It occurred to us this morning whether anyone had ever written a short story about a severely messed up fellow, a losing poker player and alcoholic, who ends up renting a car and then keeping that car as if he owned it? This fellow had intended to off himself and the car in California but then ended up back home as a beggar--but still with the car. He changed the oil and rotated the tires. Even drifting through the occasional car wash. Ever notice how much better a car drives after a good washing? Ah, but the tags were expiring as New Year's Eve/birthday approached. He also, alas, was overstaying his welcome at an acquaintence's run-down hovel of a house. And, to be honest, he was getting sick himself of this friend and that house. It's no fun to be a beggar. Better dead than beg. Cute. Just wondering if anyone had written a story along these lines.
Choices. Does one stay and watch "Magnolia" again or hustle off to the library to continue reading an interesting biography of Groucho Marx? We chose the latter. "Respect the C*ck. Tame the C*nt."
This fellow with the car--grand theft auto? What was he doing? Was he trying to out-irresponsible his sister? Where was his urge to struggle on and overcome his recent self-inflicted wounds? He seemed not to know. The life he lived when he was employed seems like such a distant memory. He had loved that life in many, many ways. But that life was also doomed to expire. Drinking in the morning on the way to work, and then at work. Hard to sustain. He didn't have cable or internet at home, all the better for motivation to go to work every day. How long could that motivation be sustained? Turns out just the other side of twenty years. Why stuggle anymore now that all that life has now vanished? Even the house is in the final stages...the Sheriff may be on the way now....He had some fun, it can't be denied. Fifteen thousand dollar online pots. Similiar live action pots. But it could not be sustained. Play carelessly with fire long enough and you get burned. Such a trite truism. Did he have the will and the guts that his brother exhibited ten years ago? Getting out, finally, before the year's end seemed, somehow, poetic. By what means though? Leap? Interred with the car? Combination including the car? Well, he would think about it later. Now, as the snow fell heavily, he would check in on sister and his kitty....
Friday, December 21, 2007
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Birthday Greetings
Happy Birthday, Mother. We may still make it over there later this evening to see you, but we must avoid to the admin folks who would have left for the day.
Guess we have sorta mucked everything up, haven't we? We were, at least for twenty years, hanging onto that long-time City job, a great job but also one that had finally gotten to us. But, alas, we were not taking some of the steps necessary to get healthy--stopping the booze at work (after, to be fair, fair warning), dealing with the gambling bug, catching up at our house, dealing with getting mother situated. Then the move upstairs at WMD cracked our routine. Basic cable TV from the conference room ended. Oh, how we loved coming down and watching Gunsmoke and TCM on weekends. Could've turned the move into a blessing if we had just made the adjustment to a more normal and accepted workplace modus vivendi. Blowing the 60K from the second refi. Blowing another 50K borrowed from deferred comp in early 2007. On tilt with on-line poker. Familiar faces retiring. Situation with mother and sister feeling like the breaking point. The DUI. 10th anniversary of brother's leap from the parking garage my office window looked out at for ten years. Staying on 4th floor at 777 another week or so this past April might have been well-advised. Another week to continue staying away from old habits, clear my head. Maybe figure a way to do family medical and hit the road and clear our head. No guarantees that job would still be there, but it would have been worth a try. Get more bang for that three hundred co-payment buck. Good luck, by the way, trying to collect that baby. There was just some mental health work to be done and we didn't do it. We are still not doing it. Is there still time? Best piece of advice we've gotten in the last few months is to just "give yourself a chance." A very wise lady said that, and we thank her. We wonder if typing these words is therapeutic? At a minimum it gives one a chance to write and type a little. And get's us over to a library for a change.
Guess we have sorta mucked everything up, haven't we? We were, at least for twenty years, hanging onto that long-time City job, a great job but also one that had finally gotten to us. But, alas, we were not taking some of the steps necessary to get healthy--stopping the booze at work (after, to be fair, fair warning), dealing with the gambling bug, catching up at our house, dealing with getting mother situated. Then the move upstairs at WMD cracked our routine. Basic cable TV from the conference room ended. Oh, how we loved coming down and watching Gunsmoke and TCM on weekends. Could've turned the move into a blessing if we had just made the adjustment to a more normal and accepted workplace modus vivendi. Blowing the 60K from the second refi. Blowing another 50K borrowed from deferred comp in early 2007. On tilt with on-line poker. Familiar faces retiring. Situation with mother and sister feeling like the breaking point. The DUI. 10th anniversary of brother's leap from the parking garage my office window looked out at for ten years. Staying on 4th floor at 777 another week or so this past April might have been well-advised. Another week to continue staying away from old habits, clear my head. Maybe figure a way to do family medical and hit the road and clear our head. No guarantees that job would still be there, but it would have been worth a try. Get more bang for that three hundred co-payment buck. Good luck, by the way, trying to collect that baby. There was just some mental health work to be done and we didn't do it. We are still not doing it. Is there still time? Best piece of advice we've gotten in the last few months is to just "give yourself a chance." A very wise lady said that, and we thank her. We wonder if typing these words is therapeutic? At a minimum it gives one a chance to write and type a little. And get's us over to a library for a change.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Pinter's "The Homecoming"
We think this would be a play worth driving all the way to NYC to see. Alas, the money is now mostly gone. Ian McShane and the rest. Pinter's "The Homecoming". Never heard of it before now.
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/theater/reviews/17home.html?th&emc=th
One finds it increasingly hard to scribble these dispatches. The end seems closer than ever. We won't complain. We've had our moments, chances to hang onto a decent stake, but the compulsion to lose is just too overwhelming. Of course, that's the whole point: Winning would mean to having to go on, and THAT we don't really want to do. These things are always a mystery anyway. Some end up being just bigger mysteries than others. Same old story, just another iteration--gambling, booze, food, laziness, terminal inertia. The last two, we suppose, are the same: Sloth. They aren't just whistlin' dixie when they write about those seven sins as being deadly.
We dropped by the Colorado Train Museum today. Lot's of tears. Our father was the son of a boiler-maker in Wichita. He loved trains, especially the old steam locomotives. He worked as an industrial insurance inspector for many decades with what was then called Kemper. I think he was also certified to inspect some nuclear stuff as well. I regret that I didn't fully debrief dad before his death in 1995 at a diner in Switzerland during a trip focused on trains.
Well mother seems OK, comfortable. Sister Grace now has my (brother's) kitty cat and also seems OK. Maybe we just wanted to see some stability. We are the only decidedly not OK--at least in this life. What was remaining of the money is mostly gone. Work is but a distant memory. Just playing out the string. Perhaps the little long-term rental car will be our tomb?
Heard dear Mayor Hick on KOA. Talking about tough love for the homeless. One can only imagine how distorted are those homeless statistics that hizzoner throws out. We suppose tough love might be the only cure for anonymousbuyer. It also might a cure worse than the disease. Which statistic do we want to be? I used to have that structure that a job confers. Used to....
It HAS been a good run. Pity to think about ending just short of the dawn of our forty eighth year. Movies, books. All ultimately meaningless. Like television, just another way to kill time.
The play "Becket" is an interesting read. The movie understandable is quite faithful to the play. Fun reading the play in the voices of O'Toole and Burton. Becket was a man searching for meaning and he found it in God.
Goosebump moments:
----KOA playing "Houston" by Dean Martin on the day of Thursday's Bronco game in Houston.
----Irv and Joe and Jim on 950thefan: Joe mentioning Merle Haggard's song"I Take A Lot of Pride in What I Am". Also the title of a Dino album and a great cover version of that song.
Watched Dean and Jerry in "At War With The Army" this morning. Dean is and was everything. That'll be the hardest thing to let go of, but we're close....
Reading a Robert Mitchum bio at Tattered. Very interesting fellow. Born same year as Dino and died two years later, in 1987. "Five Card Stud" is an all-time favorite.
We went through the book "1001 Movies To See Before You Die". We tallied it up and it turns out we've seen about 225 from the list. We wonder if you could get all of them from netflix? Quite a few relatively obscure silents and foreign films. A few worthy favorites of ours, however, didn't make the list: House of Games, A Face In The Crowd, Ace In The Hole, Romance (French). "Airport" is worth seeing and it's on cable all the time. The Young Lions, Some Came Running. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Becket. The Killing. Cannonball Run 2. As we leafed through all those movies we were reminded of the year we saw a particular movie at the Mayan or Chez Artiste. I remember seeing Pulp Fiction four or five times. Mulholland Drive, same thing. And "Memento" was worth seeing more than once.
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/theater/reviews/17home.html?th&emc=th
One finds it increasingly hard to scribble these dispatches. The end seems closer than ever. We won't complain. We've had our moments, chances to hang onto a decent stake, but the compulsion to lose is just too overwhelming. Of course, that's the whole point: Winning would mean to having to go on, and THAT we don't really want to do. These things are always a mystery anyway. Some end up being just bigger mysteries than others. Same old story, just another iteration--gambling, booze, food, laziness, terminal inertia. The last two, we suppose, are the same: Sloth. They aren't just whistlin' dixie when they write about those seven sins as being deadly.
We dropped by the Colorado Train Museum today. Lot's of tears. Our father was the son of a boiler-maker in Wichita. He loved trains, especially the old steam locomotives. He worked as an industrial insurance inspector for many decades with what was then called Kemper. I think he was also certified to inspect some nuclear stuff as well. I regret that I didn't fully debrief dad before his death in 1995 at a diner in Switzerland during a trip focused on trains.
Well mother seems OK, comfortable. Sister Grace now has my (brother's) kitty cat and also seems OK. Maybe we just wanted to see some stability. We are the only decidedly not OK--at least in this life. What was remaining of the money is mostly gone. Work is but a distant memory. Just playing out the string. Perhaps the little long-term rental car will be our tomb?
Heard dear Mayor Hick on KOA. Talking about tough love for the homeless. One can only imagine how distorted are those homeless statistics that hizzoner throws out. We suppose tough love might be the only cure for anonymousbuyer. It also might a cure worse than the disease. Which statistic do we want to be? I used to have that structure that a job confers. Used to....
It HAS been a good run. Pity to think about ending just short of the dawn of our forty eighth year. Movies, books. All ultimately meaningless. Like television, just another way to kill time.
The play "Becket" is an interesting read. The movie understandable is quite faithful to the play. Fun reading the play in the voices of O'Toole and Burton. Becket was a man searching for meaning and he found it in God.
Goosebump moments:
----KOA playing "Houston" by Dean Martin on the day of Thursday's Bronco game in Houston.
----Irv and Joe and Jim on 950thefan: Joe mentioning Merle Haggard's song"I Take A Lot of Pride in What I Am". Also the title of a Dino album and a great cover version of that song.
Watched Dean and Jerry in "At War With The Army" this morning. Dean is and was everything. That'll be the hardest thing to let go of, but we're close....
Reading a Robert Mitchum bio at Tattered. Very interesting fellow. Born same year as Dino and died two years later, in 1987. "Five Card Stud" is an all-time favorite.
We went through the book "1001 Movies To See Before You Die". We tallied it up and it turns out we've seen about 225 from the list. We wonder if you could get all of them from netflix? Quite a few relatively obscure silents and foreign films. A few worthy favorites of ours, however, didn't make the list: House of Games, A Face In The Crowd, Ace In The Hole, Romance (French). "Airport" is worth seeing and it's on cable all the time. The Young Lions, Some Came Running. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Becket. The Killing. Cannonball Run 2. As we leafed through all those movies we were reminded of the year we saw a particular movie at the Mayan or Chez Artiste. I remember seeing Pulp Fiction four or five times. Mulholland Drive, same thing. And "Memento" was worth seeing more than once.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Floating About
We actually read a book last night--start to finish. Double Indemnity, the 1936 roman noir by James M. Cain that the movie was based on. Fascinating to see how differently the book turns out. The movie is one of our all-time favorites, having seen it at least a dozen times. In the book the Stanwyck character is much more evil. And the ending is a complete departure from the movie. Hollywood couldn't let them get away with the murder.
Found some other goodies at the house along with the Sheriff's notice. MAD magazine from 1973 with a parody of the TV show Cannon. They called it Cannonball. We were a big fan of William Conrad growing up. Also turns out he was on the Dean Martin Show quite a lot.
We've relocated our cat, 'Ole Lady, to our sister's motel room. It's been a couple days and she is adjusting to the confined space and the other cat. Not an ideal solution but we had to get her away from the house, which will be gone in matter of a week or two at latest. End of a process. Should have had sister living there last few months and saved on motel rent. Oh, well.....add that the the long list of mistakes. The end game is approaching for us. Mother got approved for Medicaid at the nursing home but they want to bill her retroactively for her portion of the expenses. It's fairly trivial amounts, but that bread is long gone.
Found some other goodies at the house along with the Sheriff's notice. MAD magazine from 1973 with a parody of the TV show Cannon. They called it Cannonball. We were a big fan of William Conrad growing up. Also turns out he was on the Dean Martin Show quite a lot.
We've relocated our cat, 'Ole Lady, to our sister's motel room. It's been a couple days and she is adjusting to the confined space and the other cat. Not an ideal solution but we had to get her away from the house, which will be gone in matter of a week or two at latest. End of a process. Should have had sister living there last few months and saved on motel rent. Oh, well.....add that the the long list of mistakes. The end game is approaching for us. Mother got approved for Medicaid at the nursing home but they want to bill her retroactively for her portion of the expenses. It's fairly trivial amounts, but that bread is long gone.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Abruzzo--Dino Paul Crocetti
The most expensive olive oil at Wholefoods is a brand called Agramato. It's pressed with tangerines and sells for almost three cents an ounce. It's imported from the Abruzzo region of Italy, which is straight across Italy from Rome on the Adriatic side. It's also the region from which Dean Martin's father and uncles emigrated to the United States, from Montesilvano on the coast in the early twentieth century.
We've recovered a few important books. Complete Handbook of Greek Verbs. 201 Latin Verbs.
The Greek verbs brings back memories of cramming and trying (unsucessfully) to finally pass second semester Classical Greek at CU. My tenure at CU callibrated to those attempts. I had passed Greek 101 one fall on the second try, or was it the third? Then Greek 102 always followed in the spring. Always five classes per week at 9:00 a.m. Ugh. Who can get up that early for a class? I was enrolled in Greek 102 during the spring of my eighth year and was about to fail it for the third time. That's when it occurred to me to just withdraw from the whole semester and graduate. It was a lovely time to be at CU. I could never leave because they would never have let me back in. Eight years was enough, and only three in base two. I occasionally have sleep dreams of being back on the campus and running around and so forth. Out of sixteen total semesters, six were fairly solid with one or two other semesters decent. The first two years were the solid foundation upon which I constructed latter zero point zero efforts, ala Mr. Blutarsky.
We've recovered a few important books. Complete Handbook of Greek Verbs. 201 Latin Verbs.
The Greek verbs brings back memories of cramming and trying (unsucessfully) to finally pass second semester Classical Greek at CU. My tenure at CU callibrated to those attempts. I had passed Greek 101 one fall on the second try, or was it the third? Then Greek 102 always followed in the spring. Always five classes per week at 9:00 a.m. Ugh. Who can get up that early for a class? I was enrolled in Greek 102 during the spring of my eighth year and was about to fail it for the third time. That's when it occurred to me to just withdraw from the whole semester and graduate. It was a lovely time to be at CU. I could never leave because they would never have let me back in. Eight years was enough, and only three in base two. I occasionally have sleep dreams of being back on the campus and running around and so forth. Out of sixteen total semesters, six were fairly solid with one or two other semesters decent. The first two years were the solid foundation upon which I constructed latter zero point zero efforts, ala Mr. Blutarsky.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Dean Martin and Jean-Paul Belmondo
Just wanted to see those two names together. Watched the original "Breathless" and wondered whether that character's fate might foreshadow my own? They are also connected through Jean Seberg, who co-starred in both "Breathless" with Jean-Paul and 1970's "Airport" with Dean Martin. The latter was Seberg's final major film. Some years later she committed suicide.
Gambling for me is a means to an end. Losing is a sure-fire way towards desparate suicidal feelings. Booze never does that for me; its impact, rather, is to slightly enhance my already mauldlin and emotional reaction to life, to movies, to memories, to visiting the cats and dogs at the shelters. Gambling was the means that drove me to quit my job. Booze would never have accomplished that.
We saw a story in The Times about the late Judge Manzanares and his wife's lawsuit over his suicide. Seems she and her brother-in-law want to hold the Jeffco DA, et al. accountable. Good luck. The only individual responsible for that suicide died during the act. Must everyone be a victim?
We saw a story in The Times about the late Judge Manzanares and his wife's lawsuit over his suicide. Seems she and her brother-in-law want to hold the Jeffco DA, et al. accountable. Good luck. The only individual responsible for that suicide died during the act. Must everyone be a victim?
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