I Love a Parade

The movie "Blue Velvet," if I remember correctly, opens with a sort of surrealistic parade scene (and a severed left ear). It's a bizarre movie, and capturing the spectacle of a parade sets the tone, since parades are some the strangest fucking things I've ever seen.
I recently attender a Memorial Day parade. People in passing vehicles distributed candy, and my kids raked it in like it was Halloween. What's better than a lollipop that has just rolled across the street?
Participants in the parade included people who were trying to sell cars; people who were trying to get you to adopt dogs; people who were trying to get you to send your kids to summer camp; fire trucks; more fire trucks; cheerleaders; high-school marching bands, in full regalia in the wilting heat; cops (waving); firemen in kilts playing bagpipes; gymnasts, who had attendants walking alongside them spraying them with, I guess, water, but it was in one those pump sprayers used to put weedkiller on the lawn, so maybe they were actually spraying the kids with poison (now that would be a parade); baton twirlers; people riding bikes, including one that looked suitable for a circus clown (meanwhile, the guy who owns the local bike shop did handstands on his skateboard); my kids' friends from little league, riding in a truck while their fathers walked behind; old guys, some of whom appeared to be veterans, riding in pickups and waving; politicians (waving); and my personal favorite, the guys and gals who looked like Hell's Angels, riding their Harley Davidsons too fast, vests adorned with MIA patches and something like "Bikers for Christ" stitched across the back. God has Hell's Angels in his corner. I still don't understand why they were there or what they have to do with Memorial Day or whatever. But I suppose you have to populate a parade somehow. Sometime early in the parade a 12-foot guy dressed like Uncle Sam zigged to one curb and zagged to the other. I'm guessing he had stilts under that patriotic outfit.
We even got one of those things you use to secure a better grip on a hard-to-open jar, except this one contained some sort of religious message. Not sure about the thought process involved there. "Hmm, let's quorum up and figure out how to spread the word. I got it: The things people use to get a better grip on lids." Maybe some people use them frequently and, as such, will see the word a lot. Maybe the plan is ingenious.  They should have handed out toilet paper with Bible verses.
Our bounty also inluded, I think, seven Frisbees. What the hell, it was Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer, and nothing says summer like a Frisbee. And nothing reminds me more of our fallen service members than a Frisbee.The kids use these for bases while playing baseball, then the dog bites them in half.
The kids also seemed to think there was nothing unusual about it all; why not have motorcycle guys proselytizing and the high-school marching band and the girls in their gymnastics outfits and the car-dealer sales pitches? It's capitalism and God and candy and gymnasts and veterans and motorcycles and dogs. It's America. If I couldn't embrace God, catch a Frisbee, eat candy, dodge motorcycles and listen to marching bands, I might be distraught.

Why

Recently I wondered how a friend, a Catholic laywoman who teaches religious-education classes, can reconcile being divorced and having a boyfriend with her faith. My wife said there wouldn't be any Catholics if they had to follow the rules. Yet I remember as a boy Father O'Keefe saying you couldn't have it both ways, and the pope seems to echo that message.
I had a recent conversation with another friend in which we discussed educational options for our children, and I asked her whether she believed in God, because I know she doesn't attend church services. She said believed in God and that it was important for her husband that their two kids receive the sacraments, like first communion and confirmation. She said they had to be better about their religious practices.
I don't attend church, either, but I didn't exactly tell her that I don't believe in God. Having grown up with Catholic indoctrination, I naturally turned to prayer for relief from the crippling anxiety I experienced as a younger man. Suicide seemed like a logical solution, but the Church forbade it; logic and the Church don't especially walk hand in hand.
So I told this friend I had prayed for relief, persistently, from certain burdens, but no relief arrived. That shook my faith and set me off on a path of seriously questioning what up to that point had remained gospel, so to speak. Getting out from under an upbringing in which religion played an outsize role can be tortuous and protracted. Especially when believing brings comfort. It's nice to think that a beneficent higher power watches over mankind and has our interests at heart and will cradle us in his arms when we die. It's just that experience indicates otherwise. And if you don't believe in our God, we'll kill you, motherfucker. Perhaps life is a trial and eternal reward awaits. Probably not for me, I guess, since I've had the temerity to pose questions, such as:

Why do people kill their children? Are they nuts? If so, why did God allow these nuts to be born, let alone have children? Free will, my mother would say. God gave us free will, so we can kill at will.

Why do people suffer from depression? Not the blues because, say, the Steelers lost (I have seen some crestfallen Steelers fans, and domestic violence has been documented to increase on Super Sunday). But debilitating depression, the kind that makes you submit to having electricity course through your skull.

Why do other diseases exist, like cancer and Alzheimer's and the like? 

Why do people text and drive? Or walk and text? Maybe, and this appears to be pervasive, because they're inconsiderate. They have the right to impose on others.

Why do people lie? Usually self-interest, I'd wager, which begs the question about why people are selfish. And inconsiderate.


Why do human beings wage war? Again, self-interest could be the likely culprit. With war comes suffering and death.

Why do people rape? Sure, psychologists have explanations, but why did God allow for the psychological conditions that motivate rape? If, in fact, they are the reasons.

Why do some people have excessive wealth while others sit on the streets in tattered clothes and ask for money?

Why was I born today, Life is useless like Ecclesiastes say? That's Pete Townshend, so I can't take credit. 

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Why are some people ugly and others attractive?

Why do imbeciles proliferate?

Why didn't I hit the lottery? I played. If I had prayed, might I have won? If I had done the St. Theresa thing or the Prayer to Saint Joseph? I used those prayers as a younger man, and not for anything material, but just to feel all right. They're supposed to get you what you want, goddamnit.

Why does free will make some people self-destructive? That's probably the pain.

So why do we hurt?

And why did my best friend die?

Why can't I get past myself to surrender to religion? I might feel better if I could.

John Doe

Mary Chapin Carpenter has a song called "John Doe No. 24," which I thought about when I received notification that someone carrying my brother's wallet was found unconscious on the street and lay in a medically induced coma in the hospital. John Doe #12. They needed someone to identify him, and I agreed. He wasn't easily recognizable, but there my brother was, a ventilator handling the bulk of his breathing.
Not too long before this incident I considered how my sons, separated by three years, fight like this brother and I did growing up. The difference being that eight years separates us. He always wanted to watch "The Flintstones," while I preferred "Ultraman." I loved "Ultraman."
This brother never appeared to give much thought to the fact that he was wrestling someone eight years his junior when he would kneel on my arms and rock his knees back and forth across my biceps. Perhaps because an intellectual gap didn't exist  And by the time I hit 7th grade, the physical playing field at least had leveled. I think I was in 8th grade when he grabbed our mother and I had to physically intervene. Sometimes when he knelt on top of me he would encourage me to break free by exhorting me to treat him like a "nigger." Of course his rationale for remaining on unemployment and then receiving public assistance was that the niggers did it, so why shouldn't he? This coming from the same person who wouldn't try an antidepressant because he didn't want to be a drug addict. Sometimes he would pull up my shirt and swing his long red hair on my stomach because it tickled, and not in a good way. I once had a schnauzer given to me by my mother's co-worker. I won Gretel over by feeding her peanuts or something like that, and she would attempt to bite my brother at my command. I still derive satisfaction from the memory of him leaping onto the couch in an effort to get away from her. Eventually we had to surrender Gretel because she bit a neighborhood kid.      
My brother used to consider it cool to come into our shared bedroom and fall over drunk. When he was about 14, my mother had to roust me from bed one night to go pick him up at the police station in a nearby township because the police had corralled him wandering down the street drunk. I lay in my bed after we returned home listening to her crying and slapping him. They never have relinquished the creepy dynamic between them. She as an octogenarian and he as a middle-aged man have behaved very much like during his teen years. And they attempted to draw other family members into their destructive orbit. But I don't suppose they even knew they were doing it.
 He didn't seem to experience remorse when he drove into the detective's parked car and then hightailed it home and hid in our basement and I had to run interference. Or when he got arrested for driving the wrong way on the interstate, or smashing into the guardrail. Or when the music would rattle the walls of my adjoining bedroom at all hours when we grew a little older and he would sell drugs to a parade of unfamiliar comers and goers.
I don't think he ever possessed the intellectual capability to process that he had done something wrong. He always has appeared not to have the capacity for guilt. I used to marvel at his resilience in that respect. Not only was he born with a predisposition to alcoholism, he seemingly exited the womb predisposed to never feel guilt. Self-interest has driven his nearly every act.
He and a friend once destroyed the neighbor kid's metal fire engine, the kind you would sit in and pedal, and I lied to cover it up. Just like I lied when the detective whose car he hit came to our door. He spent time in jail for stealing, but that didn't stop him from stealing again. He let my psychologically compromised mother wander off in the rain and in fact would allow her to shelter and feed him for as long as she would. And he stole from her simultaneously. He, brimming with pride, once kicked the side of our car in with his new steel-toe construction boots.
All the while he considered himself smarter than everyone. And all the while our mother served as his apologist. Our father poked him with a fork at dinner so that he would remove his elbows from the table. He had dyslexia. He wasn't as good at sports as our other two brothers and me. He was used to getting attention and then I came along. She never ran out of excuses. She blamed others for his transgressions.  And were she to discover the current state of affairs, she likely would blame the rest of us for that, since we separated them by having her enter assisted living. Nothing lies beyond their potential.  
He endangered my life more than once. On a river in a small boat that he made highly unstable because he couldn't remain upright. On a motorcycle when I was in grade school, going so fast that the wind blurred my vision. When we used to go bowling on Sunday mornings and he would get the Dodge Duster up to its maximum potential before shifting into neutral and coasting.
So his recent descent created a quandary. Sad? Yes. As selfish as he has been, did he deserve to have someone identify him and ask questions about his predicament? I did it, so obviously I thought so. Should anyone be in such circumstances alone and anonymous? And he was John Doe No. 12. There are 11 others there. Someone's son or daughter, brother or sister, father or mother? I think my father died under similar circumstances, alone in a hospital, his liver shot.  I can't help but wonder to what extent the hospital should expend resources on my brother now. A lot of cost and effort are involved for someone who is not a productive member of society, a drainer of resources rather that a contributor. 
My brother has since awakened, though they describe him as incoherent. I harbor no illusion that he will have had a revelation and change his ways if he recovers. I also harbor no illusion that he he would do for me what I have done for him, modest as that may be.

As He Lay Dying-4

Time's passage allows for grief to recede slightly and the preceding years' shared experiences to come more sharply into focus. Life proceeds, and for those of us with children, it proceeds apace.
And then, in the midst of the hectic nature of life, events long past creep through, carrying along on their currents a mixture of amusement and sadness and lives lived and offering, however fleeting, moments of reflection.
For Dave and me, I've often used fishing as a prism through which to view our relationship. That's not unique; I think other people have covered that ground, that of the bond between those who fish. We fished consistently, sometimes quietly, other times boisterously, sometimes conversing, sometimes not and sometimes drinking. Partying might be an equally valid window through which to view our shared experiences. We fished, we drank, we smoked, and sometimes we did all of them at once.
But in a relationship covering roughly 30 years, we did other stuff too. Like the time we went to J.C. Penney so Dave could get suitable clothes for a job interview? The blind leading the sartorially blind. Yes, that looks quite respectable, I offered, as a 24-year-old whose taste in clothes was fashioned by a product of the Depression mother, she who allowed me to attend school sporting desert boots through which my toes poked. 
And the job to which those clothes, so carefully selected, led him somehow involved us going to an Indian, as in Native American, ceremony. To break it down, he somehow hitched on to a sort-of headhunter firm (based on his management degree), and the guy to whom he was assigned fancied Indians. So off we trekked, into the wilds of New Jersey, to experience the rain dance and the hawkers of turquoise jewelry. During the course of that trip, we discussed the responsibilities required of such a job. The guy who liked Indians also happened to manipulate people for whom he found jobs by appealing to their parents if they, the job seekers, balked: "I'm sorry, Mrs. Jones, your son's not there? Can you please tell him that the people who offered the $80,000-a-year job would like an answer?" I, maybe  idealistically, objected to the tactics, while Dave objected to my objection. But, eventually, he came around and saw things my way.

Somewhere around that time we took a New Year's Eve trip to the Poconos to visit our friends who had rented a cabin for the occasion. The most memorable part of the night was when Kevin, who I didn't know and perhaps have seen once since, ran from one room to the next, jumped, arms spread, and farted in his unsuspecting girlfriend's face as she sat on the couch. To which she replied, memorably: "Kevin, that was most vile." Dave pointed him out to me on subsequent occasions through reference to the flying fart.
On the way home from that trip, on New Year's Day, we detoured to a small airport and subsequently found ourselves in a small plane circling the mountains. When I asked the pilot about his qualifications, as we were coming in for a landing, he said he received his training right there at that little airfield. And later, Dave said to me that I expected him to say he received his training in Vietnam. He was correct, I expected his credentials to extend beyond the community airfield. But as we floated above those mountains, we transcended for a while the trials that awaited us upon our return. We lived through it, as we did so many other circumstances...

My Brave Face

Reading this book has prompted me to examine more intently a particular time in my life and reflect upon the similarities I now behold. Not that melancholia ever ventures far, though sometimes, briefly, it may lie dormant.
In the book, William Styron's daughter Alexandra recounts her father's battle with depression and how he eventually seemed to succumb to it. In this book, William Styron himself addressed his first attempt to come to terms with the depression. I've read William Styron's book more than once, but most particularly around the time when I underwent electroconvulsive therapy. I thought then that William Styron hadn't suffered enough to have been driven to a state desperate enough to contemplate taking his own life. Having read more, and gained more insight into his behavior, though, I think perhaps he had. Alcohol served as his drug of choice before he delved into doctor-prescribed treatments.
Alexandra Styron tells of her father having to cope with a severe descent into depression 15 years after the first flirtation with the thin line between madness and whatever isn't madness. I find myself now 18 years past the ECT, and I wonder if circumstances aren't threatening to come full circle. A priest once told me that wars come along about every 20 years, at least before W., and ECT is a bomb intended to incapacitate the enemy when one fights against himself.
Alexandra Styron's book also says studies have revealed that most major depressive episodes occur during the spring. My most comprehensive breakdown straddled the seasons, between winter and spring, just as I straddled the metaphorical line on one side of which lay the promise of life grounded and to the other an abyss of unknown proportions.
I commiserated with William Styron through his book. Right around the time of its publication, I also began to seek a pharmacological remedy. About 20 years later, I struggle to find a way forward within the chemical universe or to find a way out. Perhaps this place. Perhaps not.
The search for a remedy has consumed much of my adult life, and even sub-adult life, at least those moments when I wasn't resigned to the notion that no remedy existed. The quest began in high school, when I first sought a therapist's assistance, but the self-medication began in middle school, with the alcohol and marijuana.
With cognitive therapy alone offering no respite, eventually I came to a point at which I considered medication to be helpful, my life held together by chemical bonds. But now my mainstay, Effexor, doesn't really work anymore. Coming off of it, though, can be worse than staying on, and worse than depression alone, and that's where I find myself. Trying to wade through quicksand, with a lead weight in my stomach and a fire hose squirting around inside my skull. The withdrawal drives some people back to the medication itself, the vicious cycle in which one finds the cure has induced an infirmity of its own that holds an equally tight grip.
I try to conceal the pain, especially from the children, and turn to words to convey what essentially defies description, except for the apparent minority who have undergone similar experiences. The kids don't need anything else to worry about, or anything at all. I won't accept, though, any kind of stigma attached to depression. My brave face stems either from a desire to spare the feelings of those ill-equipped to handle the infirmity.
Now, though, perhaps a new avenue of research holds promise. Therein lies one of depression's dilemmas, the perpetual hope-disappointment cycle. The prospect that this treatment will cure what ails me or you. As John Hiatt says, "It's always somewhere else, you're gonna fix yourself...but you can't get away from the nagging dark." The Devil's greatest trick is making you think he doesn't exist. Maybe depression's greatest trick involves making those in its grips think a way out exists.
So, while depressives can be realists, which some people think might bring about the melancholia in the first place, they too employ tactics that fly in the face of experience. The survival mechanism, believing that something better could lie in wait. And what if it isn't just a mind game? If the next cure is the cure? How would someone who has lived a life of depression and so much time in search of the cure react to a cure's existence? Maybe I'll find out.
To that end, the avenues of research that recently have opened differ from the standard treatments of the past 30-odd years. A consensus seems to exist among psychiatric researchers that we need a better treatment. Ketamine and scopolamine, which work on the glutamate system, have become subjects of clinical trials. Their methods of action in particular appear to intrigue those involved with the research, especially because they differ starkly from Prozac and its ilk.
The promise of an effective treatment also frustrates, which people with any number of maladies experience. They work great, but you can't get them. Only those involved in the trials themselves, which, after all, do hold a risk/reward aspect. You might feel great, and the additional appendage you have spawned might not even bother you. Drugs are good. Health-care providers, however, already use ketamine and scopolamine, for anesthesia and motion sickness, respectively. Different treatment regimens likely would exist for say, car sickness and depression, but the safety profile has been established to some extent. Shouldn't people who already suffer from potentially life-threatening maladies be able to accept the risk for the potential reward? So, researchers, let's get moving. I await the next big disappointment. Except maybe, just maybe....And, if nothing else, the promise of something better will have consumed another undetermined number of years, bringing me one step closer to being a survivor.

Strange Bedfellows

Politics makes strange bedfellows. Credit for this quote widely goes to Charles Dudley Warner, a writer and friend of Mark Twain, who himself never said anything pithy.
In keeping with the spirit of strange bedfellows, what about Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum? This, according to his website:

Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990 at the age of 32, and from 1995 to 2007, served in the US Senate. In 2000, he was elected by his peers to the position of Senate Republican Conference Chairman.


Eventually, he got walloped in a Senate re-election bid. Mr. Santorum fancies himself "A Champion of Traditional American Values." That's actually the title of a PDF you can download on his site. He advocates fiscal sanity and wrote a book called "It Takes a Family." To that end, he and his wife have seven kids. The youngest, Isabella, 3 years old, is in the hospital with something called Trisomy 18, a genetic abnormality tha can cause developmental and cardiac problems. Apparently about 90% of children with this problem die before birth or result in a stillbirth. For those who survive, fewer than 1% reach age 10. A horrible situation for a little girl and her family.
The difficulties the Santorums face and his recently elevated profile bring to mind another incident involving one of their children. Their son, whom they called Gabriel, died at 20 weeks gestation in 1996. Again, tragic. And under such a circumstance, parents could have unusual reactions. But they took the dead fetus home and allowed their other children to hold it. Before that, the couple apparently spent the night in a hospital bed with the dead baby. He's against embryonic-stem-cell research but finds it acceptable to sleep with the dead baby. Truly a strange bedfellow. People of faith, if you were to poke around the Internet, seemingly find inspiration in the Santorum family's embrace of the fetus and willingness to channel its grief in such a fashion. Wouldn't anyone not caught up in religious zealotry find it troubling, not to mention sleep-disruptive, to have a fetus in bed? If he were really pro-life, perhaps Mr. Santorum would support stem-cell research, which has the potential to save other lives.
Aside from which, you, as an adult, bringing a dead child home to your other children are either forcing them to retreat further into your religion to rationalize such behavior or fucking them up forever. Or both.
This guy is running for the Republican nomination? Seriously?

***

Speaking of people running for the Republican nomination (again, seriously?). Newt Gingrich, Mr. Conservative, the one who trumpets himself as the true standard bearer. One of his ex-wives recently did a television interview in which she said Newt wanted to, basically, fuck another woman but not necessarily separate. She called it an open marriage. and Newt isn't unique in that respect.
That was his second wife. He currently is married to #3. I might be wrong, but that kind of track record doesn't seem fitting for one who campaigns on such a platform. When the CNN guy, John King, hosted a subsequent debate and asked him about the open-marriage issue, Newt responded quite testily that he was appalled the moderator would broach such a subject during a presidential debate. Indignant self-righteousness, that's the way to go. Bully the guy because you're so far off-base you have no cogent argument to provide. With his campaign platform relying on conservative values, people do have a right to question whether he advocates, at least for himself, a guilt-free piece on the side. Even more amazing is that at least three women have been willing to fuck him.

Pissed Off

Were you here, we might be discussing these subjects:

Some Marine have caused an uproar by urinating on their vanquished foes, apparently some Taliban guys. I believe the video went viral, as they say (they being the people who talk about stuff like videos going viral). The U.S., doing damage control, has concerns that it might appear to be disrespectful to Muslims. I guess the part where they killed them wasn't disrespectful. Somehow it seems like wartime bestows some sort of nobility on killing.

This book talks about how some Japanese soldiers admired the fighting spirit of some U.S. soldiers during World War II. So much so that one Japanese guy, right after killing an American, thought he must look that guy's family up after the war and tell them how bravely he fought. Hell, I admire the guy who toughs it out to the end, but I'm not sure pissing on these men was as bad as killing them. Out of respect for a worthy adversary, yeah, you might not want to urinate on them after the fact. But these guys have indiscriminately harmed civilians and might not be worthy of that respect. Anyhow, I digress. I guess the central question is whether it's worse to piss on somebody or kill somebody. Or piss on somebody after killing him. Or pissing on somebody before killing him. That's probably the worst, since then they're aware of being pissed on, which likely would really piss them off. 

***

I still don't understand why marijuana is illegal. at least not while alcohol is. A recent study found that marijuana smoke appears not to damage one's lungs.
So, with the tobacco industry bucking up against hard times, I may have arrived at a solution: Let Altria, formerly Philip Morris and still a purveyor of Marlboros, and its ilk get into the game. Some tobacco fields in North Carolina and Virginia could convert to growing marijuana, the big companies could harvest it and I could go to 7-Eleven for a few joints. The government could collect tax revenue, and we'd have fewer problems at the border. In addition, people wouldn't be taking over remote tracts of national forests to cultivate weed. Then, when people smoked, they'd get hungry and eat a bag of Doritos. So it would be good for the economy because of the food we'd have to buy. And in my experience, people tend to think shit's funny when they get stoned, which appears preferable to getting violent.
With the Super Bowl coming up, and the accompanying wife beating, now would be a good time to consider this policy. At parties, stoned people wouldn't even care that the vegetable dip sucked, or even that it had vegetables in it. And instead of engaging in fisticuffs, they'd chill, man, or maybe play some hacky sack or even fall asleep. Everybody would win.

***

This guy Haley Barbour, the outgoing Republican governor of Mississippi, recently decided to pardon a few people. Apparently working at the Governor's Mansion gives you a leg up if you eventually want a pardon for killing your wife or whatever, as eight of those who received pardons seem to have done. What was he thinking? Take this guy David Glenn Gatlin, for example, who apparently shot his estranged wife while she held their baby. Perhaps Haley thought, "Oh, David Glenn's a good guy. He cuts the grass around here and makes a mean whiskey sour."

Random

If popes represent God here on Earth, and God is eternal, then why aren't popes eternal? Why do they die? Oh, yes, they're human. And since they're human, what makes them so special? Because a bunch of guys in weird-looking hats decided that that person should be the top dog? What if someone else had been chosen? Does it turn out that the loser never really was pope material to begin with? Or does papal headwear confer extraordinary capabilities? Apparently the papal hat rack contains an array of items, and the logical conclusion has to be that these hats bestow magic, like some sort of voodoo. Like Frosty the Snowman's hat.

There must have been some magic
In that old pope hat he found, 

For when he put it on his head, 

He began to dance around....(dancing pope here)

***

Can anyone seriously consider voting for a Newt or a Mitt? If anybody wanted to introduce me to a guy from Georgia named Newt, I'd be inclined to run the other way. His name is Newton, and he fancies himself a thinker along the lines of Isaac Newton. But a newt is, like, an amphibian, scurrying around the ground and stuff. Oh.
Mitt's name apparently is Willard. I seem to recall a movie by that name, in which the protagonist interacted with a colony of rats. Nevermind. Anyway, Romney's first name is Willard. According to Wiki, he decided in kindergarten that he didn't want to be called Billy anymore, so he started going by Mitt. Hmm, I don't know. He thinks "Mitt" is better than "Bill" or "Will" or something like that, and he's a Mormon.   

Herman is a name I can get down with. Problem is, Herman apparently was getting down with a bunch of the ladies. I'm not sure how he burnished his foreign-policy credentials, since he was a pizza guy. Maybe, though, he can embark on a new career as a porn star. For the first script, I suggest he show up at some lady's door ostensibly delivering a pizza and, you know, she immediately wants to fuck him. Happens all the time. I'm thinking of going into pizza delivery. What if Herman had become president? Perhaps Veronica Hamel could have been his running mate, and whenever he came into the room, she could have said, "Hello, Pizza Man," just like she did to Daniel J. Travanti on "Hill Street Blues."
 And Ron Paul has two first names, which is kind of strange.

***

Homeless people populate the streets of New York. In cold weather, passersby can spot them hanging around the train station, usually because they're asleep on the floor or wearing a sign that asks for money. A shopping cart also can be a dead giveaway, filled with possessions or Mountain Dew cans. I don't know what aluminum fetches these days, but I imagine trying to make a living that way poses challenges.
I often give money to panhandlers, which I guess a certain slice of the population would say encourages them to keep at it instead of getting a job. But I can't give money to the same people every day. So I have a proposal: Give them some money, Mayor Bloomberg. You're a public servant. You got elected to help solve these kinds of problems. 
Homeless people in New York City number somewhere just north of 40,000, according to a New York Times article from March 2010. Forbes says Bloomberg is worth $19.5 billion. By my math, rounding Bloomberg's wealth down to $19 billion, he could give 40,000 homeless people $475,000 each. And he would have $500 million left over. For $10 billion, each of those 40,000 could get $250,000.
Ok, so if you don't want to give them the money, create the jobs. Yeah, I know Bloomberg the company employs thousands, but what about these poor sops? Not everyone is qualified to work at Bloomberg the company. You're the 1%, Mr. Mayor, and you can't be taxed more, so say those who control the House, so create the jobs.
In a similar vein, Paul Allen, the guy who co-founded Microsoft, this week announced plans for a new commercial spaceship, the Associated Press reported. Allen's spaceship apparently will carry private passengers into space. Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos is building a rival spacecraft intended to carry astronauts. Why don't these guys cut the shit and feed people? Maybe they already do, I don't know, but feed more people. You have so much money that the best you can do is try to build a spaceship? Maybe you can launch the homeless people into space if you're successful. That would clean up the streets and train stations.

***

I just started paying attention to Amy Winehouse. I knew she was a singer with substance-abuse problems who died, but I never listened to her music. Then I heard Tony Bennett say how much of a tragedy her death was and how talented she was. He put her up with there with some people considered to be among the greatest female singers. The chick was, in fact, great. Too bad she was so fucked up that she drank herself to death, but, hey, I can relate.

As He Lay Dying-3

Pickerel served as a sort of siren call of the New Jersey Pine Barrens for Dave and me, ensconced as those bullet-shaped fish were in the tea-like cedar water of the former cranberry bogs. New Jersey ranks somewhere in the top five of cranberry-producing states, after Wisconsin and Massachusetts, according to the Census Bureau. And sometimes we drank a little cranberry juice with our liquor. Mainly, though, cranberries were of tangential interest to us because of the fish habitat provided by their former harvest areas.
Our most productive trip to our favorite bog came as we fished yet again on a college spring break. Between us we caught more than 50 pickerel that blustery March day, the peculiar beauty of the dark-green chain link patterns on their sides contrasting with their paler bodies, their ample dentition ensuring that we didn't grow careless when removing hooks. Joe and Brett went to the go-go bar that day, and when we got back to the house, they told us they encountered far fewer teeth in that not-so-upscale gentlemen's establishment On that trip, Joe walked into the roof rack on the side of my '68 Dart and wound up with a rectangular indentation in his forehead that seemed to last for years.
Dave, we also took your brother Jeff there, on another occasion, and he reminded me recently of how he threw up intermittently on the car ride there and how that angered you. That's what he got for visiting his big brother in college and drinking with us.On one of those occasions, he offered this maxim:

     Liquor then beer, nothing to fear.
     Beer and then liquor, never been sicker.

Those Pine Barrens also allegedly housed the Jersey Devil, and didn't we end up going to our share of New Jersey Devils games? Maybe we did drink a bit more than we should have that one particular night. Just that once.
Back to the pickerel, though, and how some years after that we spent some gray March days in a different environment. You and Kim, and Joe and Jeff, were among those there for me when I had my hospital and ECT stint. Kim and I not too long ago tried to remember the year you guys got married; the cancellation of the World Series served as her reference point, and it occurred the same year I was in the hospital. I suppose when we took to the hunt for pickerel I didn't suspect what would befall me, and I regret that you guys felt like I didn't pay as much attention to our relationship following the hospital stay. I certainly didn't feel cured, only that I perhaps had gotten a reprieve, and my perceived aloofness really amounted to me withdrawing into a shell and tending only to the details necessary for survival. Not what I would call the best of times, and shame sometimes enveloped me. Shame over a marital dissolution and shame over my inability to meet the expectations laid out for me.
Had I the chance I would change some of that. I don't believe those people who say they wouldn't change any of it, that it all somehow contributed to the people they became, and that's good. I'm not entirely satisfied with who I've become, and maybe a little less adversity or a little more of a proactive approach would have meant a positive difference. Fewer terror-filled nights and fewer fruitless sessions with out-of-touch psychiatrists might have served me well.
I wouldn't change our time together, though. When we hung out at the house on Whitehorse and you watched the TV so fixedly that I couldn't get your attention, much as it drove me crazy. Those Sunday nights getting Chinese food from the Panda. The time in the bar next door, of course. The parties outside and the quoits, and you picking me up--this time in joy, not anger--when I won that game on our last shot as the yellow-tinged parking-lot light offered barely enough to see by just this side of midnight.
You and Jeff on one of those trips mocked me over toilet-paper technique, you advocates of the upswipe. You relented some years later when Howard Stern, that renowned wiping guru, recommended the downswipe. Some motherfucking nerve, you students of scatology. We also stopped off after one of our pickerel trips at the school over which your father presided as principal. We arrived just in time for the assembly at which animals took center stage. That is, until you and I saw the kid trying to pick up the lop-eared bunny by those very ears. Another incident stuck in the scrapbook of my mind, a building block that helped to construct the compartment in which reside the accumulation of snapshots providing testament to a friendship. 

As He Lay Dying-2

Dave and I took another fishing trip, to upstate New York, in search of yet more steelhead. This time, we weren't fortunate enough to latch on to poachers and came up empty with respect to fish. While the fishing proved disappointing, the hanging out didn't.
We spent some time at a bar called The Silver Nickel after the waitress at the diner tipped us off that that was the place to be. Or that was where she planned to be, at least. And how could we have resisted hanging out at the bar where the waitress planned to be, she who joked about her menstrual cycle while serving us food?
And not just any food: Dave ordered the liver, and liver he got. A plate full, about the size of a fucking football. Yeah, he was going to eat it all. I would have felt as if I were in a Richard Russo novel, had I been familiar at the time with Richard Russo novels.
We played shuffleboard at The Silver Nickel, and the waitress did appear. That bar didn't particularly provide many entertainment opportunities, and we already had heard about the waitress's menses, so we drank cheap beer, perhaps Pabst, and eventually returned to our little fishermen's retreat, a modest boarding house of sorts that offered clean accommodations at a reasonable price.
An array of snapshots runs through my mind, a scrapbook chronicling the highs and lows of a friendship that consumed the majority of our lives. Mostly highs, though even the lows serve as a reminder that the road from start to finish rarely involves a straight line.
Like the time Dave and I planned to share a student subscription to The Wall Street Journal while in college. He didn't pay me over the course of an entire semester after I bought the subscription, so when he fronted the money for the keg one night, I figured I would take advantage of the opportunity to break even. When I left his dorm room without chipping in for the keg, he grabbed me from behind in the hallway, picked me up and started swinging me. I, preferring to have my feet hit the wall instead of my face, stuck my legs out and kicked off the cinder block. I must have jarred myself loose at some point, or he let me go, but as my feet hit the floor, my girlfriend ran up and kicked him straight in the balls. Apparently that hurt. Then Dave started to be more conciliatory, and I popped him hard in the chest with an open hand and sent him across the hallway. Somebody intervened, and I left in alcohol-fueled indignation. And leaving I was, until my girlfriend refused to go. She wouldn't leave until he and I talked.
As selfish as I consider her actions throughout most of that time, she did recognize the significance of my friendship with Dave. Our friendship with him. So I eventually went back upstairs, and we went back in the room and drank some more.
He always blamed that disagreement on our girlfriends at the time, despite mine having jumped to my defense. He may have been right, that they fomented the underlying tension because of how they felt about one another, then his Lady Macbeth drove him past the breaking point. 
He had a picture of a bodybuilder or some other fitness guy on the mini-fridge in that room and bet me that his abs would look like that in a few months. He never had a chance, but he didn't pay up on that bet, so maybe he did get me back for not helping out with the cost of the keg. Fucker. Then again, he bought plenty of stuff for my kids. But the clothes he took from me over the years, at least when he could still fit in my clothes.... 
So we caught no fish on that sojourn into Richard Russo land. Did we have to? We would have liked to. We really did go to fish. But we had the time, and it never amounted to a waste.