Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

WHAT THE KIDS DID THIS WEEKEND

missing: mark. he missed his plane.

Stop Signs

Dear 30-ish Guy in the Subaru Outback Wagon,

There was no stop sign for traffic going in my direction. I think that means that I didn't have to stop at all, even turning left. You, on the other hand, had a stop sign. I think that means you had to stop and yield to legally-proceeding traffic.

It wasn't very cool when you pulled up next to me and started screaming at me. I couldn't understand what you were saying ... you need to enunciate, like I did, after you acted like such a lunatic. Now, just so you know, you are going to feel like a real asshole when you go back and check out the intersection, just like I said you were.

And then when we got into traffic and you started screaming at me again from three lanes over, I couldn't understand a word you were screaming. I wonder if any of the other drivers understood you. Perhaps, some of them thought you were screaming at them.

Hope your day got better.

Bill

CELEBRATE

1. memorial day weekend,
2. all kids home for part of the weekend,
3. house is clean,
4. sheba seems much better,
5. scouty no stinky,
6. life is good,

and, ...

JAX GOT THE JOB!!!

Demon in the Dark

"Sheba's crying," the voice announced somewhere from outside the dark room he was in. He struggled to wakefulness and looked at the luminescing hands of the chronograph on his wrist.

3:15. The storm outside had blown through, and darkness still enveloped the room.

The dog, which had been struggling for the past few days with an intestinal disorder, wanted to go outside. He sat on the edge of the bed, trying to clear the sleep from his head.

"Is this from your neck?" she asked.

He looked down and to the right, where his upper torso had been only moments before. It was black against the lighter colored sheet, moving, flopping around ... from his neck?! It was alien-looking, moving, writhing back toward him, obviously not done doing what it had been doing to him, seeking him out once more.

What is that? he asked, trying to control the terror rising within him, but losing his grip, mind searching to put the flopping form into some sensical, worldly category of a type of being that wasn't trying to feed on him; but it brought Star Trek to mind, Captain Picard, to be exact, with Borg implements affixed to his face. Panic rose.

"What?" she asked.

"What is it?" he cried out again, his voice quivering, hoping against all hope that it could at least be killed before it could satisfy its alien hunger, as it crawled, pulsing, toward him. He should grab it and dash it to the floor before it could get to him again or just smash it right there on the bed.

"A bandanna, maybe?" she said, calmly.

Reality smacked him up side his head, jolting him awake. "Oh, yeah. Scout's bandanna ..." he pointed out, recalling that the beagle had been given a present by her groomer.

"What did you think it was?" she asked; and he hoped that she wouldn't add, "You sounded terrified," but she did.

"Umm, I thought it was alive, the way it was moving," he pointed out.

"I had it in my hand, silly," she said.

"I have to get Sheba outside," he said, afraid that her laughter might wake the neighbors.

Sitting in the Courthouse Hallway

I am in court today, as a parent, being supportive of the J-dogg in his legal bout that arises from his pre-treatment adventures. A friend of mine is representing him; so, I'm along for the ride, waiting like all the other civilians. While I'm sitting her on the church-pew-like wooden bench along the wall of the hallway outside the courtroom knowing that I'll be waiting a while, I figured I'd pass the time by writing about what's going on here, besides with the dark-haired guy sitting next to me who has been complaining that he has been sitting here since 1. A back-hand snap punch might be in order if he doesn't stop.

He doesn't have a lawyer because lawyers are worthless, or so he says. He is now telling the guy sitting on the other side of him that he wants to leave town, join the Navy, but the judge is stopping him from doing that. I wish he would have to take a leak and leave.

Some kid -- a lawyer -- just came out of the magic door, behind which lawyers work their deals and tell their off-color jokes and purvey the latest gossip. And I say "kid" because he looks to be all of 14 years old; and he's now talking to his client, who looks to be over twice his lawyer's age and who seems to have more experience with the law, insofar as search-and-seizure law is concerned, than his teenaged lawyer -- his lawyer is nodding his head and writing things down.

How can he have any confidence in this teenager?

And now, through the magic door comes another lawyer, who looks like the guy who just won American Idol, except not as gray and except that he's wearing a nasty-looking tan suit. It's not the kind of suit Atticus Finch would have worn, but something that looks like polyester. With a bad tie, a silvery-green-striped bad tie.

He walks by me and sits down next to an attractive curly, strawberry-blonde-haired woman, much younger than he is, wearing a black knee-length skirt and a tank top made out of the same material as his tie, but she carries it off so much better than he tries. He's sitting next to her, and I can see the fingers of his right hand moving lightly across her thigh, just above the knee of her left leg that is crossed over her right. He is leaning into her, speaking in a low voice.

It doesn't look like the usual male-attorney-female-client encounter; and the lawyer should consider himself fortunate that the state bar has not yet adopted the Model Rules of Conduct, which prohibit *ahem* intimate contact between lawyer and client.

He's getting off the bench -- and J-dogg's lawyer is calling. I look back and damned if that American-Idol-looking lawyer has his back to me and is hunched a little -- I can't see if he is erect or not.

Back to the business at hand.

THIS IS ME LURKING.

i don't know what's up with me and this blogging thing. so very few posts, and even fewer comments when i visit your sites. rude, i am. but i'm keeping up with you all, i am.

is it a phase? i hope so.

---------------------

the dougs (we call them dougs -- most people say dogs) have been spewing from both ends all over the place these last couple of days. don't know what's up with that. it comes and goes -- vet told us what to do, and we do it. keep your fingers crossed that they're all better by the time the kids start rolling in on friday. i think we'll buckle and take sheba in tomorrow if she's not "dry" by the morning. beagle scout's getting the works at the groomer tomorrow. she stinks.

jackson's got a real job interview tomorrow. cross your fingers, say a prayer, light a candle, sacrifice a lamb, whatever. just do it.

oh, and dana? boy do you know how to hurt a girl with your comment on my last post. i'm coming clean, telling my secrets, and you throw it back in my face. thanks a lot. no more "sweetness" from me.

In the News

The McCain's french fry plant in Scarborough in northern England was evacuated Friday when an artillery shell was found among a bunch of spuds that were being processed. On Saturday, one of the workers found an unexploded hand grenade; and again, the plant was evacuated.

I find it hard to believe that none of the wire services picked up on the story written by the penultimate of Washingtonian journalists, David Tolsey, who reported that President Bush was thrilled to finally be reading at a 6th grade level.

A monkey psychologist reports that putty-nosed monkeys talk to each other in sentences ... well, actually, they don't really talk to each other, the males yell at the females.

And for all of you who are fearful of the coming alien invasion, a Duluth, Minnesota, insurance carrier is offering to insure you against the obvious perils of an alien invasion, damage to houses, cars, and personal property. I guess that the premium is more for coverage of emotional trauma and medical expenses caused by medical experimentation by aliens.

E-mail to DT

DT--

I would rather walk the dogs when it is cold and snowing than when these goddamn fucking canadian soldiers (mayflies, fucking bugs) are flying around. I walk the dogs and these mother fuckers fly up from the grass and into my face and in my mouth and my nose -- fucking things (and don't make any fucking jokes about how big my nose is, you asshole). When we were in A.L., they used to invade, but I didn't walk the dogs and didn't have to compete for air with the little fuckers ...

It's supposed to get down to near freezing tonight, so maybe that will fucking kill the mother fuckers.

At least the Indians won today. Fuckers.

Your pal,

Bill

Golf at Manakiki

Manakiki Golf Course does not treat well the golfer who has not swung a golf club for about six months. The course has not been changed drastically by the hand of man since its construction according to the plans of the legendary golf course designer Donald Ross.

My first trip to Manakiki, which is east of Cleveland and now owned by the Cleveland Metropolitan Park District, which maintains the Emerald Necklace that surrounds Cleveland, providing recreation, education, and picnicking opportunities for millions, was decades ago. I played golf with three friends every Sunday morning, arriving at another Metropark course, Sleepy Hollow, before sunrise to lay claim to one of the several open starting times between 6 and 7 a.m. and finished 18 holes of golf by 9:30, at the latest, without a power cart, something unheard of nowadays.

One of us decided that it would be fun, for a change, to play Manakiki, which was a much farther drive and would require us to leave home all the earlier to get to the course at about 5:30 or so. On the appointed Sunday, I woke up at 4:30, making sure to wake up my lovely wife, took a shower, and got on the road. Clouds blotted out the stars in the middle-of-the-night sky. As I drove, raindrops began to splat against the windshield, which ordinarily is not a good sign; but for a true golfer, this was not necessarily a bad sign. After all, golf umbrellas are huge; and a little precipitation is good for horticultural growth and discourages fair weather golfers. The closer to my destination I drove, the heavier the rain pelted what little I could see of the roadway lighted by my metallic-blue-and-rusted '68 Nova's headlamps.

Arriving at the course, splashing through the rivulets of water racing across the winding entrance roadway, I saw only one car, lighted by the single overhead light in the parking lot, a familiar Chevy Impala. I parked next to the gold Impala, slid across the front seat of my car, alighted from it, and pushed my way into the back seat of the Impala, laughing about the rain coming down, just as lightning brightened the early morning sky, followed by a cracking crash of thunder ... so very close ...

The rain was now a full-fledged gully washer, complete with thunder and lightning. As golfers are prone to do when confronted by a summer thunderstorm, we waited, discussing how the storm would pass through, except that the sky failed to brighten the closer the clock moved to the announced time of sunrise; and no other cars had pulled into the large expanse of asphalt being pelted by sheets of rain, torrents of water racing in unseen channels toward the sewers.

And we wondered why nobody else had pulled into the lot. After all, people worked at the course. Somebody had to wake up and come to open the clubhouse and the snack bar and the pro shop. There was the groundskeeping crew, who needed to be there to groom the course for us. They should have been there already.

And the rainfall continued pouring unabated from the heavens, as if Mother Nature directed the golfing landscape be given a break from the duffers and hackers who would destroy the luscious tracts of fairways and greens and trample the natural forest setting in search of wayward-flown golf balls. After uselessly coaxing the thunderclouds to part momentarily and the lightning to cease, powerless to effect change in the natural order, with great reluctance, we ended our wait, the sky no brighter than when we arrived.

DEAL

i just wrote a self-indulgent, venting e-mail to an on-line friend. time to post. if you haven't been able to figure me out by now, i'll try to explain a little bit more. in my attempt to educate, ahem. or just cuz i like talking about myself. don't look at me like that.

my life philosophy (see my kids rolling their eyes at this -- they've heard it a million times): life is shit, AND life is beautiful. deal with the shit, and notice and enjoy the hell out of the beauty.

you should know that i share only SOME of the shit. i don't spend a lot of time thinking about whether or not to share. i just don't. i'm kind of a private person in some ways. stop laughing. now, damnit. don't make me get out of this chair.

because i've looked at the crap enough today, i'm going to look at -- and enumerate -- some good stuff. cuz that's my philosophy you know. and because i'm sick of hearing myself whine today. so here goes.

1. god, i love my family. my husband. my kids. my friends. and those of you i've had the pleasure of getting to know. you rock. and thanks for your lovely support.

2. all my kids will be here for most of next weekend. i'm way too excited about this.

3. i love, love, love the work the contractor did in the loft.

4. my (paying) job ends may 31. after that i'll be working "for" bill. i see a lot of driving around in a golf cart this summer in the crystal ball.

5. jax is staying clean. working verrry hard at it. [these are NOT in any order of importance, you know.]

6. love, love, love living downtown.

7. no yard work. don't miss that one bit.

8. GO CAVS!

9. friends. i know i said that before. worth saying again.

10. house. boston legal. lost. family guy. futurama.

11. lebron james. anderson varejao.

12. strawberry lemonade. 1 pump venti mocha with a shot of toffee nut.

13. the totally dirty dream i had last night. phew. dirty in a really good way.

i'm thankful for a lot of things. thanks for letting me think more about them. i feel much, much better. was it good for you?

Flash: Light Goes Backwards!!

I know someone who has said on more than one occasion that the world is fucked up. Now, there is proof. Some silly physicists want us to believe that they shined a light into a fiber optic cable and it actually started at the other end instead of at the end into which they shined the light, that is, they claim that the light traveled backwards.

Although the speed of light is said to be about 186,000 miles per second, it can be faster or slower, depending on the nature of the substance the light passes through ... hence, the pencil sticking out of the partially-filled glass of water appears bent because of the differing densities of air and the liquid in the glass. It's a trick of the light, so to speak.

And so, I say, this experiment that the pesky scientists performed is simply a cheap parlor trick because, as the Poynting vector indicated, the energy flow is pointing in the forward direction.

Well, on second thought, it may not have been as cheap as the pencil-in-the-glass-of-water trick.

What's the Big Deal?

What's the big deal about the NSA logging telephone calls? There is no name associated with each number. There are no addresses supplied with any numbers. The records simply show which phone numbers were dialed up by about 200 million phone users for the last five years. What's the big deal? It's to stop terrorists ... to check patterns of calls and track down terrorists.

"We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans. ... Our efforts are focused on links to Al Qaeda and their known affiliates," George the Lesser told us about the data mining operation.

Let's assume for the moment that your daughter is using one of your cell phones, one of the free phones that you were offered as a part of the plan by the phone company. And unbeknownst to you, she is in the business of doing favors for her friends at school, getting crystal meth for them; so, she makes a lot of calls to her hook-up at a certain number. And her hook-up calls several individuals in a group that supplies him with ice, who get their stuff from a couple of meth labs, one of which donates money to a religious group that the IRS has under investigation, seeking to withdraw its religious exemption, for espousing political views about the prosecution of alleged terrorists out in California or in Buffalo or in Toledo, which are contrary to the views held by the Department of Justice.

A National Security Agency computer program finds a pattern there ... your phone number is implicated in activity by a terrorist group, which may be linked to an affiliate of Al Qaeda. Big Brother is watching you ... and investigating criminal activity without any warrant.

Let's track back ... It's not your daughter who is dealing crystal meth. Your son called the girl's number several times because she's popular and cute, and he really, really wants to take her to the prom to the point of being obsessed.

Well, Big Brother is there, omnipresent, making those connections to Al Qaeda, investigating you, an innocent American, because it's your phone, maybe pulling your tax returns, banking records, library records, your blog entries (horrors!) ...

That's the bigger picture. That's the picture that George the Lesser won't paint for you. That's America under a President who has no regard for the rule of law in general, no regard for the Constitution of the United States (it's only an old piece of paper), and no regard for laws enacted by the law-making branch of our government. W's attitude is far worse than that of Richard Nixon.

That's the "big deal."

For Mom

I don't know what, if anything, my mom understands now. My sister cares for her now and should be sainted. More than several years ago, when my dad was alive, I mentioned to him and to my mom's doctor that I thought that she was suffering from a disorder that was seen in polio survivors of her age characterized by a kind of dementia. My dad was naturally defensive and protective and said he didn't notice anything unusual, which the doctor, of course, took as the truth, rather than do some testing and reading. But that was a while ago and doesn't matter now. I bought my mom a small gift for Mothers' Day that I'll be sending out by Fed Ex with a card. I think she'll like it, even now; and I know she would have liked it back then.

I was 12 years old. I was feverish. The pain was worse than when I spun the blades of the rotary push lawnmower and caught my hand in the blades. My leg, red and swollen, was killing me. It was a sudden thing, no injury, no cuts, no bruises, as I was prone to bring home nearly every day; and my mom and dad took me to see the doctor, the only doctor I could remember in my first 12 years. His office was on an upper floor of a big bank building at the corner of 25th and Clark, in which the elevator was operated by a man in uniform. There was a huge dark, wooden bear in the waiting room, standing on its hind legs with its forelegs outstretched to hold coats or hats or children hanging on.

I'd been in the office before ... more than a few times. The doctor was an older, bald, gray-haired man with thin lips and a bulbous nose, puffing a lit cigar perpetually affixed in the corner of his mouth. He asked me questions, listened to my heart, checked my reflexes, looked down my throat and into my ears and up my nose, felt my arms and legs, and stuck the thermometer in my mouth, all with the cigar dangling from the corner of his mouth. From time to time, ashes fell, pursuant to the Law of Gravity, which was a relatively new thing back in those days.

My mom stood by in the examining room watching over me. My dad stayed back in the waiting room with my sisters, watching them climb on and around their friend, the wooden bear. The doctor, with his gravelly voice, intoned that I needed to be hospitalized immediately. My mother left the room with the doctor, as I sat in the examining room looking at dark brown bottles of tinctures of this, alcohol, and solutions of that. I don't remember much after that, except for waking up in a hospital room with three older men, each in their beds. One of them joked about them all moving to the pediatrics ward and welcoming me back into the real world. My left leg was raised on a pile of pillows with a large hot water bottle wrapped around my leg. The nurse came into the hospital room shortly after I awoke, pulled the curtain, and gave me an injection in my butt because that spot was closest to my leg, or so she claimed. Over the next ten days, I had so many shots of penicillin that the stuff leaked out of the needle holes when injected.

The fever subsided, as did the swelling in my leg. The guy in the bed next to me "left us" one night, the commotion waking me. He was replaced by someone else who didn't speak English. The other two guys in the beds across the room were discharged, both wishing me luck in the coming Little League season, after we had talked baseball for days. And my mom and dad came in every morning, since my dad worked nights and we only had one car and my mom didn't have a driver's license until several years later, making sure I was comfortable, bringing a copy of Don't Knock the Rock, signed by Rocky Colavito, who wrote that I should get better soon. My mom checked my leg, touching, pushing, bending it, making sure it was still working throughout the day, making sure of my recovery.

I didn't know at the time, nor would I find out for many, many years, that my mom fought with the doctor, several doctors, about my medical treatment. It turns out that they wanted to amputate. They didn't know if the penicillin would work. The accepted and preferred treatment, the sure cure, was hacking off the offending leg.

And because of her perspicacity, her tenacity, and her courage to make a difficult decision despite the immense pressure put on her by learned men, because she's my mother, I have two legs still.

Cartoon Collagen

I swear that the cartoon woman in the Charles Schwab commercial had collagen injections in her lips. I hate those damn commercials.

That is all.

A Visit to the Post Office

Postal Service Guy: Will the next customer step forward.
Me: Good afternoon.
Postal Service Guy: Does this package contain anything flammable or breakable.
Me: Just paper, sir.
Postal Service Guy: That is a "no."
Me: Yes, that would be a "no."
Postal Service Guy: I will write the zip code in the proper space for you.
Me: Thank you.
Postal Service Guy: Your Express Mail package is insured for a value of up to $100. If the mailed item is valued in excess of $100, you can purchase additional insurance to cover the potential loss. Is the value of the contents of your Express Mail package greater than $100.
Me: No.
Postal Service Guy: The package is guarantedd to arrive at this post office box by noon tomorrow.
Me: Thank you.
Postal Service Guy: Will there be anything else for which I might be of assistance.
Me: No, sir.
Postal Service Guy: The charge for the Express Mail is 22 dollars and 50 cents American. How do you wish to pay for this purchase.
Me: Here's my Visa.
Postal Service Guy: Credit or debit.
Me: Debit.
Postal Service Guy: Enter your PIN. Your full signature is not on the reverse side of your Visa card.
Me: Here's my driver's license.
Postal Service Guy: Be advised that I will accept this card for payment today, but I will not accept it for payment in the future unless properly signed.
Me: Yeah, okay.
Postal Service Guy: Here is your receipt You may track your shipment by accessing the world wide web and entering the label number in the appropriate box at the United States Postal Service website, USPS-dot-com. Do you have any questions.
Me: No, er ... thanks.
Postal Service Guy: It was a pleasure to serve you and thank you for using the United States Postal Service for your shipment.
Me: You're welcome.

Now, you must go back and read the part of the Postal Service Guy in a monotone, clipped voice, but with no nasal overtones, with anger seething under the surface because the person standing before him shipping the package is obviously a fucking wise-guy moron of the first magnitude; and if they'd allow you to bring your Colt revolver to work like they used to do, you'd put the dumbass mother-fucker who doesn't know where to write the zip code out of his misery.

A Note to the President

"Ultimately, the character of America will be determined by your willingness to serve a cause larger than yourselves. The day will come when you will be asked what you have done to build a better America than the one you found. I am confident that if you answer the call to service, your lives will be more fulfilling, your country will be more hopeful -- and you will never be disappointed." -- George W. Bush, Commencement Address, Oklahoma State University, May 6, 2006.

Dear Mr. President,

What have you done to build a better America?

I don't know the answer to that question. Name one thing ... maybe, that will make me feel more optimistic about the future of America and the future of mankind.

If you are going to borrow from other people's material, just quote President John F. Kennedy. "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

It is probably Kennedy's Inaugural Address that you used as a blueprint for your presidency, even though, as Kennedy pointed out almost a half century ago, "The world is very different now." I know that you are enamored of the statement Kennedy made early on in his speech: For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life.

But don't you believe, looking back now, that abolishing all forms of human poverty would have been a far better goal that abolishing all forms of human life?

Your fellow American,

Bill

Wall Street Journal Blues

I don't want to appear pretentious ... I am almost as fiscally irresponsible as our president and I just like to look at the pictures ... but The Wall Street Journal is delivered every morning between 5 and 6:30 a.m. Why, you may ask? I don't know the answer to that, except that it doesn't have my name on it. The woman down the hall a little gets the WSJ (see, I'm right in tune with all the other avid readers by using the initials), also.

The woman who delivers the newspaper is playing with my head. How was I supposed to know that she was delivering papers that one morning I did not let her into the building when I was walking the dogs? She wasn't carrying newspapers ... and I wasn't reading minds that day ... and I couldn't understand her fractured English ... and she was a stranger, and I don't let anyone in the door. Don't have a key? No free pass from me.

So, she is trying to get to me. Every morning, the newspaper delivered to the woman down the hall a little is right there outside her door, laying flat on the floor. My paper, on the other hand, is rolled up in a blue bag or bound together with rubber bands or both ... and sometimes it is wet, whereas the WSJ delivered to the woman down the hall a little is given the deference that business people think it deserves and is dry and laying there rectangularly in front of her door, folded edge toward her when she opens the door. And invariably, I need to walk a step or two farther every day to get my WSJ ... the newspaper-delivery lady probably knows that my financial acumen is as low as it can be for any human, and she gives me the respect I deserve when it comes to delivery of the Bible of financial wizards everywhere.

Yes, she is trying to get to me. This morning, the WSJ was laying flat, folded edge toward me, squarely in front of the door.

I don't know what I did to deserve such treatment.

Comment on Obscenity

"You know it when you see it," Justice William Brennan is credited with saying about obscenity.

What's going on in Iraq, other than the killing, day in and day out? The U.S. embassy is taking shape at a cost of almost 600,000,000 American dollars, which, without re-building what W decimated with his "shock and awe" campaign, is obscene.

The solution is rather simple. Congress need not authorize the funds to continue the war in Iraq or the construction of the modern Xanadu.

Isn't anyone else embarrassed?

Beagles

I was walking the dogs, two boxers and the beagle. Having had boxers for a long time, I have found boxers to be quite bright, loving, playful, and protective. I haven't figured out the beagle, yet.

She has flushed out two rabbits since we moved to the city; so, I guess she does the instinctive hunting thing pretty well. And she howls at every other dog we encounter. A friend has told me that beagles stink -- Scout doesn't stink; although, she does try to stink. When I was distracted one afternoon, she started to roll around in ... well, someone doesn't carry plastic bags around to pick up their dogs turds.

So, I learned my lesson and am vigilant for the first sign of Scout the beagle desiring to slide around in some organic matter and rein her in, when necessary. But I could not imagine the lengths this dog would go to get smelly.

She darted under the big, old boxer while the boxer was crouching to ... you know ... and well, you know ... the beagle was very creative in her quest to stink. Instinct ... or intelligence?

Iraq -- Success at Last

The headline in The New York Times announced Bush Hails a 'Turning Point' in Iraq.

Is this another "turning point" similar to the “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” turning point announced by the flight-suited AWOL trainee pilot president on the deck of the USS Eisenhower three years ago this date?

Or is it like the turning point that General Sanchez mentioned back in November, 2003. That’s right … 2003.

Or is it a great success story, as Cheney claimed, since the war was in its "last throes?"

So, where are we? The 2,415 dead can't answer.