Woody'z Amazing "Cold Turkey" Thanksgiving.
I went out yesterday for dinner with an old friend, in Santa Fe. Figuring I'd be back by evening, at least, I left the backdoor ajar so Budreaux could get a nose through and open it if he needed to use the facilities.
Thus arranged, I departed.
The drive was lovely, albeit sparse. The dun of winter lies everywhere. I arrived in plenty of time, and mine hostess and I chatted amiably about this and that, old friends, recent deaths, etc., while she finished the dinner preparations.
I had a beer, and then another, all the while scarfing cheese and crackers. Soon the bird was done, and the side dishes were in their bowls, I carved the turkey, and we commenced to eat.
It was delicious. My pal fixed "her famous" mashed spuds, delicious dressing, and a onion-and-pea veggie side, all of which, in small portions, I consumed avidly. Lately, my appetite hasn't been what it was. I also ate sparingly of the bird because I've had bad experiences with the last two times I'd consumed home-prepared bird.
I thought for a minute it seemed okay, but withing mere moments of my swallowing the last bite on my plate, I was overcome with nausea.
Clutching my mouth to prevent projectile spewage, I stumbled toward the bathroom, but I lost my balance and fell flat on my back and clonked my head on the floor outside the bathroom, and of course I spilled it all, all over myself and the floor. I guess I was out, for a moment, too. I opened my eyes to see my horrified hostess, peering down at me saying, Oh' I'm so glad. I thought you were dead.
It was a mess, which mine generous, patient, immensely kindly and tolerant hostess cleaned up, while I stood, or sat, mainly unmoving,  in shock from the head knock and at my bad 'manners.'
The upshot was that she and I felt I'd better spend the night in her spare room, since the cops were out in their multitudes for the drive home time on both ends and and on the hiway between. It was about 9 when I went to sleep.
I awoke at around 6:30, and left asaqap. I said good bye through the door, again uttered my profound apologies and thanks, and drove back home...where I'd left the back door open, all night. And man, the ol' perrara was muy frio; but Budreaux had made a nice little nest on the bed.
Tomorrow, I'm gonna call a florist and send her some flowers or a pretty plant....

A Boat of Goat?

Cold Turkey: Woody'z undergoing an experiment.
 I've temporarily suspended my consumption of alcohol.
 I haven't had anything alcoholic to drink since last Saturday night. But this isn't about temperance. 
This is when I learned of gout.when I found out about gout.
For the past MANY months, I have been experiencing fierce, radiating pain the big toe, and the next two toes, of my tight foot, intermittently to regularly.
Meanwhile, my foot felt like there was always a bunch of sock under the ball of my right foot, which was never there when I removed my shoe to check. I believe it was throwing me off my stride, and causing, or at least contributing to, my general ambulatory difficulties.
I mentioned the symptom to a pal who is just about a degenerate and dissolute as I, and he said, "That sounds like gout."
Such a thing had never occurred to me, but I turned straight away to the Google (39,100,000 hits) and pretty soon learned that there was indeed a well-researched, well-established link between alcohol consumption and gout.
 This presented me with a scientific opportunity to investigate 1) whether there were a causal connection between MY alcohol consumption and my pains, and 2)whether I could quit booze cold turkey.
The answer, after one week, so far is a qualified "Yes" to both questions.

Just Another Day...Not!

I've repeated this story several times. I was a HS Senior in '63, and had a job at a local radio station as night disc jockey. But I was fascinated by the place, and bored as shit with school, so I cut class a lot and hung out there making myself useful.
This day in November, '63, I was in the teletype room, where the AP printer ground out news stories, crop reports, stock market data and sports scores all day, when the bell on the teletype went crazy. The bell rang when an important story was going to follow. One bell was unusual; two bells were an emergency, like tornadoes; three bells was total war. Then, the damn bell rang four, five, ten times...
I scurried over to see what the story could be that was that important, and read the hed: "Kennedy shot in Dallas." The first reports didn't declare he was dead. That didn't come til later.
I was shaken. I ripped the first page of the story off the machine and took it to the booth where the AM guy--his name was Ed Bush--was on the board.
I opened the door to the booth and handed the bulletin to him. He read it and his face went ashen.
He told me to show it to Carl Goodwin, the owner. I ran to Carl's office. Carl took the bulletin, read it, his hand quivered, and then went back to the booth, moved Ed from the mic and made the announcement himself.
All this within about 10 minutes of that Friday morning (Santa Fe's an hour earlier than Dallas) that changed the course of history....

The End Of The Line

Looking for reasons beyond misogyny, xenophobia and racism gives The Trump's voters and campaign FAR too much credit. And it excuses what, to my mind, is inexcusable. It excuses folks who thought 1) Hillary was a lock and that, 2) therefore their vanity votes for Stein and Johnson were "harmless." 

And so they might have been, if Hillary had, indeed, held the "lock." 

But she didn't. She won the popular vote, by a whisker, a microscopic percentage, but those seemingly tiny, vanity-inspired hemorrhages, in places like Florida, Michigan, Virginia and Wisconsin cost her the election, and cost US at least four years of fascism-lite.

SO I've been saying my good-byes today. This really is the end of something, an epoch, an era, an age. A change has been tolled, the bells rung... I heard someone on an NPR show today say that now the press is going to HAVE to become more adversarial--that was the word--and I thought where have you BEEN for the past 20 or 30 years, child? The "press" is not going to treat The Trump with any but the gentlest kid gloves. They'll celebrate his successes, ignore and/or excuse his failures. He's their baby...

The biggest danger is that The Trump's electoral victory will legitimize and normalize the racial hoistilities and antipathies of his supporters....and it is ALREADY coming out in anecdotal incidents all over the country. Google "Day One in Trump's Amerikkka."  That nematode on NPR Wednesday was saying that The Trump was a "wake-up call" for journalists, and pointed to a need for adversarial journalism, and I thought: Are you SHITTING me? Where has the child been for the last 30 years of relentless, press stenography?

HDRC was not my favored candidate. None were. That said, I fancied I had the a normal citizen's duty to attempt to vote for the outcome that did the least harm. "Greatest good" is an illusion. Least harm can be felt.

Throughout the campaign, I had continually counseled a Rawlsian ethic for choosing for whom to vote. I rejected the "Lesser evil" trope as conceding the wrong points, and advocated the choice who represented the Least Harm for the Greatest Number. After the primaries and the Convention, that was Hilary Clinton. She (alone) could stop The Trump.

That seemed to me to be a more important project than voicing my personal, vain objections to a system I've been trying unsuccessfully to change since the 60s. Trump, I believed HAD to be stopped. I voted for Sanders in the primary, though by then the issue had been settled. When Hillary Clinton was nominated, she became my choice.

But "The Trump" prevailed despite my efforts. I "compromised my principles," in vain, again, apparently; I guess I'm grumpy that "you" didn't sacrifice yours in the same (albeit doomed) enterprise, and I guess a little disappointed, at that....

This appears to be the inglorious end of the fabled American political experiment, culminating in the 'election' of the most careless, willfully ignorant, intellectually lazy, morally corrupt, incompetent, dishonest, and reprehensible charlatan and mountebank ever installed in such high office with so much power. The Trump is the embodiment of EVERYTHING that makes "Loathsome White Men" such loathsome people. He's the Ultra Ugly American. He reeks of entitlement and privilege. He heaps excess upon excess, maladroit and malaprop in the same breath.

AND THIS is what all that nobility of aspiration, all that impassioned, enlightenment rhetoric, all that "Of, for and By" the people has led to. The institution of the presidency will not recover from this; at least, it is not supposed to. 

These are historic days. This is the terminus of that particular road.

It is "The End."

The End Of The Line

Looking for reasons beyond misogyny, xenophobia and racism gives his voters FAR too much credit. And it excuses what, to my mind, is inexcusable. It excuses folks who thought 1) Hillary was a lock and that, 2) therefore their vanity votes for Stein and Johnson were "harmless." 

And so they might have been, if Hillary had, indeed, held the "lock." 

But she didn't. She won the popular vote, by a microscopic percentage, but those tiny, vanity-inspired hemorrhages, in places like Florida, Michigan, Virginia and Wisconsin cost her the election, and cost US at least four years of fascism-lite.


SO I've been saying my good-byes today. This really is the end of something, an epoch, an era, an age. A change has been tolled, the bells rung... 

I heard someone on an NPR show today say that now the press is going to HAVE to become more adversarial--that was the word--and I thought where have you BEEN for the past 20 or 30 years, child? The "press" is not going to treat The Trump with any but the gentlest kid gloves. They'll celebrate his successes, ignore and/or excuse his failures. He's their baby...

The biggest danger is that The Trump's electoral victory will legitimize and normalize the racial hoistilities and antipathies of his supporters....and it is ALREADY coming out in anecdotal incidents all over the country. Google "Day One in Trump's Amerikkka."  That nematode on NPR Wednesday was saying that The Trump was a "wake-up call" for journalists, and pointed to a need for adversarial journalism, and I thought: Are you SHITTING me? Where has the child been for the last 30 years of relentless, press stenography?

HDRC was not my favored candidate. None were. That said, I fancied I had the a normal citizen's duty to attempt to vote for the outcome that did the least harm.,

Throughout the campaign, I had continually counseled a Rawlsian ethic for choosing for whom to vote. I rejected the "Lesser evil" trope as conceding the wrong points, and advocated the choice who represented the Least Harm for the Greatest Number. After the primaries and the Convention, that was Hilary Clinton. She (alone) could stop The Trump.

That seemed to me to be a more important project than voicing my personal, vain objections to a system I've been trying unsuccessfully to change since the 60s. Trump, I believed HAD to be stopped.

But "The Trump" prevailed despite my efforts. I "compromised my principles," in vain, again, apparently; I guess I'm grumpy that "you" didn't sacrifice yours in the same (albeit doomed) enterprise, and I guess a little disappointed, at that....

This appears to be the inglorious end of the fabled American political experiment, culminating in the 'election' of the most careless, willfully ignorant, intellectually lazy, morally corrupt, incompetent, dishonest, and reprehensible charlatan and mountebank ever installed in such high office with so much power. The Trump is the embodiment of EVERYTHING that makes "Loathsome White Men" such loathsome people. He's the Ultra Ugly American. He reeks of entitlement and privilege. He heaps excess upon excess, maladroit and malaprop in the same breath.

AND THIS is what all that nobility of aspiration, all that impassioned, enlightenment rhetoric, all that "Of, for and By" the people has led to. The institution of the presidency will not recover from this; at least, it is not supposed to. 

These are historic days. This is the terminus of that particular road.

It is "The End."