When I started this damned thing, I never had any intention of it becoming prolific. So far, so good. My good friend Laura had won a “Prolific Blogger” award recently, and I send my congratulations. She has recently granted me the “Creative Writing” award (God knows why). I don’t think I’ve been very creative in damn near thirty years. I just keep rehashing the same stories. But since I’m clever, and have oodles of charm, I can pull it off quite well.
The thing that keeps me writing though is people. Not my friends or family, at my age most of them are dead anyhow. Instead, it is the people I happen to meet from day to day either at the grocery store, the post office, or coffee shops. One of my closest friends, Adam Richards, and I met at a coffee shop.
Yesterday, I was walking into my favorite little coffee shop and out came a group of damn rowdy kids, not one over fifteen. They came out yelling, “Oh my God! It’s fucking Theo! Hey Theo! Do you remember us, do you?” Normally, maybe it’s my age, I would try to figure out how I know those dam rowdy kids, but instead, I said nothing, and shooed them away with a scowl. I assumed Adam was in the shop and seeing me walk down the street, coached those damn rowdy kids into harassing me. Instead, Adam was late, and my curiosity grew to find out if I really knew those damn rowdy kids. I quickly walked back outside to find them getting on their bicycles, preparing to ride away. “Hey there! How do I know you?” They laughed, one yelled, “You don’t!” and they threw up their middle fingers as they rode off. I, without hesitation, threw up my own middle finger, and lit a cigarette. Despite being a retired college professor and novelist, this was my reaction. Oh well.
Today, I met a young woman at the post office. Since we were at the post office, we were standing in a line. She was mailing a birthday present, and I was buying stamps. We got to talking, and she told me that she had just quit her job. I congratulated her, and asked her ex-profession. Human Resources, she said. She told me that she was sick and tired of firing people. “Oh you’ve worked here your whole life?” She said. “Well, you’re fired. Sorry! Oh you’re child has a terrible disease?” She said. “Well, your family just lost their health insurance. Sorry!” She was the most interesting woman I have met this week. She wasn’t older than thirty-five: A spring chicken! I hope she will find something she enjoys more, or at least that these American companies will decide to start hiring people again instead of firing them. Then perhaps, my HR friend may find some joy in her work. Who knows.
Do you enjoy meeting strangers as much as I do? Do they help with your writing? Now with all these computers laying around, how does one find characterization inspiration?
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Neo-Luddite
A young friend of mine owns a laptop computer. She asked me if it would be wise to also purchase a desktop computer. She is a silly thing. I'm still not sold on the idea of computers. Sure, the Internet has brought more information than you could ever want to know to damn near everybody in the world, but they still scare me. Don't mind me though, this is coming from an old man who doesn't know if his own TV works or not and just recently bough a microwave, but only for the idea of instant popcorn.
What's so scary about computers? People don't need to know anything anymore. Why learn French or Spanish when you have a translator? Why learn how to drive over the river and through the woods to Grandma's house when you have a computer that triangulates your position using the Global Positioning System? There's no need to remember peoples addresses or telephone numbers anymore. Hell, nobody writes letters anymore. Instead they have those black cell phones glued to their ears talking away about nothing. "I'm going to be late. I'll see you at 6:16PM instead of 6:15PM" Bluetooth? Miniature cell phones you stick directly into your ear so you can walk around talking to yourself. People with blueteeth: You are insane.
The latest craze is the iPad. Plenty of jokes have already been made about the name's similarities to feminine hygiene products, so I'll skip those. But can't people see it is nothing short of an entire waste of money? Why must we buy all these unnecessary things? The iPad is a giant touch screen laptop, is it not? You already have a laptop, do you not?
Despite all of my blathering, there is one thing beautiful about all of this: The young friend of mine who wants two computers. Even though she is as sucked into computers as much as the rest of the crazies out there, she is one of the few people who still write letters the old fashion way. She takes the time to hand write letters and licks stamps and envelopes and patiently waits by the door for the mailman to bring a response. Bless her heart.
Writing and receiving letters are one of the great joys of my life. It is up there with music, blue skies, delicious food, good health, cigarettes, and the Norway Maple tree.
Now it is time I get off of this damned machine before I get any dumber.
Enjoy your day. Take notice of the pleasantries in life. Walk outside and take a whiff. Take a pen to paper and write a friend a letter. It doesn't even have to be a good letter. Just take the time out to do so.
What's so scary about computers? People don't need to know anything anymore. Why learn French or Spanish when you have a translator? Why learn how to drive over the river and through the woods to Grandma's house when you have a computer that triangulates your position using the Global Positioning System? There's no need to remember peoples addresses or telephone numbers anymore. Hell, nobody writes letters anymore. Instead they have those black cell phones glued to their ears talking away about nothing. "I'm going to be late. I'll see you at 6:16PM instead of 6:15PM" Bluetooth? Miniature cell phones you stick directly into your ear so you can walk around talking to yourself. People with blueteeth: You are insane.
The latest craze is the iPad. Plenty of jokes have already been made about the name's similarities to feminine hygiene products, so I'll skip those. But can't people see it is nothing short of an entire waste of money? Why must we buy all these unnecessary things? The iPad is a giant touch screen laptop, is it not? You already have a laptop, do you not?
Despite all of my blathering, there is one thing beautiful about all of this: The young friend of mine who wants two computers. Even though she is as sucked into computers as much as the rest of the crazies out there, she is one of the few people who still write letters the old fashion way. She takes the time to hand write letters and licks stamps and envelopes and patiently waits by the door for the mailman to bring a response. Bless her heart.
Writing and receiving letters are one of the great joys of my life. It is up there with music, blue skies, delicious food, good health, cigarettes, and the Norway Maple tree.
Now it is time I get off of this damned machine before I get any dumber.
Enjoy your day. Take notice of the pleasantries in life. Walk outside and take a whiff. Take a pen to paper and write a friend a letter. It doesn't even have to be a good letter. Just take the time out to do so.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Operation Glory
I have asked my granddaughter what I should write about. She shrugged. She’s six years old. I asked her if there was anything she wanted to know about me. She shrugged again. Then she perked up and became very exited! She asked me if I had ever fought in a war. I haven’t. She pouted and shrugged again. She left to go watch Television.
Officially, in accordance with the United States Constitution, I have only been alive for one war during my seventy-four years on this planet. That, of course, was the Second World War: The West’s second attempt at self destruction. I was ten years old when that war ended. It was my childhood. It’s what I grew up with, it’s how we played. My friends and I would charged up hills and shoot at invisible Nazis. When I turned eighteen, I signed up for the Army and was shipped off to Korea. I turned eighteen in December of 1953. The cease fire had been signed in July of that year, and the way things had gone, I never thought it would last. I’m still surprised that it has lasted this long, but it’s a good thing it has.
When I arrived in Korea, Operation Glory was just about to get underway. If I was a young boy, hungry for war and glory, when I arrived in Korea, I was a peace loving pacifist when I left. For those of you who don’t know: Operation Glory (ha!) was nothing more than the exchange of dead bodies between the north and south. They gave us back 4,000 dead US Army and Marine Corp soldiers. For those bodies, we gave them about 13,000 of theirs. It took damn near six months. I still don’t know how I ended up in the middle of all that. They say there are no Atheists in foxholes, but after the shells are done falling, and you’re still alive, it’s a hard thing trying to find God underneath all those bodies.
Before 1955 came around, I was discharged, was back home, and found a job as a bartender at jazz and blues club in Chicago. I wasn’t very good at carrying strangers’ caskets, and I was a worse mixologist.
Officially, in accordance with the United States Constitution, I have only been alive for one war during my seventy-four years on this planet. That, of course, was the Second World War: The West’s second attempt at self destruction. I was ten years old when that war ended. It was my childhood. It’s what I grew up with, it’s how we played. My friends and I would charged up hills and shoot at invisible Nazis. When I turned eighteen, I signed up for the Army and was shipped off to Korea. I turned eighteen in December of 1953. The cease fire had been signed in July of that year, and the way things had gone, I never thought it would last. I’m still surprised that it has lasted this long, but it’s a good thing it has.
When I arrived in Korea, Operation Glory was just about to get underway. If I was a young boy, hungry for war and glory, when I arrived in Korea, I was a peace loving pacifist when I left. For those of you who don’t know: Operation Glory (ha!) was nothing more than the exchange of dead bodies between the north and south. They gave us back 4,000 dead US Army and Marine Corp soldiers. For those bodies, we gave them about 13,000 of theirs. It took damn near six months. I still don’t know how I ended up in the middle of all that. They say there are no Atheists in foxholes, but after the shells are done falling, and you’re still alive, it’s a hard thing trying to find God underneath all those bodies.
Before 1955 came around, I was discharged, was back home, and found a job as a bartender at jazz and blues club in Chicago. I wasn’t very good at carrying strangers’ caskets, and I was a worse mixologist.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
A Dream
I had the strangest dream last night. I dreamt that I was a young man again and that I had traveled through time to the year 2030. It wasn't until I saw a whole lot of propeller driven airplanes crashing all around me, that I started to ask the people that happened to be around me what year it was. I saw my younger brother, he was alive and young again, he was crying. I ran to him to ask him what was going on. He ran from me and disappeared into the crowd. After the planes were done falling, everyone got on one knee and started to pray. A loud speaker explained that prayer was no longer an option, but instead kindly reminded the crowd that prayer was mandatory.
I took a knee, and out the corner of my eye looked around in horror. Everyone had there heads down, and eyes shut hard. In my ear an echoing Orwell was saying, "I told you so."
I ran for it. I ran across a field and they chased me.
I escaped. I hitchhiked.
I got into a car driven by an old man. I asked him what was going on, why everything had changed. He didn't know what I was talking about. He couldn't remember when things had been much different. He pitied me and thought I was crazy. But the old man drove me far out to the country so it would be harder to find me. I asked him about the possibility of time-travel. He told me I was crazy.
The old man driving the car was me.
We found a small town with a well developed main street. We went window shopping. When the loud speakers turned on again, and kindly asked us to get on one knee, we did. We prayed to God.
I took a knee, and out the corner of my eye looked around in horror. Everyone had there heads down, and eyes shut hard. In my ear an echoing Orwell was saying, "I told you so."
I ran for it. I ran across a field and they chased me.
I escaped. I hitchhiked.
I got into a car driven by an old man. I asked him what was going on, why everything had changed. He didn't know what I was talking about. He couldn't remember when things had been much different. He pitied me and thought I was crazy. But the old man drove me far out to the country so it would be harder to find me. I asked him about the possibility of time-travel. He told me I was crazy.
The old man driving the car was me.
We found a small town with a well developed main street. We went window shopping. When the loud speakers turned on again, and kindly asked us to get on one knee, we did. We prayed to God.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Too Many Zeros
Let me make one thing clear: I am damn near as liberal as they get. It baffles me that this country does not have the greatest public school system in the world. I'm surprised how ignorant people are about health care. I'm dumbfounded that people even care if the LGBT community wants to marry one another.
However, despite all of that, I want to apologize to our future generations for our lack of fiscal responsibility. As a younger man, without much money, my father would often tell me, "It's not how much money you make, it's what you do with it." And he lived that advice. I tried to live it to. I also would fantasize about what I would do with certain sums of money, but my fantasies always stopped right around at $100,000,000USD because it always proved too hard to think of much more money than that. Now a days, we have musicians and sports stars who will eventually make, or who already have made, that much money.
We have billionaires who gave $4,000,000USD to Haiti, and they are called heroes. If you are worth $30,000,000,000USD you will make over $4,000,000 every day just from an interest rate of 8%! I'm rambling. I apologize, readers. Let us now get back to the matter at hand: Fiscal Responsibility.
Andrew Jackson, our 7th President of the United States, made it his goal as president to remove the national debt. He's the only president to do so. The year before he took office in 1829, the debt was over $67,000,0000USD. By 1835 it was $33,733.05USD! What a feat! Can you even imagine? Today, the debt has not been under $2,000,000,000USD in over one hundred years! And today, the debt is at damn near $13,000,000,000,000USD. It is one great big ponzi scheme! This is not O.K. Not even Old Hickory can help us now.
Clinton had it right for a little while: A government surplus, slowly paying down the debt. It was the best he could do. But then BushII lost his veto pen and his RNC handbook and signed off on every piece of legislation his Republican Senate passed. Those past eight years were scarier than the movie 28 Days Later. In that movie raging human zombies rip the world apart and humanity falls apart. During BushII below average students from this country’s top universities take over our government and country, remove all the checks and balance, invade Iraq with troops that don't know how to say "hello" in Arabic (As-Salaam-Alaikum) and make a total mess of the place. This includes the Nation Debt.
Don't get me wrong, Obama has not much helped in this situation either, but damn do I feel bad for the man. He's doing what the presidents before him did, even Jackson, when there is a problem, such as if the last administration had made a mess of things, you throw a lot of money around in hopes that it fixes things. Two years after Jackson all but removed the national debt, our country was hit with a depression in 1837. The Debt went from $33,733.05USD in 1835 to $10,434,221.14USD in 1839. By 1844, when this depression was finally easing, the Debt was at $32,742,922.00USD.
This lack of fiscal responsibility is nothing more than a status quo, but damn don't I seeing it biting us in the ass pretty hard eventually. And so again I say to our future generations: Please forgive us.
However, despite all of that, I want to apologize to our future generations for our lack of fiscal responsibility. As a younger man, without much money, my father would often tell me, "It's not how much money you make, it's what you do with it." And he lived that advice. I tried to live it to. I also would fantasize about what I would do with certain sums of money, but my fantasies always stopped right around at $100,000,000USD because it always proved too hard to think of much more money than that. Now a days, we have musicians and sports stars who will eventually make, or who already have made, that much money.
We have billionaires who gave $4,000,000USD to Haiti, and they are called heroes. If you are worth $30,000,000,000USD you will make over $4,000,000 every day just from an interest rate of 8%! I'm rambling. I apologize, readers. Let us now get back to the matter at hand: Fiscal Responsibility.
Andrew Jackson, our 7th President of the United States, made it his goal as president to remove the national debt. He's the only president to do so. The year before he took office in 1829, the debt was over $67,000,0000USD. By 1835 it was $33,733.05USD! What a feat! Can you even imagine? Today, the debt has not been under $2,000,000,000USD in over one hundred years! And today, the debt is at damn near $13,000,000,000,000USD. It is one great big ponzi scheme! This is not O.K. Not even Old Hickory can help us now.
Clinton had it right for a little while: A government surplus, slowly paying down the debt. It was the best he could do. But then BushII lost his veto pen and his RNC handbook and signed off on every piece of legislation his Republican Senate passed. Those past eight years were scarier than the movie 28 Days Later. In that movie raging human zombies rip the world apart and humanity falls apart. During BushII below average students from this country’s top universities take over our government and country, remove all the checks and balance, invade Iraq with troops that don't know how to say "hello" in Arabic (As-Salaam-Alaikum) and make a total mess of the place. This includes the Nation Debt.
Don't get me wrong, Obama has not much helped in this situation either, but damn do I feel bad for the man. He's doing what the presidents before him did, even Jackson, when there is a problem, such as if the last administration had made a mess of things, you throw a lot of money around in hopes that it fixes things. Two years after Jackson all but removed the national debt, our country was hit with a depression in 1837. The Debt went from $33,733.05USD in 1835 to $10,434,221.14USD in 1839. By 1844, when this depression was finally easing, the Debt was at $32,742,922.00USD.
This lack of fiscal responsibility is nothing more than a status quo, but damn don't I seeing it biting us in the ass pretty hard eventually. And so again I say to our future generations: Please forgive us.
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