2016 – Year's End

I’ve done year-end wrap ups since practically the beginning of Tell Me A Story. There’ve been four this-was-the-year-that-was editions. 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 – which, by the by, was the year in rants. There was also a best of collection of sunrises.

This year? Meh, this was the year that The Amazing Bob died (twice even!). I don’t feel very Anno Wind Up-y. This was a year of devastation and not just for me.

Bowie kicked the bucket on TAB’s final birthday – January 10th. Alan Rickman on the 14th of that first month. Maurice White of Earth, Wind and Fire croaked on February 3rd. Like TAB, he was 74. Keith Emerson of Emerson, Lake and Palmer signed off in March. Prince left us in April. Muhammad Ali, also 74, ceased with the floating like a butterfly action in June. Gene Wilder died in August, W.P. Kinsella in September, Leonard Cohen and Leon Russell in November. This last month of 2016 Greg Lake, founder of two of my fave bands – King Crimson and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, stepped out of the airlock. Carrie Fisher, whose books I always bought in hardcover – just could NOT wait to read her wit, her great tales – checked out on the 27th. Her mother sang her last show tune the very next day. On that, all I can say is that I hope Todd Fisher, like me, is surrounded by wonderful supportive friends.

Oh yeah, and this was also the year that the electoral college shafted us. Again but a thousand times worse.

I have very little hope for this new year BUT I plan to fight like hell. I joined Organizing for Action. I’ve been giving to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood. I’ve written to my congresscritters and I’ll keep looking for new ways that I can work toward averting the coming doom.

So then, I’m not in a big Happy Joy, Joy New Year mood. Maybe reality will surprise me and the world won’t blow up on January 21st. Maybe I’ll actually find a way to survive losing the center of my universe. Will I ever laugh again in this post-TAB life? I betcha I will.

It's All in the DNA

Where does Trump come from? Who are his people. Let’s just have a look-see at who he resembles. Think of all the valuable intel we'll gain through our observations!

Trump and Jabba the Hut – obvious resemblance don'cha think? Cousins maybe?
Did you know? There’s a Jabba the Hut “action figure.” Wouldn’t it be more accurate to call it an inaction figure? All he did was give orders for others to carry out his vile thoughts. Much like Trump, eh?

Will there be a Trump action figure now? If so, will his tiny plastic self be all svelte and studly unlike reality? That Joss Whedon show Dollhouse comes to mind. Did you ever see it? The show is, at heart, an exploration of identity – who are we and how'd we get like this?

The story follows Echo (Eliza Dushku), a "doll" or "Active" for the Los Angeles "Dollhouse", one of several fictional facilities, called "Houses", run by a company which hires out human beings to wealthy clients. These "engagements" range from romantic interludes to high-risk criminal enterprises. Each Active has their original memories wiped and exists in a childlike blank state until programmed via the insertion of new memories and personalities for each mission. (source)

Specifically, I’m thinking of the ep where a rich mobster dude (LIKE Trump!) was having his incorporeal being transferred into a new, fit, young bod. He did this serially – as soon as he’d stretched out and fucked up the one he was in (with overeating/drinking, smoking and other sorts of abuse) he'd "hire" a new skinsuit. Dude treated the bodies he inhabited as disposable.

Yeah, what a dick. (by the by, loved this show!)

Back to Star Wars though – Carrie Fisher’s response to censorious parents re: that metal bikini – the director’s gift to teen boys everywhere – was fabulous!

"To the father who flipped out about it, 'What am I going to tell my kid about why she’s in that outfit?' Tell them that a giant slug captured me and forced me to wear that stupid outfit, and then I killed him because I didn’t like it. And then I took it off. Backstage." (source)

How about Melania? Will she ever have a moment like that? I kinda doubt it. She was a soft porn model before she ever met the Trumpanzee. Nothin’ wrong with that but, unlike Fisher, Mellie's got no prob being objectified and kept like a pet. We all make our own choices — hers came with a big, fat paycheck.

Notice the resemblance between this blob fish and Trump. A blob fish has no muscles. Trump has no apparent muscles either. I suppose you can tell them apart by color. Trump’s the traffic cone colored one. OH but wait! There’s an orange blob fish so Trump isn’t the only Cheeto hued creature on the planet!

Trump looks rather like Roz from Monsters, Inc. sans the cool glasses. I think Roz is probably more pleasant – certainly less monstrous.

Have you noticed that Trump bears a stunning resemblance to an older, fatter, even more homely Biff from Back to the Future. In fact, apparently the greedheaded, dimwitted, bullying Biff was based on Trump!

In an interview with the Daily Beast, trilogy co-writer Bob Gale revealed that the surly Biff was inspired by real estate mogul and Republican presidential contender Donald Trump. (source)

Waddya know.

Jabba the Hut's cousin? Descended from blob fish? The model for both Roz AND Biff? Remember, it is irresponsible not to speculate.

Kitchen Conundrum

Here’s a puzzle.

Imagine, someone’s coming to do a bit of much needed work on your kitchen floor. You know that, once the work begins, you won’t be able to enter said scullery for approximately 36 hours.

What do you do to prepare? Now then, a clear, forward thinking, bright babe might make a list of must-haves. Things to move into the living room such as:

• coffee maker, coffee AND a mug
• trash can WITH bag in place
• cat food AND their dishes
• that packet of dark chocolate covered almonds to which I’m currently addicted

Did I do this? Yeah, not so much. This wasn’t some dark mysterious problem. No MIT level brains needed to work this out, huh? And yet…. oopsie. 

At Obscenely Dark O’clock, I donned my coat (YES over my jammies!) and lit out for the closest caffeine pusher. First things first don’cha know.

Now then, cats are fed, trash is in a pile waiting for its bag, Cocco and Rocco’s dinner dishes are sitting on the dining table along with my soup bowl from yesterday’s lunch – yup, they’re all dry and crusty now and will be great gobs ‘o’ fun to clean tonight.

You'd think (OK, I would think) that being without the comestible cube for a day would be no biggie for me. After all, I don't cook – at most I boil, reheat or microwave. BUT the eatables alcove is where the cat food and espresso roast live. Also too, the joint's doing double duty as my painting studio now. I get all jangly when I can't paint.

BUT I’ve got a large java which’ll hopefully float me until I can get to the Y where, conveniently, there’s a coffee vendor in the lobby. Have I mentioned my deep love for the Y? If I had any sense when I woke (not a common event) I would’ve just skinned on my bathing suit, hit the Y, done my laps while still too groggy to understand that I was exercising and had my cuppa there.

Speaking of which – time to go!

Home

Artists and “the gays” – we're  pioneers – a lot of us anyway. We find new, untamed, cheap (or relatively cheap) neighborhoods, move in and, over time, terraform. We bring a hod and a half of cool and, just generally, spiff up the joint. The areas eventually become fab-ola, all the rage and majorly à la mode. Think Williamsburg in Brooklyn, SoHo, the South End of Boston, Bisbee and Jerome, Arizona, the Paseo in Oklahoma City. And then, inevitably, these places become unaffordable to all but the Money Patch Kids.

I knew a woman who,  though not an artist of any sort. bought a condo in a loft building. This was back in the late '80s, before open floor plans, BIG airy, floor to ceiling/wall to wall windows and exposed brick spaces were de rigueur for the slick set. Tina was a research librarian for a publishing house – made serious bucks. She could've had a Back Bay townhouse but, like a lot of suit wearing 9-5ers, she had a yen to live amongst art types. Was this a rebellion against her 1%-er parents? Was she purchasing the fantasy, freewheeling, artist youth that she never had? //shrugs//

Williamsburg Street Art

So many, like her, snatched up these awesome spaces – artists of the not-quite-starving-but-certainly-struggling-to-get-by variety were priced out. Granted, there still are real, actual artists, designers, writers, musicians living in these enviable cribs but, more often than not, no. They're inhabited by folks like Tina who, when asked what sort of art she created, proclaimed that she, herself was her work of art. Yes, yes she did. Was she thoroughly pretentious or desperately insecure? Mebbe both. Mind you, she had interesting and exquisite taste in clothes though her make up and choice of hairstyle could be best described as kabuki-esque. So yeah, true, she was def an art project of sorts.

When The Amazing Bob, Jen, Oni and I moved to Valhalla, were we pioneering? Fuck no. TAB made it abundantly clear from the get-go that he did NOT want to live in a dicey area that may or may not  come up during his lifetime. He wanted a SAFE, quiet side street with trees.

Randomly, if I was Todd Fisher, I’d check into
I’d check into Cedars-Sinai NOW. Ya
know, just to be ahead of the curve. Kee-rist!

Cool, cool. Home was wherever TAB was. So I set our search parameters on that. I knew I’d found Valhalla the minute the real estate dude turned the corner of Edgewater Drive.

With my beloved now gone am I thinking about trailblazing into to some fresh, not yet up-and-coming artist-type neighborhood? Eh, who knows what the future will bring BUT Jen and Oni are here and they too are my home.

And home is where the New Year is greeted.

Saturday is New Year’s Eve, AKA Amateur Night on the Town. No, I don’t go out on this BIG, BIG party night. Eons ago, on rare occasion, I would. One year, I saw Morphine play downstairs at the Middle East. On another, I saw a brill Tower of Power-esque, horn heavy fan-fucking-tastic group (whose name I forget – of course) at Harpers Ferry (now it’s called the Brighton Music Hall). Most of the revelers brittle gaiety annoyed the fuck outta me so I generally chose to stay home. TAB, Jen, Oni and I would make dinner together, play Scrabble and watch movies. TAB and I were, invariably, asleep before midnight and that was fine and ducky.

What will I do this year? Will it feel too weird to do the same old/same old? That is, will TAB’s absence be too overwhelming for me? Should I do something wildly different so’s I’m not a lake of sad that night?

I don’t know. I just don’t. I suspect though, that I’d be in high mourning no matter what so I’m better off here at home with J&O, all the cats and the memories of my beloved.

I wonder what Todd Fisher’s got planned for the night.

Random Bits of Fuss

Fūd

Why does the yummy cherry oat bar that I had yesterday morning not count as one of my servings of fruit for the day? C’MON, cherry’s a fruit innit?!
Also too, why, why, why does wine not sit under the fruit header? What’s wine made of? GRAPES! That’s a fruit. HONEST!

While I’m at it, let’s consider wasabi peas, K?

Unlike many processed snack foods, wasabi peas do provide fiber and protein, but they lack many additional vitamins and minerals. (source)

But peas are a veggie – they’re good for me, right?! Three to five serving a day and shit.

Wasabi peas are green peas that have been roasted and coated in a mixture of starch, sugar, salt, oil and wasabi. They may also contain artificial coloring, depending on the brand.
~~~
According to the nutrition information website Calorie King, 1 ounce, or about 1/4 cup of wasabi peas, contains 112 calories. This makes these tiny snacks very calorie-dense…(source)

Fine. Fuck you, Food Pyramid!

At least veggie tempura, while also nutritionally in the danger zone, is less calorically evil. *sigh*

This healthy eating shit is NOT intuitive AT ALL. I’m tellin’ you!

Fōn

Good news on the new tinyphone front. Though the good folk down at the Apple store were unable to fix my slick new Text Beast, they gave me a replacement! For free! I didn’t even buy the original there – Credo gave me one for agreeing to go with them for no less than two years. I must say, considering the iPhone 7 retails for $649, this seems like one hellova deal.

The Apple team said I’ll need to purchase a SIM card. Heh, DONE. When I was up at the Hunt’s Camera Show a couple months back, I picked one up (cheap!) figuring, I’d need it eventually. *BING*

So, I’ll motor back down to Appleville today and have them set up my new little beastie.

Yea! I’m just wild for happy endings.

Postcard from the Edge

This is one of my favorite books and Carrie Fisher is/was (past tense feels so wrong!) one of my fave wits. She’s right up there with Dorothy Parker who’s said:
    *  Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone
    *  Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common
    *  I don't know much about being a millionaire, but I'll bet I'd be darling at it.
    and
    *  What fresh hell is this?
amongst so many other brill bon mots.

Some of Fisher’s greats (and these are just from Postcards):

Actually, I am a failed anorexic. I have anorexic thinking, but I can't seem to muster the behavoir.

The only thing worse than being hurt is everyone knowing that you're hurt.

'We live in America,' he said. 'Everyone who speaks English understands you. How they interpret you is something else.'

She wanted so to be tranquil, to be someone who took walks in the late-afternoon sun, listening to the birds and crickets and feeling the whole world breathe. Instead, she lived in her head like a madwoman locked in a tower, hearing the wind howling through her hair and waiting for someone to come and rescue her from feeling things so deeply that her bones burned. She had plenty of evidence that she had a good life. She just couldn’t feel the life she had. It was as though she had cancer of the perspective.

And the quote I may love best:

Instant gratification takes too long.

Yes, yes it do.

Christ, I think I’m gonna grab my cuppa, head back to bed and read the rest of her new book – The Princess Diarist.

Early Onset Fōn Death

Yes, I broke my new phone while trying to set it up. *sigh* You’re SO not shocked – are you? I can tell. I’m not but still, I'm horribly angry with myself. What a galumphing idiot!

I was trying to pull out the SIM card tray. This was not as smooth and easy as I’d expected OR hoped. I must’ve yanked hard or something because the damn thing just vanished. Seriously. I got on my hands and knees, flashlight in hand, and searched. It’s nowhere.

Maybe the stupid, fiddly bit collapsed in on itself – you know, all its atoms maybe imploded. It could happen, right?! This makes total sense to me. Now, after giving up my search, I inserted the SIM card into the space where the tray used to be (seemed logical at the time, dammit!) and it too vanished. I believe I’ve got a wee black hole inside my iPhone now. Perchance Mister Stephen Hawking should come visit me, have a look, break new theoretical cosmological ground and shit.
Another possibility – this phone is the devil and its goal here is to fuck with me and make me feel failure-esque. When I feel low enough, I'll join him on the Dark Side (da da dum!) Nice try, fucker but I’m on to your vile tricks! Mind you, as a devout agnostic, I’m not convinced of the existence of angels or demons. So….ummmm…there’s that.

Could this actually be a Chinese puzzle box, not a phone at all? I SO suck at puzzles!

Maybe this is a Christmas ornament version of an iPhone? Ya know, not an actual, functioning cell.(It's got the non-functioning part down cold. Just FYI.)

Or maybe I’m just a stunningly talented, level 40 klutz. Yup, I think that’s it.

I’ll head down to the Apple store at the South Shore Plaza mall at 9:30 so’d I’m first in line for the Genius Bar. I love this store. There’s always at least one worker bee on hand who knows my adopted language (ASL) OR knows enough to fire up a voice recog text doc.

Damn, I hope they can fix this!

Hurdlings

In most of my recent dreams, I’m either living in (but about to move out of) or working in (and about to transfer out of) radically decrepit, falling down buildings. These suckers are totally condemned and I need to get out before tumbling beams and rotted floors do me in.

J&O's Xmas lights. Yes, those are skeletons.

As I exit though, I notice that all these neighborhoods are on the verge of upscale rejuvenation.

Huh.

I imagine this is something about my dire emotional state right now. Ya know, the mondo sad I’m carrying. My monstro berefitudedness over the love of my life, my soulmate, my handsome wonderful man being all dead and shit. I guess I’m the building that’s falling apart.

K. What’s up with the imminent urban regeneration action though? Eh, you know me, I am, at heart, Annie, Mary-fucking-Poppins and Maria. (OK, except about Trump – in that regard, I think we’re pretty fucking doomed.) BUT the point here is that, in my dreams, like Tony in West Side Story,  I can sense that:

We Three Valhallans

    Could it be? Yes, it could.
    Something's coming, something good,
    If I can wait!
    Something's coming, I don't know what it is,
    But it is
    Gonna be great!

For someone who, back in my hearing days, generally despised musicals, seems like an awful lot of them come to mind. Hmmph.

Here’s the thing, I survived my first Christmas without The Amazing Bob. Yeah, the morning was touch and go BUT Jen and Oni were awesome+. Yes, yes, yezzzz, it did help that they blitzed me with goodies. Jen made the most fabuloso breakfast burritos. Mine had Brussels sprouts AND guac! Oni made some amazing coffee concoction WITH whipped cream! And then there were the prezzies. YES, what you see at right is an Imperial Storm Trooper done in the style of Van Gogh. Gee, perfect much?! They also gave me The Princess Diarist, Carrie Fisher’s journals, kept while shooting Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. (for those of you not hip to the newish naming, that’s the first flick which came out in ’77). I’ve been crazy mad to get this but knew I’d have to wait for paperback. NO MORE!

Oh sure, sure, there were other very cool gifts (what a haul and DAY-um, I’m a lucky woman) but these two spoke to my stone, inner geek.

And Joe came over for the afternoon. We watched Becket and Run Lola Run (both TREMENDOUS!), ate Szechuan asparagus, veggie tempura, blueberry pie and ice cream. Great flicks, fantastico food, excellent company. It was a good day.

Now I just need to survive January 10th (his birthday. TAB would've been 75) and the 27th – our anniversary. I can do this.

Taken January 10th, on TAB's very last birthday.

Xmas and the New Fōn

The new fōn. Don't look like much, do it?

Got my new, fancy iPhone yesterday. It was my Xmas prezzie to me and, BIG bonus, it was free! I’ve never had one of these suckers before. The MOST Amazing Bob and I just couldn’t/didn't want to make room in the budget for it. Two lines meant we had to roll with cheap ass, no Internet connection cells. That was totes fine – I had an iPad for 'netting on the road and TAB only used his mobile for, ya know, talking OR texting with me.

I now get to valiently attempt sorting out how this sucker works. Mebbe I’ll leave that onerous chore to Julianna and Madison, my grands. They’ve grown up on smartphones and will be here Monday. OR I can read the damn manual and do it for myself. I could – honest and true!

I figure I can now get rid of the iPad – just have the iPhone and finally take advantage of all the groovy apps like Waze and Ava. You know, so's I can find where I'm going AND understand what the hell's being said once I arrive.

Turns out I won’t be spending this day alone, waiting for TAB to reappear like the Ghost of Christmas past. Jen, Oni and I will have brekkie together at 8AM before they hit the road. My pal Joe will be over later to join me for the traditional Chinese food lunchy with movies. YEA!

I’m happy as all fucking hell that I get to stay home (JUST in case TAB does appear. HEY, it could happen...right? Right!?) but have company (besides Coco and Rocco) too.

David Johansen as the
ghost of Christmas past in Scrooged

I get that I should have a new tradition. Maybe my new thing will be to do something different each year. Next year I could hit the wondrously peaceful Silica Hotel lagoon – float the day away. Bliss out. The following year, I could crash Helen and famiglia's celebration up in Hoosick Falls. I could throw a big party or spend the day with Jen's big family, I could book myself into the Conusg B&B in Portree on the Isle of Skye – spend my holiday exploring the Black Cuillen and the Quiraing. AND, if I felt like it, I could stay home with the herd, order in Chinese food and watch Scrooged. I'm an adult now, I can do whatever the fuck I want. Dammit!

So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
– John Lennon 

And remember, it’s not officially Christmas until Hans Gruber falls off the Nakatomi Tower!

Ophthalmology Hell

I went to bed and to sleep astoundingly early last night. Naturally this meant that I woke at midnight and could NOT fall back into SlumberVille. Luckily Rocco's on the job. He leaped to my side and asked (rilly he did!) Was ist los?

Well, I explained, it takes FOR-fucking-evah to recover from those damn dilating drops the docs put in my eyes. I'm all tired but jangly too. That and yesterday’s neuro-ophthalmology appointment which should have taken no more than an hour and a half (based on past performance) took over THREE motherfucking hours! This was NOT due to the the new guy being extra special thorough and shit, no. First, he was 40 minutes late in calling me in. Second, for the overwhelming bulk of the analysis I was relegated to one of his baby docs. Third, there was way more sit-and-wait time between various tests, putting pupil expanding driblets in and more gazing-into-my-peepers action by both baby and King Doc. I wondered if they'd forgotten I was even there.

Not even in my very first time with Lessell or in that year of heinous double vision have I ever had such a long, drawn out irritating visit.

Gotta say though…that baby doc? She really was meticulously observant in her exam and note taking. More so than Rizzo even. She discovered scarring on my left cornea. I was gawping over her shoulder as she typed and read this as well as her recommendation that I see a cornea specialist. Rizzo, in the fast, quickie look-see that he finally came in to do, did not take note of this or mention it. Before he could duck out I did my old crossing guard maneuver – held up my hand and said, WAIT, I understand I’ve considerable scarring on my cornea and should see a specialist. Can you address this?

He did. Yeah, you’ve got some nasty scarring there. That’s IT! He dashed out. Baby Doc told me that the receptionist out front would hook me up with a cornea dude/dudette. I see Dr. Dana, who looks like a big, important cheese, in February.

OK then.

Aaaand during the multitudinous wait times, I was directed to sit in the waiting room where a big screen had CNN (WITH closed captioning) playing, showing all the Trump idiocies and atrocities du jour. I only mention it but reading von Clownstick's arms race blustering is NOT an effective way to calm down nervous and annoyed patients.

All in all, it was a long, very frustrating experience, heavily overlaid with my deep sorrow over Lessell’s death and my beautiful, Amazing Bob’s absence. If THEY were here I could handle anything! Yeah, yeah, I can cope no matter what BUT everything’s so much scarier now.

Dunno if I’ll stick with Rizzo or look for someone new. He's the head of the department so getting a new, better neuro-ophthalmologist would probably involve exploring a different hospital. Intimidating but then, I’ve never been keen on Mass Eye and Ear’s Eye departments. Apart from the late great Simmons Lessell, the lot of them seem to have a glaring lack of empathy and business sense. 

Pissing off your très vulnerable patients is a good way to lose them. Just FYI and shit.

Fuzz

Did NOTHING yesterday!

OK, OK totally not true. I blogged, ran a zillion errands, did laundry, a bit of housecleaning even (!!!) and spent some quality time with my beautiful herd.

Still, it feels like nada when I don’t get to the gym AND I don’t work. 'member, I’m freelance. I only gig if I get an email saying Hey, I need… No contact-y/no work-y. *groan*

My eye dilation defense garb

I know, I know, we’re coming up on a big, big holiday week, so OF COURSE there’s less work and missing a day at the Body Shop (AKA the Y) is totes understandable. The guilt, the guilt on not working out though. I’ve got pounds to shed and they ain’t gonna cast off on their own (far as I know anyway).

One half of my beautiful herd.

I'll get there today after my neuro-ophthalmologist appointment. I’m meeting a new dude today. My eye guy, who Ive been seeing for the past 522 years, croaked last May. Guess when I found out. No, guess! Two weeks after my beloved took off on the Avalon Express is when I got the word. Bad timing? Fuck yeah!

 Simmons Lessell was a wonderful, brilliant, caring, supportive doc. He brought me to the other side of some mega scary times. Given how much Doc Lessell meant to me, meeting the new guy, Dr. Rizzo – the head of Mass. Eye and Ear’s Neuro-Ophthalmology deaprtment (!!!), will be an emotional mixed bag. I get that my eyeballs will, probably, most likely, be in good hands BUT he won’t be the wonderful, daddy-figure, hero, guardian like Lessell and, for that matter, Ojemann were.

Change – I suck at this shit.

On top of that, I’m toting my usual pre-neuro-ophthalmology appointment fears. Is this the year for more surgery? Will there be bad news on the sight front? I’m already missing two ears, the visions GOT to be fine!

Oh and anotha thing, Rizzo’ll put the drops in that dilate the fuck outta my pupils. So, the view out my peepers is gonna fuzzy as all hell and, already way light sensitive, just a drop of sunlight’s gonna have me screaming for mercy. Joy. I'll sit in the Yawkey Building's first floor cafeteria, drink coffee and watch the shadows ghost by until my pupils shrink up a bit.

Will the vile effect of the drops wear off enough so’s I can get to the gym today? They betta!

I will sit right down,
Waiting for the gift of sound and vision
And I will sing, waiting for the gift of sound and vision
Drifting into my solitude,
over my head

Bowie – Sound and Vision

Grit

Last year, the wife of a man I used to know read an old post of mine. Though I mentioned no names and masked how I knew her, she recognized herself in the long ago described incidents. I was using her not-exactly-pro-level behavior, AS WELL AS MY OWN, to illustrate a point. It was a don’t-do-this kind of a post.

Despite my self-flagellation, the anonymity I gave her and the fact that Tell Me a Story doesn’t exactly have Bloggess levels of readership, the young woman was furious. So much so that she imperiously threatened me with legal action. Yup, over a little read post where there was no way that anyone could or would identify her.

Can I get you some sugar to go with that cup of thin-skinned narcissism?

I ignored the Red Queen’s demands to speak with my lawyer. Mind you, I did run it by my esteemed barrister. He advised that it’d be easier and cheaper just to placate the twat – less stressful and costly than going to court over her touchy tantrum. The Amazing Bob, at the time, was going through chemo and, boyhowdy, there was more than enough painful intensity on our plates.

I got her to cop to what’d make her all happy. I just needed to delete two wee paragraphs. Approx. 100 words. Fine. Easy enough.

I had to compromise my story, my writing but she was now off my back. No real biggie – this was not a column of world shattering significance. Hells, I know an author who had to do the same thing but with an entire book – OOOF! Things coulda been way worse.

Why do I bring this up (besides my usual penchant for kvetching)? Imagine what it’ll be like for the mainstream media, not known for their courage as it is, in the coming Trump era. Their scribblings are of major importance – they’re supposed to report on the crimes and misdemeanors of the government (amongst other things) not act as fluffers.

In the face of a lawsuit-happy, hypersensitive, narcissistic, spray tan addict and his gun crazed, dimwitted, reactionary, troll-brained fans, will our cowardly press do the right thing? Will they be heroes? Will they "Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.” 

I SO want to be happily surprised but I’m not holding my breath. From the post 10+ Independent Online News Sources and Why America Needs More of Them on Soapboxie.

There was a time when the nightly news was synonymous with the words objective, impartial, fair and balanced. Reporters and newscasters saw it as their duty and badge of honor to inform the public, as factually as possible, of the happenings in this country and around the world. Today, instead of journalists such as Walter Cronkite, a legend in his own right who brought the scandals of Watergate and the Vietnam War to the American people unfiltered, we have the major media outlets and their Talking Heads blindly supporting “facts” as told to them by the government, corporations and anyone else they deem worthy. Unfortunately, as the Iraq war has taught us, perceived truths are not always the facts and thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died as a consequence. It is extremely disturbing that the mainstream media’s abject failure to do its job and the public's abject failure to demand that they do so could result in a "mistake" of such magnitude.

The article lists independent news sources available to anyone with access to the ‘net. There’s also a list of groups who monitor and report on fake news stories (factcheck.org and more). In this era of no such thing as facts and hogshit, brainwashing “news” stories we need reliable, hard hitting sources. I’ll continue to read the New York Times and the Washington Post – two papers not fully in Prez-elect von Clownstick’s corner. I’m also gonna bookmark the dailies listed in the Soapboxie piece.

Ya know who’s really gonna make out during the Trump years? Yeah, apart from the rich, the imbecilic lapdogs to whom he’s awarded government gigs and the war machine (how long will it take the Decomposing Jack-o-lantern to send our children, our spouses off to war? A month? A year?). Lawyers. I just hope to fuck there are more on the side of humanity and they all have giant, multi level chess playing brains, tungsten spines and empathetic, pragmatic, tenacious souls.

Alive

It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.
~ Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

OK, interesting point. What am I free to do now? Travel, read in bed at 3AM, move my painting studio up from the basement and into the kitchen, shift the furniture all around, turn The Amazing Bob’s study into a spare bedroom….and some other stuff. What??? I was free to do just about anything when TAB was here with me. My self-imposed travel restriction was, more than anything, about wanting to be here at home to care of him to be with him. I was greedy for him. I wanted all I could get.

I’d trade all this new freedom away forever, if I could have just one more day with my wonderful man.
~~~~~
Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.
~ Jalaluddin Rumi

Yeah? Gosh, gee whillikers, thanks mister! Sheesh. It’s not like grief is a bloody choice, mon ami. Gee, I think I’ll be an ocean of sad today over TAB’s death. Yup, and tomorrow I’ll do laundry. Cool. Dude, lovely, bloody sentiment but shit don’t work like that!

Also too, FUCK YOU!
~~~~~
Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Yeah, what she said!

~~~~~
At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it.
~ Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

By the by, I loved this book. Yeah, it rankled a bit that this was a white man writing about a young Japanese woman’s experience but still, I enjoyed the hell out of it.
An interesting bit:

In the book, the U.S. author mentions the assistance of former geisha Mineko Iwasaki, who later received death threats and criticism for breaking the code of silence about her community. Iwasaki sued Golden for breaking their alleged agreement to maintain her anonymity but they later reached a settlement out of court. (source)

Though Golden’s writing was sensitive, thoughtful, considerate and well researched, he missed one big thing – this is a real world with real dangers and consequences. Even though it may seem like one to us, in our far away country, this ain't no fairy tale. In publicly thanking her, Golden was NOT trying to dox her. No, he was saying thank you but in using her real name, the custom in Western book acknowledgments, he risked her life.

Cultural appropriation – watch out for the backwash!
~~~~~
Separation

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
~ W.S. Merwin
~~~~~
Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.
~ Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Paraphrasing my old buddy, Descartes, I’m alive therefore I feel.