Tao of Scott

Hi Nichole,

I can’t leave my property.

I think the community at large would prefer that I don’t leave my yard. Actually, I think my immediate neighbors would hope that I remain indoors. I cannot accommodate this wish however as I am claustrophobic and the fear of enclosed spaces is just too shattering for me to bear. I consider open air football stadiums to be enclosed spaces. So, you know, there’s that. Needless to say this claustrophobic tendency along with my anxiety issues, the insipid, clawing, “please love me” begging puppy dog, monumentally embarrassing behavior precipitated by my over arching feeling that everybody knows or will soon discover that my existence is without merit, and the fact that I have not one tooth which would be considered “good” by anyone living outside of Britain, keeps me out of the local societal soup for the most part.

Kathy and I were invited to our neighbor Ron’s house for a Memorial Day barbeque the other day. Memorial Day actually. For the reasons alluded to above (and others as well) this act on Ron’s part renders his judgment, sense of decorum, and concern for his other guests suspect. However everybody loves Kathy and Ron may have invited only her. I, awash in my utter obtuseness, tagged along and once on the scene could not be expelled without the designated bouncer appearing cruel.

“Oh hi Kathy, (hug hug kiss kiss) how are you? Jeez it’s been so long. God you look great. Well, come on and get something to drink. Everybody this Kathy. Kathy this is everybody.” Ron would say.

“Oh, hello Scott I didn’t realize you were coming so yah, well so OK, hmmm.” Ron would add.

So we’re all standing around next to our respective plastic picnic chairs (of exceptional quality I assure you) and my friend Don is dominating the conversation with tales of greatness and wonder referring, of course, to his greatness and wondrousness which is allowed because Don is really interesting, has seemingly done almost everything interesting a body could do, and tells his stories in a very entertaining fashion. Out of nowhere this huge, absurdly handsome guy, accompanied by his painfully attractive wife (they’re baby boomers just really good looking baby boomers), says to Don “hey you got a brother named Ronie?”

“I do have a brother named Ronie as a matter of fact” Don confirms.

“Yah, me and him used to race cars together down at Ascot and out at Riverside.”

“Fuckin’ A.” Don says in a lightly amazed inflection. “Shit, small world isn’t it?”

The conversation turns to the ins, outs and what have yous (Re: “The Big Labowski” a film by the Cohen Brothers) of small time auto racing. I must admit I was somewhat incredulous at the number of baby boomer men at this barbeque who had some kind of auto racing story. Of course you put a bunch of old men together with copious poundage of meat and seas of beer and the personal real life accounts can reach mythic proportions.

The other thing was that, of the twenty or so people attending this Memorial Day barbeque, at least sixteen were either born and raised in, or spent the entirety of their adult lives in southern California.

When I moved to this area in 1977 there were eight hundred people living here. Most of the land in this community was devoted to ranching or under production as farm land. I had ditched southern California in 1970 for the four corners region of these here United States and the solitude, simplicity of life and truth of spirit it promised. (Re: the first leg of the fateful journey taken by Denis Hopper and Peter Fonda in the seminal film “Easy Rider”). Now there are something like fourteen thousand people living in the community and it’s immediate environs and the only thing they’re growing is stucco, asphalt shingles, oversized three car garages, and most recently “for sale” signs.

I was whining to Kathy for the millionth time about my consternation over this deeply disappointing turn of events and that “the only way to get out of the line of fire of this cancerous, insidious, ugly, cookie cutter, expansion of cheezy big box, metal sided, architecture, we don’t need no stinking architect, neon signed, storage bin for mountains of absolutely useless shit which must break and cease functioning within ten minutes of getting it home, soul eating suburban style progress is to move to a place where no one would ever chose to live. Like Montana or something.”

“Hmm hmm, could you bring in the groceries please?” Kathy asked in a soothing “yah well what are going to do” tone.

“Ok” I said. “Honey?” I whimpered.

“Yes, baby?” Kathy said rapping me in the swaddling clothes of her emotional grounding.

“Can we just stay home next weekend?” I damn near sniffled.

“Sure sweet heart.”

Love Dad.

Hi Nichole,

Well how about Michael Jackson? Shit! He always looked a bit peaked to me but I sure didn’t see this coming. You know when I was coming up in the sixties Motown and Stax records were producing some of my all time favorite music. Motown had that real full, orchestrated, Phil Spector sortta sound. Phil Spector, now there’s a bizarre story. But I digress. Stax had a more stripped down funky sound. I always gravitated to the Stax and Atlantic records approach. The Motown machine seemed to get real traction but the sound evolved over the years and by the time Michael Jackson was making his first records the only Motown artist who was really capturing my imagination was Marvin Gaye. Of course Michael was only like five years old at the time. By 1970 I was pretty much into the Grateful Dead, stuff like Jeff Beck and pretty soon Bob Marley. So I really missed Michael Jackson until Thriller came out. Produced by Quincy Jones, Thriller was over the top. Up until Thriller, the fairly new MTV was being accused of shutting out black performers. Thriller took MTV over and totally changed music television both in terms of content and visual production values. For a while MTV was kinda cool, even for an old fuck like me. So that was about the extent of my involvement in his music.

The other Michael Jackson was this extremely private, self protective person who couldn’t help but live the most public life in history. He always seemed to be doing such weird shit. Strange fashion changes including, but not limited to, skin pigment adjustments. Turning his yard into Disneyland. Having little kids over to play with Barbies and shit. As every stand up comedian in the world noted “gee Michael if you weren’t so shit bird odd people would not spend so much of their lives speculating on the question, how shit bird odd are you?” But you know, he never was convicted on any of those pedophilia charges, he always appeared be a decent sort, he had a good message in his music for the young folks who loved him, and the mother fucker surely could dance and sing, fergetaboutit.

Being odd is not illegal, being rich is not illegal, being the most famous person in the world is not illegal. This culture has this tendency of finding certain people, treating them like some deity, waiting until they are comfortable in the role and then like some early twentieth century lynch mob grabbing them up, hanging ’em from a tree, and throwing shit at them until they die. I don’t know, I guess I just really don’t see the humor in that.

Love dad

hi baby,

i need to tech-up. some of the comments are dropping off the list! some of the early postings are dropping of the list! someone left a comment which did not show in it’s entirety! where was the rest of the comment? when i posted the comment it was still in complete form. i responded to this comment and my response shows as a comment in it’s own right! FUCK! so i thought it might be a good idea for you and i to get on the phone, each with the site up on our computers and you can teach me how to navigate my own fucking blogg. let me know when would be a good time to pursue this endeavor.

thanx baby

love dad

Hi Nichole,

Had a great time in Portland!

I can’t be sure if I told you about the airport. So Kathy and I get to the airport, take our anti-anxiety medication, dope our way to the correct gate for our flight and there looms the security check maze. This place reminds me of scenes of East Germany in old cold war movies. The guards all dressed in button and patch bedecked uniforms (I didn’t see a gun but I’m sure there was one close by) asking “your papers please” in that sneering suspicious accent. Kathy deftly navigates the series of obstacles designed to sooth the passengers/suspects sense of safety and security. I, on the other hand, am stymied every step of the way. I remove my exotic animal skin cowboy boots, lose my balance in doing so, catch myself mid fall making a chaotic racket, stabilize myself, commence removing my copious pieces of Navajo jewelry eliciting a comment from the ever expanding crowd behind me, something to the effect of “ Jesus Christ are you kidding me? Where do think this guy parked his mule?” then fire off the siren at the metal object check portal, turns out it’s my straw cowboy hat (what the fuck?!) it appears there is wire in my hat, get to the other side, am told that I now have to remove my computer from it’s carrying case (who knew), pass it back through, finally complete these steps towards heightened security and am told by the guard, “There you go cowboy you can go now.” A spattering of applause emanated from the twitching, obsessively watching reviewing crowd behind me.

We get to the gate, take our seats in the waiting area and, well, wait. There is a constant stream of instructions spewing from unseen speakers. “Mary Johnson, please go to the nearest security station we have your children in custody.” “Jack Billingsly, please go to the nearest courtesy phone, your son is disowning you and will not be meeting you at your destination.” “Scott and Kathy Tennyson please go to the boarding desk; you are being removed from your flight.” My stomach starts pumping acid like an oil well, I am belching profusely, I look over at Kathy, “WHAT DO THEY MEAN!?” WHAT’RE WE GONNA DO!?” “SHIT!” Kathy says in an unperturbed cadence. “I guess I better go find out what’s happening.” It turns out they’ve added a non-stop flight to Portland to the schedule. We were going to have to change planes in Reno so this will be better for us they say and besides the flight to Reno was way overbooked and they need us to help them out. So this is fine with us and all we have to do is sit in the waiting area for an additional three hours.

We are awakened by the rustling of passengers. Time to board. Together we engorge the plane fully. Kathy and I take the last two seats in the plane, at the very back of the plane. As I am claustrophobic it is extremely important that I get a window seat and surprise of surprises I am successful in this effort. There is virtually no space between me and the seat in front of me. A large female human schlepping a commensurately large baby human sits in the seat in front of me, leans back and the seat back closes the microscopic distance between she and me by fully half. This maneuver bisects the window area. I spend the two hour and forty five minute flight with my cheek pressed against the back of her seat pushing forward in an effort to maximize the available window area and thereby my claustrophobia mitigating view. She of course pushes back. It’s a battle that leaves me with a strained neck and red faced with exhaustion by the time we arrive in Portland.

In my day “service” constituted an effort or series of efforts rendered by a merchant on behalf of the customer in order to secure his or her return business. The merchant or provider would take steps, some of which might even result in reduced profits, to ensure that the customer had a pleasant experience while engaged in the transaction and as a result would suggest to his or her friends that they patronize this merchant as well. Those days are fucking gone! Now the customer gives up leg room, complimentary meals, free baggage handling, and suffers reduced flight options. Hell, I even had a flight cancelled because it was under booked. Cost me about two hours and a fucked up connection with another flight. Nobody apologized! These days the customer exists at the pleasure of the merchant. Now the question asked is, what can I the customer do to make the merchants experience more pleasant! Are you kidding me? Oh well, fuck it.

Wait a minute, this bookkeeping software that I need for my potential day job is ready to download. I’ll be right back.

FUCK! I hate these guys. So two hours of following instructions both online and on the phone have crash landed me into the same quagmire of ignorance I started from. Fuck it, I’ll call tech tomorrow. I wish the Beer & Blog meetings were held at my house.

Wait a minute, it’s Kathy on the phone. Her car is broke in the Safeway parking lot. I gotta go save her. Be right back.

FUCK! I hate these cars. So her battery is dead. No problem, it’s an American car, standard tools should work. WRONG! It’s metric. Doesn’t matter, the battery is situated in such a fashion that you have put the car up on a lift and completely dismantle the engine to remove the motherfucker. I’ll bet most of the Beer & Bloggers are at least passable mechanics. The technical expertise required for both internet navigation and modern auto mechanics are mutually compatible I would imagine. As you are well aware I of course possess no applicable skills nor will I in the foreseeable future if the events of this day are any indication.

Now, where was I? Right. Portland. The Beer & Blog meeting was really a peach. I loved how you and Kathy and I walked in there like we had lost our way to an Am-way convention and just stared introducing, and shaking hands, and grabbing peoples brains and wringing them out for all the information we could get. Of course the fact that Brian, Michelle and a couple of other extra genius people so graciously forked over their brains insured the success of our brain wringing scheme. I am looking forward to advancing our communication with these guys. I dig that bloggers are not jealous of their knowledge.

We’ll see how patient and generous the blog dwellers are after they’ve gotten load of my impenetrable cranium.

Love dad.

Hi Nichole,

I just got back from Costco. Fuck!!

So I went Costco as instructed by Kathy. Not only was I to complete the primary mission which was to find and purchase the items on the shopping list but also I needed to talk to the little cyborg guy in the electronics department about some weird shit that is going on with our DVD player which we had recently bought at this very Costco. See, our “home entertainment system” is comprised of an assorted pile of components representing a range of technologies some of which go back thirty years. The chore is to integrate these components, which all logic would suggest could never be compatible, into one seamless smooth running multi-media system. Well it did work but not well. Anyway I explain the nature of our problem to the little cyborg and he says, “The interface you are attempting cannot work.”

“This DVD player what I just bought is identical to the one we had which worked, in this exact same interface, for four years.” I informed the little cyborg piece of shit who isn’t even shaving yet.

“No, it didn’t.” it said.

“Excuse me, it did so.” I said, tight jawed, in a voice that sounded like it had come from a cinder block.

“No it didn’t. It never worked,” it said.

“Fuck you.” I breathed under my breath so as not get thrown out of Costco in an unceremonious fashion. You know, the complete impossibility of coherent communication between the youth of today and barely animated carcasses such as myself brought one by this blizzard of technological wonderment makes the “generation gap” of my younger days look like a small crack in the side walk. God, our parents had it easy!

Well, I got behind the wheel of my push cart and proceeded to venture into the vast and unfamiliar din that is Costco. When I come here with Kathy I don’t actually look for things I just follow her like an old slobbery faced hound. Kathy says she’d rather I stayed home but I feel like by accompanying her I can trick her into thinking I’m at least moderately useful. She never really falls for this insipid ploy. Anyway I am looking for stuff now.

When Kathy gave me the shopping list I realized that I had no idea where any of this shit would be located so I drew a crude rendition of the Costco layout (basically a square with the appropriate points of the compass adjacent to the various sides of the building) and had her write in each of the items in their approximate locations within the store. With this illustrative device, I commenced to shop. Costco changes the location of things all the time, they have like items in more than one place in the store (i.e.… two kinds of bacon in the open cabinet cold food section and one other kind of bacon inexplicably situated about a hundred yards away in the closed cabinet of some other cold food section). When I discovered the latter, I felt compelled to return the former to its original storage place as I was sure that Kathy normally bought the latter brand. Kathy said, upon my return home with the goods, that she had never seen this brand of bacon before but oh well; it was too late now we would just have to suffer through. This scenario played out, more or less, with the bulk of the items on the list. Also Costco is fucking ginormous and, as I neglected to bring my driving glasses, I could not make out the size, shape or color of anything situated more than fifteen feet away from me. I must have walked eleven miles in Costco to get nine items.

As I’m stumbling around in this airplane hanger turned bulk purchase department store I begin to notice small gaggles of shoppers gathered around little stands, located all over the store, where Barbie sized portions of smoked salmon, gourmet pizza, sausage on tooth pick, chip with sundry dip, every vegetable with sundry dip, Barbie sandwiches, etc., are being served for free. I also notice this guy in a billed cap, the kind with the stupid, flat, bill board sized front that makes the wearer look he just got let out of a state facility, showing up at each of these little stands as I pass by and it occurs to me that he has come to Costco for lunch. If you go to all the little stands you can accumulate about seventy Barbie bites which constitute a nutritious meal for free. His need to frequent this eating establishment, which doubles as a bulk purchase department store, is made clear by the sign on the bill board resting atop his noggin which reads “Terry’s Used Tires and Taqueria.” In this economy I have noted a marked increase in multi tasking entrepreneurs. Kathy and I were driving to the bank one day and she pulled into a drive thru “Hawaiian Ice” stand, located in the middle of a huge, otherwise empty dirt lot. She pulls up to the order window and places an “Avon” order. “What the fuck?” I say. Kathy explains that the proprietor lost her job as a low level health care shlub, bought this vacant shack which used to be an espresso station, and then realized she needed to augment her income and started selling Avon out of the Hawaiian Ice stand. A customer’s pickup truck was parked at the corner of the dirt lot. On it was painted “Anything Anytime/No Job Too Small” along with a local phone number. This is why Americans may be down but their never out.

I was telling Kathy about the amazing “lunch phenomenon” at Costco.

“Yah, that’s my favorite part of going to Costco.” Kathy said.

Love Dad

Oh, as it turns out I went back to Costco to pursue the DVD question. A different little cyborg guy was on duty. I again explained my problem.

“Yah, no that’s wrong. This is our best selling item. You hooked it up right. It’s probably just a lemon. Bring it back and get another one.” he said.

Hi Nichole,

Wait a minute, I got stuff in the dryer that needs to be hung out.

So I quit my bank job of twenty three years and became Kathy’s house boy. Actually I consider this to be a good career move with excellent prospects for the future, including a reduction in unexplained random full body muscle twitching, perpetual eye blinking, and my abject fear of the mail and the telephone. One time I decided to stop taking over the counter sleep medication and within two days I was breaking out in these amazing hives, thousands of raised, red, frantically itchy, lines crazily crisscrossing my back or shoulders or butt cheeks or in some kinda combination. I quickly resumed the medication and the hives disappeared. (Authors note: never stop taking your medications…ever). I am anticipating if not the cessation than at least a drop in frequency of rapid heart rate episodes. One time a 198 beats a minute (that’s like a humming bird or something) landed me in the emergency room. After a three hour examination, an hour and half of which left me alone in the room while the doctor and everybody else affecting an appearance of being of the medical profession went out to study the results of myriad tests having been recently run on me ( I could hear rushes of laughter coming from a near by but unseen room) the doctor returned and suggested this curative approach to my problem. “Jesus man take a pill” he said. It seems, after visits to my primary care physician, two cardiologists, and a gastro-intestine specialists that my “problem” could likely be cured by a lobotomy but a full decapitation should not be ruled out.

Kathy, though never one to stand in the way of my hair brained schemes, found outside corroboration that my temporary retirement was a good idea when, while on hunting and gathering mission at Safeway, she overheard two women discussing their absolute glee at the recent change in their respective husbands’ employment status. They were laid off. This giddy exuberance was due to the fact that much of the household maintenance drudgery was miraculously being removed from their purview. They figured that if they could just pickup some extra hours at what ever salt mine they were slaving at they may just keep their husbands unemployed. So the wives would rather labor in the fast paced world of commerce and the husbands would rather do the dishes, maybe some laundry, take the kids to their various heaps of activities designed to exhaust them so by the time they get home they are too beat to engage you, the parent, in endless conversation about stuff you couldn’t possibly give a shit about, and take the dog to the doggy park. What the fuck is up with doggy parks? You sit on a park bench under a gazebo surveying a vast expanse of steaming dog shit and watch your Pomeranian get gulped down by somebody else’s Rotweiller.

“So ok I‘ll do the laundry, wash the dishes and make the bed. In addition I would like to remind you that I do the floors, do all the dusting and clean the bathrooms.” Actually I subcontracted these duties out to a house cleaner who comes over twice a month. “Since I pay for this service out of MY MONEY it’s as good as me doing these things myself. Just because I am not personally experiencing the misery which so often accompanies this type of household brutality at least YOU don’t have to do it. So, you know, there’s that.
Oh, and just so we’re clear, I do not cook (Kathy agreed that that was probably the better idea) and I DO NOT GO SHOPPING.”

Kathy handed me a piece of paper with many items listed on it. “Here, I need you go to Costco and get all this stuff.” She turned and glided away to her office to finish up the final details of her PAYING JOB.

“Shit” I said.

Love,

dad

Hi Nichole,

Well I’m back at it.

So I was showing Kathy how I couldn’t get my “cut”, “copy”, and “paste” functions to work in my “Works” program.

She says “here let me try, I think I might be able to help.”
I say “just tell me what to do and I will do it.”

She reaches in towards my keyboard. I slap her hand and screech “WHAT ARE YOU DOING.” (reference: Crispin Glover as Uncle Del explaining to his mother that he is “making his lunch” in the film Wild at Heart).

She reaches in again “please, I might be able to figure this out.”
I slap her hand vigorously “JUST TELL ME WHAT TO DO AND I WILL DO IT.”

She reaches.
I slap.
Reaches.
Slap.
Reaches, slap, reaches, slap, reaches, slap, both reaching, both slapping, each with both hands, four hands slapping, she explaining that she just wants to assist me, me screaming at her to leave my computer alone, that she will wreck everything and I will have to redo hours of work. This whole affair looks and sounds like a gaggle of birds fighting over a single nesting place. An amazing bluster of squawking, wing flailing, and feathers flying. It’s over as fast as it began, just like the birds. Kathy stands with her lightly battered hands at her side and upon my now calmly stated instructions begins to, in a steady voice and soothing tone, suggest some possible approaches to solving the problem I am having with the machine. None of these work.

Fuck, I’m a fifty seven year old man with the will to work and a perfectly fine mind (I delude myself) now rendered pointless by a rapidly evolving technology which has no need for, and therefore places no value on, a single skill which I currently possess. Those of us raised in the last death throws of the industrial age witnessed our fathers coming home from either their blue work shirt or their suite and tie jobs, driving an extraordinarily huge automobile made by one of the big three or Studebaker or De Soto, kissing the wife, doling out the appropriate spankings to the appropriate children, changing into something comfortable, taking their rightful position in the recliner, highball in one hand, cigarette or pipe in the other and watching Walter Cronkite on the TV. No further work would be accomplished nor even attempted on this day. Hell, even the TV only had three network stations and one or maybe two local stations. No complicated decisions as to what to watch so no real work there. No dad was taking continuing education classes in anything. No dad was wearily hammering out some project designed to make somebody other than himself rich until the wee hours of the morning. “Honey, when are you coming to bed” answered by “in a bit goddamnit, I have to get this project completed by 7:00 tomorrow morning, fuck!” was never heard in the households of yore. You went to trade school, high school, or college, went to work five sometimes six days a week, never learned one new thing, retired at about sixty five years old after which your health declined rapidly and you died. There, that was the deal and when we grew up that would still be the deal. This was the world we prepared for.

Then the computer, the first of which was as big as a gas station, appeared in the news and the language. The computer, it was promised, would cut the standard forty hour work week to thirty hours because you would be able to work so much more quickly and efficiently. The naivete was blinding. “No you fucking numbnuts, sit your lazy ass back down. You don’t get to do your same old work load faster and then go home to the wife and kids earlier, you get to do more work than ever in your forty hours. Hell, if we can think of way to shrink these things you could take ’em home and work twenty-four seven. Now that’s an idea”, was now heard throughout the land.

Chris came over earlier today and watched me work on the machine for a couple of minutes. The experience for him was so painful that I could hear his teeth begin to loosen. He said “hey, I can barely read this shit do you want me to show you how to make the letters bigger?” at which point he shoved me out of my chair (he was a college football player, had I gone to college I would have been a skinny acid head. As it was I was just a skinny acid head), took total control of the computer and started to make gestures like he was going to touch the keyboard or something. “GODDAMMIT CHRIS WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, DON’T…, GET YOUR HANDS…, I HAVE’NT SAVED THAT YET, YOU’LL LOSE IT, STOP, FUCK” I bellowed.

Chris replied “Jesus man take pill.”

“Hmmm” I thought.

“See look everything’s fine and now you can read this bilge. Man, I thought I was the stupidest motherfucker in the known universe, turns out you are. Well good luck, adios”.

Love, dad

Hi Nichole,

I hate this shit!

So not only am I attempting to write in this infernal “Works” program to better (jury is out) facilitate communication with you, come to find out, this “works” program will be invaluable to my new business venture in which I have already invested relatively large sums of money. Non-refundable money I might add. I probably should have more deeply investigated the depths of my ineptitude on this machine before taking any monetary leaps of faith. Faith in my abilities is not my strong suite anyway. Someone once said follow your instincts. The capacity to take direction has historically proven to be dubious in my case as well. So anyway I write my first letter in “Works”, go to edit, intuitively, and find that neither the copy, cut, nor paste function are available. They are displayed in a light gray color while other potential functions are in black. I surmise that the black stuff is available for use while the gray stuff is just a tease. I come to this conclusion by placing my curser (is it “or“, curser, is it cuser or cusor… oh well what the hell) on the potential function begin to “click on“, in the vernacular, right click, left click, then a frustrated flurry of clicking other random keys until it becomes clear that either something or nothing is going to take place. No matter what combination of clicking is applied nothing happens when you click the gray functions. Finally I stumble on to highlighting the text and saving it. Miraculously, when diminished, this action puts a little rectangle with the document title at the bottom of the screen. I then go to my e-mail, open “create mail“, click (again with the click) the attachment icon, Lord of hosts, what do you know, a little paper clip picture shows up in upper right hand corner of the e-mail, I assume that the document (document seems like a strong term to me) is hooked to the e-mail and click “send“. Whew, fuck, I’m beat.

After a break, I swing past the medicine cabinet, think for second, what could it hurt, gulp down an anti-anxiety pill and return to the machine.

The other night I went through my nightly “it’s time to go to bed” routine checking all the outdoor water faucets, which I had turned off a couple of hours ago, to be sure I had turned them off, turning off all the lights, locking the front door, the back door, the sliding glass door, and the laundry room door, checking to be sure I had turned out all the lights, brushing my teeth, taking all my medications (I don’t go to sleep, I bludgeon my self into slumber with a cocktail of over the counter sleeping pills, prescription muscle relaxers and anti- anxiety medications), stood before my bed, dropped my shorts and Hawaiian shirt on the floor, slipped under the sheets, reached for my book, put on my reading glasses, opened the book, removed the place holder, looked over at Kathy and said “God is this sweet”. “I love bed” I say. We kiss gently Kathy turns off her light and rolls over. I roll over in the opposite direction and begin to enter the safe universe of the book.

“Scott?” Kathy says.
“Yes dear” I say.
“Did you remember to lock the doors?”
“Shit” I say.

We have cement floors in our house so when I walk around in bare feet they make a slapping sound like platypus feet. I platypus around to all the doors and return to bed. Kathy is chuckling softly like a four year old. She does this shit to me all the time.

I decided to check the e-mail I sent to be sure the attachment was still there. “Do you want to open this file”. “Yes” I say. I click “open”, the attachment is still there. I do this, in the e-mail program, every thirty or forty minutes all day . Later I go back into the “Works” program and there are nine entries of the letter I wrote, all identical, over and over again, in the “Works” program.

I don’t understand.

I’m not in cyberspace I’m in cyber-mud bog. I can’t have a blog, I can only have a bog. I can be found in the bogisphere. “Welcome to my bog” I could say. I should have been killed at birth. “This won’t go well” the doctor could have said. “He probably won’t thrive” the nurse could have said. “Besides he’s not as good looking as I thought he would be” his mother could have said.

Oh well, Chris just came over, he needs a beer.

Love dad

Hi Nichole,

I have nothing to do.

I almost always have nothing to do. Maybe two hours of things to do in a typical day which I stretch to its most absurd limits, so maybe four hours of stuff to do. I was sitting on the sofa on the front porch (this sofa is actually our finest piece of furniture so we figured it could best hold up out on the porch, in the weather, with mice living in it) when it dawned on me “ I know what, I could get a jar of water”. So now I have something to do. I started to think about the fact that you cannot do nothing. Humans must do something. So for the next hour or so I thought about the ramifications of our inability to do nothing which kept me busy for an hour or so.

Kathy came home from work. It was Sunday afternoon. Kathy doesn’t get concerned about what to do when she has nothing to do because she always has something to do. I mean actually something that needs doing. Having something to do means doing something that needs doing or your life will go, to one degree or another, to shit. When I am around Kathy people sometimes say that they can’t see me very well because I, due to my utter lack of consequential input into what ever is going on, have tendency to fade a little. The impact of my presence being so miniscule that the fact of my very existence becomes suspect. So, you know, there’s that about Kathy and me.

I was very excited to have Kathy home because I had run out of things to do and, though quite proud of the results of my hour or so of thinking, I was kinda tired of, you know,…thinking. So I chased after her on her way into her office, all atwitter like a three year old, and breathlessly blurted out the details of my findings. “ This planet wouldn’t be such a shit hole if people could have just been content with the beating of the heart, the breathing of the lung, the shitting of the ass instead of fiddle fucking around with shit and harnessing the power of fire which could be transported to far away places in vehicles made viable by the advent of the wheel where, upon arrival at these far away places, the fire could then be attached to recently developed arrows which could be sent by powerful bows (the obvious companion invention to the arrow) screaming into the homes and bodies of the human inhabitants of said far way place to which the hapless recipients of the burning arrows had previously laid claim. If people could have been satisfied simply by sitting under a tree somewhere in central Africa, getting beaned on the head by a breadfruit or some such shit, eating the fruit so graciously and freely given by the tree, and then just said “bitchin” instead of interring the burning ruins of the defeated far away place , kicking through the charred remains of its inhabitants, noticing that they were in the early stages of developing agriculture , carefully studying the required concepts and technologies, adopting these concepts and technologies, taking them back to their village, applying their new found knowledge and thereby inventing urbanization, localized specialization and the resultant need for trade with other cultures, trade which in turn requires continuous growth and ever expanding markets which must be developed and maintained at all costs finally leaving humans in a continious state of competition and conflict, unsustainable population growth and global environmental degradation” I said basking in my own perceived genius.

Kathy replied “ I heard all that shit before“.

“Shit” I said.

Love, dad

How did this happen?

For twenty three years I have practiced my profession in the banking industry. Over the past four years I have been in the throws of insidious mission creep as far as my duties, responsibilities, and the very definition of my job is concerned while no additional pay has been forthcoming nor would it ever. Finally I was working seven days a week and making about the same amount of money as I was in 1995 for five days work. In addition, as the financial markets started teetering, heading for collapse, I commenced to developing a rather nasty anxiety disorder finally adversely impacting both my emotional and physical health. I came to regard the world in which I was employed to be headed up by cave dwelling slime snakes devoid of color and with closed over eyes. A cabal of pirates populated the nations money universe from the government through the upper management ivory towers of the entire financial architecture of the country, and yes, the globe itself. All of this facilitated by the very foundation of the human condition, GREED. Greed is predictable and therefore easily manipulated in certain people because it is born in our survival instinct. In Oliver Stones’ prophetic film “Wall Street” the most popular character was Michael Douglas in the role of the evil, greedy, amoral, monster Gordon Gekko. This came as quite a surprise to Oliver Stone. You think you know people.

Anyway we were plowing along, my immediate co-workers and I, trying to do the best job we could. Most people are good folks trying to do the best they can. Problem was the monster had slipped its leash. So anyway we’re plowing along and one day my supervisor, a wonderful person working with both hands tied behind her back, called and asked “how many of these additional reports can you put out per day?”

“On top of all this other shit I got lying around?” I asked.

“Uh, yes” she responded

I opened my mouth and out came these words like a wild, out of control cattle stampede. “I can do none per day. In fact I think I’m resigning.”

A couple of weeks go by and it becomes clear that not only did I quit working for that particular organization, I had thoroughly quit the industry. Come to find out I had hit full on, flat assed, face in the mud burnout. To go back in would be like voluntarily returning my hand to the blazing fire from which I had just removed it. I just can’t do it!

So I got my first personal computer (referred to as “the machine” from here on out) in March of 2009. I sent the first e-mail in my life, at the age of fifty six, in the first week of March 2009.

So this is how I found myself with nothing to do.

Welcome to the new world old man.