Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Good days and bad days and going half mad days

Sidelined and holding the single malt hostage.
Over the years my stream of consciousness has eroded the banks so badly it's difficult to find the main channel these days, but let's try. This was going to be one of those good days but, here's how my life goes. I had the trailer all packed up and stocked up to take my first extended trip in it today. But as these things go, the furnace failed so my trip was from here to the dealer's. They had to keep it because they might have to replace the furnace. 
I headed home disappointed but realized I could at least renew a prescription that was about to run out while I was gone and might have cut my trip short. When I called they said half an hour and as I was only that far from them and it was on the way home, the timing was perfect. 
I got there early so I made a Taco Bell stop and the pharmacy which was right across the street called while I was in line for my food. Perfect, luck changing. With my prescription and my burrito in hand I headed home, putzed a little, took a long nap and woke up feeling better. 
I watched Rachel and O'Donnell lavish praise on Kamala Harris and went on line where I came across a great story about her written by a public defender who often opposed her in court when Harris was California's attorney general. I was suitably impressed at the many effective progressive improvements Harris was able to make. In the process I went back into some old political writings on this blog and came across the video version of "For What It's Worth" the kids at Stoneman High School produced after the shooting there. 
Here's that video:

 
My friend Suzy calls
this an adult juice bocx.
That got the juices flowing and then the song following was a cover version of the old Cream song "I can't find my way home." That also was inspiring and I thought of all the alcohol fueled playlists I've put up over the years and considered it, especially as the third song in the future on that channel was by Amy Winehouse and I have never heard her. So, mmmm, time for a little single malt to get things rolling. Get this. I own two expensive bottles of Glenmorangie scotch. You know where they are? They are in the travel trailer 25 miles away at the dealership. I went to the closest liquor store to me here a couple of years ago and I actually had to explain to the kid exactly what single malt scotch is. No sense going there and I am not up for a 20-mile round trip for what would probably be no more than two glasses of expensive scotch. In the process of looking for liquid inspiration, it hit me that in addition to moving those two expensive bottles of scotch into the trailer, I had also cleaned out what was left in the liquor cabinet in the process of leaving this place.
Looking like another night of mediocre TV now. Crap. But wait. I found an old box of Cabernet with some left in it in the back of the refrigerator. Maybe the evening is saved.  
I originally wrote this as an instant message to a friend and it got so long my first move is to turn that into this blog post. Turns out the wine isn't so bad. Watch this space.

 And, oh yeah, here's that Cream cover:


And then there's my first Amy Winehouse. (The most recent member to join the "27 club") RIP


Interesting for sure. And this old wine is still pretty good, too. Now, about that furnace.
       Somehow the term "old wine" keeps drawing me into the necessity to write a poem but for the life of me I can't find my way to the next word or home either for that matter. So that goes. It brings to mind Isaac Bashevis Singer whose "Old Loves" was recommended to me by a friend years ago and still stands in a place of prominence on an overloaded bookshelf at the East Pole. So old loves and old wine must connect by some thread, but old loves have become painful memories in my current circumstance and right now I am past the bad part of the day and looking for food so I'm not going there and besides I have just poured the second glass of wine and really would rather eat something. (now that's how stream of consciousness works) but there's a problem you see, most of the recent food purchases and all the condiments and sauces and such are in that trailer a 50-mile round trip away and probably locked indoors anyway (I don't even have Jimmy Buffett's mythical lost shaker of salt), however I did spot a Marie Callendar chicken pot pie in the freezer when I pulled an ice cube out for the wine (I have this tray that makes huge cubes you only need one per drink and it lasts a long time)… oh, crap just gave away my pedestrian tastes … no matter, this isn't luxury wine dining it's what I call writer's wine, the cheap wine beat writers like Ferlinghetti and Kerouac and Ginsburg drank in sleazy apartments and taverns in San Francisco or Greenwich Village ... during the 1950s. I'm done.
Here's that story about Kamala Harris
Past playlists
More past playlists
And a few looks at politics
When good people do nothing
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1 comment:

  1. SuzyAugust 12, 2020 at 8:54 AM

    I love the expression "writer's wine". Inspiration in a bottle. Or box! :)

    ReplyDelete

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Best headlines ever

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Memorable quotations

The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger

"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

“My children will likely turn my picture to the wall but what the hell, you only get old once." — Joe May

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.― Kurt Vonnegut

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”―Stephen King

The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

“The rivers of Alaska are strewn with the bones of men who made but one mistake” - Fred McGarry, a Nushagak Trapper

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center

One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes

Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”

You can have your own opinion but you can’t have your own science.—commenter arguing on a story about polar bears and global warming

He looks at three ex wives as a good start—TV police drama

Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

“You’re either into the wall or into the show”—Marco Andretti on giving it all to qualify last at the 2011 Indy 500

Makeup is not for the faint of heart—the makeup guerrilla

“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti

“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places

As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

Each day do something that won’t compute – anon

I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration

Life should be a little nuts or else it’s just a bunch of Thursdays strung together—Kevin Costner as Beau Burroughs in “Rumor has it”

You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

Being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are—Michelle Obama

Sports malaprops

Commenting on an athlete with hearing impairment he said the player didn’t show any “uncomfortability.” “He's not doing things he can't do."

"… there's a fearlessment about him …"

"He's got to have the lead if he's going to win this race." "

"Kansas has always had the ability to score with the basketball."

"NFL to put computer chips in balls." Oh, that's gotta hurt.

"Now that you're in the finals you have to run the race that's going to get you on the podium."

"It's very important for both sides that they stay on their feet."

This is why you get to hate sportscasters. Kansas beats Texas for the first time since 1938. So the pundits open their segment with the question "let's talk about what went wrong." Wrong? Kansas WON a football game! That's what went RIGHT!

"I brought out the thermostat to show you how cold it is here." Points to a thermometer reading zero in Minneapolis.

"It's tough to win on the road when you turn the ball over." Oh, really? Like you can do all right if you turn the ball over playing at home?

Cliches so embedded in sportscasters' minds they can't help themselves: "Minnesota fell from the ranks of the undefeated today." What ranks? They were the only undefeated team left.

A good one: A 5'10" player went up and caught a pass off a defensive back over six feet tall. The quote? "He's got some hops."

Best homonym of the day so far: "It's all tied. Alabama 34, Kentucky 3." Oh, Tide.

"Steve Hooker commentates on his Olympic pole vault gold medal." When "comments" just won't do.

"He's certainly capable of the top ten, maybe even higher than that."

"Atlanta is capable of doing what they're doing."

"Biyombo, one of seven kids from the Republic of Congo." In the NBA? In America? In his whole country?

"You can't come out and be aggressive but you can't come out and be unaggressive."

"They're gonna be in every game they play!"

"First you have to get two strikes on the hitter before you get the strikeout."

"The game ended in the final seconds." You have to wonder when the others ended or are they still going on?

How is a team down by one touchdown before the half "totally demoralized?"

"If they score runs they will win."

"I think the matchup is what it is"

After a play a Houston defender was on his knees, his head on the ground and his hand underneath him appeared to clutch a very sensitive part of the male anatomy. He rolled onto his back and quickly removed his hand. (Remember the old Cosby routine "you cannot touch certain parts of your body?") Finally they helped the guy to the sideline and then the replay was shown. In it the guy clearly took a hard knee between his thighs. As this was being shown, one of the announcers says, "It looks like he hurt his shoulder." The other agrees and then they both talk about how serious a shoulder injury can be. Were we watching the same game?

"Somebody is going to be the quarterback or we're going to see a new quarterback."

"That was a playmaker making a play.”