A Randomly Selected Email to FP

No, Jack H, this has not been delightful. We expect from you edifying prose, nay, poetry, about for example how beautiful your masculine beauty is, or how incomprehensibly intelligent and brilliant you are -- not depressing dirges and brilliant essays about unhappiness and despair. How we miss the, uh, delightfully comedic touch for which you, Jack H, are world-renowned on the world wide web. What can we, the lowly and unworthy public, so pitiful in our inadequacy, do to help you rise again to the full radiant glory of your godlike perfection? Not that useless drones like us could ever hope to have an effect on you, Jack H, so wonderful the way you are, even when you're so sad the way the holidays seem to make you. We are all in awe of how amazingly awesome you are, and all wish we could be that way too, although the idea is pathetically ridiculous and bogus. No one could ever be even like in the same room with Jack H, he's so cool and popular. And he's so tall and handsome, and he has beautiful soulful blue eyes, deep-set like all intelligent geniuses, and he's aging really well, with rockhard abs that ripple in the morning sunlight like golden sands of rippling dunes in the hot Sahara Desert of northern Africa. And he's so hairy the way all the women love, covered with beautiful blond fur like a Siberian albino tiger if they're not extinct, I'm not sure, or a dire wolf, which was like 8 feet tall at the shoulders, but it's extinct now, from the Ice Age, but they were not blond, although some of them might have been, maybe during the winter so they'd blend in with camouflage in the implacable snows of the mysterious Ice Age from 100,000 BC! And there Jack H is, battling the mammoths and sabertoothed tigers of the hidden Valley of Doom that he discovered and liberates the mighty blond slaves there who are held captive by reptilian aliens for another dimension. And there's this one hot babe who especially digs Jack H, and he's all like Hey, babe, I chose you, and she's all Oh Jack H, my master, take me with your powerful arms and ravish me beyond the capacity of any woman to endure the ecstasy of it. And then there's a mighty explosion and I save the Planet from the monsters, but they will return in the far distant future, but don't worry, Jack H will be there to once more save the day, for Jack H is totally awesome.

signed,

One of the Anonymous Throng of Admirers Who Adore the Fabulous Jack H Beyond Human Ability to Communicate

Winter

Indeed, Christmas and its season is hard for me. I find myself absolutely toxic with bitterness. Sometimes I vibrate with it. Not in public, because I have some selfcontrol. But it's unseemly, even to me, in my privacy. I am a hard and unrelenting man. I am stupidly stubborn, in my weaknesses. I don't know if it's a tradeoff or not, for the things I'm good at. Call them coeval.

I don't know what to do about my father. I cannot abide the man. Close to loathing. Pity mixed in there, at his folly and wretchedness, but I am wretched too, and it's a choice. I seem to be resolved in my unforgiveness. There is nothing that will make me believe his repentance, believe in the lie of his repentance. The scorpion repents its venom. I've just been backflipping through the fantasy of writing a letter. Yeah, another futile, feckless letter, like this, pouring out my pain and heart and yearning to be loved. What image can best express my meaning here? -- something like stomping to death newborn puppies.

I'm writing this now to encapsulate a searing realization I've just had. I have it not infrequently, but usually I let it subside into the bilge sloshing through my lower decks. One of the things I'm bitter about is that I was not loved in my family. I was the unwanted youngest, bottom dog, lowest on the food chain, in a place that was savage in its emotional and physical abuse, and insane in its disregard for reality. Of course I overstate the matter. Just venting. But even to this day I prefer, strongly, to eat alone, and if not, I absolutely demand peace.

They weren't evil people. Far from it. Just unhappy, rather stupid, and what intelligence they possessed was used to dominate. So it seemed. The result is me. In my adult lifetime I have had and have one friend. Someone who had the patience and humor and wisdom to outwait my aloofness. I had one wife, one meaningful love, on my part at least, and I don't know how to find another. I am ridiculously private -- secretive really. I don't know how to accept invitations. I have to disassociate to accept a gift. I am not ingenerous, but I don't give gifts. What am I trying to communicate by that? It's not normal.

There is no one with moral authority over me, to induce or command or shame me into acting rightly. I must forgive. I will not. No one commends me to my conscience, to risk the flood of my grief. I have neglected many of my obligations. I want to love, and to be loved. I do not believe that I will have more than I have now. If this has to be enough, it will be. I see myself living to an old age, alone, in reduced circumstances but accommodating myself to that. I see myself in the desert. My visions often come true.

I understand why you avoid these pages, return to them but once in a while. I have turned to stone, self-reflected Medusa, Midas to the child of himself. It gets wearing, when the only change you can expect is the new ways I find to communicate futility. Love me, then, and forgive me. It has to start somewhere, and your loyalty is like the light of redemption. How else will I find my way? The thing about love is that we hardly ever deserve it.

J

A Christmas Slash Hanukkah Essay

I enjoy unfair invective. Other people's, I mean. I would never dream of being unfair. I have too much integrity for anything like that. Perish the thought. I should sully this temple of righteousness with the slimy serpent bile of wrath? I laugh the very idea to derision. Ha, ha, I say, and ha again. Never.

But someone like Christopher Hitchens, sodden with his iniquities, must of course be expected to indulge in such low and shameful practices. And I enjoy it. So when he wrote, several weeks ago, on one of his favorite subjects, religion, it was a spectacle to behold. He's a prominent atheist, you see. Let's take a peek, what? More specifically, let's examine his use of the only asset to which he can honestly lay claim in his attack on faith: logic.

"High on the list of idiotic commonplace expressions is the old maxim that 'it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.' How do such fatuous pieces of folk wisdom ever get started on their careers of glib quotation? Of course it would be preferable to light a candle than to complain about the darkness. You would only be bitching about the darkness if you didn't have ­a candle to begin with."

Logical? Alas. The point of the maxim is not to lament the lack of candles, or the presence of darkness. It is to point out that sometimes people with candles will still insist on remaining in the dark. How is it that Hitchens misses this elementary point? It surely cannot be merely to link candles, menorahs and Hanukkah with "the imposition of theocratic darkness." Perhaps he's using a bit of rhetorical leverage? -- rather than himself failing to understand self-evident meanings? In which case the failure of intelligence wouldn't be in him, but imputed to us, his readers. Seems a bit rude, don't you think? Surely his invective shouldn't be aimed at us, but at, in this case, the Jews.

Hitchens refers to the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire, and how its influence undermined the sundry "reactionary manifestations of an ancient and cruel faith" -- Judaism. No logic there, but the indictments are too familiar to need enumeration. The term "reactionary" is instructive, though, of Hitchens' teleological bias, by which he must suppose newer is better -- an Evolutionist to the core, then. Hellenism represents art and science and all things humane, while the Hebrew Maccabees exult in "fundamentalist thuggeries". His grasp of history may not be as thorough as his confidence suggests. Or perhaps it's his understanding of human nature and its need for dignity.

The Seleucid king, Antiochus Epiphanes -- punningly called Epimenes, the "Madman" -- attacked Egypt, then conquered Judah, pillaging the temple and butchering the Jews, making Jerusalem into a garrison and heavily taxing the population. He then set about suppressing religious expression -- approved of, no doubt, by Hitchens -- by outlawing circumcision and the Hebrew scriptures on pain of death, turning the Holy of Holies into a pagan shrine, sacrificing pigs on the alter, forbidding worship on the Sabbath, and so on.

Hitchens may dismiss the Hellenist oppression as he pleases. He is inconsistent in doing so, since he refuses to allow any excuse for the Jewish Hasmonean dynasty that replaced it in Jerusalem. That regime "soon became exorbitantly corrupt, vicious, and divided, and encouraged the Roman annexation of Judea [sic]. Had it not been for this no-less imperial event, we would never have had to hear of Jesus of Nazareth or his sect -- which was a plagiarism from fundamentalist Judaism -- and the Jewish people would never have been accused of being deicidal 'Christ killers.' ... Without the precedents of Orthodox Judaism and Roman Christianity, on which it is based and from which it is borrowed, there would be no Islam, either."

His objection would then be to religion, not to oppression. For shame. His excuse for the oppression is a finger-wave at the future: something worse than oppression happened ... more religion. As I say, teleological. Does he then believe in prophecy after all? -- the insurrectionists should have known, but the dastards went ahead anyway? His logic remains murky, for all the determination of its predicates.

A Jew honors Hanukkah "because it gives his child an excuse to mingle the dreidel with the Christmas tree and the sleigh (neither of these absurd symbols having the least thing to do with Palestine two millenniums past)". Oh. Is that the reason. Well, maybe. Not being a Jew, I wouldn't want to be dogmatic on the matter. I'd like to think there is real faith involved, and the honoring of one's heritage and identity. Perhaps Hitchens knows better though. He thinks he does. I can speak with a bit more authority regarding Christmas trees and sleighs. Hitchens appears befuddled by such symbols. What, he seems to wonder, do coniferous species indigenous to more boreal climes have to do with the Levant? He seems to have rather a literal mind, don't you think so too?

He mocks the Hanukkah miracle. One day's lamp oil lasted for eight days. "Wow! Certain proof, not just of an Almighty, but of an Almighty with a special fondness for fundamentalists. ... Epicurus and Democritus had brilliantly discovered that the world was made up of atoms, but who cares about a mere fact like that when there is miraculous oil to be goggled at by credulous peasants?"

If his point were that multiplied oil is not on a par with, say, the Christmas miracle, Hitchens' levity would have some weight. It isn't a comparison of miracles however with which he concerns himself, but the very possibility of miracles. Oh my. Such an easy target. He's an atheist, you see, who believes that life arises from randomness. The greatest miracle of all. After such a wonder, all things are possible. He should be less free in applying to others such epithets as "credulous peasants". And just to be accurate, Epicurus and Democritus did not discover anything. They supposed it, and assumed it was true, dogmatically. You know, like religion, or atheism.

Regarding public displays of Christmas symbols, Hitchens asserts that the "fierce partisanship of the holly bush and mistletoe believers convicts them of nothing more than ignorance and simple-mindedness. They would have been just as pious under the reign of the Druids or the Vikings, and just as much attached to their bucolic icons." That last may well be true. I think there is a predisposition toward temperamental steadfastness, as there is toward free-thinking. But why is it only the *believers* who are ignorant for fighting over what is worthless? If such public displays are meaningless, why oppose them? The secularists are just as fiercely partisan, or they could evoke no such passion from the simpletons. He unwittingly charges his own side, and convicts it by his own blindness.

"Everybody knows, furthermore, that there was no moving star in the east, that Quirinius was not the governor of Syria in the time of King Herod, that no worldwide tax census was conducted in that period of the rule of Augustus, and that no 'stable' is mentioned even in any of the mutually contradictory books of the New Testament."

All this is unanswerable. How blind we've been. Now that the clever atheist has pointed these historical facts out, I must wonder how 80 generations of Christians could have been so deluded. Faith is truly a poisonous drug, and toxic to truth and reason. Of course. Of course. The "mutually contradictory books of the New Testament." Of course. But I won't remain enlightened for long. Such is the nature of faith. I will be blinded by it again by the time this sentence reaches its period.

Being blind, he should evoke our compassion. You've heard him, perhaps, on the radio. I like him. He reminds me of an artist I knew in Australia. Dick Larter. Richard. So much so that in the middle of reading Hitchens' article I googled Dick to see if he's still alive, after 25 years. He is. Old, now. Pat's dead, but I knew that. Then I googled my wife, to see if she's alive. She is. Then I emailed my son, to tell him to write to his mom, or to visit her. Then I came back to the article. What are we to do with such partisans? Shoot them in the head? But we want them alive, not dead. Alive and thinking. Thinking more clearly than such shoddy pieces of well-written and poorly-reasoned tripe reveal. What have we to fear from such people? Only the volume of their arguments -- the power of which is nil.

We have nothing to fear. The universe is indeed teleological, working toward a purpose. It will get there regardless of our efforts. This tells us that our actions, though not meaningless, are meaningful, ultimately, only on a human level. But that's the meaning of the universe itself. What else are we to suppose, of a creation in which God himself becomes a man?

Indeed. I never ever say it. But I will say it, this once. Merry Christmas. Easter is more powerful, but we shouldn't neglect beginnings. So, then, happy, happy, happy Christmas. May your light shine always, with an eightfold brightness. May it push back the darkness that no candlelight can pierce.


J

Archetypes

Indomitable

Heroic

Fearless

J

Imaginary Conversations

Man I hate the holidays. All these slimy lowlifes crawl out of their holes and want to have family get-togethers. Leave me the fuck alone. A hideous tragedy of bad luck put me into that madhouse when I had no choice. Involuntary commitment. Please, sir, may I have a choice now?

• Y'see, when words come out of your mouth, that's how people know what you think.

• No, dumbass, I'm not the one who tells you what you have to do to make it right. You need to figure it out. Fucking clueless retard.

• Is there anything that would make it better? Yes, I could travel back in time and beat you to death with a brick in your crib.

• Do not ever ever ever try to contact me again in any way. If you do, the first thing out of your mouth had better be an abject and perfect apology. Or I will burn your house to the ground.

• So let me get this straight. Explain it to me. Is it a dick up my ass that I like, or in my mouth? Or my dick in some guys' ass and/or mouth? Or both? Since you understand my love affair with shit so well, please explain myself to me.

Hate speech? I call it therapy.

Women women women. That is to say, sex. I don't believe I've ever confided my tastes to these pages. Is it a secret? I think it may be. It just seems like a vulnerability, letting anyone know what I like. I mentioned once that Queen Latifah was a handsome woman, and that provoked gales of laughter. No, Big Girls are not to my taste. (They tend to like me though.) There is a phenotype or two that I prefer, but always tending toward athletic. That's as much as I think I'll let you know. Something to do with honesty. Some emotions I'm open about. Rage. Some, desire, are private, in their details. Twisted, I know. All the more reason to judge and reject me.

The idea of friendship, trust, love, all bound up in each other -- very hard for me to come to terms with. I think people wonder about me. I think I'm someone for whom there is no mate.

So, I like athletic women of a certain type, and guys' dicks in my mouth, and assholes.

J

I shouldn't still love you?

The wind, the sun, the waves.

Sinday

My profound need to isolate is offset sightly by some civilizing influences. But I do tend to isolate.

If my father knew the full degree of my aversion to contact with him, he would kill himself. That is my honest opinion. If my son felt that way toward me, it would devastate me. The difference of course is that I am honorable, as far as he will ever have cause to know. Secrets? By definition, we do not discuss my secrets. But only God can judge my heart. As for actions, my father has never had a relationship he has not betrayed -- no wife, no son, if any friends, no friend.

It was arranged for Sunday at 2:30, the family get-together. What a travesty. I said I'd go if one or any of my brothers would. But what can that old man possibly be thinking. He sends me his insane abusive letters, and then appears to forget about it. Neat trick. But I've really had it. My lifelong pattern has been to comply and just shut up. All I could ever have done would be to contradict his errors, and where's the point in correcting someone who is incapable of learning? Like a dog that's incapable of being house-trained. Not cut out to be a pet. Yard dog.

But one day, I maintained, was insufficient notice. I reserve Sundays for things that are not toxic. A day of cleansing and rest. So I have given myself a slight reprieve. Only one brother is willing to go. The needy one. The other, rightly, refuses to have contact with someone who demonstrates an intractable inability to hide his contempt for a man's wife. I'm told that the phone call last night did not go well. Incapable of understanding the insult. Well. Speaking for homosexual pedophiles everywhere, I can relate.

What, do I have to fake my death? Leave me the fuck alone, psycho.

An attitude hard to resolve with Christianity. God will have to overlook my hard heart. But for all God's forgiveness, he provides for damnation. The word means lost. Let him find grace. I have shown mercy by keeping my mouth shut.

The pattern is always the same. Those of his sons who can be gathered, alone with him in the vast echoing hollow of his home. He does all the talking. I don't know. Do you have any suggestions? I'll be very good, like him, at pointing out why solutions won't work. None possible. Engage in an honest exchange of ideas? That's called an argument. No dissent allowed. Remain silent? I'll be silent at his funeral. Unload? -- some digestibly small part of the vitriol, bile and rancor stored up in my soul? What's the point? Just bring on an earlier funeral, or, at best, poison his life just that much more. Better for him to be insane and ignorant, than to have his eyes open to the emotional Bataan death march of his past.

He didn't do it on purpose, stifle all the small souls around him. But if he had been a drinker, he would have beaten us to death. As it was, he wasn't violent, physically, except with prior announcement. "Go get the belt." A blessing, truly. Should we be thankful for evil that does not overtake us? Sadly, yes.

Merry Xmas.

J

A Complete History of the Millennium So Far

Oh forget it. Good idea though. Some news wonk should do it. I'm donating the premise to, um, MoveOn or some like-minded philanthropic not-for-profit. Start with the Summer of the Shark. Y2K is too soon. Oh, no, wait ... hanging chads. Then how 9-11 was an inside job, and how there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction. Uh, Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. Al Gore again, but this time how he Saved the Planet. And then the Messiah came, and at the same time there are Trials and Tribulations. We'll just overlook how the eschatological order there is wrong. Bush can be the Beast.

Just got yet another stripe on my already-very-high bjj belt. I don't want to brag and say what the belt is, but it's a REALLY high rank. And this makes it 18 or 20 stripes. I can't be bothered to count ... but it's practically a white belt again. LOL!!! I've been lobbying pretty hard for promotion, cuz I'm so good n stuff. Getting some of my influential friends to make phone calls. And I'm not above nagging and pouting and letting air out of tires to help get the message out. Gotta stay on top of these things. Ambition -- it's what I'm about.

So that's another thing that MoveOn should include in the history to date of the millennium.

They're keeping my stepfather for a couple of months. My incoherent mother said they said something was wrong with his nuclear brain. I haven't tried to puzzle out what that means. But it's simply not working. Rehab prognosis negative. So there's talk of nursing homes. Just heard two different pieces on neglect in nursing homes. Hmm.

So while I was visiting in her house, she's on the phone in another room using a fairly aggressive tone. Phrases like "man up" and "you are a racist" and "be real for once". It was a tad surprising, since they haven't seen each other for 33 years, but she was speaking to my father, I deduced. I mean, a phony racist who needs to man up ... who else? I didn't get into it, at all. But clearly he's at sea about why my eldest brother refuses to see him. Bro married a little foreign teenager, and my father is not respectful about that. I've told the delightful anecdote of how my father was, um, involved with a teenager of his own, back when I lived in his house. But she was white. So, like, that's okay then.

Kind of creaky today. Loosened up when I rolled a little, but my sleep is erratic and I've been neglectful of my diet. Starting strength training again. Gotta find a viable workload. Feeling it in the lower back from the deadlifts, but no danger. Just amping it up. Squats need commitment. But I've been treading water too long.

That all. The end of history.

J

Ntmr

It's not a matter of who has the most. It's a matter of whose it is. If they have the most, it's theirs. Should they share? Sure, why not. Should they be forced to share? Sure, in times of most dire need. But in times of freedom? Western, Judeo-Christian, liberty-loving civilization does not lightly use coercive force to redistribute wealth. So, while I have no love of the "rich", I have no antipathy toward them. Indeed, I suffer from a life-long deficit of envy. Had I more of it, I would have been more focused, more materially ambitious. This is not a bad thing. Jesus after all praises the land-owner who builds more granaries. Just do it wisely.

So the Pelosi creature -- who deliberates, if at all, only after the words have come out of her mouth -- plops out her syllables like horse droppings ... the shape, texture and size of elephant dung, but she would dispute the GOP connection ... ah, let's call it donkey droppings. Now, where was I. She evacuates her vocabulary like cholera -- but now I've changed the imagery, more of a disarticulate fluid, but never mind. Pelosi employs her death rattle, if a zombie can ever really die, to gurgle out something about how bad the rich are. Because it's better to be poor? She wants us all to be Kenyans.

I don't know. Maybe it's a famous internet picture. Dr. Obama. New to me, and deeply, deeply, deeply offensive.

I mean, imagine a blond guy depicted as a Viking. Imagine a guy from Texas -- say, a president maybe -- shown as a cowboy. Out of bounds, dude, totally. Politics is so dirty. I feel unclean just seeing it. Cuz isn't it all racist or something? I know the Viking thing is. I am frequently offended by offhanded slurs against my heritage. I think there's a professional athletics association named Vikings. Really hatespeachish. And the way these darkhaired people are always bleaching themselves to look like me? Totally racist of them. Yeah, there are plenty of dumb blondes ... BLEACHED blondes, like Julian Assange, but maybe he's just gone gray, cuz he used drugs. But anyway there are dumb "blondes" like there are dumb "blacks" -- "whites" who "tan" themselves. Fuckers.

But I'm avoiding the issue, I see. I got a message just now that my father wants a Seasons Greetings "family" get-together. The Nightmare Before Xmas. Maybe I can leave the state for a while? Because honesty and genuine communication is unacceptable, for so many reasons. I keep hoping he'll mean it, when he sends his deeply deeply offensive letters indicating he's done with me. But the lies of liars have nothing to do with truth. They exist in and of themselves.

I'm trapped.

Please, then, understand the power that parents have, and always will. It is, and is more than, the power that older adults have over the impressionable and vulnerable. Children are not there for their parents. Parents, for children. Not as indulgers. Trainers. Current sacrifice, on the part of both parties, for future blessings. Case in point, myself, who is not there for an aged father, who when younger was not there for his sons. I know, I'm a hypocrite. This is not a time for balanced reciprocation -- no time for justice. Mercy, and grace. But I'm afraid not. That rood I mean root is cut. I trust my own son has issues far less acute.

But I'm starting strength training again. Finding my numbers. Got a program. Deadlifts and squats. 5 reps, 3 sets, 2 minute rests. 255 deadlifts -- not so bad after taking seven months off. Slow and easy. We shall see.

J

JA

Julian Assange, one of the handsomest men in the world,

because he's so blond, which is the best thing to be, but maybe he's not blond,

which is just creepy, but he's probably tall, so very attractive, and pale is beautiful, very pale, sallow even, like a cave salamander's belly, which is so hot and beautiful, and not to be inappropriate but I bet his, you know, manhood, if you get my meaning, is really something hot Hot HOT!! -- well, anyway, uh, what was I saying? Something about WikiLicks and how good it is. Is it true that Julian had real sex with women? That's so hot. I wonder what it's like. And they were asleep, too. That makes it even better. And no, you know, uh, I don't want to say the word, but that, uh, thing that goes on your thing? That makes it rape though, and it's not good to rape woman. Those Swedes are very enlightened. Makes up for all the nun-raping we did a thousand years ago when we were uncivilized Vikings, not that I'm technically a Swede, although they invaded and controlled Norway for 200 years, the bastards. But I look much younger than Julian Assange, even though I'm much older. He must take drugs. He was raised on Magnetic Island. Magnetic. Isn't that cool? Like a character from Jules Verne. We should call him Jules Assange. And his mother had him in a cult led by Australian Yoga instructor Anne Hamilton-Byrne, who pretended 14 kids were her own, forged the paperwork, and starved them and often dosed them with psychiatric drugs such as Anatensol, Diazepam, Haloperidol, Largactil, Mogadon, Serepax, Stelazine, Tegretol and/or Tofranil. Mogadon is a funny word. Like something Edgar Rice Burroughs would write about -- "Hero John Carter escapes the Citadel of Serepax to fight a battle royale against the multi-tentacled demon Mogadon of Largactil!" And she gave the kids LSD as an initiation rite into puberty. And Julian was kept in hiding during a five-year custody battle against one of his dads, and then he had his own 10-year-long fight with one of his babies mammas. Awake or asleep, the dude gets more ass than an enema tube. LOL.

So of course he should be nominated for Man of the Year, and also Most Fascinating Man in the World. More like He-man ... Most Fascinating He-man of the Year in the World! Like me!

J

Rehash

Sat down to eat, in front of the TV, and saw something of the much-vaunted show, Modern Family. Supposed to be ever so good. Crap. A cross between The Office and Arrested Development, so it should have been very good. Crap. Crap. Maybe I got a bad sampling? Too bad. One chance, and they blew it. So blow me.

Very tired.

Looks like I'm starting strength training again. Did some tentative deadlifts. Getting the form back. Think I'll pare it down to just deadlifts, squats and overhead presses. Work on kipping chinups, double unders and rowing. If I get access to a fast treadmill I'll do intervals. 15 mph. Anything slower is jogging.

Alas, I think my shoulder is tweaked. Nice, thoughtful, tough roll tonight with a black belt, but there was an athletic leap that may have got me. We shall see.

I seem to be doing this blog again. It's a place to vent. This morning I was absolutely ranting to myself about my father. I just can't get over it. You can't say these things to them, parents. They can't understand, won't change, won't repent. I just can't let it go. Cursed with a narcissist for a father. Clinical. All through the sixties his style was cowboy hat, canvas Levis jacket, and custom-made knee-high black leather boots. Muscle man, in the sixties. People would touch his muscles, in line for the movie theater. Well, we all project a self image. But did it have to be that everyone in the house existed at his pleasure? When he came home from work, I'd find some place to be that was out of the way. I still try always to eat alone, when I eat. Meal time was something extraordinary.

He wasn't violent, out of control -- but he did have a big wide black leather belt, that he used, not indiscriminately but without justice; my eh-hole brothers would fight, and I'd get lumped in with the "whippings" as we called them. In any case, unceasingly disapproving, judgmental, critical, and at the same time phony. So much preaching, so many lectures as we called them, so many unspoken rules. For no good purpose. So the letter I got from him last week remains unread. Fuck Christmas. Leave me alone. Do not try to drag me back into that nightmare. And why would he want contact anyway with his homosexual pedophile son?

Bitter? Unforgiving?

On the other hand, I was told today of a father who seems to have changed his surely ways, just because of a few palliative words from his son. Conduct may be volitional after all. There may be rationality in the universe.

I'll withhold judgment.

J

Glass

I think of the only wife I've ever had, or will, and shake my head at my poor judgment. But poor judgment must be better than the alternative -- some choice was better than no choice. Because without that choice, I would have nothing at all. What I do have is a son, grown, gone, independent, unneedy. See? I did a good job. I raised a boy into a man. This is my vindication.

It doesn't matter how much I cared about my students, or friends, or the world. My influence was fleeting. My diligence was unnoticed. My better qualities are buried under an extraordinary personality, both fascinating and repulsive. Sorry about that. More battledress than camouflage. It disguised me enough to procreate, though, so its double purpose was served.

The burden of friendship, or acquaintanceship, or family, is that one must be honorable. I'd have to wait for them all to die, before I could be how I really am. Can't out wait God, though.

I can't say what it is. Can't communicate the futility, of the process itself, and of the goal. What, you will understand me? She will? Of all the people in the world, my former wife was least equipped to understand me. It's not that I will remain forever incomplete. Some men are so broken that it would take a whole other person to fill in the empty spaces. And impossible things don't happen.

I am not violent. I see the possibility of course, that madness like the edge of a blade. But one of the times I was fired, as a teacher, when I was told, on the phone, by the principle, the only thing I had to say was, "I have a son." He understood my meaning, but my kind of directness with incorrigible students could not be countenanced in the LA Unified School District of that or this era. As with the physical universe, the social world has its inevitabilities. So, no, we do not allow ourselves violence. We suck it up, the futility, the incomprehension, the incompetence, the acquiescence. After all, what is to be done?

Do you find my meaning, here? Am I too oblique? The depression is back, tardy this year, and hardly worthy of the name, but even the shadow is oppressive. And if I couldn't speak with you, then who? I find that the only audience that understands my voice, conveys its comprehension through silence. A line from an old poem, only partially recalled, is running through my memory. I keep feeling hands on my shoulders. I keep seeing myself, lifted up... And then I can't remember. But it has the line, I think of myself as glass.

Ah well. Never mind. I'm in a morbid mood.

J

What I Missed Last Night

I would have posted here last night, as we hotshot internet celebs say, but the web was down. Yes, in the whole world. And I barely remember what it was I had to say. I have so many brilliant ideas they just crowd each out of my head and the universe, until I create them again.

I hadn't noticed, but I haven't been depressed for a while. Then it was back last night, and I knew it by its absence. Hello, old friend. Not so bad though. It's like desire. Just something in the background.

I got absolutely creamed in the workout last night. Been getting by on past accomplishment. That's a good way to become mediocre.

The thing that I noticed, in my distemper, was that I am highly place-oriented, rather than people-oriented. I just want to go to my place, and be alone. Other people want to go to their people, and be with them, and the place is incidental. So I thought about that. It's not that I care about places. It's that it's so demanding to be around others. We need some sort of anchor. I've chosen the wrong one. It used to be that I was driven to get home to my little boy. But that's a long time ago now. And I look forward to seeing my one or several current and only friends, but it's just so ingrained now, to hold onto my reserve. It's not on purpose. Just hard-won habit. And you can always get to a place. People, not so much.

We talk about love. How much I love you. How eternal it is. But mostly what we mean is, need. That's not love at all. Then again, sure it is. It's just that you need me. And I love you for that. What does that say about God. It says that selfless love is only possible because of someone else's weakness. Oh yes, God needs us. He needs us so that he can be needed. So he can sacrifice himself, and feel compassion. Nothing wrong with that. It's in his nature. As it is in ours.

So it must be that, yes, I will love you in my need for you, and for your need of me. Shall we be worthy of each other then? Last night, in my place, my hole, my refuge, my hiding place, I missed you.

J

T Harmony

I'm working out a bit more, so my T levels are off the chart, and that's making things uncomfortable. All of my current lovers are vacationing in Fiji at the moment, so I spend my nights alone. (I'm working hard here to avoid cheap innuendo. Argh. Even that word.) But my will is iron, so I can bear this burden. Even so. I think I need some new lovers. It's keeping me up nights. And I have enough trouble sleeping.

Because I'm doing more, I just got done putting together a simple post-workout drink -- 60 grams carbs and 30 protein. Cherry pomegranate concentrate, way way too sweet, but it can go up to 100 grams, and that must be like syrup. Dilutable, sure, but even so. You monitor your energy levels about 90 minutes after you drink it, and if you're sleepy etc, too many carbs. The spiked insulin shunts the protein into cells. I'm not trying to gain weight, but 182 is lanky, for 6-4. And if I want to attract more lovers, I should give some mind to these things. Not that I'm not magnificent. Someone is always talking about my masculine beauty, where ever I go. It's more of an excellence thing, than increased beauty. It's hardly possible for me to be more beautiful, but even I, yes, I, could be more excellent. Because, you see, perfection is not possible. QED.

Someone suggested Eharmony to me the other day. I'm not opposed to that sort of thing. In fact I think it's a good idea. The randomness of modern courtship is unprecidented in human history. Only three generations old, when you think about it. A post-WWI thing. Prior to that, even American marriages were arranged, mostly. Consensual, but overseen by responsible, by which is meant older, adults. I haven't even considered a committed relationship since I was in my 20s. In my 30s I was a single father, and that was what I was. In my 40s I was suffering though a decade-long nightmare that precluded the possibility, given my temperament. Now I am largely recovered, but damaged, and set in my ways -- untrusting, rather selfish, and unrealistic in my expectations and my judgments.

Because I enjoy and have always been good at tests, I took the Eharmony survey a few years ago. There were no matches. I skewed outside of their parameters. How many millions or hundreds of thousands or tens of millions of women do they have, and not one for me. But I was not serious, honestly, no, really, so it was just a chuckle. But even so. Randomness won't do it, and neither apparently will planning.

It's just as well. Women don't like sex, in my experience. I was just lying before, when I was talking about all my lovers. I have no lovers. I am unloved. I don't need love, or want it. Or sex, for all that my testosterone levels make me unbearable to be around. I use all my hormones to increase my already outrageous masculine beauty, and, uh, for other good things too.

I wish though sometimes that I had been normal. Sometimes even average seems like an acceptable sacrifice, if it would bring, oh, what's the word -- happiness? But that sort of trade isn't possible. And you know I'm just talking and would never go for it. Never. Never. Because there are a few things that I'm good at, all joking aside, and not compromising is near the top.

So in 20 years, when I'm in my 70s, I will be stronger and faster and harder than you ever were, in your 20s, or 40s, or now or ever. That's something I have control over. It doesn't make me happy, the way a family or the love and respect of a good woman would, but I don't have to be happy.

J

K4K

Someone asked what there was in the way of first aid, and I said, "There's duct tape, and alcohol." And someone else said, "Sounds like a party." "Oh you Hollywood types," I chided. Then I said to the first one, "What, is it a blood issue? --yeah, an issue of blood, like a woman." That's right, I get all sex-talking when there are no women around. So?

Over and over and over again, on the radio -- almost Obamalike, talking about how smart he is and bad they are ... you know, them, the hostage-takers, The Enemy ... sheesh THE REPUBLICANS, stupid -- blasting the airwaves, I say, is the cute little Kars 4 Kids jingle. And indeed, the first several hundred times one hears it, one joyfully sings along. Sadly, at some point the saturation point is met and we become sodden, bloated with it -- like Obama, oleaginous with self-approbation until a greazy stream flows after him, inches thick, both sweet and noxious to the nose, like petrifaction, tasting to his remaining worshipers, according to reports (from Keith Olbermann), eerily like the male sexual fluid of Turkish firemen.

Kars 4 Kids. Who could be against that? But I was wondering how much goes to the poor deprived kids, and how much to the ad budget. So I looked it up. Turns out that Kars4Kids is reasonably responsible, somehow, in its application to the charity it supports. But even so, there's something odd there.

Almost all of the money goes to pay for private schooling for Jewish kids, to bring them closer to their roots. Literacy through the Talmud. A laudable aim. But would you have had any clue whatsoever? Cuz, not a word about that, in the cute bouncy guitar-strumming little folk ditty -- "phone number, phone number, phone number, doNATE your car to-day" -- that airs on all those stations at the same time, so if you dial around that's what you hear, two or three times all at once, somehow. And, frankly, while it's a good thing to promote charity, a bit more upfront transparency might be required, for the highest degree of integrity. ...doNATE your car to-day to the religious education of Jewish kids. Because for all that the Jews are the Chosen People, I'd rather the Hebrew Branch get closer to that particular Root that is the Messiah. What with this being Christmastide and all. Rather than closer to the Talmud.

So then. Responsibility. Even diligent charities may be diligent only in their own interests, and not in yours. One might suppose integrity was more globally rigorous than that. But that's just one man's opinion, and frankly I am the Enemy, and a hostage-taker. If only The O -- that's One, not Zero -- could save me from myself, miraculously, as he has brought harmony between the races and all parties, Unifier, Councilor, Nobel Prince of Peace Prize winning Lowerer of the Seas, Whose pronouncements change the very Weather. Save the Planet. No Kars 4 Anyone. No duct tape for blood.


J

ZeerO

Someone asked me what I want for Christmas. I said, "No, not 'want'. Demand. Biatch." Just kidding.

Yesterday I heard part of Oblahblah's press conference. Contrary to prevailing conservative opinion, it was not a meltdown. Dude's way too cool to melt. He's the sort who ablates, from a solid straight to a gas -- just becomes more and more insubstantial, like he's translating himself into a higher dimensional plane, far beyond the one we mere and materialistic Americans are condemned to inhabit. During the Time of Pronouncements, some instrument of the press, the O-press, asked O if what he was doing -- some sort of deal where extended unemployment welfare would be given in exchange for not taking more money away from people who have earned it -- was just "the politics of the moment."

Obama said, "This isn't the politics of the moment. This has to do with what can we get done right now." Well. Hmm. Well. Whew. Huh. Wow. Wowwie. My my. How, how to begin. Politics, as Bismark said, is the art of the possible -- that is, what we can get done. And, of the moment means, uh, right now. So ... what's a tautology again? -- so hard to keep it straight, words and their meanings. I was driving at the time, but it was so, uh, O-rageous that I made an attempt to memorize it. Textbook. "It's not a matter of what can we get done right now. It's a matter of politics of the moment."

People say, "He is our president." Indeed, never argue with reality. He is your president. Mine? Must we entangle ourselves in technicalities? Somehow, somehow The O -- that's Oh, not Zero, I'm sure -- talked himself into the Oval Office, and because he is Qualified, he is President. In America after all we mind our Ps and Qs.

Qualified, I say, because O was over age 35, and a natural-born citizen. Can't say whether he was a test tube baby, eugenically perfect messiah as he must be, but that's not the sort of natural we're talking about. Born of an American, whether on American soil or not ... sheesh, the stupid stupid stupid arguments some people try to make. Therefore, American. President, because Americans are, well, stupid, but that's the human condition. What after all is the Antichrist, but an acclaimed and Dear Leader? Not to conflate Obama with the Antichrist. There is after all a False Prophet involved somewhere in that eschatology, and a Beast, and anyway, there are many antichrists.

Don't catastrophize. There was a worse president. Pierce. And Carter. So there you go. Every century has a worst president. We've got almost 2 years for Oblama to not be worse than them. That's a mega cause for hope. And change.

So you can get me a 1949 Hudson Commodore, red please.

I will also accept a Cadillac DeVille.

Well, whatever. A Pontiac, convertible of course, also red.

I'm not picky. But nothing after '54, and unmolested please.

J

Pearls

My stepfather is in the intensive care ward now, moved to a different wing. Not a life-support situation. Intensive rehab, or something. For two months. Trying to build up some muscle mass. Of course, it was the month he spent away in "respite care" that degenerated him so much. So there you go then. It's too dramatic to call it a death sentence. But people die all the time. So, fuck.

He's one of the few people I've allowed myself to love. Sorry about that. I should be more loving. It's just that it hurts a lot to love. So much betrayal. I met him something over 30 years ago, as a teen. He was dating my recently-divorced mother, lately castaway by my father. Who wanted a much younger woman. A teenager, in fact. A girl. One year older than I was. I could hear them fucking. She was a screamer. I should say, I could hear them fucking from down the street, when I went out for a late-night run. So, fuck, and thank you for that iridescent dollop of memory.

But I digress. My brothers didn't like M, my not-yet stepfather. They had no respect for him. He was a simple man, has never read a book in his life, or the paper, no hobbies, no interests -- maybe a Lakers game on TV. He just worked, and ate, and watched TV. But he was loyal. He deserved more respect than he got. But he got it from me, as much as I was able, in those days. So that's good. And after some years, my brothers, at least one of them, came around. "M is a pretty good guy," said one of them. "You just noticed that?"

But we can't save anyone. I preached for years about a better diet, but it never took. Now he's living the outworking of his lifestyle. He never drank or smoked, but as I've said, decades of fast crap food makes you old before your time. And no gesture, and no feeling, can ever redeem anyone from the consequences of entropy. Nowadays, there are only spiritual miracles. Any physical healing will have to do with the immune system.

Maybe I'm wrong. But Thomas is my favorite apostle, and Berea my favorite polis, and a first spiritual truth is to test all things, and hold fast only to that which is true.

Which brings me once more to hugs. I've just implied that gestures are adulterated with futility. Which is as much as to say that communication is futile. Well, yes. But still we must communicate. It is not good for man to be alone. And of all forms of communication, touch is most direct. Does that make it most powerful? Think about sex, and that may be an answer. Fortunately not all touch is sex. Yuck. Even so, it's powerful. I'm aware of this more than most, I suppose. With me, there's hardly any casual touching. When I see people all high-fiving each other, I get busy looking preoccupied with some very important and engrossing task. Obvious, I know, but allow me my frailties.

From the very first month of this blog, I've had a few on-and-off consistent readers. One was a teenager whose blog I found, and it was simple and joyful and delightful. Now he's in his mid-20s, and I've watched, monitored, his growth from afar, pleased with the increasing maturity and wisdom I've noticed. I'm not a "chatter", but one does get a feel for these things. Here's a bit of what he just sent me, in response to the previous post: "I don't think it exists in this life, the action I would want to express the feeling that I have. What I want to do is an action that affirms who you are, and the good decisions you make, and the compassion in your heart."

I don't know that hugs can undo the violence that fathers might work upon the souls of their sons. I don't know how healing takes place. I don't dare hope for miracles, some healing touch that straightens crooked limbs or cleans what is unclean. I don't know that any lasting peace can be found. But I know that it matters, that we be heard, and understood, and that some attempt be made to soothe the unrest and despair that may pervade our distressed hearts. It matters, that we touch, and try to touch one another. Without compassion, how unbearable life is.

It has such a high price, compassion. Like pearls.

J

Favorite Fruit

I'm hearing this radio food show, all about people planning dates or Hanukkah meals or stuff. It's so very strange. Not that I don't eat, and I have been known to enjoy someone's cooking -- but to actually have a conversation about it? So strange. Someone asked me the other day what my favorite fruit was. I have no idea. I had to reframe it, away from nutritional content, into her frame of reference. So while I was stalling, she said, "Well, how about vegetable?" And I had the same problem. There are foods that I eat, but the idea that they would be a favorite seems like putting too much effort into having an opinion. I know what she wanted. She was planning on cooking something.

Then one of them came at me like she was going to hug me goodbye. And I said, "I know what you're thinking. No hugging." She wanted to give me a lecture about how to talk to 'girls.' "No, baby, I'll tell you how to talk to girls." Not really. My editor works most of the time. But I did say that thing about hugs, and she wanted to be offended. Lord. It's so much work, futile, even trying. Please, give me an opportunity to be offended.

Therefore I've been thinking about my father again, conversations, or diatribes, that I myself have never had. Please, disown me. Leave me out of your will. Never call, please never send me a letter, never talk about me, never think about me. Please. I am completely capable of saying that. I already think it. But we have to play the game -- you know, that game God set the rules for, about keeping our mouths shut sometimes.

The specific this time is the cold burning shame-laden memory of one of the times he asked me if I was gay. I was in my mid-thirties. "Uh, no, I'm not gay." And he argued with me. Gave evidence, as he considered it. And I was too, what, taken aback? -- to answer the fool according to his folly. I don't actually remember the evidence. I listened to classical music? I read books? I didn't care about sports? Faggy stuff like that.

But later I figured it out. I was helping him coach his son, my half-brother, on a baseball team, 9- and 10-year-olds. My son, same age, was on it too. And I was fond of some of the boys, and hugged them. One in particular. Sorry, I know, creepy. But he had an older asshole brother, and I was empathetic.

That's it. That's the evidence, the real. I figured it out. So the proper question from my father, dad, should have been, "Are you a homosexual pedophile?"

And indeed, later I was a foster parent, single, to young boys. So there you go then. That's not a story I've actually told before. What do you do with that. What crime, what offense, did I commit, to earn that? Now it's stored up like a treasure in my heart, and I suppose I'll come if I'm summoned, for more and continuing weirdness yet again, and go to his funeral. Because there's no such thing as freedom. Either you sear your conscience, or it sears you.

That's what I spend my Saturdays thinking about. Almost always, it's so hard to be around people.


J

MAD

Mohammed Mohamud. A name so great they spelled it twice. Let us pause, Gentle Reader, and consider this young American and the life course his night visions charted out for him. "Go ye, my child, and take unto thyself a bomb of great power, and use it, O Chosen One, to vaporize into a mist most holy the corpulent flesh of your corrupt fellow American heretics and their children. I mean fellow Americans, who are heretics, no, I mean infidels, not fellow heretics, for thou art not an heretic, er, infidel, but verily a True Hero is Islam!!!" (Author's reconstruction.) So he contacted the FBI to help him achieve his Moslem-American Dream, and BAM, almost made it! Dang explosives dint go off? Like, wuzzup wit dat, y'know? Cheap bomb shit, musta bin made in like, y'know, um, someplaste where they don't know how to build bombs good. Fuckin Ebay. Shit, Allah be praised.

It will be remembered that it was here, in the trenchant pages of Forgotten Prophets™, the observation was made: For any given terrorist act, there is a fifty-fifty chance that somewhere in the hero's name will appear some variation of the name Mohammad. This particular Mad Mo doubles that statistic ... although my math may be a bit off -- point five times point five is point two-five. Well, that doesn't seem right. And to be fair the little scamp's name is -- presumably in full ... although one never knows with these Third-World-Americans -- Mohammed Osman Mohamud. So, maybe he's Mormon? Is there an anagram in there?

• Madman ammo mushed Homo! A Portland headline we'd never expect to see.
• Oh Ammo-Demon! Damm USA, hm? An islamist prayer?
• Ahead! Summon doom! Ah! Mmm! A call to arms?
• Amuse doom, Madman ... ho hmm. An appeal to conscience?
• Mum, mom ... ashamed manhood. Psychoanalysis, of islam. Ism.
• Hush, mom, dad, mama ... men. Oom.... Cuz it's about family, and inner peace.

Muy a propósito, as we Mexicans say. Only in America. Portland is in America, right? Like California? California is in America, right?

What a world.

J

Drag

My stepfather can't get out of bed anymore. Falls down and lies in a heap for an hour while my poor stupid mother tugs and cries. Finally she calls me and I come and load him up, and he hobbles about, Parkinsons, one slow dragging foot and then the other. He fell and broke the bathroom sink yesterday. Today my mother said to me, in front of him, that she understands "mercy killing". She has a lot of anger and resentment. I was quite harsh about that. She can think it, and say it, but not in front of him. "Oh, he doesn't understand." Nevertheless. This, from a woman who will not train her four little incessantly-barking dogs not to piss in the house.

He's in the hospital now.

I'm not at all sympathetic. We call these things down upon ourselves. If she had not squandered all her money on her grandchildren and my brother, she'd have resources now. If he had not eaten at Jack in the Box every day for thirty years, he wouldn't be dying a slow and degrading death. If I had been prudent and sociable, I would be surrounded by loved ones and material wealth.

Today a friend of mine -- undoubtedly the best friend I've ever had -- told a story about how his wife was upset because he'd thrown out an empty printer cartridge that was by the trash. She got all huffy about it, or snippy, or indignant, or whatever. It was disappointment. She had this idea in her head about how things should be, and her plan was foiled. He joked with her about it later, when maybe she could hear it. But it was still on his mind too. That's how we are. We like things to be the way we'd like them to be. The Buddhists are not wrong -- the cause of suffering is desire. A cause.

I got a sore throat last night, before I went to bed. Not very sore. But I couldn't sleep, again, and I'm not feeling well. Ate too many almonds. Nothing unreasonable, but one must prepare oneself. Sleep deprived again and unwell is not a great combination. So I'll try to get seven hours tonight. I have ongoing early-morning obligations. Not an easy thing. This weekend was the first two days in a row that I've had to myself for six months. Then I had to eat too many almonds. Too much of a good thing. Hope I don't degenerate and need to be mercy killed.

Who will love me if I'm not strong, and wise?

So love her, or him, even when she's weak, or foolish. It's not even that God is watching. It's that kindness should come, first, to humans.

J

Really Good Books

Of course Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald. Anything by them, almost. Not so much the very early books of Macdonald, and with Chandler there's weakness in the last few, but still worth reading, if only for the gloaming. I reread Chandler every five years or so. All of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books. Just good storytelling and prose exactly what it needs to be. Nothing necessarily scintillating, but masterful. I gave the whole box full of them to my former wife as a birthday present. She loved them, but I wish I still had them. Worth rereading.

The Parker books by "Richard Stark" -- Westlake. They make Micky Spillane look like, well, the untalented hack that he was. The three "hard" books by Dan Simmons, worth reading, and in a pinch maybe a reread.

Any of Alan Furst's night soldier books. He is superb, absolutely unmatched. Every page has something good on it. A rare thing. From The Polish Officer: "...his hands were trembling. He was ashamed of that, so had wedged them in his pockets as though he were a street-corner tough who whistled at girls." This, of a very minor character. Furst is brilliant. I'm into the third, and I will read them all. That's how I am.

I seem to have found a few more good authors, but haven't read them yet. It's really hard to come up with anything truly worth while. I finished off three or so books in the past few days. Irritating isn't the half of it. You'd think a historical mystery featuring Leonardo da Vinci would be great. "The Queen's Gambit." It's so bad I am tempted to write a review on Amazon. Written for junior high, only not. Told from the perspective of a young apprentice ... who's really a girl!!! "The Master is so smart and talented and handsome, and strong and a vegetarian too, but not gay. And he called me to help him solve the mystery of the murder that the Duke wanted solved, and I was a chess bishop in a big game, and trapped in a crypt, and the Master invented a giant metal robot if I knew that word, operated by a box, maybe radio, I don't know, but somehow with strings, and anyway the brass automaton fell over onto one of the murderers who was so sexy and bad." I actually skimmed it. Authoress doesn't know when to use whom, and a little shaky on how commas, work.

Another historical series -- I do like series -- about a detective in Victorian England, told from the perspective of his young apprentice, a real boy, manboy, and isn't it good that Barker is so interesting and stuff, because nothing that happens in either of the two and only books I've read is interesting at all. Barker the mysterious master hero detective throws sharpened coins and can stick-fight really well, and he wears mysterious dark glasses all the time, and other things happen too. That's interesting right? Or not? Well, whatever. It's instructive, at least, to read about how people wash and stuff.

And then something by Joe Gores, who isn't bad, just not worth reading again. Has a very good reputation, so that was disappointing.

Really good books come from really good authors. Apparently it's not enough to want to be a writer so much that you actually write books. One should also be talented. But who am I to speak? So very talented, brilliant even, wry, insightful, succinct ... no, pithy, just amazing. Yet search the shelves though you may, no surviving fiction may be found from Jack H. What an artist the world loses in me.

Still, someone has to criticize. If not me, whom? If not now, when?

J

Weak in Review

I realized a couple days ago that I don't trust smiles. They're such an easy manipulation. A tension of muscle fibers, voluntary, like the strings of a puppet. No honesty needed, or passion. Social viagra. But why should expression be more honest than words? As I have so wisely said, words are what we use to tell lies. Corollary: smiles are for deceiving. And also for telling the truth. How are we to discern?

One of the reasons I'm such a stick is that I withhold judgment. Don't trust. But don't distrust either. Wait and see. Twenty-five and more years ago, early in my marriage, my then-wife told me that one of her friends had figured out why I was so socially abrasive. Well, first, I'm abrasive? But it was that I was testing people, seeing if they could be trusted. Y'know what? The friend was right. An unconscious mechanism on my part, brought into the light by an insightful woman. I've toned it down, way down, in the ensuing decades, but trust is still the heart of the matter.

I've had a couple days off, for the holy day. That was nice. Caught up on some missed sleep. Finished reading three books. Thinking about eating more, and focusing again on training. Maybe get a microwave -- maybe I'll find one on the side of the road? It's been a desultory few months. Thinking about starting a long-delayed project. Hard to find the time, yet sleep deprived, and need the energy, and food. Ah well. It's another one of those turning-point moments, so often missed.

So I need to do met-cons at least three times a week. Been neglecting that. And strength training. Need to focus on chinups and double-unders, and rowing. Want a treadmill, that goes at least 14 mph, for intervals. Most productive. So much to do, so little reason to do it.

Legalized marijuana. Medical. Medical. Doesn't that mean it should be regulated as a pharmaceutical? Not the over-the-counter kind of drug, that you just buy cuz you want it. And not under-the-counter. Prescribed. What are these quasi-criminal dispensaries doing, being semi-legal? If you need a prescription to get medical marijuana, then it should be supplied only by pharmacies. The not-online kind.

I have this fantasy, where someone identifies drug dealers and shoots them down like mad dogs, as a public service. When public safety institutions fail, we need vigilantes. Need. But, sadly, courts are a part of the public safety establishment, which means that righteous men, who stand up for justice, go to jail.

The 60 Year War was hot again for a few minutes, this week. North Korea. Murdered a few soldiers, if that's possible. A few dozen sailors some months back. Ah well, what's a country to do. I mean, it's not as if we have any leverage with China, NoKo's sponsor. What, have WalMart buy from India instead? Unthinkable. That would cost 2 cents more. Sure, an ally is an ally, but 2 cents ain't hay. We're talking real money after a while, and what's a few dead South Koreans compared to that? Don't rock the boat baby. Let NoKo sink it. Who needs boats anyway. We can fly. It's a right, and it has the added bonus nowadays of us getting our junk twisted publicly by fat men in uniforms. Ahh. I always wanted to be famous for being naked on the internet, even if it's only backsplatter imaging. Yeah, you heard right baby. It's so dirty and fine. So it all ties in together. We bend over for all the Second World despots and Third World hard guys, and, uh, well, I can't think of a way to end this sentence, but as long as the West remains complacent everything is fine, and dirty.

So I went online to see if I could find more images of penises. Slim picklings. Sort of surprising. But I'll upload what I found. Mostly autopsy photos, but isn't that appropriate, coming from our sterile and dying civilization? Now Arab penises, and North Korean! I can't think of a way to finish that thought, but it would be great if I could. Something about explosions and missiles and suchlike.

That's Danny Bonaduce. We live after all in a celebriticentric culture. Dude takes steroids. Frankly, not attractive.

So that's everything I could find on the web about penises. Since you insisted. Next week I'll try to find boobs.

Hey, don't be so uptight. Try smiling.

J