Conversation between two women behind me at Laemmele's in Encino

“As if there was a way to, or through, a painless catharsis."
"A free lunch, so to speak."
"Exactly! As if Joe or Jenny SixPack could actually just stroll in off the street into your garden-variety strip mall church---"
"---or the Sistine Chapel for that matter."
"Exactly! And shed a few Pavlovian tears as they recite the sinner's prayer..."
"...and Voila!"
" Zap!"
"Kuh-ching! Hit the cosmospiritual jackpot! Dive headlong into some sort of magically painless wormhole."
"Slip right through the cervix of the universe, the crucible of existence!"
"Slide right on into 'God-consciousness.'"
"And just completely circumvent, by the way, that pesky yin-yang, karmaic, for-every-action-there-is-an-equal-and-opposite-reaction physical law….thing….”
"Exactly!"

E-mail to Bonz

This picture has nothing to do with me. I was just intrigued by the moment. "The nick of time" as Thoreau so eloquently declared. And what form!







E-mail to Bonz 03/04/06

True. I won't miss the ludicrous "if you only knew what I know, yadda, yadda, etc, etc," ad nauseum, ad infinitum. That can be annoying, but we all have our foibles.
Nevertheless, it's damn good to hear you're back with us in the "real world" ---whatever that cliche means?...I'm not exactly sure. (Seems the older I get, the less the universe resembles the picture of it my mind haspasted together over the decades. Funny thing, this momentary congealation of wavy-massish..stuff, and its odd ability to turn inward and scratch its head in wonder of itself. I have a sneaking suspicion your Bipolar II-ism is not quite as strange a "condition" as one might be tempted to think. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that your artsy proclivities---both inherited and nurtured---are simply your being more in tune with both aspects of that guy we all know of as Bonz. The Yin-Bonz and the Yang-Bonz, as it were; and not knowing which one is "the real me.")

I also know how painful the internal strife is. If it hadn't been for excruciating and debilitating back pain, and a chance prescription for a relatively harmless little molecular cocktail called Tramadol, I'd have never known that there existed this space/time place---call it Peaceville. It's quite addictive, this Tramadol; but, other than that pesky little aspect, it's actually easier on your system than Advil and all those other gut-wrecking Cox inhibitors that keep our internal medicine doctors in Mercedes and golf condos. Seriously, other than a few very short episodes in my life---at most a few months over a 43 year life---there was always this gnawing thing inside me. Evil little bastard. And I think it's safe to say it's probably the same little bugger that was whispering into my dad's ear 35 years ago as he sat in his car in a dark parking lot in Orange---urging my dad on as he put that little revolver up to his head and began squeezing the trigger: "...just fucking pull it! You worthless piece of shit. They'll be better off without you around anyway, you miserable fuckup. Besides, they don't love you anyway. Nobody does. Hell, not even your own dad loves you, you pile of crap. How could they? How could anybody love a worthless, negative, worthless, self-righteous, worthless, arrogant, worthless, worthless, worthless......"
That's fucked up. I know. I used to hear the exact same shit, to the letter. It all started when I lived at the Ranch, when I was a mere lad of 16 and laid up with a broken leg; and it lasted, more or less obnoxiously, all the way up until James and Stu came along. The blackness sorta rolls on in like a hellish fog, always so fucking thick that no matter which way you turn to stumble out of it, you invariably just go deeper and deeper into the blackness. Ironically, alcohol helpled---albeit in the same way that chemotherapy might give a sick man a few more years of misery. (That was the Happy Lappy that you stumbled upon in that little house on the corner of Acacia & Girard.)
But the Happy part of Lappy began to dissipate in an inverse ratio with his blood-alcohol level. Of course, I had a family to feed and shelter, so I quit, and things did get dramatically better. But it wasn't until I started riding bicycles that I slowly began realizing my chemicals were, had always been, seriously out of whack (emphasis on whack). Endorphin made things better---much, much better; BIG improvement. But there was always still that nastly little shit in the background, clawing away at the last few shreds of Happy Lappy. Nevertheless, I got used to him, for the most part. So long as I could keep on ODing on Endorphin, life was servicable, if not exactly Nirvana.
Years happen, though. “The grass withers, the flower fades,” or so goes the scripture. And my treasonous back began turning on me. Unable to get ANY exercise at all, the evil little bastard crept back in, bitching me up, whining, complaining. After almost 15 years of relative peace and neuro-quietude, the physical pain set off a growing depression. Egged on by my own proclivity towards a bad attitude, I was beginning to hear his little hissing again, right in my ear. Any time I tried to get quiet and introspective: "...worthless, worthless, worthless...just get it over with..." and so on and so forth.
Then, one day, out of the blue, the heavens opened, and out dropped this little brown bottle of pills. Not that life suddenly gotten easier; not by any means. The year-and-half with an unnamed defense contractor in Hawaii was the most difficult, trying, nearly-always-discouraging experience of my life. But, even during the worst moments, when I felt like the biggest dumbass stupidfuck for ever promising to build a freakin' (weird thing we built in Hawaii)...I never felt worthless. Naive? Yes. Stupid? Of course. Self-destructively careless with my family's well-being? Absolutely. But NEVER worthless.

I'm pretty sure my dad would agree. As would yours, about both of us.

Thanks, once again, for making me open up that stinking old wound, expose it to some oxygen and scrub out the necrotic gaubeldiguk that tends to grow in those dark, nasty places. Somehow all it takes is a few words from you to slice me open and just let it all start pouring out. And please forgive me if it seemed I had given up on you. I hadn't. But there comes a time when one realizes that there is nothing to be done, expect to hope---and that I always have done.

Welcome back,
Happily Lappy

Politically expedient devils still have rights

Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that.
More: Oh? And when the law was down -- and the Devil turned round on you -- where would you hide? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.
from "A Man for All Seasons" Robert Bolt


This simple little snippet—to all but the most obtuse denizens of that rat warren of bureaucratic ineptitude, i.e. Fed Gov and the vast majority of its tri- quad- and penta-lettered subsidiaries (IRS, FEMA, BATFE, etc., etc., ad infinitum), and not excluding its increasingly unwitted ivory tower partners-in-propoganda—would seem to be so self-evidently, commonsensically, undeniably undeniable, that it should require nary a letter in the way of apologetics.
But where would the fun in that silence be?
So, in the interest of perspective, lets look at it from a slightly different point of view:

Bush: So....now you'd....give the.......terrorists (or insert any politically expedient “devil”) benefit of law....?

2nd-year Constitutional Law student: Uh…well, yes, Mr. President. Dude! In all due respect, what else can you do? Nuke the whole lot of them, and then bulldoze a 20-lane superhighway right through the Constitution, not only endangering but actually sealing the unhappy fate of hundreds of millions of Americans?..in order to do…what?...save a few thousand lives?...to protect ourselves from the politically expedient devil?

Bush: You kiddin’, missy, I’d nuke Europe to do that.

2nd-year Constitutional Law student: Ah, Dude!? Oop. Excuse me. Sir. In all due respect…sir. Seriously. Were you out fishing when they lectured about the Third Reich? Remember....brownshirts…the suspension of civil liberties? Gun confiscation? Kristalnacht? Yellow stars on little Jewish kids being smuggled out of Germany in order to save their lives? Piles of emaciated stinking corpses being tossed—by walking, stinking, emaciated, soon-to-be-corpses—into burning pits of stinking, emaciated corpses? Did you miss that day at Yale when they talked about how virtually every great statesman in our national history has warned us that our greatest challenge would be that of reigning in our own government, and the never-ending struggle to prevent it from becoming a fascist dictatorship?
And, Mr. President, when the Constitution has been rendered meaningless, when it's become nothing but a worthless pile of mutually exclusive phrases and powerless platitudes, and when your heroic "superhighway for public safety” has finally been paved (right over the top of our last constitutionally-recognized natural human right); then what will you do when that politically expedient devil, or someone very much like him, has somehow gained the upper hand and turned the tables on us? (and rest assured, he will) Where will our grandchildren hide…Mr. President?
Where will they run?
Yes, Mr. President, I would absolutely and graciously grant the devil benefit of law---for my own safety's sake. And for yours.

Bush: ???????? That’s not………………………………uh…………………………how it’s uh……………………supposed to…uh……………………the doers of evil………um……………and the Lord smiteth Israe—…… Ishmael ……………..

Nancy Gearhardt
In the beginning God created my mother. And I saw that she was good. And she was the light, and the warmth, and all that that was good. And she was my first love. But such is the tender tale for most all men, regardless of realities.
After that, first there was Nancy. Nancy Gearhardt, in whom was no guile. I can still smell the freshly sharpened pencils, and feel the smooth edges of the double desk tops that we shared. My chair had a snag of wood fibers on the right had side, evidently from the last nervous third-grader unable to control her incessant clawing at the hard pine seat’s top. I could tell, because it was precisely the spot my hand reached for and grabbed when Nancy entered the room. She walked through the humungous orange door, stopped and looked around with her sad, caring eyes, apparently surveying the room for familiar faces, apparently unsuccessfully. She seemed far too relaxed, and her smile was the sort that some girls are blessed with; the type that they just can’t seem to shake off, even when they’re mad, or hurt. That type. Her hair was gold, just pure sparkling gold. And she parted it in the middle, like half the girls did in 1968. The other half had bangs chopped neatly above their eyebrows.
She carried a Pee-Chee and a slightly worn yet perfectly serviceable ring-binder type notebook of proportions that seemed, to me, a bit excessive for the needs of even the most studious of third-graders. But I forgave the indiscretion, as it seemed at the time (given her angelic countenance) inconsequential.
As she walked up to the front of the class I immediately prayed to Jehovah and promised him that if he would cause Miss Grace, our teacher, to assign this precious creature to share a desk with me, that I would henceforth spend the rest of my days praising my savior, all the day long. Of course, having had much experience with prayers answered with a resounding NO, I already knew what the answer was. I looked around the room and saw that most of the double desks were as yet still occupied by only one eager child, mostly girls; and why would any teacher cause this happy little golden elf to suffer such a fate as to be yoked with a beast such as myself? Not even God, in all his mercies to me, would condemn his poor little lamb to share a desk with me. I was sure of it.
But God works in strange and mysterious ways. And, as I watched in tortured silence, my faith was renewed, again, when the teacher pointed to my...our...desk—our heavenly conjoined love nest. Nancy turned and looked over her shoulder at me and our gazes locked momentarily. Imperturbed would, I believe, be the most proper description of her reaction as she turned back to the teacher and leaned forward to survey the desk assignment sheet. Nancy Gearhardt glanced back at me again; then, still leaning over the teacher’s desk, said something quietly to Miss Grace, who in turn glanced sidelong at me. She mumbled something—probably something like: Yeah, lets see if we can get you away from that wretched toad of boy…or something like that—then she rotated the seating assignment sheet, studied it, looked up over her the top rims of her glasses and counted off some seats with a long sharpened fingernail, and then looked back down at the paper. All the while I was shrinking slowly into my seat, feeling not too unlike the poor kid standing on home base by himself after watching sixteen other kids get chosen for a pickup game. Except the team captain was evidently attempting to forfeit the game, rather than play with me.
Miss Grace finally shook her head with an apologetic pout on her face. Nancy sighed, shrugged her shoulders, turned back toward the class and, carefully skipping past my adoring gaze, surveyed the rest of the class once more. Her eyes eventually stopped upon a desk occupied by a tiny, curly-blond girl already immersed in one of the books that filled our hinged-top desks. Pointing at the girl, Nancy turned to the teacher once again. This time the teacher, looking a bit less apologetic, simply shook her head, and this time I could hear the reply: “Sorry, Miss...Gearhardt, the class is full. Why don’t you have a seat with Mr...uh...Jefferson, and if things don’t work out...well...we’ll just see about it…then.” To which Nancy, to her credit, simply straightened her shoulders up and nodded in agreement, turned and glided straight toward me.
Thank you, Lord, I groveled, your mercies endureth forever.

Nancy Gearhardt sat down next to me, opened the giant desk and deposited her ring-binder notebook inside. She slid one textbook off the other, surveying the titles and shuffling through the pages. Then she closed the desk, placed the Pee-Chee directly in front of her, opened it and produced one pencil, one pen, and one eraser, placing them neatly in the little groove at the front of the desk. She closed the Pee-Chee, folded her hands neatly on top it and looked straight ahead, her profile like a third-grader at Greek goddess school. Her nose was straight and set at the perfect angle for my developing sense of aesthetics---about 34 degrees from the vertical plane of her smooth, goldish cheeks and her perfectly proportioned and situated chin.

The chin was important. For a chin too much recessed beyond the nose can create quite an unappealing plethora of sensations. Depending on the mood and lighting a person is seen in, one can appear as an angry rat, a frightened weasel, a silly mouse, or any number of uncomplimentary combinations—most of which unfortunately involve rodents—which at any given moment may not reflect at all the actual emotional state of the unlucky weak-chinned person. I know—I’ve been caught off guard by my own reflection in an unexpectedly unflattering mirror enough times to drive this concept home. (Not that I would consider my chin as below that datum line delineating acceptability to the 95% of us who inhabit the middle of the bell curve of aesthetic sensibilities.)
Of course, while a diminutive chin is less than desirable, a thrusting, or jutting chin can be downright bulldoggish. To be avoided at all times.

Needless to say, Nancy Gearhardt’s chin was perfectly sized, relatively proportioned and situated just so, so that the overall effect on my as-yet untrampled sense of infatuation was deep, all-encompassing and permanent---as is obvious, being that it has now been 38 years since that indelible semester with Nancy Gearhardt. And, though I may not recall the name or topic of the movie I watched yesterday, Nancy's clean, sweet, girl-child scent and her angular, no-nonsense cursive letters are both still imprinted onto my gray matter deeply enough so as to be instantly recalled, and smelled, and seen, just as though she is sitting next to me, right now, right here, carefully printing our vocabulary assignment after a hard game of dodgeball on a warm spring morning playground.

Ah, the blessings and curses of memory.

She wore a yellow, sleeveless dress that hung somewhat like a long, narrow pillowcase on her as-yet entirely formless young figure. And she wore brown canvas sneakers and white socks with a single conservatively unfrilly red frill. Other girls, most of them anyway, wore shiny black or white shoes with small heels and socks with multiple frilly frills. The white cotton socks seemed all the whiter against her perpetually golden-tanned skin, which was so amazingly even and smooth. I always took advantage, whenever the class had to rotate in their seats toward the chalkboard on the east wall, to lean in as close as I dared in order to better see and smell that smooth layer of skin that wrapped itself around her anatomy like a silken elastic body sock, so to speak, which she wriggled into every morning, or was maybe painted on at birth.

One day she inadvertently reached over and put her hand on my forearm before recoiling and apologizing. I was helpless, and fairly worthless, for the rest of the afternoon, completely unable to commandeer enough brain cells from their relishing reverie even to perform such mundane tasks as a spelling test---the one thing, the only thing, I ever excelled at in all my years at school—other than exasperating my poor unfortunate teachers.

(I apologize if you thought this was actually going somewhere. It wasn't. I just smelled something that brought it all back, and figured I might should get it down, before it's gone, again, for another 38 years.)

Marrs

2/8/04
E-mail to Bonz:
That place--Loraine's--was always intriguing. Something about it--not sure what--but something gave it a certain...a certain quality. A quaint sort of solitariness and a strength, perched up there on the hill, nearly hidden from view. Can't really put my finger on it.

It was for sale a few years back and I wanted to go look at it--but Angie said "Yuck. You and your weird houses and music and art and..."
Ahh, wedded bliss.

Odd thing: once in a while she'll say something that makes it seem as though she's a complete stranger. Not just unfamiliar, but a complete and utter stranger! I have to step back, shake it off, press reset, look around at this house and these things (and that fucking TV, may it burn in hell for eternity along with the inventor of the cathode tube). Then I look at her, and for a moment she even looks like a stranger. And I think, Who the hell are you? And how did we get together in the first place?
But then it all comes rushing back in on me, like memories do, and soon I'm awash in warm fuzzy mental video clips of her smiling face and the smell of her sweat ("I don't sweat; I glisten"), the sound and feel of her wet tongue in my ear.
And the first time we met--how her tube top seemed to be calling to me (c'mon in!) while she leaned over as far as she could and cleaned off the counters at her brother Ricardo's house while Todd and I sat there around the table, chopping up little white piles of pseudo-adrenalized reality. Her smile, her rock solid self assurance. And how my bare bleeding feet stung after pushing her from the Bumstead/Findley/Lappy pad all the way downtown to her place, in a shopping cart, at midnite. And later that night, in her sweltering upstairs bedroom with the fan blowing across our soaked young bodies...
God that hurts. But its a warm aqua-green pain.
A cruel ruse, that first chapter, it often seems.

Chapter One

Animal Lust.

I'd give almost anything to have that passion back, to figure out how to reawaken it in her. Seems the chemicals that make for good mothers are the same chemicals that make for sleepy lovers.

On a lighter note: Today I hiked and boulder-hopped, solitaire, up the canyon that leads to the Lake Hemet dam. I only went a couple hours up before I found a nice sunny open spot where I sat down and did some writing. I believe, before long, I'll have to get away from it all and take my second big adventure trip. But this time I think I'll go further and get lost; try and figure out how the rest of the story should proceed. I just can't imagine the protagonist in my life story moulding and souring in this stucco box under the purple skies and the pulsing negative energy that saturates So Cal. Unfortunately I can't see Angie following, so the picture may have to be reformulated.

I keep remembering how pitiful it was to see my mother die after living a life of disappointment, in places she didn't want to be, doing things she didn't want to do. Of course, she was stoic about it and, except for the very end, she was incorrigibly positive and smiley.
She was only 55 when cancer got her, and it's a congenital thing. So here I am, wondering if maybe I have only ten years left. Or five. Or less. The questions keep rolling around my cranium: How much freedom and fulfillment are you willing to sacrifice for comfort and security? And what if I found out I did only have a year or two years or six months left; would I have the guts to pack up the Jeep and go spend it doing what I love? Try to find passion in my writing, in the mountains. Do I have the guts to do it now? Would it be folly to leave? Is it folly to stay?
Then I wonder how I could be such an immature ingrate, and why can't I be more like Ward Cleaver and learn to enjoy the tepid mediocrity so easily and naturally embraced by most "responsible" middle-agers? Occasionally I catch a glimpse of him: the cardigan sweatered, cigar-loving me, reclining by the pool, beautiful grandchildren skittering about and giggling, climbing on his lap, trading sloppy kisses for chocolate bribes. But then I see the savage me, the adventurous Viking, frozen beard, raping (consensual, of course), pillaging. The Amazon Indian me, running through steamy jungles, melting into the emerald green and the glowing blue and red as the psylocybin cooks his brain...

Alas, the desperate thoughts of a (slowly) dying man.

Nevertheless, it's good therapy. And good therapy is much needed. Thanks for lending an open ear.

Lap

Life with Elmer

I woke up on Easter morning in 1976 in the little town of Escalon, CA, to the sound of my mother’s voice outside my bedroom door, demanding I be ready to leave for church in fifteen minutes. I went back to sleep. Fifteen minutes later she returned and opened the door, poking her still very pretty, albeit very angry, face into my trash heap.
Get yourself out that bed right now, young man.
Alright, alright.
I’m not messin’ around. I mean now. You’re already gonna miss Sunday school. You know good and well that your— that Ray’s preaching this morning. And you’d better be sitting up front, with your hair combed, when he steps up to the pulpit. Do you understand me?
I’m getting out of bed. I’m putting on my soc—
Don’t get smart with me, young man.
Sorry.
DO NOT be late! And clean up this pig pen this afternoon.
Yes’m.
She slammed the door, in her gentle way, and a few minutes later I could hear the reassuring sound of car wheels rolling out the gravel driveway. Half an hour later I stood on the front porch, stuffing out my second Winston of the morning to the sound of church bells. Ray, my stepfather, was preaching—so to speak, though droning would be more accurate—and the sociopolitical implications of his own stepson being late, or worse yet, altogether absent for his sermon were embarrassing for both he and my mother. But, alas, late would have to suffice. Why? Why do pigs grunt? Why do priests bugger little boys? Might just as well ask why you can’t see dark matter. It’s just the way things are. Because I was me. And it was the first blue sky day in this dreary little town of Escalon—with its Hitchcockian windblown streets and skeletal trees—in what seemed like an eternity. Escalon, I was told by a certain pipe smoking history teacher at Escalon High School, was Latin for Nasty, Brutish & Ugly, only half-jokingly. Such a beautiful morning, I soon began to understand (once the nicotine level in my bloodstream had been optimized), was proof that God really had no intention of forcing me to suffer the self-imposed torture of sitting through another sermon at the Escalon Assembly of God church. Seriously, it was just too much to even contemplate.
Suddenly even the concept of church was so abhorrent, when viewed against the Montana-blue sky and the uncharacteristically warm breeze that April morning, that I was forced to abandon the effort altogether. Of course, decisions have consequences, which require further decisions, which obviously result in yet more consequences: arguments, fights, threats, restrictions, cold wars, hot wars, thermonuclear slaps in the face, etc. So, after calculating most likely of the various possible outcomes of what would ultimately be judged as a blatant challenge to the heavenly-ordained chain of authority in our little household, I came to a startling conclusion: I had to leave home.
Immediately.
Technically, I guess, it was a classic case of running away from home, but since I was half way to 17 I thought of it more as just leaving. Without telling anyone.
It’s not like they’d be missing me a whole heckuva lot, I reasoned, as I stuffed a couple of T-shirts and socks and an extra pair of jeans a big yellow backpack. I changed from my Sunday duds into cowboy boots, Wranglers, a slightly weathered yet comfortable pearl buttoned western work shirt. My mom loved me, I knew, as I stuffed my head into a humungous black bullrider hat and looked into the mirror. The young man staring back at me seemed already a changed person. And, as I and set off for the edge of town, I knew that deep down even Ray didn’t really hate me; that he just had no idea how unbelievably and maddeningly shitheaded one otherwise not-all-that-terrible of a kid could be—given the wrong circumstances.
And our circumstance was, sad to say, as wrong as it gets: a) he was an anal retentive, bordering-on-miserly, 31-year old, thrust into a relationship with a careless, shiftless 16 year-old with a genetic proclivity to see the cup as half-empty, even when it was brimming over. Not that he didn’t have his own, shall we say, quirks? But, more on that later.
I stepped out the front door of the little green and white house and sucked in a lungful of air, said goodbye to the giant pine tree on the front lawn, absolutely no idea of where I was going, savoring every moment of it. Nor was there even an inkling of what I might actually do once there, wherever there happened to end up being. I had seven dollars and forty-five cents, two packs of Winston reds, and a couple days worth of clothes. Yet, that morning as I scuffed along the shoulder of Hwy 2, pointing my thumb at the sky, I believe that I may have been happier, right at that moment, than at any other time in my life up to that point (with the possible exception of when Cheryll Monson had a panic attack on church youth group field trip to the Palm Springs aerial tramway, squeezing the bejesus out of me and nearly crushing me with her 13 year-old breasts, which she had conveniently left unbound. But that’s another story which has no place in this narrative).
I felt like George Orwell marching off to war in Spain—a babe in the woods, mortally naïve, and just happy to be finally getting it over with on this my own rite of passage, such as it was. I could have no idea that it would be six months before I would see my mother and stepfather, and that little cluster of neanderthal huts known as Escalon.

I read an article in the Riverside Press Enterprise a couple of months ago, and I was so incensed that I sat down and penned a letter to the editor. The article was about a poor dejected woman who lived in a house which the city of Temecula, CA. had sold her the house at half the market price. It’s an older house, and it’s not in one of the choicest parts of town. But it’s by no means in Inglewood or East LA, where children are lulled off the slumberland each night by the pop-pop-pop of stolen Glock 9’s. No, it’s actually a quaint little area—just not as ridiculously expensive as the rest of Temecula.
Anyway, so Vanessa(that’s her name) gladly accepts the generous offer from the good people of Temecula moves in, and lo and behold, a few months later, winter has the audacity to come sliding down from Canada and dump a prodigious amount of water on her new/old home. Now, evidently it’s been a few years since the roof was installed, and probably the same amount of time since anyone touched it. Vanessa is now very hurt, confused, and just downright flustered, darn it! If it wasn’t for the heartless people of Temecula (and their bumbling city managers), poor Vanessa wouldn’t have this problem……I mean it’s only obvious.
But, of course, I simply don’t possess the wherewithal to say it better than Ms. Vanessa herself, as she so eloquently stated in her plea for help in patching her celing: "It wouldn't seem like $1,000 would be a big deal to [the City of Temecula] to help out and fix this." Evidently she labors under the delusion that Temecula has its own mint, or money tree, or some other form of money-producing machine which is "no big deal" to turn on and off. She further clears up any misunderstanding regarding just exactly who is ethically responsible for this mostly cosmetic inconvenience: "It would be nice if [Temecula] could help." (help = "Pay for the repairs") Yet "she wonders why a city with such ample resources as Temecula would seek the help of a non-profit group rather than solve a problem connected with one of its programs." (Italics mine)
If we extrapolate this last concept of Responsibility-by-Connection, well, then my mortgage company is therefore ethically responsible for repairing the crack in my foundation; they surely knew the home was built in a seismically active area. I mean, it's only fair; they were connected with the sale of the home, after all. They did loan me the money, without which I would not be in the predicament I’m now in. I’d most likely be contentedly watching football on my $5000 big-screen—stuffed into my $1200/month apartment, rather than squirting epoxy into a 50 foot long crack—until I can sell the old big-screen in the kids’ room, after which time I’ll have enough money to pay someone to fix the crack right. (please spare me the recipes for this fix; it’s only fixional)
Or, in other words, because the people of the City of Temecula were generous enough to pay for half of Vanessa’s home, then it only follows that those same generous Temeculans should pay for any repairs which Ms. Hernandez isn't currently prepared to pay for herself.
Sorry, Vanessa, but it's time to staple up some plastic and tough out another brutal Temecula winter. And while you’re at it, drape a tattered American flag over it; it'll be a fitting symbol of what's left of the boot-strap independence that made America the great nation it was (and will be again, if ever we can manage to rid ourselves of this irresponsible and socially cancerous mindset...and the people who preach it).

Jefferson

Alright, alright. So it's a computer monitor and not a TV. I think you get the drift.





Television………
it would appear, appeals to that little peanut of a reptile brain that we all have buried at the center of our bio-processors. The little micro-bio-processor, so to speak, developed to perform a very few, very specific functions: copulation, eating, hunting, eating, copulation, etc., etc., and the few other basic physical functions required for terrestrial life. And, while there are at least a few mildly interesting, semi-educational, emotionally-gratuitously touching, and even the infrequent yet genuinely humorous programs a person can watch nowadays, we (or at least the greater part of the “industrialized” human race) nevertheless choose, far more often than not, to watch those shows which settle, like dregs, down into that murky cesspool of LCD (network) television.
No, it’s not Liquid Crystal Diodes I’m referring to; it’s Lowest Common Denominator television (much like that trillion dollar babysitting institution in charge of turning out a steady, if helpless, parade of “industrialized” citizens, or shall we say, comrades). It not only aims at, but it is designed for, the lowest comprehensible product acceptable to the largest viewing audience. Simple as that.
Why? For the painfully simple reason that a trout can eat a minnow, but not the other way around. If a program requires even a modicum of, shall we say, intellectual horsepower and/or comprehension, then only the relative few will watch that show. But if that show (same story, albeit culturally softened—like baby food) is aimed at, say, third thru fifth grade intelligence level, well, then everyone can watch it. Not that everyone wants to watch it. Nevertheless, they will watch it, simply because they’re too lazy to put their macro-processor to work when they can lay back and just keep the lizard amused.
But I digress (an annoying habit nurtured by years of soundbite-thought-processing training, sitting in front of a glowing tube for thousands upon thousands of hours of my semi-normal childhood). As already stated, the television is, for hundreds of millions of people, if not billions, nothing more than a box of colorful flies buzzing around frantically, in an effort to keep that little processor in the middle of our craniums from losing interest.
Just imagine—if indeed you’re still capable—that your brain is a little lizard. And just imagine that your little lizard is, well, like all lizards, not exactly what we think of when we envision a pet—more like a cat with Alzheimer’s. Not overly friendly, not much going on between those perky little ears, and every time it sees you, you’re a stranger. Of course, some guys would be OK with that, misofelinous as they pretend to be, or so they say, but the rest of us wouldn’t be too keen on it. But if it’s your only pet, well, you can’t exactly just toss it out, especially if, like most cats will when given the chance, it serves a vital function: pest control.
Well, such is your reptile mind, that tiny little lizard happily doing nothing—save watching and pushing off the occasional pushup the way lizards do—in your head, biding its time and not wasting a calorie of energy in the process. Waiting for a chance to plug you into, or be plugged into by, a member of the opposite sex. Waiting for chance to snatch an unwitting fly out of the air as it buzzambles past your field of vision. Waiting for some large and/or poisonous and/or quick and/or toothy carnivore to amble by and see you out of the corner of its eye, at which time your lizard says “SCRAM! NOW!”
Like I said, a lizard may not be the cuddliest little smoocher when it comes to pets, but then again, when was the last time your Shih Tzu screamed “DUCK!” when a 95 mph curveball was on a collision course with its dog house; or “STOP!” when a 95 mph Honda Civic (full of inebriated teenage primates hypnotized by the monotonous, bowel-loosening mega bass thumping along to an onslaught of inane, unintelligible braggadocio) blows the stop sign in front of you; or “GO!GO! GO! YOU GODDAM USELESS WASTE OF CARBON AND OXYGEN, SHE’S LEAVING! GO! NOW! DON’T THINK ABOUT IT, JUST GO! TAKE HER, RAVISH HER, MAKE MAD PASSI—”
Well, actually, my inner lizard would never waste such extraneous verbiage as mad, passionate love, but you get the drift.
So, there it is, your little lizard, just hangin’ in there doin’ its job—keeping you alive, keepin’ the cobwebs off your willie—when along comes Mr. FifthAv. He understands your inner lizard, far, far better than you do, especially since most people are wholly unaware they even carry this little guardian herp-angel around. Mr. Advertising Agency understands your inner lizard so well that he is able to go Mr. Consumer Junk and say, “Nice shot! 300 yards if it was foot. Hey, CJ, how’s it going with that new Wurth-Less-itron? Sales keeping up with your projections, the projections you used to justify that stock split?”
“God-dammit! You %#$@#$% #$@@%@!! I told you we don’t talk business on the 13th hole.”
“Yeah, sorry! Forgot.”
“Shit!”
“I did, seriously. Sorry, it won’t hap—”
“I didn’t say bull shit. I said Shit. As in, lackluster would be a ridiculous overstatement.”
“So…..it’s OK to talk shop now.”
“You broke the spell, man. Have at it.”
“OK. So here’s the deal.”
“Christ. Here we go.”
After five more holes whack-fucking, and a half dozen martinis at the 19th hole, Mr. FifthAv finally convinces Mr. Consumer Junk that by inserting pictures of the Wurth-less-itron into a 30 second series of rapid-fire pictures (which, by the way, creates a very convincing illusion of physical motion) of beautifully youthful looking Eurocentric “multiculturals,” and then aiming this illusion at the rods and cones of the eyes of hundreds of millions of hypnotized Americans, Europeans, Asians, and a smattering few billion of “other,” that CJ will not only sell his entire stock of WurthLess-itrons, but that he’ll have to build factories on every continent and possibly even on a few passing comets just to keep up with demand.
“Where dhhooo I ssss…sign?” slurs CJ.
“I’ll brink uhhhh connntrackt ofer m..m..monday.”

And that’s how it came to be that 3 billion people stare at an illusion every night, instead of reading, exercising, talking, playing, writing, etc., etc. …..oh yeah, and exercising their lizards.

......more on this later. For the time being, there are bigger fish to fry.

My wife says I'm negative. Nonsense, I said, I'm simply a realist. I can't help it if reality is so fucked up.

Aloha,
This is the first of many (hopefully) posts in which I will attempt, most likely with varying degrees of failure, to convey my particular cosmic view….of things…and stuff like that. I’ve been trying for some time (about 5 years now, I guess) to write something, some….thing---a short story, a novel, a micro-story, all manner of vehicles, all of which sit in rusted heaps in varying degrees of discombobulation along their nondescript roads to oblivion---which might be of interest to you, the coveted reader. Of course, my insidiously ulterior motive is for you, the coveted listener, to help me, the pathetically lonely and misunderstood......guy in the throes of a monumental mid-life crisis, to rid myself of what I’ve come to think of as “this dead guy strapped to my back.”
Damn, he thinks, biting his lip and scratching the back of his neck, I’ve probably already said too much........but I guess that’s what this experiment is all about. Now where's that pesky PUBLISH button.

Happy Trails,
It Depends

PS: I have really no idea how to manipulate the controls of this blogthing, so bear with me while I stumble, seemingly drunkenly, through this dark new world of Blog.

The Moment of Truth
(or The Crucible )

How many of us, when we arrive at that moment which George Bailey arrived at in It’s a Wonderful Life, where we sit across the massive, polished oak desk from Mr. Potter (the embodiment of evil), will have the strength of character to stop for even a moment, as George Bailey did, and to consider the $20 cigar we hold in our fingers? How many of us will see it not as a gesture of friendship, but as it truly is? The worm on the hook.
Will we taste only the deliciously oily tobacco? Or will we be able to smell the foul coercion and understand the true nature of the addictively lofty buzz which accompanies each delectable exhalation of its ultimately deadly drug?

Marrs Maniteaux