There's a little meme going on here and here and here, and for a while, I considered doing it here.

There are a couple of things that will stick with me forever, such as my grandfather saying to the room, upon the arrival of my girl cousin "Oh. Now the pretty one is here." Ouch. Thanks, Grandpa.

And then the ever popular comment by a former boss regarding my attendance at a meeting to discuss the hospital developing a web site: "Nobody wants to hear what you have to say: you're only going to tell us what we're doing wrong and it doesn't have to be done right, it only has to be done."
But those are such negative things. I thought I'd mix it up a little and tell you about other words...written words, that changed me and stayed with me and that I have to read now and again, just to make sure that they are forever etched on my soul.

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

"I saw this morning morning's minion"

"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."

And this, which was later stolen (or adapted, whatever) for the greatest scene Kevin Costner ever played, and which I give you in its entirety.

From "The Bushwhacked Piano" by Thomas McGuane copyright 1971.

"What I believe in? I believe in happiness, birth control, generosity, fast cars, environmental sanity, Coor's beer, Merle Haggard, upland game birds, expensive optics, helmets for prizefighters, canoes, skiffs and sloops, horses that will not allow themselves to be ridden, speeches made under duress; I believe in metal fatigue and the immortality of the bristlecone pine. I believe in the Virgin Mary and others of that ilk. Even her son whom civilization accuses of sleeping at the switch." Missus Fitzgerald was seen to leave the room, Ann to gaze into her lap. "I believe that I am a molecular swerve not to be put off by the zippy diversions of the cheap-minded. I believe in the ultimate rule of men who are sleeping. I believe in the cargo of torpor which is the historically registered bequest of politics. I believe in Kate Smith and Hammond Home Organs. I believe in ramps and drop-offs." Fitzgerlad got out too, leaving only Payne and Ann; she, in the banishing of her agony and feeling she was possibly close to Something, raised adoring eyes to the madman. "I believe in spare tires and emergency repairs. I believe in the final possum. I believe in little eggs of light falling from outer space and the bombardment of the poles by free electrons. I believe in tintypes, rotogravures and parked cars, all in their places. I believe in roast spring lamb with boiled potatoes. I believe in spinach with bacon and onion. I believe in canyons lost under the feet of waterskiers. I believe that we are necessary and will rise agian. I believe in words on paper, pictures on rock, intergalactic hellos. I believe in fraud. I believe that in pretending to be something you aren't you have your only crack at release from the bondage of time. I believe in my own dead more than I do in yours. What's more, credo in unum deum, I believe in one God. He's up there. He's mine. And he's smart as a whip.

"Anyway," he said melifluously and with a shabbily urbane gesture, "you get the drift. I hate to flop the old philosophy on the table like so much pig's guts. And I left out a lot. But, well, there she is."

And it was too. Now and again, you have to check the bread in the oven."

Where do I begin?

With the US government spying illegally on its citizens and then trying to spin it like "O, we are only collecting data on who you call, we aren't actually listening in on your conversations" but in the next breath rationalizing this illegal, unconstitutional, covert and terrifying activity by saying that not only will it help them capture terrorists (yeah. right. and I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I can let go cheap) but also child pornographers. Uh, if you aren't listening in, how would just a phone number let you know you are on the path of pedophiles? Just asking.

The whole thing is so disingenuous it makes me want to heave more than I usually do when I look at that smirking chimp and his band of devil-may-care draft dodgers, thieves, criminals, cold-hearted bastards and jack-booted thugs.
This particular cabal of evil doers (aka the Bush White House) is so fluent in double speak that George Orwell his own self could use them to write the play book for Big Brother.

I am not afraid. I will not be made to be afraid.

I will take this fight to the polling booth and despite the best efforts of the corporations who have bought this administration, I will attempt to vote all of them out of office. I will write my spineless, Republican hand-puppet representatives and demand impeachment, or at least a dog and pony show of an investigation.

While I'm ranting about the ugly and the evil, can I just say, once and for all, that I am sick and tired and disgusted with you people? You people (women) who seem to think that MetroRail is the appropriate place to pluck your facial hair and apply your pancake makeup? Look. It is really very simple.

If you need to wear makeup to appear in public, it should be applied BEFORE you appear in public. And let me define public, since that also appears to be a concept far beyond your limited capacity: Public is anyplace outside of your house. That means your car, too. Any form of transportation referred to as PUBLIC, i.e.: buses, trains, els, elevators, trams, trollies, jitneys, taxis, tuk-tuks, car-pools, camel caravans, rikshaws. All of these and anything I may have left out, are public transportation and you should shut the fuck up on your damned cell phones, stop plucking your chin hair, and curling your eye lashes and applying foundation.

And still I'm not done with the ugly and the evil, because I haven't even started on ANTM and Darth Jader. She has to be the ugliest, nastiest, stupidest, annoyingest, delusionalest (that's Darth Jader-speak for most delusioned) hamster this series has ever foisted on us. And that is saying something, since we have had girls with she-nises and Adam's apples, girls who thought all birds are blind, Camille and Ya-Ya.

She looks like a pointy, wet, pissed-off cat and acts much like one, only without the endearing quality of being cute and fuzzy when dried off. Even when the judges say they see her being soft, I only see sallow skin, squinty mean eys and an infinite abyss of stupidity.

Yet, still, I watch. I want to see her fall. I want to see her fail. I want her humbled and brought down. Is that so very wrong?

Tomorrow is my mother's birthday. She'll be 88. She won't know it. She won't know it's her birthday. She won't know that she's 88. She won't know that she's in an assisted living facility. She won't know that I've come to see her and brought her a cake. She only knows... what?

In some ways, I think, Alzheimer's Disease is like severe autism. The person with the disease has an interior life that nobody else will ever know.

I've said before that I think Mummy is in the store, taking inventory, or changing the displays. I think that because of the words I pick out from the neurological static that comes out of her mouth. There are numbers, and colors. Sometimes she'll tell an invisible assistant to put something there, where people can see it.

But who knows.

She's been saying the names of dead people for the past couple of weeks, and pointing. At them? I don't know. I've asked her if she sees her cousin Milton, who was her favorite relative. I don't get an answer.

This is what she's become: an empty shell, a blown-out egg. Fragile and hollow, with only a hint of what was inside before. Let me show you something else:


This was the hottie who did her part for the war effort by dancing with sailors at the USO. She drove them wild. Check her out, in her sailor's cap and her peacoat. I still have that peacoat. It had her name written in indelible ink on the inside label, where the sailor's was supposed to go. She always giggled a little when she let me wear it, and told me it was a REAL peacoat, one that a sailor had given her, and they weren't supposed to do that.

The old dame had some set of pins on her, didn't she? And she still has a trim pair of ankles, even if she can't really walk.

I wish she was still on that beach, smiling with those dimples at whoever took the picture. I cropped it, but his toes are in the shot, at the bottom. I wish she were dancing with the sailors, and not counting pairs of shoes.

I have to believe that she is where she was happiest in her life, because to believe otherwise is too cruel. For me, for her, for anyone who ever loved her.

Happy birthday, Momma. I love you. I made your recipe for macaroni and cheese for dinner tonight. I'll bring you some tomorrow.

Not that she reads my blog, she's too cool for that.

But she is one of my best friends in the world (despite that she IS The Coolest Person In The World) and I can't let the day go by without wishing her a happy birthday.

Of course, if she is actually turning 50 this year, and I can't remember if she is or if it's next year, and she's having a party without me, I'll just have to slit my wrists.
Why is she The Coolest Person In The World?

One night, many many many years ago, she came over to my apartment in a rare snit. Her friend Woody was in town, and wanted to take her to dinner, but not out, just over to his friend's apartment. But his friend's wife was on a health food kick at the time, so all that she could expect for dinner would be brown rice, bean sprouts and a bottle of water. This was totally unacceptable, so she told Woody if he couldn't cough up for a steak and a bottle of wine somewhere, she wasn't going out with him.

Except.

Woody was Ron Wood, the friend was Mick Jagger, and the health-conscious wife was Bianca Jagger.

I told her I L-U-V ed brown rice, water and bean sprouts and that I'd be happy to go in her place.

I recieved a look of scorn for being so easy.

Happy Birthday, Girlfriend.

And a big thankew to Larry Cafiero, candidate for Insurance Commission, State of California, Green Party, for pointing this out to me.

Today's sociology lesson came from some random asshat on the train. I should know better than to change my routine, because it never works out very well.

Instead of getting off the train at Brickell and taking the shuttle to Bayfront, I got off at Government Center. Once downstairs and on the shuttle, there was a ten minute delay. But, luckily for all those on board, we had a vocal lunatic on hand to give us a running commentary on the state of America with side notes about American history, the curse of poverty and the origins of certain ethnic slurs.

Unluckily for those of us on board, the guy was a raving idiot, and possibly a Tourrette's sufferer too, because he Never Shut Up. He had a sidekick, to whom he addressed his lecture.
Allow me to paint you a picture, if you will.

The doors are open, and a young male who appears to be Anglo (fair, light eyes, tall) comes in and holds the door for his friend, a not-so-young black male in a wheelchair. The guy in the wheelchair has some sort of twisty-writhing thing going on, so that every time I glance over at him, he's in a different position, including, at one point, (I kid you not) upside down, with his head on the foot rest, facing in.

None of these contortions phase his buddy in the least, if, in fact, he is even aware that his friend is wiggling around. The fair-haired boy is wearing a pair of baggy (of course) denim shorts complete with large logo on one leg, and a styled denim jacket in a very now acid wash, fully buttoned to the throat, where he has tied on a grey bandana, old west style, like a bandit about to pull it up over his face just before the bank robbery. Clean sneakers, no baseball cap. And then he opens up his pie-hole and does not stop. He talks like a seriously "gangsta" inner-city thug. Reminds me of Jamie Kennedy in Malibu's Most Wanted. A lot.

It is a rant about how all these people are going to work in offices where they are going to talk on their cell phones and sit on their asses and make piles of money whereas he is a poor working guy who does construction and gets laughed at by the stiffs in their Chryslers. America is doomed to crash. America deserves to crash. But he and his friend will be OK, because they are the poor and the downtrodden and they have better survival skills.

When the power goes out, and OH IT WILL, all of us will be down, and he will be on top and he'll know what to do then, oh, YES HE WILL and we will all be working with our hands and suffering because the (and I quote) SPICS and the NIGGAS will be on top. The working peeps who know what it's like to blahblahblahblah. Then there was a slight digression as he explained where the term spic came from... except I don't think the last letter began with a C...or a K. Anyway.

But America is going to CRASH and it'll be worse than the Great Depression in his granddaddy's day. (HUH? This asshat knows about the Great Depression? I'll be damned.) OH YES IT WILL. And he's got the popcorn ready.

OK. You get the gist. Repeat with variations ad nauseum for the ten minutes we are stuck at the station (although while he was on the people in the towers with their cell phones portion, there was a general fleeing of the ship by the rats in question), followed by more variations on a theme for another ten to fifteen minutes while we creep along the el to my stop. He was still going on when I left.

But, and here's the thing, for all his anti-Capitalist Pig, anarchy in UK posturing, the kid is wearing new clothes, in new styles with highly visible branding. And while I have no way of knowing his level of education, he at least was awake long enough to learn about the Great Depression and even able to place it in the correct time frame... which is more than I can say for a lot of high school graduates.
He is bragging that he's got his popcorn ready when America falls (never mind that Gill Scott Heron said that the revolution will not be televised), which would indicate that he has a home, and the money to pay the electric bills and fork over the buck fifty for a bag of Jiffy Pop. He talked about his job, working hard with his hands. So, anarchy boy? Aren't you just more of the same as me? Job. Rent. Food. Clothes. Mass Transit. TV. Electric bills.

Sucks being the man, don't it?