factor in play. I do believe, however, that learning about the frustrations of one’s limitations and inadequacies does more to prepare you for life than all the lovely accolades and accomplishments of Little League do. Success is just great until it isn’t. May the two Mikes rest in peace as we flat footers lumber toward home plate.

 

495. Dx: Sousaphilia, a depraved love of tubas, usually occurring in older males

It’s not a typical diagnosis, and one that should not be made lightly. First a thorough intake history must be taken of the patient. When did he (’cause it’s always an offbeat older male) first meet up with a tuba? The earlier the bond was made, the worse the expected outcome will be. It’s analogous to Super Glue bonds between a penny and concrete. If the date on the penny is more than ten years old, you will not separate the penny from the sidewalk without destroying one or both. The literature confirms the indissolvability of such bonds, which are often called “marriages made in chemistry”. In fact, researchers speculate that budding sousaphiles excrete a rare protein in their sweat which bonds with the brass in the tubas they contact, thus the breathy betrothal begins.

Other researchers have examined the role of fluttering lips in sousaphiles and drawn a connection between late oral stage, pleasure-seeking male infants who blow air ‘raspberries’ with eventual tuba players in middle school and found a strong correlation of +2.0 within a margin of error of –.666. Furthermore, many mothers of sousaphiles report a fascination in their infant sons with blowing bubbles in liquids or an over-dependency on drinking straws. More than one mother was quoted as saying, “He never sucked; he just blew.” Even in third world countries without access to tubas, such boys are said to be descendants of the feared mythical chupacabra, known for its blood curdling raspberry trumpet blasts in the wastelands of Mexico, Peru, and Mongolia.

The patient before me was, of course, Joel. He was sharing his weekend update with me on this past Monday when I realized for the first time that he was not only an eccentric tuba player with the community band, but he had been silently suffering alone from Sousaphilia for decades. My throat swelled with compassion when the realization hit me. ‘The poor unfortunate soul. Bless his little reptilian heart.’ All these years now and I had missed it. Perhaps his suave sociability had fooled me, the way he worked a cocktail party room– until a strange woman across the room told him his tortoise shell eyeglasses were fascinating to her like an old world chameleon is to a herpetologist. Well, of course, he was a rock star in 360 degrees of sightedness, as he launched into a rendition of Frankie Valli’s “You’re Just Too Good To Be True”… as sung to a horsefly.

“You’re just too good to be true
I can’t take my eyes off you
You’d be like heaven to touch
I wanna hold you so much
At long last love has arrived
And I thank God I’m alive
You’re just too good to be true
Can’t take my eyes off you

Pardon the way that I stare
There’s nothing else to compare
The sight of you leaves me weak
There are no words left to speak
But if you feel like I feel
Please let me know that is real
You’re just too good to be true
I can’t take my eyes off you”

And so, returning to the matter at hand, after much inter-species flirting and mating dance rituals were demonstrated with a muffin and iced tea as table props, I took Joel’s tarnished brass history.

“Well, I got into the tuba game fairly late. I was in eighth grade when the band teacher realized she only had a single senior tuba player left for the marching band and needed to replace him. She noticed my bright,curious manner with other instruments and then did a saliva test for the mystery protein. Apparently I had what it took, genetically speaking, for the intrepid journey into sousaphilia.

No one asked me if I wanted to go, mind you. I was like a young Ted Kaczynski, a guinea pig from a small town. The next thing I knew I was marching around during half time at football games, praying that the wind would not blow me over as I struggled to balance that brass monster on my narrow shoulders during blustery November nights. I said nothing of my pain. I merely shouldered the load and took it all for my alma mater.

Later on in college ROTC I realized this was my way out of tromping through the jungles of ‘Nam. If I played the tuba well, it could save my life, unless General Westmoreland decided to stop napalming the Viet Cong and send in a marching brass band, like a herd of wild chupacabras, deafening the hearing of villagers and collaborators for miles, thus forcing a mass surrender and the end of an undeclared war of attrition. However, that did not occur. Instead, after many semesters of marching on the campus lawn, I developed Type 2 Sousaphilia, which is both nature and nurture driven. No words can convey my desolation, but a cash settlement would be nice.

I was discharged honorably and found myself listless and yet longing for the feel of brass. In my desperation I decided to end it all, to kill my soul, and so I went into the shadowy lair of law school. I wanted to expiate my sin, my avarice, my love of brass, but I wound up with a j.d. (just desserts) and my riscence. Soon I was clad in tweed and chasing ambulances and dump trucks into county court. All the while, though, I found that something cool, metallic and golden was missing. I knew I would never be fulfilled until I held my sousaphone closely against the void that once held my cold beating heart.

The year was 1976, and our community band leader Herb needed a full brass band that could march crisply for a mile to celebrate the bicentennial while keeping pace with Brownie troop 142 from Roxbury. Fortune smiled on me again. I auditioned for the tuba section. Herb was very complimentary, may God rest his soul. He gave me a can of Brasso and a shammy cloth to shine my bell. I still have them.”

As you can see, the patient meets all the criteria for Type 2 Sousaphilia as well as various other disorders. Do not throw stones of condemnation, dear blog readers. There but for the grace of God and one randomly occurring protein chain, go you and I.

494. The New Old Normal

Busy weekends are the norm now that we have no kids, no debt and no dog at home. The wife and I are off the leash on weekends, able to dance and party outside our circa 1985 raised rancher where we raised three girls and lots of pets over the past 33 years. Never imagined having the money or time or energy to do all we are doing in our early 60’s, that’s our dog years not the 1960’s. Plus, since my wife looks so much younger than I do, it’s like I’m Roy Moore. Ick, let’s see. How about Hugh Hefner?  What? Dead? Uh, how about never mind? Anyway, she’s still beautiful and we’re getting more competent at ballroom dance, twinkling through the rumba, aka, the dance of love.

Danced Friday night with fancy dance friends, foxtrot lesson, and then kept on going to a brewery joint with a blues band cranking till past my bedtime. Anti- nursing home fun was had by all. We danced as the younger patrons went home. What? Oh truly, youth is wasted on the young.  Our table closed the place. Each couple weighed in at 110 plus years of life experience times four couples; all told we were pulling over 450 years among us. I felt like I was in the dance mafia with Kirk playing Don Corleone. “Sonny, give this money to the band. Make them an offer they cannot refuse.” The band played on. Got home after midnight and it wasn’t even New Year’s Eve. I rarely see the a.m. side of midnight anymore, but there we were, flopping into our bed around 1:00 a.m. Naps are lifesavers not breath mints, my friends. Personally, I believe an hour of daytime sleep is equivalent to two night time hours of sleep. And yes, these late nights would not be possible without the generous sponsorship of late afternoon naps.

I knew we had to move the bed upstairs on Saturday. To make this happen we had to clean out two rooms, move the broken-down bed parts, and then clean up the original bedroom where we had slept for the last 23 years, back into the bedroom we had vacated when the kids were little… 1994. Weird, weird, weird. The mattress felt like a dead sumo wrestler as we pushed and pulled it up the stairs, huffing and puffing with only the edges to grasp. I cursed in Japanese…Kuso! which is not the brand name of my old mattress. Once we had all the components upstairs, we re-assembled and leveled the frame, box spring and sumo wrestler.

Okay, you might think we were done, but no, you’d be wrong. After much cleaning and rearranging,  a power nap revived us for an evening dance that night. Three hours of chatting, laughing, snacking, drinking and dancing wound up at 10 p.m. Oh we waltzed, rumbaed, cha chaed, fox trotted, strolled, tangoed, and generally had a wonderful time. Well, we needed to wind down with some red wine before sleeping in our new old bedroom. Maybe 11:30 p.m. when we settled in as the super moon shone outside. Inside we slept like happily hibernating brown bears spooning and mooning on the dead sumo wrestler mattress, which occasionally grunted “Oh matsuma”, which means nothing in any language. I just like the sound of it.

Sunday challenged us to get up for church services. I’d been tagged to teach a lesson on communication. Imagine that.  Breakfast was banging apple crisp, fresh brewed coffee, and scrambled eggs. Away we went, groomed and grooved for church and then a fast escape north for a day with our  grand kids. Everything fell in place and we did not fall on our faces somehow. I’m encouraged.  I’m not sure if life is better or I’m just more appreciative of it in my sixth decade. So far my wife and I remain healthy as we prepare for retirement up ahead. Still, we’re getting up every day and going to work without many complaints. So far, so good… like a good red wine that only improves with age.

When I recall my own parents at 60+, I don’t associate vigorous movement with them. In his green fake leather wing chair, my dad lifted cigarettes and coffee and beer to his lips while camped out behind the Washington Post. Smoke signals would arise from behind the A section as he read George Will’s editorials. My mother called him Dad, which is weird to me now. Sometimes Dad would put the paper down and respond. Sometimes not. Arterio sclerosis is a quiet guest that ever so slowly moves in to one’s dormant arteries. All of them, disabling the circulatory system and then the heart. “Who invited the Sclerotics to this party?” Nobody, they just show up like termites.  Come to think of it, he died the day we moved into our new house in 1985. That was another new normal for me: a sterile new house in PA, smelling of new paint and carpeting and a fresh grave back in Mount Comfort Cemetery, smelling of damp soil and dead flowers.

I’d walked through that cemetery countless times as a kid. We used it as a shortcut on the way to Beacon Hill stores. I wrote about setting it on fire with Chris Young in the post “Burning the Dead”. Later in my teens we ran through it at night with girls from Wilton Woods on the other end, drinking sangria. Those normals came and went quickly. And I always loved the fast pace of change. Slower is more appealing these days, however.

So odd how life unfolds, or for folks like me who don’t fold very well, wrinkles would be the more appropriate verb choice. As the years stretch out ahead of us, I’m sure there will be that day when folding and ironing out life’s wrinkles won’t be an option. And the smell of raw earth and dying flowers will hover about me, but that is not today. I’m enjoying this new old normal too much.

493. The unshared past

In families with multiple children it is not unusual for separate histories to emerge between and among the siblings, especially if many years separate them. Even identical twins emerge with differing personal histories about their formative years. Unfortunately, even monozygotic twins can experience favoritism working for or against one or the other. Hard to imagine, I know, but I also know it happens. Who gets named after the paternal grandfather or someway or another becomes a hero in the family later on also gets named as the executor of the will and prime beneficiary thereof.  Such inequality can lead to injustice and resentment…bitterness, feuds, and dysfunction for generations. Just ask Esau or Ishmael if you can find either.

The classic complaint is often lodged by the eldest child against siblings who follow him or her. Number one child inevitably compares his/her own experience against that of the latter child(ren).  It’s trickier if the next child is the other gender because there are built in anatomical and assumed gender identity differences. But it remains indisputable that the second child will have a different two parents who are two or five years older and have a child. Child two starts with two parents and a bigger kid who acts as an agent of the parents, i.e., a third parent. Sure, there are lots of exceptions. For instance, if the first born is handicapped or dies or is much older. Then the second child may function more as an only child.

What is missed by sibling comparisons is the fact that family dynamics do not hold static over the years. Parental income may change along with the family residence. Child one starts up in a two bedroom city apartment with clueless parents. Child two comes home to a town house and sleeps in a bunk bed with child one above. Child three comes to maturity in a single family house in the suburbs with a yard and garage, weathered parents at the helm. Child four has his own  bedroom and a playroom as his older sibs leave the home, leaving him/her alone with tired old parents. Each child from the family carries a unique historical map, although there will be large overlaps among their maps. Oh, but let’s not forget the adopted child who has a completely foreign map and shares no DNA with his/her siblings or their culture. Yikes, it’s getting deeply complicated now.

A common history is what holds us together in the larger family of our community. It is the unity in community, our indivisible oneness.  Language connects us in the moment to our history. Over time, however, if we don’t connect regularly, divisions set in. Look at East and West Germany. Over time these two random groupings of the very same people evolved away from each other due to opposing governments. It took many years after the Berlin Wall came down to reincorporate the two Germanies. They are still trying to weave one shared history going forward despite the awful Soviet satellite status and criminality that ran East Germany for 40 years.

Today in Korea we have a similar sociology project going on. South Korea practices democracy and capitalism, whereas North Korea combines cultic family worship with Stalinist communism. After 65 years of separation they are deeply divided and mistrustful of each other, though they share DNA. The north practices a bizarre religious mythology that forcibly elevates the Kim family to perfect divinity status. In the south an imperfect form of representative government runs from election to election.  The south has a vibrant economy and has made tremendous progress since the end of the war. The north still operates mostly in medieval ways outside of Pyongyang. Freedom and individualism are non existent in the north, which operates more as a nation of slaves,  like ancient Egypt only nukes have replaced pyramids.

But we need look no further than across the table of Coffee Nation to see the effects of separation and coercion among us. Brother Lance preached it again this morning, how deeply ingrained prejudice, racism and white supremacy are in the timbers of our American society. Even calling ourselves Americans is a bit possessive. Aren’t Canadians and Mexicans also Americans? And Central and South Americans…what are they? By our exclusive use of the term, we exclude these other nations from the term. Are Cubans allowed to call themselves Americans? How about Peruvians?

We have to remember that the victor writes history, right or wrong, and mostly it’s wrong, not by accident but by methodical strategy. Western immigrants took over Native American lands, forcibly moving the original inhabitants west to marginal lands. Here is one example of a divergent history. Western settlers and their descendants have documents and deeds that demonstrate the legal history of their ownership. (You need paperwork when there is no trust.) The Native Americans have only stories and empty white promises and broken treaties.

Because of systemic sanitization, we don’t share a common history.  Instead, we have a politically homogenized version of what sells best as history.  Those in power run it up the flag pole and our kids are told to salute. It’s not North Korea but it is still a subtle indoctrination. Every victor does this editing of history, minimizing atrocities and glorifying victories. And this is where the fissures and wedges are in our modern day United States of America. Lance made the radical suggestion of celebrating his people’s heritage on the streets of our town, just as the Union soldier facing south guards the town square and Confederate soldier re-enactors stride about in costume, he wondered aloud what sort of response and reaction he’d receive if he walked about in shackles and a loin cloth with a slave owner pulling him toward a southern plantation. I can only imagine the shock and horror of our townspeople if he portrayed his history on our streets. And there it is in a nutshell:  the streets are his also, right? But his history is shunted away into a footnote. Until and unless we get to our united history, however, we will continue to have racial and political earthquakes rocking us awake most rudely.

For one man to understand his fellow man, he must communicate and study the history behind the eloquent eyes of the other.