Category Archives: Uncategorized

Having already written TWO 1000-plus word entries on Stuff in one day, and now settling in to knock out another thousand words on the same subject in the same 24-hour period, I dub me an EXPERT on Stuff.  Not that I really AM an Expert but, whereas I have observed only the loosest arrangement between Truth and Claims, I CAN point to an actual paper trail that chronicles a long and intense relationship with Stuff.

It’s not that I am not tired of Stuff.  I am EXHAUSTED from Stuff.  But there is so MUCH Stuff that, like Stuff, I could go on and on.  Certainly I could go on for another 900 words, which nails TOMORROW’S entry, which means I can start PACKING MY STUFF and puzzling it into the car.  As I have done so many many times.

I left Los Angeles quite abrupty, particularly for how long I lived there, when I was “suddenly” overwhelmed by two pieces of Certainty.  1.)  If the shit hits the fan, as it would have done absent Official machinations, a major metropolis is the LAST place I want to be, and 2.) I don’t want to waste one more MINUTE of my life stuck in traffic or looking for a parking place.

I am obliged to ask: SELF, WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WASTING TIME IN TRAFFIC OR WASTING TIME REARRANGING STUFF?  Well used or utterly wasted, Time is GONE as it goes, never to be recovered in this lifetime.

The amount of Time I have wasted literally makes me weep, and I am STILL wasting Time.  I am not accumulating stuff the WAY that I used to, but Stuff is still a Player.  I am not wasting Time the WAYS that I used to, but mismanagement and MUDDYING THE WATER are still Players.

We get ONE SHOT at this life, in this lifetime.  INFURIATINGLY, it seems to take the entire expanse of a life to get it together, whereupon the body falls apart and I die?  What the hell kinda deal is THAT?  Talk about BROKEN SYSTEMS. And I daren’t call God on a design flaw, for fear of pissing off Pearly Gatekeepers.

Among the injustices and the perversities and the disappointments and the s.n.a.f.u.’s, between the geniuses and the goofballs and the sinners and the saints, enter Stuff.  If you don’t think Stuff is a Player, consider how many countries and people have run themselves into the Poor House with excessive spending.  What is all this spending ON, but Stuff?

It is perhaps the greatest MYTH in Life, that Life will REALLY begin once this, that or the other is acquired or arranged.  That which “must” be acquired or arranged for life to get good and the world to be right oftener than not entails Stuff.  Oh, getting the Girl/Guy and getting Ahead also headline in ONCE THIS, THEN THAT deferred living but, even with Mates and Success, Stuff is very often a Player.

The “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous irritated me when I first began to read it … so DATED, so QUAINT, so NOT what I wanted to be reading.  But the more I read it, the wiser it seemed, the more carefully chosen the words.  But with THIS, I still take exception: REMEMBER THAT WE DEAL WITH ALCOHOL — CUNNING, BAFFLING, POWERFUL. Nice try.  Bottles of booze do not conspire on shelves, rubbing their labels together in glee at how they might bushwhack me. The MIND is cunning, baffling and powerful.

Likewise, Stuff is not cunning, baffling and powerful.  The MINDS of Buyers and Sellers are cunning, baffling and powerful. American minds are BRAINWASHED by advertising, Advertisers are BRAINWASHED by profits, Profiteers are BRAINWASHED by power.  LOOK at our naked emperors parade and pontificate, urging us to SPEND OUR WAY OUT OF DEBT, and then know in your gut, where Michael Chertoff got HIS intel, that COMPULSIVE SPENDING is little different from ALCOHOLISM for Stinkin’ Thinkin’ leading to MORE Stinkin’ Thinkin’.

It will be convenient to avoid MY love-hate relationship with Stuff by focusing for a moment on OTHER people’s love-love relationship with Stuff.  SEVERAL are  the people I know whose second AND EVEN THIRD homes are as packed to the gills with Stuff as their primary residences.  You can’t get a trinket in edgewise, and they’re STILL buying.  I am the mangled mess at the bottom of the cliff shouting SLOW DOWN! and TURN BACK!  But the only ones who hear are the ones who, like me, can no longer afford to buy buy buy and who either got rid of Stuff they bought bought bought for pennies on the dollar or, insult to injury, had to PAY to have it hauled away.  

Those who CAN, by and large, still DO buy lotsa crap.  Lotsa empty parking lots around this nation, lotsa boarded up storefronts, but Wal*Mart is always hoppin’.  THE PRICE IS RIGHT.

Americans are SUCKERS for Stars, Americans are suckers for Stuff, Americans are suckers for Big Lies.

Stuff IS a big lie.  So is Super Stardom, but NEVER is when I have found myself owning too many Stars to be able to organize them into user-friendliness.

Counter-intuitively, lotsa Stuff is NOT user-friendly.  I don’t mean that lotsa stuff doesn’t work well, although that is certainly and sadly often the case.  I mean that sheer QUANTITY of Stuff first complicates (i.e. slows down) decision-making, then complicates (i.e. slows down) maneuvering.  I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO WEAR is the lament in front of a brimming closet, not a sparse one.  NEVER is when people who own one car start their day in a quandary over I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DRIVE.

Bill Wilson, one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, had a shrink named Harry Tiebot,who wrote about HIS MAJESTY THE BABY.  Are you kidding?  From BIRTH, we have been grabbing at anything and everything for security and comfort.  Not infrequently, we are HANDED that for which we clamor, throw it promptly onto the floor and then, just as quickly, demand to have it right back in our fickle mitts.  And y’know what?  There is a ridiculously good chance that “responsible adults” will be near at hand to silence our caterwauling by tirelessly indulging our impatient and incessant Desires.

Service contract required.  Penalty for early termination.

Regularly scheduled ranting about how PISSED I am at Big Shots and Officials is interrupted to cop to being CROSS-EYED mad at myself.

I have been downsizing for over FOUR YEARS.  I have been WANDERING for nearly two.  And STILL, Stuff is the bane of my existence.  The amount of time I have spent DISCARDING and managing my Stuff is perhaps less than the time I have spent ACQUIRING and managing my Stuff only because I have been AT divestiture for a shorter time.

If you don’t know from MANAGING Stuff, you have either never had very much Stuff or very good Stuff, or you have so much great Stuff that you have PEOPLE who manage your Stuff FOR you.  

Yes, I KNOW George Carlin already did a piece on Stuff.  INSTANT CLASSIC, not to be topped.  But no Comic or Philosopher, no matter how funny, no matter how profound, has rendered Stuff a sacred cow.  LOOK around — there’s plenty of Stuff to GO around.  

Stuff begets Stuff.  Indeed Stuff begets Stuff so reliably, Stuff may be thought of as SUSTAINABLE. & RENEWABLE.

I have beat myself emotionally black and blue and berated myself to within an inch of my self-esteem for the self-absorbed extravagance and self-destructive indulgence that accounted for the the ACCUMULATION of so much Stuff.  I am DONE with Mindless Acquisition, the reflexive accumulation of DUPLICATES and SPARE PARTS that lies beyond even Conspicuous Consumption.

Conspicuous Consumption is a hundred pair of shoes.  Mindless Acquisition is buying shoes you don’t realize you already own and have never worn, then keeping the back-up pair on the supposition that, if you liked them well enough to buy them twice, you’ll be glad to have them down the road when the first pair is kaput.  Even a  brilliant Shoe Doctor can only refurbish shoes so many times.  

The unlikelihood of shoes which have never been worn, indeed which have been forgotten, being pressed into such service as to surpass the salvage skills of a Shoe Doctor does not enter Mindless Acquisition considerations.  Serious Shoppers know that if a product is especially good, the manufacturer will either tinker with the design or quit making it altogether, with the “new and improved” version typically being more infuriating than straightforward discontinuation. Manufacturers, like Consumers, are chronically dissatisfied.

Conspicuous Consumption is hanging casually at war year after bloody year, actually USING armaments.  Mindless Acquisition is STOCKPILING armaments to destroy the world “many times over.”  

The gratification of Conspicuous Consumption is at least dolled up with Desires — to look good, to live long, to have fun, to impress people.  Mindless Acquisition is steeped entirely in fear-based, greed-fueled, ME-FIRST-ME-ONLY fanaticism.  Conspicuous Consumption is neurotic, to be sure, both fiscally and environmentally unsound.  But Mindless Acquisition lies on the Sociopath-Psychopath spectrum.

I have invested a lotta lotta time that I don’t get back in the RECRIMINATION & REGRET phase of Downsizing.  I am wide-screen that STUFF is the physical manifestation of the MONEY that is reportedly at the root of all evil.  I contest the ALL part of “root of all evil,” but I am ON BOARD with the concept.  

Anyone with financial pressure knows that it is always THERE, preoccupying attention and weighting the mind, the Ultimate Albatross.  Little did I know that Pandering Politicians would come along authoring programs and funding agencies for purpose of DISAPPEARING irresponsible people’s debt.  Silly me, I PAID the balances.  Not only that, I CONSOLIDATED the balances on the lowest interest-rate card, got RID of the other cards, and made myself pay if off my embarrassment of Consumer Debt month after month after month, interest upon interest upon interest.  So I don’t FORGET.  So I don’t RINSE & REPEAT.

Stuff is HIGHLY addictive, and I am whatcha call a Last Gasper.  Mind, I would make an exceedingly good exceedingly rich person, as I cannot be bothered with the intricacies of comparison shopping or coupon clipping or monitoring financial markets or arbitraging never-ending “windows of opportunity.”  SPEND, SPEND, SPEND, that’d be MY motto. I’d be with the old man in Ocean’s 12: I WANT MY LAST CHECK TO BOUNCE.  It makes a lotta difference to OTHERS if I have bundles to bequeath to the Needy, but it makes no nevermind to ME.  

It SEEMS like I haven’t accomplished anything these past four years.  But I have learned that  I can support myself on a FRACTION of what I thought I needed, and I have learned that I am unwilling to eat ANY shit to acquire or retain that which I don’t truly NEED.  Desires are limitless.  Needs are few.

What has me flummoxed is not THAT it happened or WHY it happened or HOW it happened, being hamstrung by Stuff, but WHY IT IS REMAINS DIFFICULT TO CUT THE CRAP LOOSE?  In Recovery Circuit parlance, I am not ADDING (much) to the wreckage, but I am CLEARING IT AWAY at a molasses-in-January pace that suggests either AMBIVALENCE about rolling smaller and lighter or ATTACHMENT to accessories and anchors.

I’ve invested too many hours I can’t get back to be unclear about Intent.  I am WIDE-SCREEN that I do not (any longer) aspire to Lotsa Money.  I am NOT ambivalent.  I am therefore ATTACHED to my Stuff.  And why wouldn’t I be?

Some of the finest minds on earth have set as the course of their lifework the persuasion of millions-soon-to-be-billions of people that Stuff is tangible proof of OTHER intangible Stuff.  Stuff is a reflection of  Success.  Stuff is a reflection of Style.  Stuff is a reflection of Responsibility.  Stuff is a reflection of Popularity.  Stuff is a reflection of Manliness.  Stuff is a reflection of Sex Appeal.  Stuff is a reflection of Good Parenting.  Stuff is a reflection of Christianity.  Stuff is a reflection of Patriotism.  Stuff is a reflection of Love.

Would you care to buy commemorative 9/11 coins, or sterling silver Ten Commandments?

I once knew a woman who, despite reversal of fortune unto living with Fixed Income Mom, nevertheless went each month to “her” storage facility to pay the rent in cash.  To save the envelope and stamp.

Never say NEVER, indeed.  I blush to think how many times I vowed I would never pay good money to store stupid stuff. Of course, my stuff is NOT stupid.  MY stuff is a REFLECTION OF WHO I AM.  I blush CRIMSON to think how many times I thoughtlessly urged that woman to GET RID OF IT — just like people tell me to GET RID OF THE ANGER.  

I feel a brainstorm gathering.  Maybe storage facilities for ANGER are the next entrepreneurial ticket.  Think, PISSED PODS and U-HELL.

stuff in stuff >> Jamie Lee Curtis >> celeb ad’g

It’s not in the same league as George Bush and BRING ‘EM ON, still, I either overstated or jinxed the ease of whipping out 1000 words per day. Keeping an eye ON the word count really throws off the pace at which it climbs. A WATCHED POT NEVER BOILS.

Which is false. It not only DOES boil eventually, it doesn’t take LONGER to boil for watching it. But it SEEMS to take longer. Perception. Perspective. Remember when Starbucks had THE WAY I SEE IT blurbs on the sides of cups?

THE WAY I SEE IT, THERE ARE AS MANY WAYS OF SEEING A THING AS THERE ARE PEOPLE LOOKING.

The problem is not that different people having different views. The problem is that Some impose THEIR views on Others. LIVE AND LET LIVE, what’s so fuckin’ hard about that?

Starbucks and swearing are both on my BOYCOTT/QUIT list. I am undaunted by having neither boycotted one nor quit the other, for I have Hope. For real. I hope that I and millions of others SPEND STRATEGICALLY. When America means business, America imposes Economic Sanctions. When Americans mean business, they will likewise impose Economic Sanctions.

Where, by the way, is the Holy Roller call for VALUES-LED INVESTING?

Exxon, BP, Starbucks, McDonalds, cigarettes, energy drinks? Spending Cuts, all around.

I see that “5-hour energy” is now advertised on oh-so-persuasive TV. Imagine me with a broken leg in the bottom of an empty pool, and YOU taking a running start to jump into the same empty pool, and me shouting GO BAAAACK! I have an embarrassment of life experience with Addiction, and I am here to attest that 5-hour energy drinks are insidious and addictive if Addict ye be.

I be, in spades.

So be my country.

Make no mistake, SHOPPING is an addiction and money is a SUBSTANCE OF CHOICE.

What would people have me do, eh? For WHAT did I acquire all this hard-won knowledge? I go to the edge of Hell and back with Alcoholism – EVERYONE on my case – only to find my COUNTRY is a practicing Addict, and everyone just goes along with it. Hey, maybe I’m JEALOUS. I wouldn’t put it past me.

PATRICK HENRY: I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience.

My country is addicted to spending as surely as I was addicted to alcohol. UNABLE TO QUIT. Compulsive spending may cause less physical wreckage than compulsive drinking, but let’s don’t kid ourselves. Compulsive spending is a bad one. Knee-breaker stuff, at the fringe.

I know from experience that practicing Addicts are unreliable. Unreliable people are bossing me around on threat of force. This is all KINDSA Not Right.

No foolin’, I believe Posterity will talk smack about Americans just like Americans talk smack about Hitler-era Germans. Unless the gig’s up in 2012. In which case, we can talk smack about ourselves.

NEVER SAY THINGS CAN’T GET ANY WORSE. They can and do. They ARE.

LOOK at how twisted it all is. That’s what happens with Addiction. STINKIN’ THINKIN’.

Beleaguered Taxpayers bail out Detroit. Again. In VERY short order, opportunity to make big bucks on a General Motors IPO is extended to Preferred Clients. Y’know, the ones who are ALREADY rich.

Beleaguered Taxpayers bail out the Banks. Again. In VERY short order, banks are posting heady profits but Small Investors whose portfolios were slashed in half are shit outta luck. ‘Cept for Bernie Madoff’s “victims”. THEY might get relief, phew, NOT that discrimination should be inferred.

Goldman Sachs, at the dark heart of the Derivative Debacle, was slapped with a fine of ONE HALF OF ONE BILLION dollars. America gained individual BILLIONAIRES via “crisis,” and Big Swinging Dick Goldman Sachs gets a one-half of one billion dollar fine? WHERE, pray tell, is the motivation to change ways? Goldman Sachs APOLOGIZED. That, and fifty cents MAY get you a phone call . . . IF you can find a phone booth.

PAUPERS have cell phones. Why should Americans trouble themselves about clean water in Africa when Working Poor buy BOTTLED WATER in America?

Speaking of Africa, it seems exactly right to inquire WHAT’S THE DEAL? “We” have been saving Africa all my life. Baby Boomers will recall being told, ridiculously, to eat unwanted food because children were starving in Biafra. They’re STILL starving. Either Africans are ignorant or American Charities are corrupt or both, take yer pick.

CONDITIONS ON THE GROUND HAVE CHANGED. These are not halcyon days wherein a vibrant Middle Class can afford to scatter Do Gooder largesse willy nilly. American Celebrities who devote themselves to African Needy rather than American Needy are strangely silent on what MUST be rampant fraud. Absent rampant fraud, Africans must be stoopid. GOD KNOWS, American Celebrities who devote themselves to African Needy rather than American Needy command a pulpit from which to call out corruption.

Hollywood is MONETIZING terror, corruption, scandal and war. Tsk tsk. I spotted a beer billboard in Los Angeles that sez THE PHONES ARE TAPPED. SPEAK EASY AT THE PUB. Heh heh. The show must go on.

“We” propose to cut funding for health, education and welfare rather than SWALLOW PRIDE, TURN OFF DEFENSE CONTRACTOR SPIGOTS & END UNWINNABLE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN. We LOITER at war, as though it is valid as a school of both economics and philosophy. It lacks even the gusto of Barbarism. It is as calculated as a computer program and as flat as Kansas.

Perpetual War & Perpetual Campaigning, these are related. War Profiteering & Trading on Offices, these are related. FOLLOW THE MONEY & ROOT OF EVIL, these are related.

Unless I very much miss my mark, Evil presently has the upper hand. It happened on our watch, on Baby Boomers’ watch in particular. (Alas, I am not exonerated by I WAS DRUNK AT THE TIME, WHAT’S EVERYONE ELSE’S EXCUSE?) If WE are accountable, WE have duties. Shoulder them, shirk them? Shoulder them, shirk them? TO BE OR NOT TO BE.

I am not a Bible Thumper but, if Heaven & Hell there be, I guaran-fucking-tee that GOVERNMENT MADE ME DO IT will not pass muster at the Pearly Gates.

We have grown accustomed to blaming THINGS and CIRCUMSTANCES and EVENTS, as though there are no people behind them. RARE are the calamities wrought by Mother Nature, relative to the calamities wrought by Humans. CORPORATIONS have more rights and protections than PEOPLE.

Congress was SWORN in? Who CARES? What does it MEAN? Who BELIEVES anyone? Not me, that’s for sure.

THOUSANDS OF DEAD BIRDS AND FISH? In the area of the Gulf Coast, you say? D’ya reckon the woefully UNDERESTIMATED AND MISMANAGED BP OIL SPILL CATASTROPHE has anything to do with it?

I have NO IDEA where I’m going with this post, other than the 1000-word finish line EARLIER AND QUICKER than “usual.” TWO whole consecutive days. They came to scoff. That’s how ya put TIME together. Recovery Circuit Folk — and our astonishingly large prison population, I can guess — know about PUTTING TIME TOGETHER.

How much TIME do you have?

WALTER MATTHAU, BAD NEWS BEARS: Don’t ASS|U|ME. It makes an ass outta you and me.

170 down, 820 to go.

Upon PRIVATIZATION of prisons, America’s prison population SKYROCKETED. That’s right, “Land of the Free” has the largest prison population on earth. Locking people up for profit is up there with killing people for a paycheck.

WHICH “WE” HAVE BEEN DOING FOR YEARS. TAXPAYERS go broke. Select Few get RICH AS ROCKEFELLER.

This is gonna be a lot easier, faster and more agreeable for me if I ASSUME there is some number of people who actually READ what I write. If that is false, it is no skin of no one’s back if I further assume/hope/believe that that number grows, however slowly and inconsistently.

Poof, another 100 words down.

Poof, another $700 down…on a rental car. Gimme that bumper-to-bumper-not-my-liability-no-matter-what insurance, while yer at it. I’m on a…an Interesting Times streak.

As far as I know, I am originating and copywriting the sales pitch that follows right here and right now. Fresh material, AUTOMATICALLY copyrighted, underlined by this announcement, for sale, CHEAP:

“IF YOU CAN WALK, YOU CAN WALK AWAY.”

Surprise $700 on a rental car, then a motel with no heat. Literally. Innards of a wall radiator REMOVED, no thermostat on a wall. NO heat. In Bleeding Heart Santa Monica. got slum lords?

Over a year on Twitter explains so much CAPITALIZATION. Twitter doesn’t DO italics, as far as I know. Turns out capitalization is FASTER than italics or quotation marks. Sometimes capitalization is mere emphasis/specificity. Sometimes capitalization IS shouting. As far as I know, Twitter doesn’t DO bold type. Sometimes capitalization is DISDAIN/CONDEMNATION.

Twitter explains single spacing between sentences — 140 characters is a short runway — and phonetic renditions like THO and ENUF.

Congress was SWORN in? Congress should be WEIGHED in. Comparisons of the GIRTH of longtime Officials, over years and sometimes decades, speaks directly to GETTING FAT AT THE PUBLIC TROUGH.

Alas, I will NOT finish the post earlier and faster. But I WILL be half-way done, when I sit back down to it after dinner and a movie. Dinner and a movie is one of those things I formerly did regularly and presently do almost NEVER. It seems TRIVIAL while we are at war. It also seems hypocritical, advocating Austerity while taking in dinner and a movie.

But dinner will be half-price and the movie will be free, a nifty arrangement whereby I spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a hotel bill. Mind, I would RATHER be a hotel guest than a houseguest, but I’M not the one who broke the dollar.

NEWSREELS should play before movie theater movies. Why would people pay RIDICULOUSLY HIGH TICKET PRICES for movie theater movies, if not to skip the fuckin’ commercials? For the big screen? Like 60″ ISN’T big? Yo, Comrades. Commercials before movie theater movies is INSULTINGLY mercenary. Whatcha call TAKING ADVANTAGE.

It has been my experience that we get in Life that for which we work, that which Providence ordains, and however much bullshit we will tolerate.

****

Black Swan. Eeww. No commercials, but tickets would have been $16.50 had they not been comp’ed. “Dinner and a movie” is not realistic for high school dating. If Teenagers and Young Adults cannot afford the time-honored “dinner and a movie,” whaddya suppose they do INSTEAD? Consider a family of five — what would THAT little trip to the movie theater cost, with five-dollar drinks and ten-dollar popcorn?

Overpopulation! Overpopulation! Does no one make the connection that SEX IS CHEAP ENTERTAINMENT? Tickets to sporting events, even in nosebleed sections? Outta the question. Dinner and a movie for four? $100 bucks? $200 bucks? Plop the kids in front of the TV while making ANOTHER baby? “Free.”

Not all Seniors feel a pinch. Automatic discounts for Seniors ABSOLUTELY results in Millionaire/Billionaire Seniors paying less than Working Poor. Are you kidding me? Uber Rich are notorious for being Cheapskates. They will no more voluntarily forego Senior Discounts than they will forego TAX BREAKS FOR THE RICH.

Where is the Common Sense?

Congress would have us believe they are BIG IDEA people tackling big-picture issues, but here’s the thing: THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS. If yer screwing up the small points, it’s a sure bet that the screwiness of yer “overarching themes” is even MORE pronounced. Somewhere between the Cognitive Disconnect, the Mixed Messaging, the Collateral Damage and the Unintended Consequences, we get crap like tax breaks for Billionaires and sterilized needles for lethal injections.

And legaleze-savvy Death Row inmates who enrich Lawyers with decades of appeals, while we CASUALLY blow Foreign Civilians to smithereens.

And extraordinarily well-compensated Officials, who take vacations while we are at war and who have Vacation Homes amidst record Homelessness.

And a ridiculously rich, ridiculously small Elite who marshall their superior educations and resources to swindle the broadcloth of their own Countrymen.

And a labyrinthian tax code with INSTITUTIONALIZED advantages for Uber Rich.

And rampant pornography juxtaposed with weirdo Abstinence/Patriarchy movements.

And consequence-free lying as a method of governance: RULING BY FOOLING.

Things are NOT getting better, people. Things are getting WORSE. Yada yada yada, from “leading experts”. Blah blah blah, about “leading indicators”. The Rich are STILL getting richer and the Poor are STILL getting poorer. THAT, my friends, is the bottom line.

And the bottom line IS the Bottom Line.

Money talks. Bullshit walks.

The great and horrible thing about “circumstances beyond my control” bushwhacking plans is that OTHER plans are foiled and theretofore non-plans, whatcha might call surprises, occur.  FOR SURE, it cuts a wide berth for rationalizing DELAYS of other plans.  Such as, say, quitting Cigarettes and Artificial Energy. 

All vices intact. 

I am getting an even later start than yesterday.  But as I typed that, I glanced up at the right hand corner of the screen to see 11:11.  Need I say more?

I have a theory that, if the criteria is defined sufficiently specifically, Humanity can be divided into two groups — those who like bell pepper and those who don’t, by way of example.  There are those for whom 11:11 is a super excellent time to happen to glance at a clock that thusly displays time, and those who would not give it a second thought did not a ooh-that’s-a-sign person mention it.

Cussing is one of the things I mean to quit, save for the occasional well-placed epithet.  

FUCK, y’know?  Just FUCK.

CHINESE SAYING (http://bit.ly/7v9kqK):  A good fortune may forbode a bad luck, which may in turn disguise a good fortune.

Have hope, will travel.  I didn’t waste any time putting several hundred miles between me and the scene of the derailed plans.  Yep, left my truck with a Stranger in a small town on a holiday weekend, and started driving back in the direction from which I came.  

Among the very LEAST of my concerns is that someone steals the truck that joins the trailer as both albatross around and pain in my neck, also dent in my wallet. I was in that rental car and driving away just as fast as I could lawfully stay under the dark clouds that rolled apace down the California coast apace, dumping rain all the way.

Remarkable as this must seem to Young ‘Uns, in my own lifetime, MOST businesses WERE closed on Sundays.  Just thought I’d throw that in there ‘cuz it speaks to GREED, which is a premier problem.  No doubt why Greed headlines as one of the Seven Deadly Sins. 

I apprehend several days if not two WEEKS of bouncing around rather than sitting tight, starting Good Stuff and stopping Bad Stuff.  Yes indeedy, I have “cause” aplenty to redefine the infamous START DATE for New Year’s resolutions.  Not 11/11, however.

I have another theory that real-time flesh-and-bones life is a Clearing House.  If Pearly Gates there be, I suspect accomplishments matter far more to the Living than to the Gatekeeper.  For spiritual advancement, be it Heaven or Reincarnation, I suspect it matters a hell of a lot how we HANDLE what goes right and wrong.

Cause, effect.  Action, reaction.  Choice, consequence.

At the risk of sounding Dear Diary-ish, I have so much in my head, I don’t know where to begin.  For more than a year, I have written MORE than 1000 words per day on Twitter: http://bit.ly/gyz2sW.

Writing 1000 words per day is not the problem.  Writing LINEARLY rather than all over the map, that is the problem. Fact or fiction, that is the question.  Whether ’tis nobler to craft essays or stories, when the world is already awash with both opinion and fantasy. 

It FLOORS me that people keep doing whatever they’re doing.  Months later, even YEARS later in some cases, those who didn’t lose their jobs are doing pretty much EXACTLY what they were doing whenever I last saw them.  How can that BE, when it feels to me very like when a wave blindsides you and hurls you under water and simultaneously churns the sand so you don’t know which directions are up and down.  NOTHING beyond my name and eye color is the same as it was a decade ago.

It absolutely floors me.  HOW am I supposed to function, WHAT am I supposed to do, when Liars & Thieves swashbuckle with impunity in my own country?  I don’t mean that in a hand-wringing WHATEVER SHALL BECOME OF ME kinda way.  I mean that in a WHAT ARE THE RULES kinda way?  

When I consider the LARCENY that underpins the Financial “Crisis,” I cannot conceive of proceeding along as though, gee whiz, it could happen to anyone.  The “crisis” didn’t HAPPEN.  People DID it.  America gained more than 200 BILLIONAIRES via “crisis”.  

As a reality-based eye-opener, map out the difference between MILLION and BILLION. One million one-dollar bills laid end to end measures 96.9 miles, Los Angeles to Santa Barbara plus ten miles.  One billion one-dollar bills laid end to end measures 96,900 miles, around the earth nearly four times.  One million seconds is 12 days.  One billion seconds is 31 years.: http://bit.ly/ImsOr.

Via MANMADE crisis, America gained over 200 BILLIONAIRES — is that or is that not correct? Puny individual mortals with BILLIONS of dollars apiece, 200 MORE of them via MANMADE crisis.  And Goldman Sachs was slapped with a fine of ONE HALF OF ONE billion dollars.  Over 1000 Traders received bonuses of over a million dollars apiece for 2008, the year people lost their shirts and America lost its moral authority and its street cred. 

War Profiteering is COMMONPLACE.

Corruption in Office is COMMONPLACE.

Unethical Executives are COMMONPLACE.

Lying is COMMONPLACE.

Scamming and thieving are COMMONPLACE.

Spinning facts and fudging numbers are COMMONPLACE.

Conspiracies are COMMONPLACE.

That in mind, might these be the new rules?

ALL BETS ARE OFF.

SINK OR SWIM.

EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF.

THE BEST DEFENSE IS A GOOD OFFENSE.

LET THE BUYER BEWARE.

TO THE VICTORS GO THE SPOILS.

HE WHO LAUGHS LAST LAUGHS BEST.

TAKE LOTS ‘N LOTS ‘N OF PRISONERS, UNTIL YOU HAVE THE LARGEST PRISON POPULATION ON EARTH.

Here’s what I know: the bottom line IS the Bottom Line. I am gonna sit myself down and have a serous talk with me about how quitting Bad Stuff will deny tax revenue to Government Officials, who have a lotta fuckin’ nerve imposing Sin Taxes.  Howzabout we tax DISHONESTY?  We’d be outta debt lickety fucking split.

Whereupon we could start running up a freshly astonishing national debt by buying more stuff we don’t need and killing more people we don’t know.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001), English writer and dramatist NAILED it, did he not?  ”I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

Samuel Johnson was not the first to remark that Hell is paved with good intentions, an observation that can be traced back at least as far as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153).

I have NOT quit smoking.  A vial of “five-hour energy” sits right beside my keyboard.  I have unrolled no exercise mat.  I HAVE, however, cussed a blue streak.  In other words, on the first day of a new year and a new decade, I have done absolutely EVERYTHING that I intend to quit in and I have done almost NOTHING I intend to start.

Baby Boomers will recall “ALMOST only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades.”

If I crank out 870 more words in the next hour and a half, I am still in the running to compose 1000 words per day.

There’s a lotta lotta real estate between STARTING and STAYING started, between quitting and STAYING quit.  I’ll get 1000 words into THIS post, one way or another.  Who KNOWS about tomorrow, though?  NO ONE, that’s who knows about tomorrow.  Based on yesterday and today, I will venture there are a thousand or a million things that could cause me not to write 1000 words.  

First things first, eh?  First, I must WAKE UP again tomorrow.  

OFTEN is when I hear people express distinct preference for dying peacefully in their sleep.  But how often does anyone retire a day with “If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take” as a heartfelt sentiment about a meaningful possibility of croaking before dawn?

I may or may not write 1000 words tomorrow, the next day, and the 362 days after that.

But I accomplished one other thing as well.  Big Shots and Officials will back me up on this, I think.  When you manage to get OTHERS to do your heavy lifting for you, it IS quite an accomplishment.

The trailer that I never imagined owning HAS been hauled to and situated in a trailer park.

I beg to differ with the several people who assured me that hauling a trailer quickly becomes “like riding a  bike.”  I remain persuaded that RV’s and RV parks are a viable solution for many who, like me, have been turned upside down and inside out by Liars & Thieves & Politics & Business As Usual.  But the ING part of RV’ing utterly eludes me.  Trust me on this, if you ain’t got some mechanical skillz, you do NOT want to find yourself roadside in distress.  Possibly on California’s steep, narrow, curvy Highway 36.  Possibly with not only smoke but FIRE spewing from your wheels.  Where the brakes are.

The older I get, the more I know I don’t know but I am wide-screen on NEVER SAY NEVER.  Even so, as far as I’m concerned, that trailer is PARKED.  One item on the ol’ To Do list, DONE.  If I accomplish not one other thing this year, I DID get other people to get the albatross of my trailer out from around my neck and settled in a place that will serve as a home base. I DO have a Writer’s Retreat.

All I have to do now is RETURN to it.  You betcha, I got the hell out of there just as fast as Triple-A could arrive to haul the TRUCK to a dealership and me to a rental car agency.  Happy New Year.

It was charming to think that TEN YEARS of misfortune was a nice round number and that a fresh decade HAD to be better, but another lesson I have mastered is that things CAN and very often DO get worse.

Brakes on fire is a very bad thing, worse on the 36.  In winter.  New Year’s Eve, no less.  With a tank nearly empty of gas and a head completely empty of ideas.

On the 36, vehicles that do not haul trailers HAUL ASS.  Some of those fearless, heavy-footed drivers are surely inclined toward Good Samaritanship, but you’d have to have driven/endured/survived the 36 to appreciate that they are PAST you even as they MAY have seen you out of the corner of eyes fixated on the next curve.

At least the man in the dump truck WAVED.

Darker.  Colder.  What to do, what to do.

And then the thing you don’t expect, the thing that obliges even a super-angry and super-cynical person to remember that there are some astonishingly good people who make incredibly generous gestures with amazingly good cheer.

The dump truck driver returns.  He actually drops his load and BACKTRACKS.

And ESCORTS you down the balance of the grade so that if the brakes on your truck don’t hold, you will run into HIS truck rather than over a cliff.  

I don’t even know his name, but I will remember him forever

Does it make one bit of sense that the truck hops-to in the morning, hauls the trailer the balance of the distance, performs like a trooper through 4-wheel-drive positioning of the Albatross, and THEN dies?  It is so ridiculous, but so much less frightening than brakes on fire, what can you do but avail yourself of the best deal in America: Triple A.

And be grateful that the tow truck driver is another great guy, who drives out of his way to drop you at a car rental agency.

So you can flee your retreat.

And buy some cigarettes.

And check in to yet another hotel.

And resolve to try again.

CHINESE SAYING:  ”Of all the strategems, to know when to quit is the best.”

WINSTON CHURCHILL:  ”Never, never, never quit.”

Whaddya think?  I’m pretty sure we’re meant NOT to quit the noble and the good, and TO quit the futile and the harmful.

WINSTON CHURCHILL:  ”Success is not final, failure is not fatal.  It is the courage to continue that counts.” 

WINSTON CHURCHILL: “It is no use saying ‘We are doing our best.’  You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.”

I didn’t make it before midnight, but I made the thousand words.  And I am a MASTER of rationalization.  I never consider a day over until I go to sleep.

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray to God my soul to keep.  If I should die before the morning, I pray to God it serves as warning.

“Early on” in my internet writing experience, pushing four years and an extra semester ago, someone on a Message Board said that someone famous said that his mind was like a ride in an amusement park.  I said, ONLY ONE? 

Yes, indeedy, I am a Thinker from WAY back.  Ponder, ponder, ponder, that’s me.  Life delivers stuff into living that makes a conscientious person stop and think AT LEAST as steadily as the sea delivers stuff onto beaches that makes a curious person stop and look.  Except on infrequent occasion of having had a beach entirely to myself, I think I have never BEEN on a beach without spotting a Beachcomber or three.  No one gives THEM a bad time about stumbling on something too provocative or non-conformist. 

As it happens, I also got Writing Skillz.  Mind, it happens I have Writing Skillz as it “happens” for people who spend “the best years of their lives” in LET’S MAKE A DEAL arrangements that fund their continued occupation of space on the planet, all the while developing natural talents that may someday “suddenly” become tenable enterprises.  I’m THERE.  I’ve decided I am DECIDER in my own life.  Down the road apiece, my claim to be a commercially viable Writer will NOT stand out as one of the WHOPPERS PULLED OUTTA THIN AIR.  Like Hillary Clinton saying she endured SNIPER FIRE.   

Thinker + Writer = Blogger.  There IS some method to my madness.  Shoulda listened to my Redneck Brother who told me YEARS ago that blogging was MADE for me.  I was computer illiterate, I couldn’t HEAR him.  I’m late to the game, but I am NOT just doing this for the hell of it.  I need to make a living.  My country is up shit creek.  I know a thing or two about a thing or two.  I frequently spend all day on Twitter, but I’m not making any money.  Money being THE measure of success in America, I infer I am having no impact.  If I’m having no impact, the MORE reason to make money OR DO SOMETHING ELSE.  

Twitter OWNERS are poised to make serious money.  There is money TO be made.  I’m “just” not making it.  Reminds me of a scene in film QUICKSILVER, when bicycle messenger Jami Gertz asks fallen-trader-turned-bicycle-messenger Kevin Bacon how so much money could disappear.  IT DIDN’T DISAPPEAR, IT’S IN OTHER HANDS.

Since making a living by blogging eludes me, I shall give a book a whirl.  I mean to write one in 2011.  It’s a super-straightforward plan, and daunting as all get-out: WRITE ONE COMPLETE WORK IN ONE CALENDAR YEAR, WHILE MAINTAINING CONTINUOUS ABSTINENCE FROM ALL SUBSTANCES.  The “first of the year” is bearing down with more than usual velocity.  I am feeling ANXIOUS and PRESSURED.  I hate that.  I could easily give in to PANIC or DESPAIR, but I have never known either to set a person or a situation aright.

Eckhart Tolle’s THE POWER OF NOW is a reading/recognizing/understanding experience that remains tucked snugly under the umbrella of GIFTS THAT KEEP ON GIVING.  He mildly points out the obvious, that Unpleasantries fall into two categories: those with which we MUST deal, and those with which we need NOT deal.  If we MUST deal with Unpleasantries, EMBRACE THEM AS THOUGH WE CHOSE THEM.  (He is more advanced than I.  I say DOING WHATCHA GOTTA DO WITHOUT BELLY-ACHING passes muster.)  If we need NOT deal with Unpleasantries, REMOVE OURSELVES from the Unpleasantries.  What could be simpler?

It is EGO, nothing else, that causes people to think it’s their job to save everyone.  It is EGO, nothing else, that causes America to think it’s America’s job to save everyone.  INHERENT in saving people is being SUPERIOR to people.  Inherent in saving people is IMPOSITION OF ONE’S OWN WORLDVIEW.

People recognize the Truth better than they can express it.  I have a way with words.  Maybe I can make a difference.  Can you believe it?  After all the lessons I’ve had drummed up the side of my head in the School of Hard Knocks, I started out thinking may I could help us SAVE us.  Fiddle dee dee.  Players are too invested in problems financially, and Peons are too invested in problems emotionally.  We ain’t fixing diddly squat.  Not in my lifetime.  Maybe I can at least eek out a living instead.  Please, Sir, may I have some more?

It’s not so far afield.  It is the more achievable because among hard-knock lessons, I have MASTERED the chapter on Conspicuous Consumption.  I am OFF the Acquisition Treadmill.  Built-in Obsolescence, Dry Clean Only, Latest Model, New & Improved, Cutting Edge, Come Back In Three Weeks, FINITO.  

Don’t get me wrong, I’m with Mae West: I’VE BEEN RICH, I’VE BEEN POOR, RICH IS BETTER.  But I have witnessed, indeed experienced, the wrath of Ultra Rich who discovered that all the money in the world STILL does not quiet their restless souls, when money is the only measure of worth they have ever acknowledged as valid.  Like battling to the Golden Fleece to find it was never anything more than a gold-plated carrot.  What can a Swashbuckler DO, but unleash his broadsword wide and fierce to vent his frustration and channel his anger? 

If I manage to write a book in its entirety, and there’s no market for it, I can in GOOD CONSCIENCE hang up my quill and pursue something more definitively rewarding, like Survival.  I got me some IDEAS about Survival — not least being that MAN DOES NOT LIVE BY SURVIVAL ALONE.

I am not myopic like Detroit, thinking that single-passenger gas-powered vehicles are the only road to riches.  I am not myopic like the Military Industrial Complex, thinking that WAR is the only path to prosperity.  I am WIDE-SCREEN that Wealth is subjective and relative, and that there is more than one way to skin a cat.

With all the whining and pissing and moaning about Hate and Fair and Racism and what-not, I’m not gonna lie, I am surprised the PETA people haven’t lobbied for outlaw of the expressions: MORE THAN ONE WAY TO SKIN A CAT and BEAT A DEAD HORSE.  Albatrosses and herrings were ALSO rather arbitrarily relegated to the Insult Heap.

Which begs the questions of how Republicans expropriated the word/trait RIGHT, and Homosexuals the word/trait GAY.  Among Republicans and Gays are some of the least Right and least Gay people with whom my path has ever crossed.

Small=Tall.  Audacity=Good.  Debt=Necessary.  Lying=Commonplace.

If I were you, I’d be asking me why I am writing a blog entry about writing a book, rather than Page One of the book. HOWEVER, because I have moving from Point A to Point B on my near horizon and the vexing packing therefore right in front of my face, I would dismiss the impertinence of my question with a pat on my head and a patronizing assurance that, as with WikiLeaks and Scripture, MORE WILL BE REVEALED.