Tuesday, August 23, 2011

I Feel The Earth Move Under My Feet . . .

The National Geological Survey has reported a 5.9 magnitude earthquake in the typically non-tectonically active Northeast U.S., centred on Mineral, VA, ninety miles south of Washington, DC, but with reports of tremors being felt as far away as Boston, MA. Although I have not experienced these tremors directly, owing to the fact that my lair here at Choas Manor II is located in the far northwest of NJ and away from the Hudson Valley tectonic plain or rift or whatever the hell it's called (I'm too lazy and non-plussed to look it up right now,) I have had calls and e-mails exhorting me to report this non-event event.

If you were alive many decades ago, you might remember the hullaballoo surrounding the release of the granddaddy of disaster movies - Krakatoa - East of Java. The movie was based on the real-life disaster in 1883, when the frickin' island EXPLODED, killing about 40,000 people. Krakatoa is in Indonesia. You will no doubt notice that the poster for the movie features a total of zero Indonesians, although Rossano Brazzi might qualify as an expat considering the time he spent as the sexy French-speaking, civilian-warrior, horse-riding, plantation-owning baritone in South Pacific.

So, there you go. The world is collapsing right before our eyes. Don't say I didn't tell you so. Good thing you're not Indonesian, huh.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Oh, My

I'm feeling maudlin and sentimental. No, this isn't a status update for Facebook, which I despise. It's this:

http://dearphotograph.com

Go there. Now. Sorry. Can't write. Tears . . . making keyboard slippery.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Letter To My Daughter

In the midst of my ex-wife's strange and un-wonderful machinations, my daughter has been getting ready to go far, far away to college. Unfortunately, there's no actual way for her to complete her education at that particular institution without personally incurring more than a hundred grand in debt, mainly because her mother is not financially capable of stepping up to the plate, though she agreed to. Anyway, I don't want my kid to get saddled with a mortgage-sized college loan to pay back since she'll be in the arts and, unless you're especially savvy and extremely agressive, super lucky AND superbly talented, you will NOT make hundreds of thousands of dollars each and every year. Still, she's my kid and I love her very much and so, I thought I should provide a modicum of fatherly advice. So I wrote her this:

I wanted to write something pithy, something exceptional on which you could rely as a touchstone for your launch into nearly utter independence. But I find that I have so much to tell you and so much to say that could serve to fill in the gaps in your young experience, that the best I could do today was to create an extemporaneous list. Here it is:
10 Things You Must Know To Succeed As A Young Human
1. Be on time. It matters.
2. Don't eat in the dark.
3. You will feel lonely sometimes. Savor those moments instead of allowing them to pull you into sadness. Those moments will become few and far between later and will be the times when you can express your inner voice without external censorship.
4. Be curious and educate yourself.
5. Don't jump to conclusions. Don't be quick to judge or to assume, neither should you dismiss. Instead, gather those cognitive end-points as elements of observation and store them for further use. Not everything is as it first appears.
6. Get plenty of exercise. You will feel better and happiness is impossible if you feel bad. Then, sleep fully, in a regular schedule that fits your brain-cycle.
7. Always pour your own drink.
8. Never carry less cash than is equal to or more than the cabfare from wherever you're going to be to wherever you'll be returning to. Relying on someone else for transportation takes away your options.
9. Don't get conned, unless you really want to.
10. Write it down.
Okay, and just one more . . .
11. Love yourself first. You are your greatest accomplishment.
Wait, there's one last one . . .
12. Call yer Dad. He's the Swiss Army Knife of human existence, has been there, done that, and will do anything he can to help you. It doesn't matter whether it's good or bad, enthusiastically upbeat or downright embarrassing, because he is your Dad and always has your best interests at heart.
There you go. You now know everything you need to. Well, okay, you don't, but you have the capacity to discover and you have the ability to make good choices if you choose to make the good choice of making good choices. Now go out there and beat the world, you world-beater, you.
I love you very much. Don't doubt it. Don't forget it. Count on it.

I miss her so much already, it's not even funny. No. Not funny at all. Good luck kid. I'm here for you and I'll be there for you as long as I live. Amen.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Stuff I Saw Today

Look, I know this isn't Facebook, which I despise, Facebook, that is, but I've been toying with the idea of producing a reality-based show surrounding my life. So, here are stills from today's meanderings:

 


Forget the show. It would be WAY too grim.  LOL, not.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Cipher

I have something I must say.

Too much conflict. I dislike confrontation. I don't understand roles. Boundaries have become mobile. It's unsettling. I'm come to understand that I really don't understand anything in fundamental ways. That's a bad thing. It puts me in league with The Sheep.

Thank you. I will post this now.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Sentimental Reality Revisited


In a prior post, I showed you an image of what seemed like visual irony from outside my favorite post office. I was there today and it doesn't look like it's getting any better. In fact, if you look carefully enough, you can see a dead bug curled up in the middle. Sigh.

Fart

Let me be candid from the outset. This little bit of commentary will be uncomfortable for some to read. But then, if I can't elicit at least that emotion from the reader, I have no business pressing these little keys until an idea emerges, do I?

Farts are a fact of life. In fact, they are a proof of life, as it were, although dead people also may fart from time to time as the need, and gases of decomposition, arise. For the living, however, farts are often inopportune and a sullen inconvenience. On that point, I wonder if there is a time that represents the optimal temporal opportunity for gaseous effluence. Farts may be odoriferous or benign, gregarious or timid. I imagine that females actually do not fart at all, thus accounting for their distemperate attitude towards males who, as a group, are a notoriously gassy bunch.

There are very bad times to fart and some not-so-good moments, like during a funereal or when near an open flame. But of more concern is not the event of the fart itself, but of the quality of the fart. Yes, I believe we all know, at least us males, that there is a broad range of possibilities. Most preferable are the dry, lift-one-cheek, airy variety most like letting the air out of a camp mattress. Least desirable are sputtering, wet, acrid, short-singeing farts that give Jackson Pollack a run for his money if the derriere of the afflicted farter could be positioned perpendicular to a primed canvas of appropriate size.

In this way, farts are like lawsuits. They both begin for different reasons and at different moments in the human life-cycle. Some take a long time to produce results, and the peak of the bell curve for both farts and lawsuits represents something messy, unpleasant and unfortunate. Farts and lawsuits that can be suppressed are a win, a sort of lower abdominal settlement. But when they go all the way, the outcome is uncertain, but at least one person will be very uncomfortable and someone will have to clean up the mess.

My absence from these pages as of late can be explained away by my involvement in one heck of a stinker. My last foray into matrimonial conjugification was at least a failure if not a disaster. This is because I simply do not have the ability to identify psychopaths. Oh, I know. You're thinking that this is just more sour grapes from another weak male not willing to take responsibility for his part in a failed relationship. Um, no. That's not it. In this case, I take responsibility for not cashing my reality check and outlining what was crystal clear to not less than a half-dozen people at the time of my enamoration, that the girl of my dreams was, in fact, suffering from borderline personality disorder.

Actually, for those who have know, lived with or attempted to love someone with BPD, it's not the afflicted person who suffers - it's everyone else. Unfortunately, when this is turned into legal wranglings, it can get very expensive. When we were rolling up to the divorce date, a scant three years ago, I was spending two grand a month just to keep her at arm's length. In the end, the total spent was enough to buy a modest house in some or another less high-falutin' part of the country and have money left over for a pool, above-ground, of course. I should have run away.

Well, since we were divorced, that should be that, right? Perhaps if it was you and me, perhaps it would be civil and adult. But, unfortunately, a BPD'ed individual thrives on the stimulation from absolute drama and is so expert at using all resources at manipulation and can do so with utterly no remorse, that there never is an end, even when employing expertly-honed low-contact techniques.

After years of post-divorce wrangling which was really just time-wasting emotional abuse, it came time to sort up a nice and tight suit. And sure enough, since no one can know the case better than me, I chose myself as the lawyer. Yay. Don't worry, I'm not totally stupid. You've no doubt heard the old saw, "The lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client." This is because even for someone who trained in the law, the emotional components involved in a legal proceeding make sound judgment unlikely. So, I do have an attorney who is of counsel and I'm on the brief, that is to say that I do the motions, cross-motions, orders, certifications and so forth - anything to do that has to be researched and written down.

The idea is to be concise and precise. This is very difficult. Try describing something in sufficient detail so that another person a thousand miles away can draw it. No try doing that in one sentence, Twitter-length. Not so easy, neh? Even worse when one fancies oneself a writer. It's necessary to convey clearly that which the Judge needs to know with the appearance of as little vitriol as possible, also not easy when having to relive serial psychoses of years gone by.

But, it's done. I have eaten the burrito and I am ready to do my worst, or should I say wurst? Ha ha! In the end, ha again, it may be like a fallow breeze or like a leaking sump hose, but this fart is a-comin' Don your protective eye-wear and clothes-pins and let'r RIIIIPPPPPP!