Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

MISSING : MUSE

oh i'm looking for my missing muse
looking for my missing muse
hi de ho, here i go,
looking for my missing muse*

wonderbread. it's not possible to feel ambivalent about wonderbread. the haters even go so far as to deny that it is, indeed, bread. i am not a hater. even today, wonderbread is amazing stuff. a fresh loaf of wonderbread - nothing compares. when your mom brought that fresh loaf out of the bag (the loaf maintains the loaf shape much better when packaged upright in a paper grocery bag. the plastic bags destroy a good loaf of wonderbread, rendering it useless for most culinary delights other than wonderballs), you HAD to have a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk. with the bread (one slice only) folded over - NEVER CUT. never. if you worked the milk and sandwich right, you might be able to avoid having to scrape most of the sandwich off the roof of your mouth with a spoon.

the next best thing to the peanut butter sandwich was two slices of american cheese in between two slices of bread. again, the milk was mandatory. the bread stayed fresh for four or five days at least (i'm not going to ruin my memories by researching the ingredients and the reasons for this). after that, it was toast or grilled cheese sandwiches with campbell's tomato soup.

it's funny how a sound or a smell or a taste brings you right back to another time and place. wonderbread brings me back to brooklyn acres. a housing project in cleveland (brooklyn) administered by the veterans administration to provide low-cost housing for veterans of world war II and their families. i don't know exactly how long we lived there; i was born there, and we stayed until the family fell apart when i was about 6. i think my family lived there for about 10 to 12 years.

my father was a veteran of the navy, having enlisted at 17, serving in the pacific, and earning a purple heart. i don't know the details. he was a hero to us for a while.

there were four girls and my mother and father living in that tiny house. i remember the back "porch" -- really just a couple steps leading up to the back door. the overhang over the door made it a porch to us. the porch from which we hung blankets from the overhang to serve as our stage curtains when we put on our "shows." i have no idea what these "shows" were about. all i remember is that i always insisted that i be the one to wear the deep red corduroy skating skirt with the pink satin lining (go ask your mother what i'm talking about).

the summers were the best. the v.a. building across the street was where we paid our rent, got our shots and medical checkups, and played in the playground while our parents were taking care of business inside. it was also where the v.a. staff sponsored and held children's fairs, contests, parades, and anything else they could think of to do with us to entertain us. i remember bubble blowing contests, bike parades, coloring contests, races, and LOTS of parties. i remember standing in line for our polio shots for hours, while the staff handed out balloons and coloring books and crayons.

the grownups were like mysterious giants to me. we weren't really very well taken care of by my parents. we pretty much took care of ourselves. i remember being left alone when i was 4. well not really alone - if you count my 3-year-old sister. the neighbors were always around for us if we needed them. they fed us and took care of our needs a lot. when i was 5, i attended afternoon kindergarten. i got ready (by myself) and began my mile and a half walk to school by crossing the busy street that ran along the back of our house. i ran and fell on the curb. the car that passed by me stopped to help. i was very badly scraped. i had fallen face first onto the curb, and my face was a bloody mess. mrs.o'malley came out and picked me up and nursed me all afternoon until my older sisters came home from school. and my dad came home from wherever he was. probably a bar or the race track. my mom always worked as a bar maid, she must have been bartending a day job then.

i loved the o'malley family. 10 kids, a mom who didn't work, a loving, always-employed dad, and walter, my best friend. when i wasn't with my sisters, i was with walter. we lived on one corner. the o'malleys were catty-corner to us. the schneiders (their dad was a DOCTOR! and the kids weren't allowed to play with ANYBODY in the projects) were across the street from us on one corner, and paul and paulette's family (i can't remember their last name - just that i had a HUGE crush on paul who looked like paul anka to me) lived on the fourth corner.

every once in a while my parents would host a party. probably 30 more adults crowded into this little house, only possible because there would be a bunch of the men outside smoking, drinking beer, and telling stories. there would be DANCING in the house. yes, DANCING. adults all danced back in those "olden" days. the women would be wearing tight, slim skirts, high heels, and pearls. the men in their suits! and they'd dance. the cha cha. the samba. and slow dancing. in our tiny living room. we four girls would be sneaking out of bed all night long to watch until we were caught. and then we'd sneak back again.

i guess we were poor. i don't really know. i know my parents were always behind with the cheap rent. i know they somehow had enough money to pay for their alcohol. i know my godfather helped. he sent money a lot. that was when mommy grocery shopped. and brought home wonderbread, peanut butter, and american cheese, along with the beer. she'd buy bologna (baloney), too.

wonder balls. formed by taking a fresh piece of wonderbread, eating off the crusts, and forming the soft, soft interior into a ball with your hands. you'd either eat the ball right away or have a wonder ball fight. then you'd eat it. it wasn't gross to us back then.

baloney. ahh. baloney. lunchmeat of the gods. and entertaining, too. kitchen ceilings in 1940's and 1950's houses were different back then. they were smooth. and shiny. they'd be painted with high-gloss white enamel paint so they could be washed. [have you EVER washed a ceiling?] we'd take a slice of baloney, hold it flat in the palm of our hands, and throw it straight up to the ceiling. it would stick. until the weight of the slice of baloney pulled it down enough to release the vacuum and allow it to fall. it was great. except for the round grease marks left on the ceiling that we never thought to clean up on our own. mommy would walk into the kitchen and IMMEDIATELY notice that we had been "throwing baloney at the ceiling again" and THEN we'd clean it up. and be in beeeeg trouble.

the smallest things in your life make an imprint, and you don't have any idea what will come back to you. i love thinking that this date may be a pre-anniversary of great importance to me some day. maybe my first grandchild will be born on this date. something awesome. i look for clues in old date books, year books, newsletters on what those past days may have portended for me/us. i like to think about how people we meet today may someday play vital parts in our lives.

bill and i were FINALLY allowed to go and watch jax play at open mic jam night at mccarthy's pub last night. i've heard jax play. but not with a band. jesus christ, he's good. i mean really good. he played some stevie ray vaughn, some hendrix, and the ubiquitous band song from my day, deep purple's "smoke on the water." i started off with my mouth hanging open in awe, bill said i kept turning around saying "holy fuck!" i don't remember that. i remember turning around to bill during the hendrix song and saying " we made that!" and then i started thinking during "smoke on the water" about the thousands of times we heard that song when we were kids and how crazy it is / blessed we are to be able to sit here and hear it again. like this. so many years - and "moments" - later.

life is sweet.

State of the Union

These five soldiers weren't able to listen to the State of the Union Address because they were bown up over in Iraq.

And these soldiers have been killed in Iraq in the new year:

Where's the Point?

In junior high school, which was 7th, 8th, and 9th grade back in the day, and I think it was 7th grade or maybe 8th, but not 9th, I somehow, and I don't remember the particulars, stabbed myself in the right thigh with a sharpened #2 pencil -- or, perhaps, someone stabbed me with a sharp #2 pencil in the right thigh, which could have happened because that was during the Cold War and the KGB was doing stuff like that.

Come to think of it, now, I couldn't have stabbed myself in the right thigh with a sharp #2 pencil, even accidentally; but I suppose that if I had the sharp pencil in my front pants pocket and kinda like bent over, I might've stabbed myself and broke the pointy end off in my leg. But that is like next to impossible to do, hard to even imagine. So, see what I mean about the KGB agent from Moscow stabbing me in the leg? Sure, you do.

So, there I was, back in junior high, with the pointy end of a pencil stuck in my leg -- and I couldn't get it out with a paper clip or a needle or scissors and tweezers. That's what happens -- they put it in so it can't come out; that's the thing about the KGB or ... the CIA. Yes, the CIA -- that could have happened. The CIA did experiments on unsuspecting people, particularly, junior high kids, especially, junior high kid nerds. Totally S.O.P. It's true.

There we are, y'know, the #2 pencil point was stuck in my right leg; and at that time in history, junior high kids, particularly, junior high kid nerds, believed that a #2 pencil caused lead poisoning. Well, not the whole pencil, but the lead part, which they say is really graphite, but that's like only in the last two or three years that they have been saying that. Not only was lead poisoning a possibility, a certainty, actually, but that sharp #2 pencil point, the broken off pointy end stuck in my right thigh by a CIA spook, it could migrate anywhere in the body, kinda like that tiny sub in that totally awesome movie, Fantastic Voyage, the one with Raquel Welch getting the antibodies ripped away from every part of her body by the groping, meaty paws of her male compadres. That's how the CIA does things, y'know. The KGB, too. It's true.

So, over the years, I'd check on the #2 pencil point in my right thigh to make sure it was still there. Then, it was like a few years after college -- well, maybe quite a few years after college, after putting on a few pounds -- well, maybe quite a few pounds (since lost, but not without drastic sacrifice to the food god) -- and one day, I checked to see that the #2 pencil point stuck in my right thigh was still there. And it wasn't where it was supposed to be -- somebody had moved it.

Somebody moved it, you ask, looking sidewise, wondering if the world has gone irretrievably mad. It's totally obvious -- you know that a thing like that just doesn't up and move by itself. Somebody had to move the thing -- or cause the thing to move.

Yes, that's it. Nanotechnology -- the CIA's teeny, tiny robots, controlled by a smallish, skinny man, hairless except for on top of his head, which hasn't been washed for several weeks, with black, horn-rimmed glasses, wearing a white lab coat, black pants, fly half unzipped, sitting before a large console, scores of joysticks pointing toward the concrete ceiling, one joystick labeled with my agency number, in a windowless room deep inside a secret government Rocky Mountain facility, the only above ground evidence of which is a small shack heated by a wood-burning Franklin stove, gray-haired, scraggly-bearded recluse, coffee stains on the chest of his dingy, used-to-be-white, long-sleeved henley, eyes closed, stretched out on a rickety, fading-muted-green, canvas cot, waiting for the tea kettle on the black stove to whistle its work-done, remotely moving it.

There is a rational explanation for everything. It just requires setting aside your long-held conceptions of reality.

Wrong-of-Way

Our president, George the Lesser, has once again nominated Steven Bradbury, who has been running the Office of Legal Counsel without being confirmed by the Senate, for the position for about the fourth time. The legal counsel issues legal opinions to government officials, including the president, to guide the officials through legal entanglements. Usually, a lawyer asked to write an opinion on a subject, usually some action a client, in this case, the U.S.A., is about to take or has taken, is expected to be somewhat objective in the analysis of the legal problem.

Bradbury, according to the news media, authored opinions that it's okay to torture people to get the answers the inquisitor, in this case, the U.S.A., needs.

It is interesting that the nomination comes just after Jose Padilla, the U.S. citizen who was first accused of building a "dirty bomb" and who was locked up for six years, then tried on the charge of materially aiding groups involved in terrorist activities, was sentenced to 17 years in prison [dirty bomb allegations were not part of the case against him]. Of about 125 recorded conversations, Padilla was in on seven of them and his two "co-conspirators," who received less time in prison than Padilla, were participants in the other calls. Jurors who talked after the verdict thought that Padilla was on the fringes of the "conspiracy" -- he said in one conversation that he was ready to go overseas to train. The problem with the conviction is that the judge did not allow a shred of evidence about the torture inflicted upon Padilla, but acknowledged during the sentencing hearing that the "extreme environmental stress," of which he was a victim, warranted some consideration in sentencing. Maybe the judge should have considered that he was a bit player in the scheme, which never reached any kind of stage, other than the talking stage -- it was a conviction based on ideas that they had and not any actions that they had taken. Padilla's co-conspirators got 15 1/2 years and 12 1/2 years, respectively; so, the judge bowed to political pressure in sentencing the high-profile, well-known defendant. Who has heard about Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, his co-defendants, and what they did?

In any event, back to Steven Bradbury, who opined that torture is okay -- now, once again, Bush the Lesser is trying to reward him for his loyal efforts to legitimize war crimes.

And Bush the Lesser made the nomination after his hypocritical* speech about his admiration and his emulation of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the ideals and ideas, for which Dr. King gave his life.

* -- hyp·o·crite [hip-uh-krit] – noun
1. a person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that he or she does not actually possess, esp. a person whose actions belie stated beliefs, e.g., George W. Bush
2. a person who feigns some desirable or publicly approved attitude, esp. one whose private life, opinions, or statements belie his or her public statements.
[Origin: 1175–1225; ME ipocrite < OF < LL hypocrita < Gk hypokrits a stage actor, hence one who pretends to be what he is not, equiv. to hypokr(nesthai) (see hypocrisy) + -tés agent suffix]

Right-of-Way

What kind of philosophy do have while walking on the sidewalk?

Do you keep to the right or the left side of the sidewalk? Do you yield if someone is walking toward you in your path of travel, or do you expect him or her to yield? Do you look at people walking toward you, or do you avert your eyes and look down? Do you greet people as you're walking with a "Good Morning" wish? Do you stop and try to pet a dog being walked? Do you cuff your kid up side the head while yelling at him while you're walking, or do you stop and then do that?

And if you're walking to the court house on the extreme right side of the wide sidewalk, right next to the buildings, looking ahead at the hefty guy striding directly toward you, do you look him in the right eye, nod your head to him as he is approaching, and knock the mother fucker on his ass when he doesn't move to his right and then say to him, "Excuse me"?

Just what is the proper sidewalk-walking etiquette in that latter circumstance?

Naming Rights

The Cleveland Indians decided to take the money and re-name The Jake, the Tribe's ballpark, officially known as Jacobs Field, something new. The naming rights were sold to locally-owned Progressive Insurance Company, and Progressive, of course, named the ballpark Progressive Field; so, when people ask me about how to get to The Jake when I'm out walking the dogs, I'm going to have to break the news to them. I thought that the company that was hired to search for a buyer of the naming rights would have taken advantage of the on-going performance-enhancing drug investigation and come up with something like Cibex-O Park, Nutropin Stadium, or Dexedrine Hi-Performance Field [Slogan: Come to the ballpark tonight and get high on baseball]; but the company lacked some imagination in pursuing possible suitors for the naming rights.

Speaking of naming rights, we met a very nice couple a few weeks back; but I'm really fucked when I see the guy because I can't remember his name. You've all run up against this problem. Don't say it's age-related or anything like that because it's not -- I've always been bad with names -- and some fuckers will, of course, purvey the bullshit notion that I lack respect for others, which is not altogether true, because if I did lack respect, I would mispronounce the person's name. He's probably named Stephen (with a "p-h" because that's what it would be) or Eric or something like Dylan because that would have been a name hippie-type parents would have named their kid back in the late '70's and early '80's.

I'll have to check around and see if anyone knows his name; otherwise, I'll just have to keep calling him "man," as in "Hey man, what's goin' on?"

Cloned in the USA

Here we go again. Now that some guy in some small lab in the United States claims that he cloned an embryo and grew it into a blastocyst, it's all official-like and a big fucking deal; and the guy deserves the Nobel Prize or some kind of medal from someone.

The guy who claims that he cloned a human embryo used his own cells. He says he's doing this for "science," to cure diseases; but I can't help thinking that he's really like totally wanting to clone himself.

But here's my problem with this whole thing. The guy's in California; he's an American scientist; he's the greatest thing since sliced bread with no skeptics out there questioning whether he really did this.

If he was from another country, say France, for instance, skeptical scientists would be coming out of the woodwork claiming fraud. Just because this California dude isn't telling everyone that a 4-foot-tall, green-skinned, long-haired, oval-eyed alien, who directed him to write a book revealing the identities of the aliens as the creators of human beings, took him up into a spaceship, everyone believes him.

He has no eleemosynary motive. It is obvious that because the FDA has categorically stated that cloned animals are safe to eat, he believes that the government will soon allow cloned humans to work on those jobs that ordinary, unemployed Americans feel are beneath their abilities; and he will step in with his many cloned selves and make a killing without all the bad press that illegal immigrants are getting.

Baseball, Steroids, and the Government

The U. S. House of Representatives has a committee called the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.* This is the Congressional committee that is investigating the use of performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball.

Here's the question I have about the investigation, many stories about which have been in the newspapers, news wire services, and television, to the exclusion of other, what I would consider, more important issues. In the general scheme of things, what does it matter what Roger Clemens did or did not do to advance his career or whether Barry Bonds' hat size increased to the size of the non-planet Pluto in the last five years? If the players purchased illegal drugs, there are actions the government can take under the present system of injustice, such as criminal prosecution. For a Congressional committee to investigate allegations of drug use in baseball or any sporting event is ludicrous and a monumental waste of the taxpayers' money.

I know that the government has granted baseball an exemption from anti-trust laws, but I don't see how this particular committee has jurisdiction to investigate allegations of drug abuse in Major League Baseball. It seems to me that the F.B.I. should be investigating interstate transport of illegal substances, money laundering, and drug law violations.

The rhetoric gushing from Capitol Hill does nothing to solve any of the problems with drug abuse in sports and, more importantly, the rampant substance abuse in this country. An investigation into the worthlessness of the "Just Say No" and other programs into which the government pours gobs of money should be conducted. We'd all be better off if that money and the gajillions of dollars spent to house drug abusers in the nation's prisons would be spent on certain treatment programs that work -- and they do work -- and the facilities involved in offering those programs. But that would mean the prison industry in this country would suffer tremendous monetary losses, and those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, that is, making money, in that arena (construction, management, services, etc.) are vehemently opposed to any attempted change of societal attitudes toward drug addiction, substance abuse, and the associated problems.

But it is time for change.

* -- See extended entry for the dry, legal stuff.

There are two functions of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is in two areas, taking care of legislative matters and the responsibility of oversight of government programs, such as the billions of dollars spent in Iraq, for which there has been no accounting.

House Rule X, Clause 1, grants the committee legislative jurisdiction in the following areas:
• Federal civil service, including intergovernmental personnel; and the status of officers and employees of the United States, including their compensation, classification, and retirement;
• Municipal affairs of the District of Columbia in general (other than appropriations);
• Federal paperwork reduction;
• Government management and accounting measures generally;
• Holidays and celebrations;
• Overall economy, efficiency, and management of government operations and activities, including federal procurement;
• National archives;
• Population and demography generally, including the Census;
• Postal service generally, including transportation of the mails;
• Public information and records;
• Relationship of the federal government to the states and municipalities generally; and
• Reorganizations in the executive branch of the government.

House Rule X, Clause 2(b), grants the committee authority to review and study on a continuing basis —

• The application, administration, execution, and effectiveness of laws and programs addressing subjects within its jurisdiction
• The organization and operation of Federal agencies and entities having responsibilities for the administration and execution of laws and programs addressing subjects within its jurisdiction
• Any conditions or circumstances that may indicate the necessity or desirability of enacting new or additional legislation addressing subjects within its jurisdiction (whether or not a bill or resolution has been introduced with respect thereto)
• Future research and forecasting on subjects within its jurisdiction.

House Rule X, Clause 3(i), states that the committee shall "review and study on a continuing basis the operation of Government activities at all levels with a view to determining their economy and efficiency."

House Rule X, Clause 4(c)(1), provides that the Committee shall:
• Receive and examine reports of the Comptroller General of the United States and submit to the House such recommendations as it considers necessary or desirable in connection with the subject matter of the reports
• Evaluate the effects of laws enacted to reorganize the legislative and executive branches of the Government
• Study intergovernmental relationships between the States and municipalities and between the United States and international organizations of which the United States is a member.

And House Rule X, Clause 4(c)(2), states that the committee "may at any time conduct investigations of any matter without regard to clause 1, 2, 3, or this clause [of House Rule X] conferring jurisdiction over the matter to another standing committee."

Transfusions

So, your doctor calls and says that the lab obviously made an error because your Hgb level is so low that it could not possibly be correct because you should not be walking around and the test result did not jive with the observations he made in the physical he did on you and that you need to go in to get more blood drawn to have it retested. Of course, you go to get your blood re-drawn.

You get home. The phone rings. Your doctor is at the other end of the electromagnetic wave and informs you that your blood count is lower than it was in the morning and orders you to go to the emergency room of the world-renowned medical monolith in town. He says he is calling to tell the E.R. you will be there in 15 or 20 minutes. What is the reading? you ask. Your doctor tells you dangerously low, 5 point 2; and he is surprised you are not showing any symptoms.

The monstrous B12 shot didn't hurt. You didn't know that four units of packed red blood cells takes over 8 hours to be transfused. One colonscopy preceded by fucking bowel prep needs no comment.

The Question Unasked

Q: Now, Roger (batting eyelashes innocently), handing you this check you wrote for $1,400 to Brian McNamee, can you explain why you would pay Mr. McNamee that outrageous amount of money to inject you with lidocaine and B-12 when all you had to do was go down the hall from the locker room, visit the licensed physician paid by the team, and ask him to give you lidocaine and B-12 shots for free?

BACKWARDS AND FORWARD

i love being, ahem, a grownup. that's what bill and i and our friends call it, and i'm sticking to that term. face it, kids. you either die, or you grow up. if you're lucky, you'll pass this way. and you'll do it either gracefully or kicking and screaming with denial. thinking that you can and WILL STILL wear a mini-skirt. or that you deserve a young and beautiful partner. or that nobody will notice that your hair's not real. or that you might as well have kids now with that new young and beautiful partner. so much freedom to make uncommon (at best) or ridiculous (at worst) choices.

usually, lives follow a certain path. a time for every season. childhood, youth, young adulthood, courtship, marriage, a short -- or longer -- period of freedom, then children (which bring with them a certain amount of enslavement. or SHOULD. unfortunately some parents don't get that. oops sorry -- showing my age there). followed by the bittersweet days of watching your children leave and thrive, if you're lucky. followed by the days of "adulthood". the empty nest and all its glories.

ohmygod. the empty nest. the term that filled me with such terror and hopelessness when contemplated as a young mom. bill and i love, love, love being parents. we were completely and slavishly devoted to them. we can say that we feel good about the kind of parents we were. and are. we did and continue to do everything that our hearts told us we had to do. it's a constantly changing, constantly redefined role. a whole 'nother book. now what i want to write about today. i'll start another paragraph.

the empty nest. it is freaking AWESOME. especially -- or maybe ONLY AFTER HAVING DONE what we felt we needed to do when the nest was occupied by the chicks. i don't measure the results -- i measure the efforts. the "kids" have free will. matt's not a phD candidate because of what we did. and neither is j a recovering drug addict because of what we did. or failed to do. we did the best we could, and we feel pretty damned good about how we did it.

when the boys were little, i'd listen to my big sister, diann, "complaining" about the constant needs and drama of teenagers. i'd say, "at least you can go to the bathroom without one of them hanging on your knees!" i learned quickly that they're with you everywhere, either literally or metaphorically. i used to say of those days that i was "in the trenches of motherhood." i learned that you'd better be in the trenches one way or the other or you're not there at all. different ages, different trenches.

i love that i don't have to cook a full balanced meal at least twice a day (in addition to everyday family dinners at the table , WE HAD DAILY FAMILY BREAKFASTS before school!) now bill and i eat when we're hungry and what we want. last night we had coconut cake for dinner at 10 p.m. we stayed up until at least 4 a.m. watching movies and cartoons. today breakfast was with two of our dearest friends at a local restaurant. started at 10 a.m. ended well past 12:30. laughed loud and hard. the four of us, three of whom sported -- either in jewelry or tattoos -- peace symbols, two of whom sported new "big lebowski" t-shirts. "maturity" comes in many flavors. we came home and took a 4-hour nap. i woke up hungry. bill made me a grilled-cheese sandwich and a butter-pecan latte.

in our house we continue to have a division of labor, albeit flexible and known only to us, and we understand that it makes sense only to us. i'm GENERALLY in charge of the kitchen. in general and with great flexibility. bill's purview has always been cheesecakes and has evolved to most of the cookie baking, the "coffee" (another tome, another time), all sandwich making (esPECIALLY grilled cheese after my one ill-fated attempt 33 years ago to "improve" perfection by "toasting" the sandwiches in a toaster oven and substituting butter with mayonaisse). bill's in charge of the dog walking (i "try" to accompany them on at least one of their daily walks). i'm mostly in charge of a lot of the other stuff.

we've learned to be flexible. and the empty nest allows us to do what suits us. when it suits us. and i realize that we're AWFULLY lucky that "our" jobs (bill's lawpractice operated out of the loft here is such that 99 percent of his work is done on whatever schedule HE sets. my "job" is billing and record keeping). we're AWFULLY young to have such flexibility in our schedule. that friday night staying up until 4 a.m.? happens a lot. on whatever day we want.

i thought for a minute a couple of weeks ago that the jackal chick was going to be coming back into the nest shortly for a temporary stay. but -- drum roll, please... he asked us to go look at a townhouse in the way-cool tremont neighborhood that he saw on craigslist. we did, thought it would work for him, he agreed, and he'll be heading back to cleveland mid-february! job transfer is in the works, and a florida friend may be joining him within the month. if not, he'll find somebody to share the place.

don't know how to wrap this up so i'll leave you with this:

i like turtles.

It's Time for Science!

I'm sure that my two regular readers have abandoned me not only because I have failed to post consistently but have utterly failed in my responsibility to keep them abreast of the latest scientific developments and discoveries so that when they go to dinner parties, they can bring up stuff more interesting than stocks, bonds, and politics. It's the new year, 2008, I think; so, I thought that I would try to slake your unending thirst for all things scientific.

Many people take anti-depressants, whether they like to admit it or not. And others should be taking them, whether they believe it or not. In the last seven years, the use of anti-depressants has climbed tremendously (Seven? Let's see ... January, 2001. Hmmm.). Well, there is a problem, sorry to tell you, with taking anti-depressants besides those about which I'm sure you've read in the 4-point type on the back of the magazine advertisements and on the warning inserts. Those who have a symbiotic relationship with (*ahem*) roundworms will be pleased to know that certain anti-depressants are extending the lifespan of your little intestinal friends. "Disgusting!" or "How dare you!" or "Mother-fucking liar!!" you say? I mean no disrespect. Please take comfort and understand that this very important research study might lead to living a 31% longer lifespan, with or without roundworms, for those who are on anti-depressants. I suppose, for some, that could be depressing news.

Many of you have read about Freddie, Stacey's immortal Aquababies frog, which is going on eight years old. I've been wondering how long this fucking frog is going to live. Puzzled and amazed, actually. I dropped him (Okay, I haven't real carefully inspected the thing; so, he could be a female.) several times, once shattering the nice tank it (See, already neutered.) had with a snail and plants, then braking its new tank with colorful stones, its own mailbox, stove, and toilet (which it rarely used because, well, Stacey didn't bother to put the stall in the tank and the toilet was right out there where everyone could see), and, finally, its temporary Zip-Loc container home; and it survived every time. And think about this -- Freddie should have succumbed by this time to some frog disease; but no, it hasn't. I now know the fucking frog's secret to longevity -- and it's not anti-depressants in the water supply. Freddie is the product of a bizarre University of Michigan experiment -- Freddie is the Teflon frog, having escaped like the dogs, Rowf and Snitter, in the Richard Adams novel (I know a link is appropriate, but I can't do every fucking thing for you -- look it up yourself. Besides, it's not science; it's fucking literature.)

M. globosa -- it's not the Latin version of M Butterfly. The pesky scientists at P & G are quite familiar with Malassezia globosa. You remember P & G -- the company changed its name from Procter & Gamble because some alleged dumbasses, allegedly associated with Amway, out in Utah (I say Utah because that's where P & G sued them. And I'd like to thank the Religion News Blog, which proclaims itself as "a non-profit service providing academics, religion professionals and other researchers with religion & cult news," for providing news about the lawsuit, but would like to point out to the alleged writer that spelling and punctuation still count for something, even if this is a non-profit religious organization.), allegedly spread unfounded rumors that Procter & Gamble supported Satanism; but that's another story. In any event, congratulations are in order for those pesky scientists down the road at P & G for sequencing the complete genome of the dandruff-causing fungus, M. globosa. That's a Nobel Prize, for sure!

This is off the subject, but, back in day, when we went to Parents' Day at the seven-year-old J-dogg's school, the teacher displayed the artwork of her students on the chalk tray around the classroom, daring the parents to find their own child's renderings of the parent(s). A trendy-coiffed, fashionably-dressed yuppie female parent complained that her child's drawing of her was sub-par, not up to her child's superior artistic proclivity, to which Stacey pointed out, "At least, you're not carrying a machine gun." And what was that hanging from Dad's mouth? Later that evening, the Jackal cheerfully replied, "A pork chop." A fucking pork chop? Well, it turns out that a pork chop in the wrong hands can be quite dangerous, especially in the hands of the alleged miscreant, 38-year-old Tony Willis, who stabbed a guy in the neck with a fucking pork chop. The purported perpetrator was caught with his weapon of choice on his person. Of course, I doubt that the victim would have had a problem pointing out Tony in a police station line-up, even if Tony had given the dog a bone.

If you have been disappointed that I, in this brief venture into the world of science, totally ignored the latest developments in physics, I apologize and promise that next week I'll bring you:

Thank you very much for the courtesy you have graciously extended me in allowing me to appear on your computer screen.

On Luck

I didn't know her. I never met her. She was 25. We attended the church service today. She died a week ago from a drug overdose.

The Jackal and her brother became friends in A.A. Jackal asked us to convey his love to her brother and that he was sorry that he could not be there.

Old friends -- helplessness and despair -- returned for a visit and smacked me up side of the head. And I felt lucky -- that's the only word I could think of -- lucky that it wasn't my son in the casket.

And I'm sure there are those who say, "There but for the grace of God go I." What does that mean? Let's just take God of every description out of it.

It's just luck.

Oh, yeah -- Happy New Year.