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Tuesday, January 29, 2008

um, hello. . . 

I trust that nothing is wrong my dear reader.

Perhaps, like me, you have been much too caught up with the ultimately meaningless and mundane details with which we all complicate our lives of self-delusional importance while basking in the electronic hyper-media glow of an over-indulgent narcissistic culture.

Or perhaps not.

Perhaps, and with the divine Providence of the Good Lord above this is indeed the case; you have simply been busy enjoying a really good piece of pie.

Perhaps with a damn fine cup of coffee.

Or perhaps you have been enjoying a single malt, and by that I don't mean a milkshake.

Either way. . . one of the simple pleasures not to be underestimated.

But really now, pay attention for Chris'sakes will ya?

I asked a question.

And is that the question? If so, if so who answers? Who answers?

C'mon man, I know you're still alive.

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Saturday, January 26, 2008

here's to mel 

In August of 1967 my father went to work for Lennox Industries.

Yesterday he stopped. He retired.

I'll pause for a moment, my dear reader, to allow you to do the math.

Yes, that's right. He worked for Lennox for 40 years.

Yesterday, The Wife and The Boy and I traveled northwards into the heart of The Sprawl for the official retirement bash at his office. There was a cake, some mixed nuts and a punch made with ginger ale. His boss for the past twelve years, a woman who can't be that much older than me, gave a brief speech extolling his virtues. She gave him a card and presented him with a plaque while congratulating him on his achievement. 40 years. My dad said a few words and cracked a few jokes. He said he was asked to prepare a speech. He spoke of the importance of having a strong beginning, a strong finish, and the requirement that in a good speech the two are close together. And then he said "let's eat".

And that's my dad, the one and only Mel. He's never been a man of many words. Even after 40 years.

As I looked around at the dozens, nay, hundred or so employees gathered in the crowed cafeteria in his office building I found a strange sense of pride welling up within me. Aside from his current coworkers, many others were there as well. There were previous retirees, lifelong family friends, people I have known as long as I have memory. My dad, in his typical self-deprecating style said that they all came for the cake or to slack off from their jobs for an hour or two.

But I saw something else.

As I mixed and mingled with those in attendance I was struck by one thing: the utmost respect and admiration with which they all held my father. They spoke to me with reverence about all they had learned from my dad, and about just what a great guy he is.

Yes.

Yes, my father is a great man.

While you will never read about him or his adventures in the pages of The New York Times or see his story on CNN, he is a great man none the less.

He diligently worked in the trenches, the offices, and cubicles of America for the same company for 40 years. All the while he continued to provide, love, and care for his family, leading more by example than by lecture.

And that is no small feat.

Next week, my father and mother will begin the next phase of their already 43 plus year journey together and begin to travel this land is your and our land in their 38 foot with three slide-outs RV motor home.

But before my folks travel proverbially off into the sunset, my dear reader, join me, raise your glass high, and share in my pride. . .

To my father, to my dad. . .

To Mel!

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Thursday, January 24, 2008

a question 

Does being a big dick make you a better douche?

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Monday, January 21, 2008

no new tricks 

Greyson
late 1996 or early 1997 - January 18, 2008


My dog was old.

He was only 11 or so in human years, but as Lorne Greene once explained, that's about 77 to you and me, and that's getting up there for a big dog. He was with me for slightly over 10 of them.

Greyson was the name he came with, and as far as any vet could ever tell me he was pure weimaraner.

You know, those silvery gray dogs that that photographer guy made famous. Yeah, we've all seen the pictures. I've had the calendars, I've gotten a book or two. You can't own one of those damned dogs without having people give you lots of that crap over the years. I've got all that shit in a box somewhere.

And I'll tell you straight up now, my dear reader, I've always thought that fella's dogs sucked ass compared to mine. Because they did. They didn't have anywheres near Greyson's personality, his expressive face.

But like I said, he was old.

Old enough to where last week The Wife and I had a conversation I wasn't ready to have. You never are, but some things just can't remain a river in Egypt.

He couldn't hardly fucking walk anymore. I had to follow him around the back yard to hold him up when he shit and pissed so that he didn't fall down in it. That was a fun job. Mostly he just slept all the time. Two or three times a day he'd drag his withering body around, stumbling and falling frequently. With each fall I would wonder if this was the one where he finally broke a leg and then the decision would be made.

He never did break anything, although I think at the end he was in almost constant pain. You could see it in his face. He was losing weight, losing his appetite, and losing his strength. He had moments, brief moments when the spark and playfulness would reappear, just long enough to fool you into thinking that he really wasn't so bad off after all. But it would only happen for a moment.

It seems as though with each day it got slowly yet steadily worse. Even with the fucking $100 a bottle pills he'd been taking for the past six months.

I've known since the day he came to my home that this day would come. The vets told me when I got him that that he would have arthritis bad in his back legs when he got older. True enough. That's just what happened. As the arthritis took over his back legs his front legs carried more and more of the load. Eventually it started to be to much and he began to lose the strength and coordination in those also.

He was a rescue dog. Some sick fuck of pig scrotum licking bastard who I would still like to string up by his testicles threw him out of a car on a highway south of town when he was a puppy, around five or six months old. When he hit the ground it caused multiple fractures in both his back legs. He was already half-starved and almost dead from malnutrition. To add insult to injury, he ended up lying in a fire ant bed. You don't need further description to know how that went.

I know this from the woman that gave him to me. She got him from the woman that saw it happen and picked him up.

I remember seeing the flyer that one of my coworkers posted in the hall at school, "PLEASE HELP GREYSON" is what it said. It had a xeroxed photo of a scrawny mangy looking half bald beat-up dog and an appeal to raise money to pay the vet bills. Apparently the local Humane Society and several vet clinics thought the best thing to do was to euthanize him, but the woman that found him thought that was to terrible an undeserved fate. He was moving from foster home to foster home as they tried to raise the money to fix him and cover his medical costs.

I like to tell people that I don't know how it went from me offering to toss in a twenty to help out to him being my dog for the past decade, but honestly that's a lie. I know. I know exactly. I knew from the moment I first saw him. He was literally the most pathetic creature I had ever seen.

He broke my heart and then he stole it.

I tell people we got each other for Christmas in 1997.

When he finally came to live with me he had just had the last of the reconstructive surgeries on his back legs. There were huge gaping wounds on his back hips that needed basic first-aid care, just keep them clean, and to heal from the inside out. To keep him from messing with them he had to wear that lamp shade collar thing for the first six months he was with me.

I remember vividly that first day. The first wife was at work and I was home cleaning up for the incoming family for the Christmas holiday. He followed me around the house as I straightened, dusted, swept and vacuumed. He wandered around beside me with that damned lamp shade cone collar, bumping and banging into damn near everything, knocking shit down and making messes as fast as I was picking them up, but he never left my side.

At my side he remained for the next 10 years.

Due to his weakened and compromised state he caught some weird fungal infection in his skin. Cripes, did he ever stink to high Heaven. Every day for about six months I gently picked him up and much to the first wife's chagrin I gave him a bath in our tub with prescription shampoo.

Every day.

Really.

Was he a factor in why the first wife is now the ex-wife? She never seemed to like him. I don't know, but I like to think maybe. And if that is true then that is a debt I can never fully repay.

After the divorce in 1999, his presence and his unconditional love helped me through those dark times.

In time, he got stronger, healthier. He had that incorruptible spirit that is a hallmark of all good dogs. He was my regular jogging partner for years. His enthusiasm prompted me to get off the couch and move on many days when I just wanted to sit there with a bowl and a beer and numb my self-pitying sorrows away.

I had a couple of different two or three mile routes mapped out through our neighborhood. He'd jog at my side on a loose leash. He was never a very attentive runner. He was easily distracted by the dogs and cats we'd pass in the yards along the way. I remember at least one occasion when we were trotting along on a nice afternoon. He spotted a cat sitting near the curb in a yard on the other side of the street. I took a couple of steps over towards the middle to go around a parked car. Apparently Greyson kept watching the cat. There was a loud crash, a big whacking sound and I felt the leash go tight. I looked over and there was Greyson, lying sprawled on the ground. He ran right smack into that parked car. I laughed, boy how I laughed and I don't think myself cruel for doing so. It was slapstick humor, pure and simple. It seemed to daze him for a moment or two, but he got up and was soon jogging along beside me like nothing had happened. Although I bet he had a bit of a headache for awhile.

We frequently joked that he was part billy goat. He ate things. Everything. Anything. He ate sticks, small stones, leaves, grass, small trees and weeds. If he could get his jaws around it, chances were he'd try to eat it. There was a period of a few years when he had a fondness for eating books and papers. Somewhere deep in the bowels of my school district's headquarters there is a the official records folder of a former student that is missing all the corners on one side.

I remember once I had found an old Bible that someone had discarded. I brought it home and was going to hollow it out in the middle to hide a flask in it for part of an evangelical preacher Halloween costume. I remember coming home one evening and opening the door. Holy shit. It looked like it had snowed in our living room. Greyson, with some help from our small female dachshound, Lenny, had shredded The Bible. I remember calling The Wife at work and joking that our dogs were going to Hell.

He once ate a box of q-tips. You know, the ones with the little purple plastic sticks. It didn't seem to phase him, and for weeks it seems as though those little plastic sticks kept coming out of one end or the other. Again, with no apparent ill effect. They will probably always be found in the small backyard of the duplex we used to live in.

One day in the old duplex he ate a book, which one I don't recall. Aside from cleaning up the mess of pieces of paper and bits of binding I didn't think much of it at the time. As I said, he frequently ate books. The trick was to keep them tight enough on the bookshelf so he couldn't work one out to dine upon.

Apparently, when we went to bed that night, the door to the pantry cupboard in the kitchen was not shut securely. I got up in the morning to discover that at some point during the night, Greyson had gotten in the pantry, pulled out, and eaten an almost full five pound bag of flour. I got up in the morning and walked into the kitchen.

Holy shit. There lie Greyson, in the middle of the kitchen floor. There was flour everwhere, and well, what do you get if you mix paper (from the book), lots of flour and the moisture from his saliva and stomach goo?

There was paper mache everywhere.

That slowed him down for about a day. I don't think he ate that day. But other than that, come the next day, he was just fine.

And that was Greyson. He was indestructible.

Was.

He was already starting to slow down when we moved in the summer of 2006 to our house. I was happy that Greyson was finally going to have a big back yard to run and play and lounge in. He was happy to have much more space to move. He had a big fence line to patrol morning and night to make sure his yard was secure. He had an endless supply of neighborhood cats and dogs to bark menacingly at through the chain link fence. Menacing? Right. I don't think he fooled anyone.

Greyson was a sweet and gentle soul. I was always impressed that the horrible neglect and abuse he suffered as a puppy never seemed to impact his personality.

Perhaps it did a little. He was never a very affectionate dog. He wasn't one to snuggle up beside you. He didn't like it when you messed with him when he was lying down. He would grump at you. Not a growl, but a grump. He preferred just to be left alone mostly, affection was dealt on his terms, not yours.

But he had that weird empathy that dogs have. He could read your emotions and if you were feeling down he would lie beside you on the couch or floor and put his head in your lap. In a way that made the last couple of days much more difficult. While I doubt he understood the decision we had made regarding his fate, he certainly picked up on the sentiment of sorrow, and spent much of his last night and afternoon curled up next to me or resting his his head on my thigh as I sat beside him on the floor.

And now he is gone. Gone to the Great Unknown Beyond, where many I have loved as dearly have gone on before.

This evening I shall stand in the cold rain, with The Wife, The Boy, The Nurse and her family, our family, my family, gathered around and we shall place him in the ground in the backyard that he loved and pay our final respects.

Over the coming days and weeks I have no doubt that memories of other events and anecdotes will come to mind, as they always do in time such as these. They shall be shared by family and friends alike. We shall tell tales of a gruff but lovable "grumpy old man". When we do, my dear reader, do not be surprised if I share one or two. Or if you have one to share, then by all means please do so.

But for now, my dear reader, please join me and raise your glass high. Join me in another toast. . .

To a brotha' who ain't here.

Farewell Greyson.

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Sunday, January 20, 2008

abide 

Yes.

"The Dude abides." - The Big Lebowski

Yes.

Yes he does.

As I write these humble words, my dear reader, I must share with you that I ache. Oh, Lo'dy how I ache.

I ache within body, mind, and soul.
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

- Leonard Cohen
I've got that broken feeling.

And while I'm quite pleased to report that my father is one week away from retiring from a forty year career to spend his remaining days traveling the country with my mother in their new home on wheels, a 38 foot bus of an RV, I can't report similar pleasant news about my dog.

My dog just died.

In my arms.

In the vet's office.

At around 4:30 Friday afternoon.

The vet is a wonderful woman who I greatly admire and respect most highly. She is the mother of one of my students, I have known her many years.

She shot him up with some bad-ass opiate pain med so that his pain would finally end. He relaxed limp in my lap. A few minutes later she returned and gave him an intravenous barbituate overdose. His heart stopped almost instantly. His body jerked and struggled for a couple last gasps of air.

"A reflex," she said, "He is already gone. . . I'm gonna leave you alone for a few minutes, take all the time you need."

Yes, he was gone. His eyes were open but they had lost their light.

I gently picked up his head and leaned down for a final embrace. . .

The damn dogged grumped at me. He grumped at me!

He let out a soft slow low gutteral growl, not of anger but of irritation and annoyance. Just like had done thousands of times before throughout the brief decade plus of our lives together.

He never was a very snuggly dog.

But he was my dog. He was my companion, my friend. He helped my though the most difficult period in my life thus far. He loved me as we sat on the couch with his his head in my lap, or curled at my feet on the pulled out sofa bed. He loved me in the depths of many drunken dark nights when I felt as though no one would again.

Yes, that was eight or nine years past, but I think of him and remember it as though it were yesterday.

I feel no shame in sharing with you, my dear reader, that I wept like I have not done since I was a small boy.

I wept then, and in quiet moments of reflection I still do.

This has been one long sucky ass weekend.

And did I mention that I ache?

I ache emotionally and I grieve for the lost life of another beloved friend. I see him in the shadows, and lurking in the corner of my eye. As I quietly get up in the middle of the night to go check on and turn The Boy, I am careful not to step on him as he lies sleeping at my side in his bed on the floor. In mid step I remember he is not there.

Physically, I awoke this morning with my back, chest, shoulders, and arms on fire. I could not move my hands without great effort. They were like clubs, useless on the ends of my arms.

My whole body aches.

Yesterday afternoon, I spent about five hours digging what I referred to all day as "a hole" in our backyard. I hacked, hoed, shoveled, and dug until the impending darkness, ever present cold, and imminent exhaustion finally took hold and I called it a day.

Yeah, that's right, "a hole". I can't yet bring myself to call it what it is: "a grave". That still just hurts a little too much.

I'm about 18 inches down. My goal is at least three feet. No science or anything behind it. It just seems deep enough for a dog. At about a foot down I hit a layer of solid limestone. It is rock, yes, but is at least still soft enough to be hackable with a garden hoe.

And cripes is it ever a giant pain in the ass, not so much literally as with the rest of my body, but figuratively, you know, to dig through that damned solid rock.

Just picture me, my dear reader. Imagine me, if you will, standing out there, in the corner of our backyard, whacking at a hole in the ground with a garden hoe. A can of Lone Star is at my side and the Greats -- Johnny, Buck, Waylon, Willie, George, Merle, Hank one and two -- sing their sad laments on the briPod.

Don't you think it's just fucking ridiculous?

Cuz' I do.

But dig I will and dig I must.

And so I will.

I will abide.

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Monday, January 14, 2008

boo 

Yikes! Al Qaeda is trying to recruit Ken and Barbie?

What horrors await us next? What blessed American icon will next be subverted to the evil will of the freedom loving America destroyers? Will the Beach Boys become Baathists? Will Tom Hanks become the next American Taliban?

Holy fuck!

This is just silly. More fear-mongering hype from the fascists at Faux News:

Fox hypes terror of 'White Al Qaeda Army'

Wait! I have blonde hair and blue eyes. And I have been having some rather suspect thoughts about the actions of the current administration. Could I be a target for Al Qaeda training?

I will be more suspicious next time some shaggy headed sandal wearing patchouli stinking bearded college kid comes knocking on my door wanting to sell me magazine subscriptions. I'm on to them now.

And I think it's probably better to stop driving around with my almanac.

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Friday, January 04, 2008

the real me 

I went back to the doctor
To get another shrink.
I sit and tell him about my weekend,
But he never betrays what he thinks.

Can you see the real me, doctor?

I went back to my mother
I said, "I'm crazy ma, help me."
She said, "I know how it feels son,
'Cause it runs in the family."

Can you see the real me, mother?

The cracks between the paving stones
Look like rivers of flowing veins.
Strange people who know me
Peeping from behind every window pane.
The girl I used to love
Lives in this yellow house.
Yesterday she passed me by,
She doesn't want to know me now.

Can you see the real me, can you?

I ended up with the preacher,
Full of lies and hate,
I seemed to scare him a little
So he showed me to the golden gate.

Can you see the real me preacher?
Can you see the real me doctor?
Can you see the real me mother?
Can you see the real me?
So can you?

Hmmm. . .

Let's take a little look, shall we?

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Wednesday, January 02, 2008

run to the hills 

Author sees hard-wired sex in the future - and apparently it's all good - especially if you like robots
And who doesn't like robots?

Creepy? Cool?
Already a Japanese sex-doll manufacturer has announced plans to market a doll with electronics in it, and Levy has read that Japanese companies are working to produce sex robots for people living in outlying fishing villages.

"I think the Japanese are probably working on this more than one would realize from the little that's been published so far," he said.

They are building a secret army of Japanese Sex Robots? Again I say, they are building a secret army of Japanese Sex Robots! Aaghh!

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Tuesday, January 01, 2008

new year 

Well, my dear reader, we have somehow miraculously managed to survive for another of our arbitrary accountings of our journey around the Sun.

So happy fuckin' new year.

Thus far, and somewhat disappointingly, the new year has begun as the old one ended: seven hours into it and The Boy is back on oxygen. So that's um, you know, a really big drag. At least he doesn't feel bad. He's all smiles, but he is also somewhat delirious. He too partied into the wee hours of the new year and has had very little sleep.

Neither have I, but I'm used to it.

I am hopeful that soon we will both be blissully sleeping and somberly slumbering away the first day of the new year.

Here's to the new year! Hurrah! Hizzah!

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