Marathon Buster

A couple of days ago I found a hidden part to my running ap that provided me with workout suggestions. I ran most of and walked some of four miles that day. Today was supposed to be the same deal. Run four miles.

Not too long ago, a couple months, that would have not been a problem, but now I am having the worst shin splints. All along the front of my shin bone the muscle tightens up and it’s just not possible to run through it. So I walked 2.5 miles and called it a day.

Back when my body liked me a bit better and actually allowed me to run sub 10 minute miles and run around greenwood cemetery and do the Manhattan bridge My wife could not touch a portion of my calf without me screaming in pain, She just tried it now and still that same pain is there. She showed me how hard she pressed by squeezing my arm and there was very little pressure. It felt like she gripped my leg in a vice.

So what the fuck.

Now I would assume if I had a stress fracture the pain would be constant.

I am not a doctor though, as a drill sergeant put it to me when I fell out of a run in basic training due to the same evil affliction.

I am wondering if a shin splint compressor would work. They look like long athletic socks. Maybe losing weight will do it.

Unfortunately I have the opposite of body dysmorphic disorder and don’t think I look like I need to lose weight.

Though, when I came back from Italy I had a vein in my bicep showing through the skin, a vein like skinny people have and I was a bit lighter. I sometimes wonder what I could achieve if I could drop twenty pounds.

It doesn’t matter. I have changed my diet. I eat whole grains. I drink only skim milk now. My only poisons are lager and pizza and neither are allowed to me in any great quantities.

I have a wife.

I should try another cleanse, not that I even really know what a cleanse is.

I tried something called a cleanse once, not too long ago. I was supposed to eat cabbage soup and all the veggies and fruit I wanted. By day four I had self-destructed at my job burning that bridge down completely and stayed jobless until just yesterday were now I found myself back to waiting on tables.

Anyway maybe if I wear my winter running tights my shin splints will go away. I certainly will not give up my marathon dream it just might not happen for several more years/decades.

Stone Park Cafe

When looking for work; apply for everything.

I follow this mantra and am on Craigslist. I see a want ad for a line cook. I think to myself I have worked as a line cook before. I worked at hooters and made sandwiches and tossed wings. I worked at Chilli’s and fucked up some people’s salads and appetizers. God I sucked as a line cook.

Hooters was my first job out of the Army and I decided that I wanted to call in sick. I wasn't allowed to do that in the Army. So I pick up the phone and call in sick. The next day I was called in to the office and was surrounded by all the red nosed managers, (hooters managers did a lot of coke), and was told I was “fired.”

“Cool,” I said and talked my friend nick into quitting before leaving, because, well, he was my ride.

My job at Chilli’s didn't end much better. I hated the waitress’s, every single one of them, mainly for asking for salad dressing. I hated the lettuce machine, which was constantly running out of lettuce; I hated the chili’s red nosed managers, or they hated me, I lied on my application or at least I think I did. I got my friend Nick a job there and right before closing one night the fucker walked out leaving all the closing side work to the rest of the shift.

It was nice being in our earlier twenties in the late nineties. Jobs were plentiful and money dripped in handfuls.

My last job on a line cooking was for a Barbecue place called Sonny’s. I will never live in Florida again anyway because of the humidity, which was exacerbated by memories of two a day football practices in August in full gear and my experience working at this restaurant. I don’t know if kitchens routinely have air conditioning, but this place did not, and it had three giant rotisserie ovens going all the time, two flat tops, a log fed grill and five people behind the line all fighting to get as close to the small breeze coming in from the expedite window as they could.

I pulled a knife on someone once here and thought seriously of using it, before the thought of prison crept up and the image of spending the rest of my days roasting on some chain gang stopped me.

I have created a special CV for line cook jobs and a cover letter to match. I e-mailed it to the craigslist’s address.

A few hours later I get a response. That’s good for craigslist usually my resumes get sucked up into the black hole of cyber space. I am thankful It doesn't cost me anything but time to apply for a job this way.

This time I get something back:

Joshua,

What exactly are you looking for? You have plenty of life experience, but really no fine dining experience. This would be an entry level job for you. If this is of interest, please give me a call and we can discuss your goals as a cook and what you're hoping to experience by working at Stone Park Cafe. Thanks,

Josh Grinker

Josh is the head chef. I am impressed.

He includes his number and I give him a call and leave a message.

“Hey I am interested!” I probably yelled into my phone!

When he calls back we talk about my experience. I try and make Chili’s, the BBQ place and Hooters sound impressive, and he says “we don’t do those sorts of things here.”

I might have said “Oh,” in a meek little voice.

“Come in and see a shift, work from 5-9 and see if you like it, then we can talk.”

I got excited and would have hugged the guy through the phone if possible.

I looked it as a free pass on a writing idea if nothing else.

When I get there I am told to follow the fish guy and I guess the fish guys makes the fish. Instead of following I am asked to clean the shrimp. I clean the shrimp leave a bit of the tail on as the guy showed me and devein them with a very sharp knife, maybe I cut a bit too deep, almost butter flying them, and still have difficulty getting the black line of salty crud from within their bodies out.

Must be some trick that I don’t know.

So I make up a trick and grab a dish fill it with water and rinse each shrimp in it and toss it in a Chinese take-out container. I am not sure if all the crud is removed or not but make it through my task. I clean my area, as I promised I would in my cover letter and am given another task.

Make the Pico De Gallo.

The Sous Chef shows me, “take a tomato and cut in three piece long ways, than cut it in six pieces short ways , this is the annoying part, but you be okay, than take the onion make three slits like this.”

He shows me but I miss it. I have my own way of cutting onions that works most of the time, his way was perfect, fuck I think, but I don’t ask him about the three slits, I wish I had. First I drop a whole basket of cherry tomatoes on the ground. Hope no one is watching, but fully aware, me, being the only gringo in the kitchen every eye had to be on me. Instead of washing those off, I just throw them away. No one yells. So I move on and cut the tomatoes and the sous chef is correct this is the most annoying thing I have yet to do.

Taking as long as the shrimp I finish and cut the onion, my way, I have a little too much left uncut at the top but decide fuck it and throw those section into the trash.

Afterward I have a bowl of Red and purple and think this doesn't seem right.

I tap one of the Mexican guys on the shoulder. “Que es?” I don’t speak Spanish, he might not even be Mexican, but he answers in deeply accented English, jalapenos and cilantro.

The young food runner walks over, “over there in the water grab that bowl and tear the leaves from the stems and toss into the mix okay?”

He sounds impatient.

“Okay.”

I scan the line for tickets and don’t see any.

Beginning to get paranoid, I wonder if these tasks given to me are taking too long. I grab the bowl dice the jalapenos and strip the leafs from the cilantro and finish the job by squeezing lime all over top.

At this point I am bored, hungry and ready to call it a day I had double booked myself and had an interview scheduled with the Olympic race walker Maria Michta scheduled for 8, it was 7:30. Than the chef walks in. “A limo’s just pulled up get ready for the night boys, the billionaire is here.”

The bowl of finished Pico De Gallo is pulled from me and the Chef says “Josh stand my me.” And I do.

The food runner comes in, “One of those fuckers is Six foot eight.” The Billionaire owns the Brooklyn Nets. I had promised to keep my mouth shut the entire evening, but couldn't help asking, Which would you prefer to be 6’8 or a billionaire?”

Billionaire came the universal response.

And I tried to explain about the stress of money, not that I have any nor any height other then my six feet, but was interrupted by the chef, “No,” he demands, “stand there in that corner cram yourself in.” Out of the way I think and free from the discussion, but I hear the chef say, “interesting,” and wonder why.

Then it starts.<>P Tickets start bouncing out of the machine, orders are given and food so perfect my mouth salivates, starts hitting the window.

I am given a taste of the English Pea Soup with crème fraiche, oh my god if I were drowned in soup I could have picked no better way to die.

Meat was charring on the grill, boned fish were smoking, and salads piled in perfect little circles on plates were being pushed into my hands to give the chef.

“Heirloom beets, Arugula, Grilled Baby Octopus, the chef explained as each new plate left my hand and wiped down my his napkin and handed to the food runner.

Rare J.T. Jobbagy, bone in, hand selected, 30 ounce, average price $2.50 an ounce. i watch the steak being sliced for consumption right next to me.

The chef demands, “is it perfect,”

“Yes Chef.”

The next cut comes from the grill.

“Cut all that fat off.”

And I whisper, “Fuck me that’s the best part.”

“Here the sous Chef says handing me a piece of perfectly cooked rare rib eye.

In my mouth the meat melts, this was better than an orgasm. If for the rest of my life I could have had one of two choices, sex or that beef it would be a close decision and a hard one to make.

It is now 9:30, I asked Olivia to send an apology e-mail to Michta, but still kept checking my phone for a response.

The chef caught me, ‘You probably want to go home. Go to the bar have dinner on me.”

“Really?”

“Yes go to the bar, we will talk when you are done.”

I changed my tomato stained chef jacket shirt back into the black button down I thought I would have to wear and headed to the bar.

I was offered beer and had two Brooklyn Lagers.

I was given the menu, and I ordered the, Cavatelli: plum tomatoes, roasted garlic, fennel sausage, beech mushrooms.

Once I ordered and a drunk a beer I called Michta. She answered and we talked and rescheduled the interview for today.

When I walked back in to the restaurant my second beer was waiting and moments later the food arrived.

“The Chef wanted you to try the, Swiss Chard Raviolini.”

"Oh God, thank you,” I either thought or said.

The bartender looked non too impressed, but I did not give a shit. Before I was finished the chef came over. “So you wanted to work full time.”

I was feeling very drunk. Two beers, but even with that I was hearing my voice slur.

“To tell you the truth chef, I don’t know if I can work in your kitchen.”

He smiles, “We were thinking the same thing, plus the language barer.”

“Those guys are amazing,” I said.

“Five years’ experience most of them, Pablo started on as a dishwasher. I read your resume I was impressed by your life experience and wanted to see if I could fit you in.”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t.”

“I want to learn that though, I will work for free, I just don’t know how that's," indicating back to the kitchen with my hand, "is even possible.”

“You want to work for free you can come back anytime you want and shadow me; you know what guys like us say. I smile.

“In every experience there is a story.”

I agree, “fuck yeah.”

The 8 mile Marathon

I am wordless today. I have nothing to write about. I wrote about Harry yesterday and he has been on my mind all day. What do we do with our population of cast away citizens. When I have children I do not want them to be in jeopardy because this man and other's like him are angry and have nothing and can probably never have anything ever again. What they did was unfair, brutal, but as a society isn't What we do to them equally brutally? Are there solutions? This has been all day since I jumped out of bed at 5:54 to avoid waking the wife who actually pushed me out of bed herself. I strapped on the ole skellie toes, spandex and running shorts and my 101st Airborne T-shirt and hit the road.

Somehow my phone reset my running ap, but replaced it with an even cooler one. This ap gives me training ideas.

Me being ultra ultra ultra I picked the marathon options and did the first suggested workout of four miles. My pace was slow so slow I won’t even mention it here. So slow I think I would have failed the Cooper test.

My goal one day is to day max the Cooper test. It really not too difficult, 12 minutes to run a set distance. In my age group of 30 to 39 I need to run more than 2700 meters, (or 1.6 miles in normal talk).

I did better than that in the army; well close to doing better than that anyway and 18. So i failed then also.

I have never been much of a runner. Much of a runner as in fast. I can run slow all day.

Except today.

1500 meters in 12 minutes is failing that like .93 of a mile.

As an excuse my shins were killing me. One would think that running barefoot it would be my feet, but it was my shins.

I had to stop and walk several times and stretch. I am not sure if I was just warmed up or what, but by the end I was running on the balls of my feet and I had no pain.

I am actually looking forward to trying the tactic out Saturday.

Of course my goal is to run a marathon and this map my run ap is actually having me run 8 miles next Thursday. I have already figured out a course , just need to outsource who will run it for me.

Any takers?

The Zombies of America

I have been thinking about voters recently, pretty obvious why. From thinking about the down the middle mix, the division of politics, where the land herself is affected. Wht about people who can’t vote?

Children for one, well most kids are idiots well anyway, retarded, but I can’t say retarded because I live to close to New Jersey, (it’s illegal there,) so much for free speech, plus I wouldn't give them command of their own meals let alone education, so I am fine with them not voting.

I am thinking about other people who can’t vote, like Harry, the walking dead, America's walking dead.

Harry was a round little man, jiggly around the edges. His feet are flat, and slap the ground with a sharp sound as he walks. He sways left to right on each step.

Harry used to work in an apartment building.

It was funny when he used to climb the stairs to work on an apartment in the building he was a super in.

As progress was made he would hack and sweat.

He coughed .

Once at the top floor of the building that is only a three sets of stairs to climb, and he would take each stair as if he carried thousands of pounds on his shoulders. The collar of his unusually splotchy dark grey t-shirt was always soaked. At the end he would need to lean against the wall for a while to catch his breath.

An observer would suspect he wouldn’t make it another day, if there was an observer, though there never was an observer. In his right hand he carried a flashlight turned off, his finger resting on the little button ready to spill light out in front of him if needed not that the hallways were shadowy or the stairwell unlit.

More that the Mag light was a great club, a weapon, a tool to intimidate.

The reason I think about Harry is not that I feel sorry for him. Quite the opposite actually, I despise the man.. Except for one fact:

Harry is a Vietnam War vet. He fought the Viet Cong and the NVC, at the battle of Ho-Bo Hill, stepped on a pungi stick with his left foot and was sent home. Ended up losing most of the foot due to infection, when he got home he was besieged by Vietnam War protesters when he’d go to the V.A. hospital for treatment.

That’s the way things go sometimes.

Then Harry’s bad decisions started.

Eventually he fought back against the protesters with a baseball bat at night with four other men who wore Hell’s Angel colors.

For all he knew the men were Hell’s Angels.

He had no reason to doubt them.

They smashed skulls with a precision he was proud to be a part of. He considered himself to be their leader.

They considered him a little limping pet. In 1972 they stopped smashing skulls. Harry was 25, he looked 14.

This was 46 years ago, his partners were gone, some to prison for long stretches, one to a “good” government job and the last just disappeared. With his cash flow of protester pocket money gone, he sought and won this job of super to a building nobody ever wanted to live in, and most never willingly left.

June 12, 1982 was his last day on the job.

On this day, he reached the third landing and stopped. Leaning against the spit stained wall he hacks a thick ball of phlegm from his throat with such force it dangled from his lips without him knowing it.

The hard part was over.

The stairs were traversed.

The fluorescent lighting in the hallway flickered; it was a cost saving method to use old bulbs, ones found outside other buildings, ones discarded by maintenance people of places people wanted to live.

He could smell the rubbery smoke of freebased cocaine on the air.

Thin lines of bass filtered through the water stained walls of the, as he called it, the jigga bo music.

A dog barked.

Shifting feet and a darkened peep-hole suggest he is being looked at, watched, worried over.

It was the floor’s old lady. One of those who would be carried out. One of those whose phone calls he had been fielding since day one.

My sink’s clogged.

My floor feels spongy.

My ceiling is falling down.

It never stopped, he took each phone call listened a moment, said he’d be right on it, then went back to masturbating, watching TV or whatever mindless choir he had been doing before the interruption. She usually never called back. Probably forgot. He would.

If any of the tenants did call back he claimed to have done the work already. Who could they complain to? A faceless corporation owned the building; he was the only one, the only one that could do anything, the only number they had.

Wiping the sweat from his brow with an upturned twist of his flashlight laden arm he pushed himself from the wall and continued on. Wearing every key to the building’s doors on a ring attached to his belt he moved with a sound every occupant could hear, even over TV’s and music.

It was a hated sound.

The only sanctuary from the jingle jangle was in the shower.

If that showerer failed to hear those keys and they were a female it could be assured at that moment some pertinent maintenance issue would need to be taken care of in that apartment. Thats why Harry loved his job, and he didn’t mind old flesh to gaze at either. He would gaze zipper undone secretly massaging his genitals until the water stopped running and a scream of unexpected fear ruined his upcoming orgasm. Or on the more relaxed occasions he was able to finish the job and leave only a puddle of semen in his wake.

Harry killed the last woman he had snuck up on. It was an accident. She hadn't been in the shower yet and had come from behind as he tried to take a look, She attacked him. Scratching at his face and screaming, the screaming knocked loose a bit more of his sanity and he raped her. Somehow her head had been smashed over and over again with the mag light.

Somehow he doesn't remember doing it.

The police caught him pretty quickly. He dripped a blood trail on top of his bloody sneaker prints down to the super apartment.

They brought him to jail.

His bail was set which of course he did not have.

During arraignment he learned he was going to be charged with breaking and entering and murder one.

He pleads, “Not guilty.”

Before his trial his lawyer got him 20 years for murder two. “Take it,” the lawyer demanded, “they want death if you don't.”

Harry took it.

Prison is a story all in itself.

At the end of it he was a different man. 56, stringy with muscle and crazier than when he went in.

He has to show an address to his parole officer, he lies and uses buddy’s. He needs to have a job, but looking for one is good enough.

He is the enemy of all that is happy and decent. He lives under the Julia Tuttle Causeway. That’s the bridge that leads families to Miami beach.

That is his home.

He and his buddies are rousted every once in a while, but with nowhere else to go he comes back with the others to set up camp until rousted yet again or prison beckons for either a parole violation or another violent crime.

He spends food stamps for food. He gets clothes from the nuns at the nearby Catholic church.

He spends his days pretending to look for work.

Getting a tan and hating.

I wonder which way he would vote if he could.

Harry, though completely fictional, won’t be voting for Barack or Mitt. Harry doesn't even care about presidents or politics.

By the way The U.S. is “responsible for roughly 25% of the world's incarcerated population, yet our entire population is only 5% of the world’s” total, so said a poster on Yahoo answers. No numbers exists for people who have successfully completed parole and are out there floundering without any hope existing under the brand of convicted felon.

We kill people in the country with criminal records. We may not hang them on a noose or shoot them in front of firing squads, but people like Harry will linger on the fringe feeling worthless just waiting till he finds himself again in a situation that means he will go back to prison.

Maybe we should vote for a candidate that has answers for this real unaddressed issue, the walking dead are among us, they survived the gladiatorial school of our prisons. They are dangerous and they aren't waving American Flags and they won’t be standing next to us on election day and they will never try to be your friend and they will never tell you about their story.

Is there a solution for Harry? Or is he just caught in a revolving door of failure that there is no escape from?

Stalking and Skull Fuckery

Luca says, “In Roma I never see this, Josh what is up man.”

I was waiting at a café next door to Alesandro’s World Famous Hostel, and that was what it was really called. If I could make up a name it would not be that. Just Alesandro’s Hostel would be fine, but to add the world famous was just about the same as calling it ‘Douche Bag’s place to sleep and shower.’

Luca was a little man who looked like he could lift a weight or two if asked. He was a not a Roman. His family came from Calabria. He called himself the Calabrese Muscle. He rode around Termini on a black scooter and loved videos of dirt bikes. Not dirt bikes being ridden just watching people rev engines with bikes on blocks, sometimes without tires.

It was the black scooter that led me to him. The day before I had found an Ad in the one American/English Newspaper in Rome asking for a front desk receptionist person at not the famous Hostel Alesandro’s Down Town. I answered it though if looking at a map its more cross town then down town.

Before finding that paper I had walked all around Termini going into every hotel and asking if they needed an English speaking reception person. It is surprising how few romans speak English I am not even sure if I was understood most of the time.

When I fist got in Rome I had no where to stay. Someone suggested I stay at a hostel near the station, which makes sense, why wouldn’t there be a hostel by the station, but I could not find it, so instead I spent one hundred Euro’s and stayed in the most craptastic hotel in Rome.

Noise doesn’t typically bother me, but this place I swear to Christ was under some kind of dish washing factory. All night it was a rush of water and the clatter of plates. I wish I had been able to figure out what it was.

Through the noise I was so tired though I crashed immediately.

The next day I watched Italian TV hoping to catch nudity and left at checkout. It was three days after I left the hotel When I found the job opportunity at Alesendros.

Luca said, “Tomorrow we meet, you come back and we talk, yes?”

I asked, “Here?” I had brought a button down shirt with me to Europe but no iron so I was wearing a grey pilling fleece, over a T-shirt, worse it was June. No matter how crazy I looked I was going to get this job.

“Sure, sure,” he said starting to walk out of the dining room we had our interview in.

“What time?” I called after him.

“Whenever I will be here around ten in the morning.”

I showed up at ten and no Luca. The gorgeous Hungarian at the desk said he was probably at the other hostel. Look for a black Scooter with a red crest like this, and she drew the symbol for the Reggina football club and a little football inside it. I asked where it was and she drew a circle around a building on the other side of the train station. She used one of the cartoon maps I was seeing all over Rome. Maps like I would have seen at Disney World or Busch Gardens.

Then she smiled and no matter what else happened that day I felt like I would be happy the rest of my life.

I am surprised there was no admission cost to enter Rome itself minus the rides I was starting to feel like I was in a theme park.

One thing I will say, or, suggest if you want to tour the Forum’s or make it down and see Pompei and have absolutely no money, wait for a tour group to walk through the ticket taking area. I saw both for free and have not suffered one moment of guilt since.

I did try this tactic at the Coliseum, it didn’t fly, that structure is roped off tight as a drum, though playing an ignorant tourist did not help me in there it did get me out of going to jail in Naples, got me drunk on the Amalfi coast and earned me a case of ring worm.

Armed with my map, and the Hungarian girls smile, I took off walking in the direction of the World Famous Hostel.

When I arrived I walked in and was confronted by another Hungarian.

I asked, ‘is Luca available, I have an interview with him.

” This Hungarian, as it would turn out later was the exboyfriend of the pretty one at the other hostel and was soon to be fired, but I knew none of this, he said, “I do not know who Luca is or what you want. Good day.”

My mouth dropped open. My image of the theme park Roma disappeared.

My second though was if I hit him I would not be getting any job at these hostels so I didn’t. But holy shit I would have been happy to dig this gentleman’s teeth from out of my knuckles.

Instead I thanked him, looking him in the eyes and punched him with my brain. It wasn’t as satisfying and his demeanor stayed bitchy.

I left, spotted the black scooter parked on the sidewalk with the little red crest and soccer ball.

He at least was here.

So I sat at the café next door and drank a bottle of sparkling water and waited for my target to emerge and be confronted.

“What don’t you do in Rome?” I asked when he came out.

“Drink water outside at a café. We eat at the café. We live and eat and drink ~vino~ Come with me, I show you where be you work.”

I wish I could have skull fucked the Hungarian as I passed him with Luca, but the little shit never even looked up.

The Watery Grave of Durney Key

I couldn’t think of my childhood yesterday without dredging up memories of Durney Key.

My family was more established as Floridians. As a boy the water of the Gulf was a huge playground, sometime I wonder how we got away with the shit we pulled. I wonder all the time how I survived and did not become dinner for the local Lamiopsis and Antigonia.

Some of the retarded stuff we would do:

Attempts to anchor our boats with weights, not the metal kind, the plastic wrapped cement filled variety. They were not heavy enough to nor would the ropes be long enough to prevent our canoe, yes fucking canoe, from coasting away as we dived in shallow water exploring sand bar reefs or digging for scallops.

Never watched the weather report the days we went out.

Never actually told anyone what we were doing or where we were going.

This has me wondering if nature has a way of weeding out the less than stellar genetic varieties and somehow me and my brother slipped through.

If we had lost or boat I wonder how long I could have treaded water before being saved. Honestly though we canoed out there in the first place I bet we could have swam back if it came to it.

Everyone knows sharks live in the water. And those sharks have symbiotic relationships with other creatures. Little fishes that wait for scraps and others that clean off bacteria. I was out on a boat with my buddy Jimmy. We were having no luck. Until I caught a giant Remora Fish big enough to crack my fishing pole in half. I Remember Jimmy exclaiming, “That must have been one big shark to have that guy cleaning its mouth.”

I pictured jaws and as Jimmy cleaned the remora for bait I decided I had done enough fishing and started preying the laws of displacement would keep our ever filling canoe from sinking.

Seriously how did I survive?

There were stories of dumb asses catching hammerhead sharks off Hudson Beach all the time. The sharks would drag motor boats miles before the line would snap leaving them far away from home and no decent evidence to show for the catch that got away.

We thought our parents were in the dark to our intentions. We had no doubt. Even today I certainly wouldn’t give any child of mine the same freedom to explore, as I think of it now, Florida’s dangerous shark filled graveyard.

The canoe would be put in the water of the Pithlachascotee at Jimmy’s father’s dock about a block from my childhood home. The three of us climbed in, aware, if we toppled over, beneath us lay the sharp barnacles of the oysters no one ate, due to the rivers pollution level.

Pushing off we headed under the bridge on U.S. 19 and past the Chicken Wing place with the girls in white and orange who would wave as we passed.

It was a mile or so stretch to the island from the dock and none of us appreciated the work, the middle seat was the choice locale, no paddling and usually won by a quick rock, paper, scissor contest, I never won and always choose the rear to guide the craft to our own personal campground.

We usually camped on the weekends, fished by day and raided crab traps, not even knowing about the legalities of such actions. Never had a fishing license and years later I heard an owner of one of those cages could shoot immediately anyone caught raiding them, but honestly I have never heard of someone being shot over crab meat, still feel bad about those indiscretions now though.

We sparked a fire at night to roast the hard earned sea's bounty, from roaring flames we ate with greedy singed fingers. We slept under stars on a speck of white sand provided by our own little island a mile off the coast of Pasco County called Durney Key.

I haven't set foot on the island in almost two decades, but still can remember the sparkling rays of sun bouncing off the greenish blue waters. Flying fish leapt for dinner, or for whatever reason they leave their watery homes visiting ours briefly. Houses on stilts built as fish camps were where we fished. We rowed out to each hoping that the owner would just one time neglect to lock their windows and doors so that we could get inside for a closer look at their magical world on stilts above the water.

We cast their docks and caught pinfish and grunts. Not big enough to eat, but we would clean them anyway and add them to the feast.

We had days of hide and seek, pretending to be in Vietnam, I was the green beret.

We dug as deep as a plastic oar will allow looking for buried treasure.

As the days went on the camping trips became more and more elaborate. First a tent would be packed then real wood from my mom’s stock pile against the house, then pots and pans, sleeping bags and changes of clothing snacks and reading material. From starting out with nothing at the beginning of the summer we became a small caravan of comfort at the end.

The canoe would ride low in the water and waves occasionally splashed over the sides making the trip out more agonizing with the fear of capsizing or going under. So we decided to do something different the final weekend.

Our last trip to the island was enough adventure to have us never return. It was near the end of the summer that separated seventh and eighth grade. We had stocked up with so much we had to bring Jimmy’s paddle boat, like the ones you rent on a lake for a lazy summer day, and a real row boat. This time we had enough room for my dog Shadow.

The paddle boat required two people to operate and with my brother and Jimmy paddling as hard they could progress was slow. Slow not only because of the physical engineering of the craft, which meant for slow meandering around smooth bodies of water but also with the added weight of our camping gear the nose of the craft keep dipping below the surface.

I had the canoe and a dog that was afraid of water, always had been and now she was trying to wedge her body under the rear seat I was propped on. She wiggling and whined I felt bad for her but never considered taking her home.

Drenched in salt water produced by our bodies and the gulf we finally made landfall on our little oasis. Night was steadily approaching and with a load of rock claw and blue crab somehow finding its way into our procession we settled in. It wasn't long before the wind began to pick up and the normal explosion of color announcing the end of a Florida day was covered by black clouds.

When the rain started we had given up on the tent and instead propped up a piece of plywood that had managed to find itself on the island. It wasn't bad sleeping on wet sleeping bags and munching on cold crab meat with my dog whining and hugging its tail between her legs running out to the beach as if the way to leave the hell were there she just needed to find it. She was not about to swim for it over the choppy water that threatened to swallow our little island right from beneath us.

Shadow Howled until the next morning.

The sun crept up in the west and we packed our stuff back into our boats, leaving crab shells as evidence. We thought about leaving stuff behind, we were tired and bickering back and forth by the time we were ready to try the journey home. Just as we were about to cast off Jimmy’s father came roaring up to the beach in his boat, a twin engine thing that skirted over the water leaving a white train of foam in its wake.

47% and no where to go

The 47% are being accused of not wanting to work. I am a member of that number. My only government subsidy comes from the care I get through Veteran Affairs Hospitals, but I am quite unemployed, and even when I get a job I am very under employed. I have a degree two in fact an AA and a BA and part of an MA. I have the credit score of a cat, a strong back, anger issues and a desire to contribute something valuable to society, though I am not entirely certain what that may be.

As my grandfather said many times, ‘the world needs ditch diggers as much as it needs doctors.”

I wonder if he would be proud that my sole occupation nowadays is couch cushion down presser.

I have not always been unemployed.

I started working when I was 13 years old. It was at a lawn care company pushing a lawnmower and swinging a weed whacker. I was illegal labor. It was a dream come true. I wanted to work even earlier, but the Publix grocery store up the street wouldn’t allow me the opportunity, though I never asked anyone other than my mom.

My parents divorced when I was nine. She moved me and my brother and sister to Florida. For the first few months or weeks or days we lived with my grandparents. Time stopped as me and my bro chased salamanders and tried to see how close we could get to the gators that lived in the runoff ponds all around the Tanglewood estates trailer park. I really don’t know how I am alive today, I really don’t. Maybe in memory the gators were bigger than they really were, but fuck I bet they would hurt if they took hold of one of us and did that death roll thing I have seen so many times on Discovery.

I guess a normal ten year old doesn’t think about work. I never even gave the concept of money all that much thought.

Until I overheard my mom telling my grandpa that my father was holding back his child support payments. She didn’t know how she was going to pay bills or have an apartment or a car or anything.

I remember her crying. Bursting into tears. The sadness streaming from her face into her upward turned hands.

My heart broke. I could not figure it out. My little brain was not able to comprehend what I just heard. I was sure what I heard meant something else. Something had to be wrong; my dad would never do anything like that, he loved us, or at least I thought he did at the time. I saw him cry when we last saw him right after he mowed the lawn for the first and last time at the rental place we had off base in Wurzburg, Germany, maybe it was for the loss of life style the divorce would mean to him.

My grandfather just sat there. If I had been older I probably would have seen a cynical look on his face like he didn’t believe the emotions being displayed. Maybe money had been borrowed before. Maybe he just hated the idea of reaching deep.

And deep he reached.

Before my mom finally found a job at the New Port Richey Public library, and we could have Pizza Hut once every two weeks my grandparent would treat us to Rax, or Arby's, or McDonalds.

My Grandmother was a coupon clipper and somehow always had a way to get bunch of free anythings.

I remember one summer we had a freezer full of McDonalds cheese burgers. They cost something like a nickel a piece. My Grandparents were very generous with stuff that cost almost nothing. By the end of that summer though, the freezer was filled with yellow wrappers with nary a burger in sight.

The genetics of having two sons.

This time he bought my mom a Datsun and helped us move into a two bedroom apartment. The apartment was cool for the sole fact that it sat on stilts and me and my brother would challenge each other to see who could climb the furthest underneath without being freaked out by spiders and snakes, this was Florida after all and I am pretty positive, now, that everything we might have spotted under those building would have been poisonous.

I wonder in thirty years will I look back on myself now and shake my head as vigorously as I am at the kid willing to do the things I did then.

I remember the cypress grooves and dry runoff lakes. From playing World War II in Germany we played Christopher Columbus here, until we met civilian kids and I saved a little boy from getting his head smashed in by a giant rock.

I took the rock from the other little boy who was about to throw it and told him, “don’t do that.”

For some reason he listened to me. I felt like a hero. The boy I saved had a trail of blood leaking for a wound over his eye. I took a closer look at it. "Go home" I told him and he ran off. I tried to talk to the other kids and they just looked at me like I had done something impressive.

There was a girl there, in a year I would meet her doppelganger, and be secretly enthralled for decades.

I hadn’t learned the politics of being a kid in Pasco County yet. I would get harsh lessons in it later, but today I saved a life, or so I like to think. Maybe they were just playing catch the rock with your face.

Who knows.

Maybe both.

After moving into this apartment complex I wanted to help pay the rent. Or maybe make some money to buy fireballs those candy balls of cinnamon that hurt so good. If my dad wasn’t going to step up, at ten I felt like I was the man of the house anyway so I asked my mom, “Could I go to Publix and collect the buggies?”

“Probably.”

I thought about it for a second, sometimes I had to be very literal with my mom, “and get paid?”

She laughed before answering, “probably not.”

Favorite Color

What is our future? Where are we going? As a people we are split, if you believe the polls, then equally right down the middle one side red one side blue and 6% will bend with the wind.

I have a hard time believing this. Not because I don’t know it to be true, but because why is it we believe so much in our party and not in our country. Voting should be for America. America should benefit by voting.

I am a student of history. I love the past. It is imagination fodder.

With the current state of our country, assuming you are reading this and call the States home, reminds me of pre-civil war America. The lines are so easily drawn. There are people who have no hope of working. 30% of African American males in New York City don’t have jobs. There are people hanging empty chairs.

I know, I know, to hang an empty chair does not mean anything, unless you happened to watched Clint Eastwood’s RNC address, he pretends that in an empty chair is Barack Obama. So the chairs hung in effigy are in fact a dangling representation of our president.

Where else have I seen this done… oh yeah the middle east, then someone burns an American flag and stomps on it.

I think Mitt Romney is a funny guy. He is the best candidate for president the republicans could have thrown up against Barack Obama if they secretly wanted Obama to win. I love how a vote for him would be a vote against 47% of the country. I love how they play a video from 2008 where Obama states you can’t change Washington from the inside. Its simple math there really, he was an outsider entering Washington to make changes. I love how Anne Romney is begging the press to take it easy on her and Mitt, because politics is hard and it is not easy doing this stuff.

When Obama ran for president, the toughest thing about him was his wife. As hard-nosed as he was I had a sense Michelle was even harder. She is the woman behind the man. A true power couple. He has charisma and she has the muscle, and then it can be reversed he is the muscle and she is the charisma. Anne and mitt can go back to being millionaires for all I care or billionaires or whatever the fuck they are. But honestly again I am more concerned with how divided we are as a nation. The vitriol, the angst and the pretend lynching’s. One side believes assault rifles are Ok, the other side believes owning a gun advocates murder.

Bringing words to a gun battle makes no sense so if it came to battle its not hard to imagine a winner.

I registered as Green party member here in New York, but am a pure independent, I would have voted for Ron Paul, I swear, but I am a green party member because it is my favorite color. If we competed in politics like we do in sports having a two leagues with one team a piece, sports would get either boring real fast or violent as hell when one side loses to the other.

I am scared for this country it feels like we have forgotten why we vote every four years, it truly is not for a favorite color people.

So again I ask, what is our future? Where are we going?

Achieving a Through Line

I believe there is no consistency in this blog. I am aware that a blog is meant to house a specific idea like cooking or sci-fi toys. When I set out to write this blog it was with as much regularity as I could muster.

I was supposed to follow that norm and find a specific through line. I don't think I met this challenge specifically. However this medium has allowed me a space to generate thoughts, a place to play with words, a space to invite others into a conversation.

Though a conversation is certainly lacking, feel free to comment.

I want to talk about challenges and where we come from and what we are doing and what we hope to do with our futures as a people and as individuals.

Though this blog has no through line, I believe I am writing about something specific, human achievement.

It may be from the scope of one man, be it my achievement or those achievements of bigger men. I want to write about the how, why and the what.

I want to explain where I came from and where I hope to go.

Speaking of achievements this morning I went for a run.

I ran most of 3.72 miles I walked a bit and stretched my calves, but am proud to say this is my best run yet since getting back into it from my tendon injury.

During my run I was thinking about the political process I thought how through all the arguments we are still connected. I thought about Paternity. If we each follow the progression of our immediate families backward to just the middle ages we will find we have over 1 billion ancestors. A certain percentage of that number are duplicates, so the real number is like 3 million ancestor have lived from the middle ages till now for any given person on the planet. I don’t even know how to calculate how many generations that would have to include in this number.

3 million ancestors.

That number is simply astounding.

And there was this one guy sitting alone in the desert one hundred thousand years ago who started it all. All human beings can trace their DNA back to him. If a time machine were to be and he was meet everyone on earth would need to call him Grandpa.

Now that’s an achievement and a through line to be proud of.

Roaming for Everything

Be willing to sacrifice everything you've got. When you are willing to put it all on the line, you are unstoppable.

I have no clue who said this originally. It was not me. I am copying a tweet by someone with the tweeter handle @NavysealPTtest

I wondered aloud "Does this mean running over kids and old people to achieve a goal?"

They responded back, "you are insane."

Then I wondered back to them, "what exactly does everything mean if not an inclusion of all things without exception."

I read everything as everything not a few select things or a choice between A, B or C. I Think Spartans which translates to, EVERYTHING!

If it wasn’t everything then shouldn’t the quote be “…within reason…” Moderation did not win any war. In Vietnam we gave 50k our enemy gave millions.

Whose embassy evacuated again?

Everything means everything.

I think i may have sacrificed everything a few times in my life, but I don’t have any babies to throw under busses. I am thinking about my decision to move to Italia. More succinct it was moving to Europe and then once there I would make a decision whether it would be to Germany or Italy I would go.

I remember planning for the trip. Making a list and then packing a big back pack with some of the stuff in it. I slipped on my shoulders and thought fuck me.

That bitch was heavy.

I took a bus to D.C. and then fumbled my way to Dulles international.

Somehow I found my plane and flew to Amsterdam. My first stop. It trickled back to me that my sister in law thought, “I would never find my way out of there again.”

Honestly wish I never had.

I want to go back there so bad.

I explored, but not much of the city. It was Queens day, or some such thing, and a fair, with rides and stuff. I avoided it. It reminded me to much of the Boys Town scene in the Disney movie Pinocchio.

Got me a bit freaked out actually.

I wouldn’t even walk within a block if it.

I camped at a place far outside the city center. I set up my little one person tent and spread my two blankets out on the ground and went back to the red light district.

Jet lag hit me square in the face. I don’t think I recovered for the three days I remained in the Netherlands. I don’t think I recovered until on a bus bound for Rome.

I had no plan in Rome. I had no Hostel lined up, I knew of no camping ground. I knew nothing of the local public transportation. I was traveling in a certain direction, south. Beyond that I was living by the traveller’s motto, leap and the net will catch you.

Nearing Rome I started exploring by approaching an Italian woman who smiled at me on the bus. She was sitting alone so I jumped up to her seat and started a conversation. We talked about Sicily and where she was coming from and mostly what I was doing. The last part of conversation led to a quick education about Rome. Everything touristy was within the old wall and the subway only ran in a few directions. If I wanted to get to the center of town I needed to take the subway to the train station.

She invited me to stay with her and she would show me where to go and what to do.

I bought her a slice of pizza when got off the bus and she showed me the subway.

I was so naïve I saw the signs all over the subway, “Uscita.” And I thought it was directing me to a bank.

I followed it always finding an exit out of the subway.

My education in all things Italian started at zero.

Everything means everything. Give it all or nothing, sometimes you lose everything by giving it all, sometimes you gain what you always wanted, or something you never knew you wanted in the first place.

I wanted to find work and find stability, instead I found adventure and a collection of memories that I will bring to my death bed and be happy to dwell on.

Running Fool

I ran this morning. 2.6 miles and it sucked. My shins hurt and I had to stop and stretch several times.

Sad really that It wasn’t that long ago I was close to double digits in miles.

I was running every day and felt good then all of a sudden I felt heavy and started tripping and falling down a lot during my runs. After an MRI it turns I had been stricken with tendonitis, a serious debilitating ailment that the VA completely ignored after diagnosing. It sucked and it sucks to fall running even when pushing a ten minute mile pace.

Once in queens I tripped going downhill. I saved my self by doing a ninja roll midair. I swear I flipped forward and somehow landed on my hip. Popped up and ran to the bottom of the hill and then got lost and turned around and walked home. I wasn’t in pain I just didn’t feel right. I hate when I start a run and halfway through need to stop and walk. No matter how far I have jogged it always seem like the distance back is so much farther and takes three times as long.

When I fell running down the hill I was trying out a new path. The hill was steep as fuck. Meaning it was the ultimate in steepness. As ultimate in steepness as Flushing New York can offer and I was running in sneakers then.

When I lost my balance under the Brooklyn Bridge I was running barefoot, well in those Skele-toe things and I fucked up all types of things in my foot, I like to blame this moment, but really it might have just been running itself that did the damage and not one specific run, but them all.

It was a really long run. I ran through Park Slope, Borerum hill, Downtown Brooklyn, and Dumbo, over the Manhattan Bridge through China Town and thought about running over the Brooklyn bridge which is something I would like to do some day, but missed the street I needed to run cross town on to get to the ramp. So I ended up running underneath it instead.

By underneath I mean the bridge is above me and I ran over one street across one median and then across another street and that was it.

Except I fell, well almost fell. I was the strangest thing. I tripped over a thick portion of air or something lost my balance and almost tumbled into oncoming traffic. Basically to picture this properly you need to envision a twenty foot cement thing and imagine some rando guy trying to catch his balance as he falls straight across it.

I grabbed onto a traffic cone or a wooden police divider or something like that at the last minute and narrowly avoided being killed by traffic leaving the city going to Brooklyn.

Of course this did not happen in a place like when I fell in queens.

In queens it was 5 in the morning and pitch black plus I did a ninja roll and in my head looked cool as fucking hell.

Under the Brooklyn Bridge there was a traffic cop standing just five feet away who started screaming like she was witnessing a murder as soon as I started to fall and she was standing next to a construction worker.

When I stopped myself just short of dying I looked over at her and mimed, whew, and smiled before taking off running again with my surest stride.

After me I heard her yell, “Hey.”

I ignored her and continued to run against the light. I am pretty sure she wanted to lecture me or give me a ticket for jaywalking.

I ran from a cop. I am such a criminal.

Probably not, but at least I didn’t have to stop and stretch my calves.

Gas Attack

I finally fell asleep. I gave up on Manning and the Broncos after their fourth turnover so whenever that was, I tossed and turned for a bit and next I know the smoke alarm was going off.

A white flashing light blinked on and off and a blare followed by silence, then a blare again. I tried to ignore it. I wanted it to go away. It didn’t. I sniffed at the air, no smoke, I got up, my wife got up, she was freaked out, I wanted the noise not to mean danger. She as well wanted the same thing. I find it funny that she owns a 12 foot ladder. We keep it in the home office turned extremely big closet; she grabbed it and opened it beneath the alarm.

I went to my laptop and typed in fire department, I wasn’t sure if I should call. What do you do when the alarm goes off? One would think the good guys would know immediately of our danger. I didn’t. Never had this happen before. I watched my wife climb the ladder while I sat and listened for the sirens.

There were no sirens, but Olivia managed to silence the alarm by pressing on a button, but the flashing light remained and we could hear more alarms going off below and above us.

She released the button and our alarm returned to full blast. After a few more experiments we were pretty confident we were in a situation of unknown consequences.

I call the fire department number near Metrotech. It kind of made sense to me, sleep addled as I was, that the fire department would be down there. That’s where the 911 offices are.

Someone got stabbed many times and died near Metrotech. I have jogged through it when running to the city over the Manhattan Bridge, but when I called Item C on Google maps all I got a inaudible voicemail where the only things I could actually hear was “fire department” and “leave a message.”

That didn’t make any sense.

It probably said something like, “this is not the fire department , if you want Steve leave a message.”

But who knows, I didn’t call it back.

I called 911 instead.

911 in the city.

I called 911 and it connected immediately. There was silence on the other end, I looked at my phone and saw time was ticking by, meaning I was connected so I replaced the phone to my ear and immediately heard a cackle of laughter some place deep in what I pictured as a huge room, which was covered by the loud demand, “State the nature of your emergency.”

“Shit.” I might have said. Followed by, “umm the fire alarm is going off in my apartment, err building and I am not---”

She interrupts me, ‘What’s your address?”

I tell her.

“What cross streets is your building between?”

I tell her something, but one of the streets is wrong, I thought I was right at the time, I found out earlier today I was wrong. I fired off the answer. The street I gave her is somewhere near here, whatever. I don’t think anyone died due to my mistake. If they did I’ll apologize to them later, if I am completely wrong about death.

“What’s your name, and number?”

I give it to her.

“Hold the line.”

A moment later after a squelch it almost seems like the 911 lady is talking to herself, “Fire dispatch, alarm in progress, reporter on the line, go ahead reporter.” I wasn’t sure what was happening so I stayed quiet.

The lady’s voice asked me, “is there an alarm?” I swear she sounded the exact same as the first lady but more, I don’t know, sympathetic.

“Yes.”

She repeated my address and asked, “Is this correct?”

Please wait outside we have trucks en route.

I told Olivia we needed to go outside. She grabbed her wallet and I grabbed mine and pulled on a pair of workout pants, slipping my phone into a pocket. I thought about grabbing my laptop, but negated that decision thankful for renters insurance and Google documents.

Outside the air was nice. There was a breeze. I hadn’t noticed in my apartment how stuffy it was, how hard to breathe it was getting. Being outside under the night sky felt like I was being released from a huge bear hug.

My chest hurt, but that may have been from the longish run I did just the day before. It took no time for the trucks to pull up. We marveled at how fast they arrived, “probably couldn’t wait for a call.”

Silence.

“Bored as shit with no more chili to eat.”

Silence.

“Fire fighters eat chili, by the way, like all the time.”

Silence.

The tallest man I have stood next to walked up and asked, “What’s going on?”

And I realized on the street I couldn’t hear the alarm. I hoped it was still going off. That would have sucked to have three trucks of angry firefighters accusing me of pulling a prank.

“The alarm is going off,” I said.

“Either of you have a key?”

You don’t need a key I thought, just lift the front half the building up and walk on through.

“Sure we do,” Olivia says.

We follow him to the door and I drop my key into a hand twice as big as mine. He doesn’t move to use it.

Olivia leans forward around him unlocking the door as he peers in.

I take the key from his hand which hasn’t moved since I give it to him and he moves through the door, and I swear to Christ he had to duck.

We walked up to the apartment with him and he said, “Ok that’s the Carbon Monoxide alarm.” He repeated the information into his walkie-talkie. “Prop this door and go outside.”

Olivia did what he asked and I watched and then we moved back down to the street. In New York you never meet your neighbors, unless you are all avoiding death and a bunch of firemen are going door to door demanding everyone leave. This was happening on the way to the street.

Numbers like 100 and this floor is at 150 were being said into walkie-talkies. It sounded bad.

They were taking it serious and all I could think of was I didn’t look at my hair before leaving the apartment.

Remember Her

My wife pulls out her phone. “Someone called,” she looks at the caller ID, “Lucien” she said, “Twice,” frowning.

He called twice?” I ask.

Then as if responding her phone rings again while in her hand. She gets up from the table and takes the call. “Lucien.”

I nod.

As they talk I do whatever mindless thing I was doing prior to the interruption, drooling if memory serves.

A while later she comes back and tells me, “Karen died.”

“Who.”

“Do you remember the woman at Lucien and Eliza’s wedding, she gave that long speech crying?”

"Then danced the rest of the day with that older man?”

“Yeah.”

I did remember her. “She died?” I questioned. It didn’t feel right. My memory of that woman and death did not fit together. “How?”

“Breast Cancer.”

She was so alive six months ago, “she died?” it did not seem right those words and that memory. That woman who cried so hard at the microphone while giving a speech. She let her heart flow and the words had meaning. I don’t remember them individually, I can only remember thinking it was a speech someone gave to someone they love and are letting them go, releasing them, saying goodbye, I remember he is yours now, though I doubt she said that.

I had wondered why she was so emotional.

She was saying goodbye. Maybe they had moments after. Maybe it wasn't a complete surprise to the groom, her friend. Maybe she was practicing, maybe, maybe, maybe, "She died?"

"Yeah."

I remember her dancing. It was during dinner right after the speeches. The music started and she was there on the dance floor. Shoes off and she was going, doing it, visiting funky town and I think about the quote dance like no one is watching and she was actually doing it. She didn’t seem to care which song was playing. She closed her eyes and she just did it. We all were watching. She didn’t care. She never left the dance floor. I thought maybe she was drunk, but she never had a beverage in hand, or at least she wouldn’t in my mind, nor do I now think she was drunk on a fermented beverage, maybe on life, maybe taking it, savoring the last bite, enjoying the last drop.

How can someone live that hard at the end, so free, and make it look so easy.

In my mind she knew she dying on that day, in my memory, she will always be more alive than anyone else in that room.

I never met her. We never spoke. Somehow though I think I will remember her for the rest of my life.

In that maybe she earned immortality, in that maybe she deserves it.

Threats of dying later rather then sooner

I have had an interesting day.

Or frustrating.

A 24 hour period of flip flopping emotion. A day filled with activities that either caused me emotional elation, physical harm, or absolute mental anguish.

Last night I tried to reformat a removable hard drive and wiped my lap tops ability to boot up. I went to sleep wishing I had prepared a recovery disk and wondered how the fuck I would fix it.

I have discovered working on things like a busted computer while tired and angry and frustrated is a good way to break things even more. So I down loaded the recovery information from my wife's 64 bit system crossed my fingers and checked my hard drive for issues then crashed for the night myself.

My plans for the morning had already been made way before the malfunctioning computer. I was going to wake up and head to the V.A. for a fasting lipid's test.

Oh joy.

Upon opening my eyes I stumbled into the living room thankful my feet have stopped hurting but wishing all the same I could start running again.

Soon I keep telling myself, soon.

I glanced at the screen to my comp. The words in yellow lines of dialouge said “passed,” which told me all three tests I had run had been successful and that my computer should start with no problems.

So I restarted it.

“Haha,” it told me doing exactly what it did last night, “no boot record found hit enter.”

I'll hit enter, I thought as I hit enter over and over again wanting to see pieces of laptop flying off the machine in all directions.

The animated meme with the stick figure getting mad at his comp and pounding his extremities against it until he has lost all his fingers both arms and every tooth from his head, enters my head as well.

Love that flash anime.

I stopped before it was too late.

For the computer and for myself.

I was irritated and wanted to smoke a cig and eat a very fatty breakfast with a big steaming cup of coffee, but instead I brushed up teeth and slipped jeans over my boxers and kissed the wife goodbye and went to give my blood to the government.

As I neared the door she yelled after me, “fix your hair at least!”

I quickly glance in the mirror and ran my fingers through my tangled locks, satisfied it was at least not standing up in tufts and let the door slam behind me.

I got a seat on the R, one of those awkward seats stuck facing into the train but right next the seat facing towards the back of the train. A man was taking up both of those seats slouching forward. On the way to Manhattan his knees kept touching my leg. I could see him out of the corner of my eye and wondered if he was doing it on purpose. Fuck him, I thought and banged my knee into his thigh. He sat up.

I was happy for a minute.

I read till Union

Once there I got off and headed to the L to take me to 1st Avenue. The L is down a few sets of stairs and if wanting to go down when a train has just arrived it is virtuely impossible without standing ones ground and barreling forward.

Its either easy to be rude here or unavoidable its hard to tell which.

This morning no train arrived while walking down the stairs, but one did arrive as I decided I wanted to be further down the platform.

It was the West bound train pulling in. I hurried to pass the stairs and was pinched against the wall when I was polite enough to allow a guy to walk through a head of me not realizing behind him was a stream of people who had witnessed my momentary bit of politeness and were swarming in to take advantage. I pushed through feeling my knee strike the soft flesh of some woman’s stomach. Through the podcast blaring in my ears I hear an angry mutter behind me. I ignore it. Thats why I wear ear-buds, they make it easy to ignore everything whether they are actually producing sound or not.

The east bound train pulls up and the rest of the trip to the V.A. happens.

I wait an hour to give them my sample and then make my way home.

I am in Brooklyn when I am pulled from my book by the angry utterance, “I will kill you if you sneak up on me!”

I look immediately to my left and see a young lady just walking onto the train from the Court street station pushing a baby carriage. Right in front of her is a hunched over dark blur of frayed clothing pushing a little shopping cart.

I look again at the young woman and she doesn’t move she stays planted in place, but the dark blur moves away from us to stand on the opposite end of the car.

Again I wonder if people actually live on the trains of New York, never leaving, picking up lost articles of clothing and things found on the ground and avoiding exits.

I like the idea of a community of people living with in the tunnels.

On the trains.

Roasting rats at night.

I get off at Union and walk home.

Once in the door I find out the 64 bit operating system will not work to restore my 32 bit lap top so I seek other alternatives.

I download a windows 7 recovery disk off the internet and plug the removable memory into my computer after I unzip it.

Now as I have watched the little blue bar move acorss my screen for the last hour I get a call.

My primary care doc tells me that my 3% chance of developing heart disease in the next 50 years has been reduced to 1.5%

yay.

Breakfast and Three felonies

Driving a car while texting is pretty dumb, but I did it all the time.

I smoked cigarettes and fight the urge everyday not to pick up the habit again.

Both are activities I am now seeing on the TV in very painful to watch public service announcements.

Wheezing lady being handed a cup of water by her child.

A coughing man over a sink.

Both PSA’s end with the tag line dying from smoking is painful… I don’t doubt it… I really don’t, never did in fact.

Then the other toughy is the one where the guy was asking, “where are you,” in a text, but gets in an accident and now wants to die because he has a traumatic brain injury. I definitely would not want to suffer from that either.

I don’t know how the rest of the country handles these issues, but this is what I did to remedy them, I moved to New York City. Number one most expensive city in the grand ole USA.

Cigarettes cost 15 fucking dollars a pack here. Easy decision right there, if I want to smoke it is almost dollar a cigarette. Fuck that.

I don’t own a car, meaning I take public transportation available, 24 hour a day, everywhere I want and have to go. Meaning I get to text whenever I want, given signal availability.

So I am watching a football game, a team called the Jets are beating another team called the Bills, badly I might add, and in-between beer and cell phone commercials with pretty people doing pretty people things, these PSA’s come on with not pretty people dying of lung cancer, or with traumatic brain injuries telling me how life changing or ending these habits are and I think to myself why are we seeing them?

Aren’t there worse epidemics in this country?

In 2010 10 million violent and property crimes were committed.

In 2010 500,000 cancer deaths happened.

In 2010 4000 cell phone related car accident deaths were recorded.

My brain is wired for conspiracy theory, so right away I think, “it’s for the medical costs associated with them.”

if it costs money it will be addressed, if it makes money it will be ignored.

Cancer and brain damage, both medical issues that once in care for you are always in care, right?

Didn’t I read if you are brought to the emergency room dying of something the hospital can’t release you, legally, until you are stable? Big insurance has to pay really expensive bills if this correct. So maybe that answers a question as to why we aren’t seeing PSA’s for other social issues.

$

The big one that comes to mind first and foremost is that crime statistic.

In this country being a criminal makes people money. Prisons have been privatized, services within a prison or jail mean money for a community, and the governments can tax the citizens under the guise of keeping the streets clean to get that money. How clean are our streets?

Almost seems America needs its criminals to survive. I picture a dysfunctional vampire Sucking on its own neck.

Harvey Silverglate states in his book “Three Felonies a Day,” that the average American unintentionally commits three crimes every 24 hours.

Huh?

For realzies?

Silverglate goes on to say, “…federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition […that…] prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior…” on three separate occasions daily.

So basically if a cop wanted to, on any given day and they were in the right place at the right time, say to catch someone grilling 3 lobster at a Maine state park in blue checkered boxer shorts, and if that's against the law this was in no way an admission that I have ever done that, every single American could have a rap sheet.

Having a record in this country is like dying. It’s a handicap that never goes away and that can never be physical therapied away, it’s a humiliating brand in the center of one’s forehead, a death sentence, a daily excuse to give up and live by an immoral code under a bridge somewhere just waiting to get the next crime “right.”

I am not seeing any PSA’s warning our kids to be good. But for some reason we need to constantly remind them not to smoke and not to drive their cars while texting. Both are no brainers really and one would think not committing a crime would be a no brainer as well. 20% of the population have records, 41% of people in my generation of felt handcuffs placed on the wrists and have been told to, "watch your head," as they were placed into the back seat of a police cruiser. Only 30% of all American have college degrees, but 20% have records. You would think money for a truly altruistic PSA would be better spent deterring crime.

It would help two people, the criminal and the victim, which maybe liberally is 40% of the country and not just 20.

A Bald Black Dude Named Kim

Its fashion week in NYC.

I know this only because I was told if I go to Lord and Taylor’s On fifth between 38th and 39th I will get free food and drinks.

I like free drinks and I like free food. Both together and nothing is better. So I promised Olivia I would meet her and a friend of hers there.

She was coming from making money testing a game in the Flatiron district just 20 blocks south and I was coming in from Brooklyn.

She beat me there.

I was taking my time playing Skyrim and didn’t leave until 6:00 and didn’t arrive at Penn station until 6:30.

Midtown is hell any time of the year, especially right off the train near Madison Square Garden. Today was worse. I turned the wrong way out of the subway and fought the crowd a block before realizing my mistake.

I stopped and stood near a red carpet event. An MC was pumping up the crowd and the crowd was cheering. I didn’t cheer I couldn’t understand a word the guy on the mic said. The crowd cheered luke warm as if disappointment had been served already and little anticipation remained.

On the East side of the red carpet the crowd was thick. On the West I had a chance to lean up against some scaffolding inches from the carpet and send Olivia a text message.

I was curious if I was about to see famous people.

As I hit send on my phone I scanned the crowd and everyone I laid eyes on seemed to be excited, bubbling, it was contagious, I wanted to see famous people, like at a zoo and standing near an empty lion enclosure knowing at any second the king of the beasts may emerge from within his little cave and do something animalistic.

I knew I wouldn’t have long to wait until my wife texted back with more instruction on were to meet her so I decided to stay where I was until I got the text.

The crowd got excited as three women approached the red carpet. As they passed I saw too much makeup and one of the women with very little ass at the top of her legs next to one wearing a leopard print “thing” and the third was invisible between them.

I was unimpressed, but the crowd cheered and the MC said something loud into his Microphone, which was as incomprehensible as the announcement of a bored subway train operator telling the train which stop the train was at and which one was next.

Not expecting to actually see anything interesting I left walking the correct direction this time after I got the text with instruction.

I was heading to what would end up being Lord and Taylors. I skipped over her suggestion to find a key, not knowing what she meant and found her sitting on a bench on the 8th floor. Her friend who invited us had taken off and left us to our own devices, he couldn’t wait for me to show up. I felt bad, he was a fun guy, but Olivia suggested he needed to be quick because he had family stuff to deal with.

She handed me a wilted beverage she said was tequila and lemonade. It was horrible but free so I drank it down and we went looking for more.

Her goal was to unlock padlocks that would lead us to prizes. I heard her mention 2 Ipads and decided it may be worth it disgusting beverages aside, but still neglected to go get a key for myself.

After two more lemonquila’s we found equally watered down vodka and blackberry kool aide, not much better so I slammed it somehow feeling even more sober then when I walked in the building.

We found a number of lines to chat in ending with a failed twisting of a key in a pad lock.

It took three sparkling wines to actually get bored enough to look at the pamphlet I had somehow come into procession of.

We were standing in line for a T-shirt designed by a reality TV personality, some modeling show, I’d know it if I heard the name, but have never seen an episode. We meant to unlock padlocks not get t-shirts scribbled on by fashionisto want-a-bes.

The pamphlet said something about Kim Kardashian, and I asked Olivia, “the porn star?”

She nodded, looking disappointed and said, “Uh-huh.”

Finally feeling a bit buzzed we heard the crowd erupt somewhere on the second floor. I moved towards it.

My wife slowed behind me.

I wanted to see, “come on, Babe,” I requested.

She did not seem to care walking slowly behind me.

The crowd screamed again.

I looked for my wife, and she was no where. She had disappeared. Was a game of find the spouse about to begin?

I stopped, disappointed, looking for her and finally she appeared, sluggishly walking towards me as if uninterested in seeing this famous for porn person, but she was too late and the crowd was waving goodbye to Kim, who turned out is a six foot five bald black man.

What a waste.

Next year I think I will skip Fashion week and just keep playing Skyrim, free drinks or not, plus I never did find any free food.

50/50

The Margin of error for this blog is +/-100%

I am constantly on the internet. I am pretty sure I am not unique in this. I woke up this morning put on my running shorts and sat down in front of my laptop and started watching Nerdist bowling videos, I made it through three episodes of that and then watched a montage of floating images of a woman in Russia who looks like a real Barbie doll and then somehow two hours later found myself watching a video called “Tsunami- Caught on Camera.”

It was pretty sad.

The title is horrible and I imagine all the people being interviewed survived, haven’t finished watching it yet so I may be in for a surprise, but I am sure I witnessed a lot of death peripherally recorded by those cameras. Some of the scariest non 9/11 stuff I have ever watched… that I can think of right now.

I never made it the end of the collection of 9 minute videos, because my wife woke up and asked me two questions, “Did I run, and did I write.”

I said, “No,” to the first question and she laughed and patted my belly.

It was so easy not to run actually. I just fell into an internet induced trance. There is no time limit though and maybe sometime today I will go for a jog.

Though I doubt it.

Being lazy sucks.

When I told her, “No, not yet,” to the writing inquiry she glared at me and demanded, “Write.”

“I will,” I told her.

And she said “Now.”

I laughed, and said, “I will, eventually,” but knew I wouldn’t get any more tsunami video watched until I did.

Sitting in front of the computer passively watching Youtube video is so much different than actually trying to come up with a concept to write about.

So I concentrated on reading Igoogle articles.

I noticed a cosmetic company's stock went up 30% and Nokia jumped 3.1%

I find that interesting, that a cordless charging invention would only help a company’s stock by 3 points but an age defying makeup product would make a company 30 points richer.

I am going to share a secret, looking young when you are old is a fake attempt to live forever.

Nobody is going to say, “Wow I can’t believe she was 80.” when a user of those products dies.

I claim False advertising!

Speaking of which, brings me to the point of all this rambling.

From there I read about what I would be watching this evening at the DNC.

Julian Castro the major of San Antonio is supposed to be the big draw. CNN said he was a Latino, which made him male, but I swear couldn’t Julian be a girl’s name also? I thought about it and even asked my wife, who said, “I have never met a girl named Julian.”

Still have my doubts whether Julian is a hermaphroditic name or not. Maybe I will never know. I sure do wish I had a resource to search for answers to questions like this.

What an invention that would be.

Now finally the point.

CNN also told me Obama is so close to Romney in the polls that there is no clear way to guess what is going to happen in November.

This boggles my mind; my mind is as boggled as it was in 2004 when I heard people were going to reelect George Bush Jr. My mind is so boggled that I had to come up with 2 excuses as to why the polls are so close.

1:

The numbers are only being reported as close so that people will pay closer attention and watch the news more. It’s a ploy for ratings.

Going the route of conspiracy right off that bat makes me nervous for my sanity. So I quickly came up with, 2:

I worked a lot of phone jobs. I sold stuff, and asked for donations, and conducted polls, answered questions, basically made very little money doing a bunch of hate your life type work.

The work sucks, but I learned something, people don’t like to be called. People don’t like to be called to the point that they are rude and hang up on real living breathing American people attempting to make a living and pay rent. I could have been a brother, cousin, classmate, or stranger on the street and I was told to die. I was told to find a real job. I was told to do things to myself that I am positive could get me locked up in Utah.

Disease was wished upon my being all because a machine dialed a number and someone on the other end picked up.

So…. how the hell are, as the Rasmussen report FAQ section states, digitally recorded questions fed through an automated dialer, actually getting valid results.

Who the fuck is answering these poll questions?

I will answer myself and say, old people and rednecks who live in the sticks.

I am biased.

I like Obama.

I think four more years with him as president might make our sinking ship of a country sink a bit slower. I think with this Nobel Peace Prize winner at our helm we might be able to figure out a way to cooperate with other countries around the globe and figure out a way to right what has gone so terribly wrong.

But with my cellphone having self no one is asking me what I think, and even if I answered the call, which most likely I would not, I would probably tell machine or person to go fuck themselves.

Chasing the Wheat Dragon

Science is making us fat.

Genetically manipulated super wheat makes us want to eat 500 more calories a day. It makes us want to eat. Ironic actually that we get hungry, we eat food and the food makes us hungrier, so we eat more food.

Wasn’t that a twilight Zone Episode?

One of Dante’s nine layers of hell?

A H.P. Lovecraft Story?

It shouldn’t be real.

But it is.

I bet if we needed less sleep we would be inhaling even more calories. I think this works out perfect for the food industry, just like it works out for crack dealers; give them a product that keeps them coming back for more and the money will just roll in.

They say this super wheat binds to the same pleasure receptors in the brain as opium does.

To seek that original feeling of satisfaction after the first time using a drug user is Chasing the Dragon, because the addict will never again, ever, feel like they did when they used for that very first time, but they will chase that idea of getting that high each and every time they use.

Do they make Methadone for food yet?

As a kid my mom would buy us wheat bread. She did it to make us healthy, because white bread was bad for us, but actually she just made us hungrier. My poor mom and all the other poor moms out there who skipped over the wonder bread in favor of the brown stuff, they just made their kids fat as hell.

I think I have read corn has been engineered in this exact same way.

Well just fuck us silly.

Food is engineered to stroke the pleasure centers of our brains anyway, right? If we did not like to eat wouldn’t it be more of a chore? It makes sense for it to be a survival thing to like the activity. But I love how this food will mimic, “trigger,” similar reaction a drug addict or alcoholic has with their drug of choice, making us want to “do” more food.

I would like to think it was an accident. That in a lab somewhere way back in the 50’s a chemist saw the compound he had just developed deep inside this new genetically enhanced wheat germ and just did not see how it would affect the brain. I am sure he just wasn't given the opportunity to call over his boss and say, “Shit dude this wheat will just make people hungrier, that defeats the whole purpose of eating, right?”

And I am sure if the chemist had made this discovery and called over his boss, his boss would have said, “Well I am sure glad you made this discovery, that would have been great for the bottom line, people eating 25% more then they need to survive daily, but we can’t allow this out into the market, too dangerous. Let’s start over”

That scene works best if you imagine Wally and the Beaver.

How cynical can I be that I know the exact opposite is how it actually went down, that someone wanted to be 25% richer.

I am sure this is closer to the reality of the real conversation.

Chemist says, “Hey I just invented a way to make people hungrier.”

Boss replies, “That’s awesome here is a raise and stock options, don’t tell anyone.”

60 years ago they designed food to make us hungrier and now we all are too fat, with high triglycerides, BMI’s off the charts and bad cholesterol dripping from our pores. I guess the 25% more daily calorie intake is valued higher then longer life expectation and normal food intake.

Funny how numbers work, huh?