The Fiscal Cliff, and How Weed Could Help Our Assault Rifle Worries

Life is full of surprises, and yet ... not so much when it comes to the news. Y2K, for instance. How long was that potential catastrophe discussed and speculated on before it turned out to be the obvious fizzle it turned out to be? Contrary, at times belligerent sort that I am, I waited until New Year's Day, 2000, before I went out to fill my tank with gas, to get cash from the ATM. There was no one at either the gas station or the bank drive-through. At the grocery store, where, to be even more perverse, I went to buy a single bottle of water, there were people—this is true—trying to return large previously purchased flats of bottled water. I didn't stop by the rental store, but I understand there was a similar line of people returning generators it turned out they wouldn't need.

The stock market wouldn't crater until March of that year, and its cratering would have nothing to do with Y2K. If anything, the crash following the parabolic rise in tech stocks the previous year was put off by the spending put toward the correcting of systems that might otherwise have been affected by Y2K, but weren't, because it was a problem that needed addressing, for the sake of profits, and was thus addressed.

Similarly, and despite the news, the endless coverage and punditry, the presidential election was over as soon as it became clear that Mitt Romney was going to be the Republican presidential nominee. Anyone with half a brain (not just me and Nate Silver) should have been able to figure that out, and yet, if you listened to the news, or got scared, as I did, watching Obama all but throw the first debate (probably high as a kite, at altitude, on that close-to-being-legal-before-it-became-legal weed that we now have in this state—notice we haven't had anyone shot up by crazy motherfuckers wielding assault rifles with big-assed magazines since; coincidence? I don't think so), you ended up getting nervous over nothing, convincing yourself that the obvious wasn't so obvious.

And now comes that dreaded Bernanke creation, The Fiscal Cliff.

As I write this, the awful clock is ticking. Frankly, I'm so frightened I could just poop my pants.

Count me among the camp (Krugman, Buffett, Howard Dean, not to mention a long list of true small government types) that thinks—hopes—we go over.

Unlike many in that camp, however, I thought the original "temporary" tax cuts were a very bad idea—all of them, including the ones for the middle-class. It seemed to me obvious at the time that we would need some reserves (now that we had finally balanced our budget after Reagan and his ilk had taken the debt to levels previously unheard of) ahead of retiring that big demographic of Baby-Boomers that had done so much to expand our growing consumer economy, a process, their transitioning from taxpayers and spenders to tax-takers and hobbyists, that would begin more or less in earnest in 2011.

But no. Instead we cut taxes, got into two fruitless wars, made sure military contractors and the VA would be busy for years to come, while also throwing in an unfunded drug plan for seniors that by law disallowed the government that was paying for it to negotiate lower prices on the drugs, as, say, the government of Canada does for its citizenry, to keep Big Pharma's coffers flush, and to further assure that medications in the United States are not only the best (they say), but the most expensive in the world.

That's what we did instead of shoring up our finances, ahead of everything blowing up again in 2008.

As I predicted in one of my blogs back then, when the whole house of cards was coming down, and, during an election year, we were being asked to free up nearly a trillion dollars, right away, to save some banks and insurance companies and possibly even Western Civilization as we knew it, from ruin, after highly-levered risks went bad, risks that likely wouldn't have been taken had the principal players not felt with reasonable certainty that American taxes would be there (over a trillion dollars, ultimately) to cushion the brutal free market blow if things went the other way of where they needed to, that arguments would be made before long that we simply couldn't afford our "entitlements"anymore, and that we would have to do something: cut them, limit them, end them, or else we'd be screwed.

The fact that many (though not all) of those who say we must do something about "entitlements" don't also say we should do something about military spending, or the gap between rich and poor brought on largely by the tax policies of the last thirty years, tells you that the budget battle we hear about endlessly on the news has more to do with whose people get the tax dollars and whose don't than it does with addressing the real fiscal problems we and most other western nations—particularly the ones who trusted the banking system to make their lives richer—face at the moment.

To wit: we are currently spending roughly 1.9 dollars for every dollar we take in. Thus, to merely balance the budget, and hold the burgeoning debt where it is, excepting the interest on it (currently held artificially low by our Federal Reserve's buying of Treasury Bonds), we would have to raise tax revenue by roughly 90%. This, as many have pointed out, would crush the economy, and with it tax receipts.

By contrast, we could cut spending by half. To give you an idea what that would look like, if we cut the entire military budget—all of it: the VA, the armed forces, contractor cash, the whole shebang—it wouldn't be enough.

Even a combination of the two: cut spending by 25%, and raise taxes by 45%, would put a strain on our economy the likes of which would make the Great Depression look like a slow afternoon at the deli, if for no other reason—and there would be other reasons, plenty of them—than the general run of human being was much less dependent on The System in those days. Our current anemic 2% growth, helped along by zero interest rate policy (ZIRP), as well as an unprecedented rise in the money supply thanks to our backstop of last resort, the Federal Reserve (QE1, QE2, QE3 ... ) would get squeezed even more, thus producing fewer tax receipts, a deep recession if not a full-on, intractable depression.

Moreover, if we cut "entitlements" across the board, many of those people would have less money to spend, in our economy that is currently 70% driven by consumer spending. If we cut military spending, the one manufacturing base that is still undeniably strong, uniquely American—weapons making—will suffer; and those who make their living at Lockheed or someplace similar will have to do with less.

Soldiers, many of whom ended up becoming soldiers because they couldn't find suitable work in the venerable private sector, would suddenly be doing with less money and medical benefits, with less VA care to follow.

Anyone with means who had old relatives, poor relatives, disabled relatives, would be stuck caring for them, just like the good old days, when only the rich traveled and went to restaurants, got their nails done and had all kinds of servants.

Many of the outposts of our economy that we now take for granted, that have been made possible, and broadly available, due in part to progressive taxation and the oft-disparaged spreading of the wealth, would suffer greatly, or simply disappear.

Many of us might imagine that would be a good thing; I don't see how.

So what do we do? Is there any way out? Realistically, no, there isn't. Certainly not if we limit our tools to taxation and spending cuts. Which is why the current political debate, that presupposes a realistic fiscal solution short of radically devaluing the currency, is absurd. What we are arguing about now is over who keeps what, not over what gets fixed and when.

One could argue—I would—that the real fiscal cliff, the point of no return, happened with the temporary tax cuts that squandered our surplus and are now set to expire, short of some last minute gimmick, in a few hours, and was further sealed by our invasion of Iraq, and our subsequent dithering about in Afghanistan. Whatever we do now is going to involve printing money, lots of it, and probably for a long time. Normally, were we not the world's de facto reserve currency, and Europe and Japan weren't in worse shape than us, this would lead to a flight from our debt, and thus our currency, by "vigilante" bondholders, causing interest rates to rise ... hyperinflation, followed by a long depression. But Europe and Japan are in worse shape than us. The dollar is still the world's reserve currency—the least dirty of all the dirty shirts, as Bill Gross of PIMCO would say—and besides, it happened to Germany in the early twenties, and look where, after two losses in two world wars, they are now? And Argentina—hyperinflation is to Argentina what guns are to the United States: a kind of unique craziness—and do people still tango in Buenos Aires? Yes they do.

So what's all the fuss? Why, after twenty first-graders were slaughtered in a classroom by the mentally challenged son of a survivalist mother who taught him to shoot, with an M-16 with a magazine that held thirty shells (the number one new buyer of guns: women), that apparently didn't jam, as a similar, possibly foreign-made, model did for our local well-armed lunatic down in Aurora in July, isn't gun control among the top four things Barack Obama is going to focus on during the first year of his new administration?

Obviously ... it's because, in this country, it would be, in the president's estimation, a waste of time. Because the people of the country, this country—most of them, it seems—just aren't that outraged. Not like they'd be if they had to pay more in taxes.

So here's my idea for dealing with both taxes and guns: What if, for starters, we get Humbolt County in California to go straight, and tax them. Then, before long, legalize weed everywhere! (Seriously, isn't it about goddamned time those potheads started giving back to their country instead of to the Mexican and Columbian cartels?)

And to boost sales, and thus boost our still anemic economy, and tax revenue with it, what if we decided to make it MANDATORY that anyone who owned an assault rifle, regardless what size the magazine(s), had to be stoned AT ALL TIMES.

That's right. All fucking day. If he wanted to own an assault rifle and keep it in his house. You buy the gun, in lieu of a background check, you'd have to sign a weed agreement.

We could come up with a simple blood test (that, think about it, would employ more lab techs, scientists, couriers) that could measure the amount of THC in the blood, and if that person who owned the weapon fell below that level, he'd have to hand over his assault rifle (the process of which could be interesting, not to mention newsworthy—exciting—but never mind).

Frankly, I'd be in favor of having the same law apply to owners of, say, handguns, but ... I'd be willing, in the spirit of democracy and all its inherent messiness, to start small. With assault rifles. That way we keep certain elements good and mellow without pinching the still thriving arms industry in this country, which, as noted, continues to struggle with anemic economic growth despite unprecedented boosts and supports. That and we'd be growing a new economic engine: the weed industry. Growing it, and taxing it. It might not seem brilliant at first, maybe even a little cock-eyed, I'll admit, but it beats the trouble of having to decide what sort of sidearm the music teacher is going to carry come next fall. AND we wouldn't have to raise taxes too terribly much on the rich, and upset them, and have them move to some other country like a certain French actor whose name I can't spell.

OR take away too much from  old people, poor people, disabled people, soldiers, military contractors, space explorers, the home-ownership industry ... the list goes on; in short, lots of people who might otherwise be buying something from you, rather than wanting to stay for free in your basement.

Something to keep in mind as we edge into the new year, and decide which things, which sorts of people, we most want to complain about.

Until then, until we get a law passed, if you got guns laying around the house, especially those big goddamned ones that shoot thirty rounds faster than you can say Jack Splatt, stay mellow. Get down to your corner, maybe it's the former small-town hardware store, and talk to your man. Head to the Weed Store. Set a good example. For the welfare of the country. For our young people. Our babies.

Lincoln

I saw the movie yesterday with my soon to be eleven-year-old and his friend, having heard that the beginning was a little violent, Janusz Kaminsky, the same cinematographer as shot Saving Private Ryan, having shot this one in similar grays (though without the blood, it turns out), that James Spader, who is great in the film, and bit more portly than when we last saw him, at one point remarks as the president, near the climax, pops in on him and his fellow Falstaffian arm-twisting operatives, in their ramshackle pre-Carville/Rove War Room: "Well I'll be fucked," he says, standing up to shake the president's hand.

But the opening battle scene is less violent than I expected given the times, and when the rhetoric of the film turns coarse, it is more often than not a coarseness as linguistically elegant as it is amusing and sharp, the best examples of which, not surprisingly, come from Tommy Lee Jones, who plays Senator Thaddeus Stevens, whose motivation to see the 13th Amendment to the Constitution passed is underscored by a scene later on, in the movie's denouement, with (to leave you wondering) a long-time cast member from "Law and Order."

Having worried the movie, with its PG-13 rating, might be too violent in its battle scenes, I was now worried that it wouldn't be violent enough, that linguistic elegance wasn't enough to overcome the lack of cool special effects and young hotties, that the children, thus, might get bored.

But they were never bored.

In fact they were more entertained by Lincoln's cleverly measured stories than many of his staff (one close to my heart, and that my son seemed to get especially well, involved Lincoln's remarking that he really ought to be more concise, yet he often found that when he got going he became lazy and couldn't stop himself); they laughed harder than most at the many mellifluous zingers. Which is to say that for two and a half hours these children of YouTube and "Gangnam Style" were entertained by a smart, surprisingly witty and trenchant movie driven almost entirely by stylized dialogue unfamiliar to their ears, around an argument that by now—let us be thankful—must seem to them preposterous.

I left the theater feeling not only exalted by the movie but by the hope that our children's sensibilities remain not entirely corrupted, this despite my soon to be eleven-year-old's remarking, as we walked out the theater, that it might have been cooler if they'd actually shown Lincoln getting shot (this, in all fairness, after he had nudged me to take off my cap, as he himself had, solemn, reverent soul that he is, when we learned of Lincoln's assassination late in the movie, in a coda that Anthony Lane, in The New Yorker, insisted was unnecessary to the otherwise tight construction of the plot, but nonetheless).

All to say, before Nick Silver tells you with diagrams and odds and various models, Lincoln will run away with this year's Best Picture Oscar, and quite a few more, come Academy Award time, not because it is so obviously the best movie of the year but because it is the kind of smart, crowd-pleasing movie the Academy hasn't had to consider in a while, and is eager to, for the sake of the public if nothing else, and it will win, big, and deservingly so.

Daniel Day-Lewis—can one say enough about this actor's gifts? Are we to once more pity Joaquin Phoenix for showing up with a brilliant performance—in The Master, this time, in Ring of Fire last—that unfortunately falls short of the best—to Philip Seymour Hoffman's last time (in Capote), Day-Lewis's this time? Or will the Academy, not wanting to drive Phoenix over the bend a second time, give Phoenix the nod?

Don't count on it. Daniel Day-Lewis inhabits Lincoln down to the shrug and understated syllable. None of which any of us, for comparison's sake, ever saw or heard in the original man; yet we get from Day-Lewis something that feels true, even as it isn't obvious, even as it surprises—the slouch, the man who doesn't take over the room with his prescence, but rather, can actually disappear into it—and is utterly contrary to any contemporary notion of greatness.

Like Lincoln, one could say.

A film with all manner of good support, by Tommy Lee Jones, James Spader, and others—including Sally Field as Lincoln's much beset wife Mary, whose connubial quarreling fit with the president I found especially moving, as it reminded me in its timbre, if not detail, of my wife and me when we get going. And also sets up the turn of heartbreak we feel at the end, if perhaps less than we should, in a coda that Lane, in his review, felt was dispensible (rather than over-keyed, in a way typical of Spielberg).

Friends of the Denver Center Theater will keep an eye open for both John Hutton (Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts) and Jamie Horton (New York Congressman Giles Stuart), the former being the more obvious on the screen.

Finally, let us not forget Tony Kushner, who wrote the great two-part play, Angels in America, before writing the screenplay for Spielberg's movie—for which he, too, will win an Academy Award.

A focused, fascinating movie destined to run away with awards come award time. One can already imagine our current president, supposedly a great admirer of Lincoln, watching it over and over in the White House Screening Room, as he and Congress finagle their way, less mellifluously, toward the Fiscal Cliff we're told is coming.

And Now for Something Completely Different

Now that the presidential election is over—having turned out pretty much exactly as I predicted it would back in January—we move on now to what Ben Bernanke sometime back referred to as "The Fiscal Cliff," an unpleasantness up ahead that is currently being offset by a scandal no one quite understands. At least they don't understand why what has ostensibly happened is the occasion for a scandal. Anyway, it's not nearly as exciting as Sandy. The Fiscal Cliff should be exciting enough, trust me, but it isn't, because hardly anyone understands just exactly what it entails.

Unlike a guy banging someone who isn't his wife. Still, it's not like he killed his wife and put her body in the freezer and then screwed the mistress, the biographer, in this case, on top the freezer, in front of security cameras he'd installed himself but, in his lust, forgot about.

Now, to me, that would be a better set up for a good scandal, especially one involving a CIA Director. Certainly better than what we have.

Let me just say at the outset that I—like many, apparently—couldn't care less who former 4-Star General and CIA Director David Petraeus is fucking—or did fuck, or even who he plans to fuck down the line once the smoke clears. For my money, he was the best military mind going at a time when our civilian leaders, many of whom ought to be up on charges for war crimes, had got us into two stunningly ill-advised conflicts. That he got us out of the stupider of two in a way that allows the delusional to imagine we actually won something in that ten-year fiasco—I'm speaking of Iraq—deserves as much praise as any general is likely to deserve. He literally wrote the book on counter-revolutionary tactics, and had our brilliant minds in Washington listened to him a little more, a little sooner, things might have gone better. Possibly. Or we could have just stayed out of the place altogether and maybe got out of Afghanistan a lot sooner ...

I know. Spilt milk. Money and lives. Get over it already.

Anyway, Petraeus is getting thrown to the dogs because he had an affair with his biographer, an affair he rather quickly admitted to, rather than, say, dragging out the situation endlessly in the way that, say, Lance Armstrong did. Perhaps it isn't the right point of view to have, but I find ambitious, cheating, win-at-all-costs, lying motherfuckers like Armstrong to be particularly risible, if for no other reason than they lie to the bitter end as though that game, too, is a contest to be won at all costs. I know all about what he did for people with cancer, the bracelets, the attention, and that was a big reason no one could touch him all these years—while his former teammates, and others, other cheaters, had their lives ruined. But the way I look at it, my son got better because of good medicine and good doctors and nurses, and possibly because he got a lot of love while he was dealing with it all, and because he was fortunate.

It didn't have anything to do with Lance Armstrong and his ego.

So fuck Lance Armstrong and the seedy culture of doping he perhaps more than anyone else helped to create and feed in cycling.

As to Petraeus, as best I can tell, he got in with a bad crowd. Tampa socialites. Some would say that when you're the most famous military officer of the century thus far, and your wife looks like the head librarian in a small town and your biographer looks like a thirty-something chick with a thong collection doing fitness videos on TV at two in morning, something is bound to happen. But I'm not that harsh. I would simply say, to paraphrase John Donne, that our military and intelligence services are the less for having a man like Petraeus gone from them.

But we're a country that has a habit of dispatching real talent for trivial sins.

Not that cheating on your wife with your biographer is trivial. But, in my estimation, it doesn't rank with killing and maiming tens of thousands in two fruitless wars.

Still, it's all how you handle your mistakes, I suppose. And a picture tells a thousand words. And I saw a picture of Petraeus and the biographer on Bloomberg this morning while I was having my oatmeal, and, well, I don't know how else to put it other than to say he looked like a guy who'd just gotten a blow job and wasn't used it and thus had that funny grin on his face, and I thought, A real weasal would have covered that up better. A first-rate lying son of a bitch would have looked a little more earnest, more professional, as they say, and less like a teen-ager after his or her first piece of ass.

The media, of course, is used to dealing with the game faces of weasals and cheats and so what are they to do with a CIA Director who just comes out and admits to something—resigns his post!—after a few emails get exposed? A brilliant general who screwed up and then, when caught, owns up to it. WTF?

It's a mystery we're likely to hear about for a few more weeks at least. As we dance around the cliff.

More on that another time.

The Next Novel ...

Working title: Term Life

On the night before his sixty-first birthday, Corson Graves sat down at his desk and counted his money—gold coins; other than the equity in his house and the signed 1^st editions in the locked glass case to the right of his desk, it was all in gold now—and when he was done, concluded, as he had the previous night, and the one before that one, that if he wasn’t dead in three years he was fucked.

With Two Weeks to Go ...

As many of you know, I predicted back in January that Mitt Romney would be the nominee for the Republicans, and that he would get beat—trounced, I believe I said—on Election Day, now only two weeks away.

Alas, there are always factors we can't account for when we go out on a limb. One of the factors I hadn't counted on (and that no one else had counted on so far as I know) was that Barack Obama would throw the first debate ...

And that Romney, of all people, would show finesse, and actually appear to care about that 47% of the population that was left strangely unmentioned by the president. And that, moreover, Romney had every intention of keeping not just these freeloaders but his own freeloaders—military contractors, Big Pharma, insurance companies, private equity types, hedge funders—everyone, pretty much, but PBS and Big Bird, flush with taxpayer dollars, this while lowering the revenues from which these payments come.

If I hadn't known better, I'd have thought he had a sensible plan to clean up the spectacular mess Obama inherited and have our economy cranking again like it was after we'd won the Second World War. Back when we had industrial power second to none, and the world, in rubble, mostly, needed it, badly. Before we were importing more than we were exporting, and the Dollar began giving way to the Chinese Yuan—at least it would, or should, if the Chinese weren't "cheating."

Back then, after the war, we had a deficit relative to GDP that was larger than now, if just barely, and yet the circumstances, as anyone, especially Mitt Romney, ought to know, were quite a lot different. Radically different. We'd emerged from a depression as a country of savers. The Defense Department was still called the War Department, and amid the crisis of war, we'd been forced to ration rather than told to shop.

Why do I mention this? Because no one in his right mind would suggest rationing to support a war or anything else these days. Not if he wanted to get elected president. Not even if you're a supposed born again fiscal conservative running on a ticket purporting to swing a meat axe at the deficit.

Thus, I hadn't counted on Moderate Mitt, Conservative Mitt, Equivocal Mitt (who was for so much before he was against so much, only to be for most of it all over again), Whatever Mitt, to so enamor "the base" by promising even more, with less revenue, than his challenger.

But no. Not only were we going to get our Cold War military back, but the farmers and Big Ag would keep getting their subsidies. Patients and bilkers alike would keep getting their full share of Medicare. And all the cost savings in Obamacare/Romneycare—eliminated (saving, once you start it, is practically as bad as rationing, and means less money going to someone who might otherwise vote for you), and yet we'd get to keep the nice parts—for, say, those with pre-existing conditions. Big bills mean big money, for someone who might vote for you. We're a country where a lot of folks make good bank on the backs of the sick, and what lunatic running for office would want to change that?

Aside from a little trimming in "discretionary" spending, we'd get to keep all the stuff paid for by the supposedly wild spending he'd been railing against for months AND we'd get a tax cut! After which, in four short years, he'd balance the budget just like Reagan and Dubya did.

Or did they quadruple and more or less double the debt, respectively?

But has it mattered, really? Dick Cheney—and what fiscal conservative other than Ron Paul doesn't love Dick Cheney?—said Reagan proved that it didn't matter. So if it doesn't matter, what's everyone worried about? And wouldn't it be nice to have everything and more, and pay less for it?

If you watched that first debate, and took Mitt seriously, that was pretty much Mitt's plan.

I hadn't counted on it ... Mitt running, at the last minute, as a spendthrift. As a guy that not only the rich could count on for charity from the taxpayers, but the old, the poor, the sick, the 47%, everyone—everyone!—would keep getting and then some, if we just voted for the conservative guy. For Mitt.

And here's another thing. I hadn't counted on a significant portion of women not thinking through the implications of having Roe versus Wade overturned, of having abortion only legal in cases of rape and incest and the health of the mother, which seems so reasonable just as long as you don't think about it at all. I hadn't counted on women, a significant number of them, apparently, not caring about what two guys named Mitt and Paul had in mind with regard to their right to make their own decisions about what happens inside their bodies and not have to stand and make their case in front of a tribunal just so they could terminate a pregnancy if they happened to get impregnated by, say, an uncle or a rapist.

I thought: if just all the women who can vote in this country said, "Are you out of your fucking mind?" and voted for the other guy, while all the men who supposedly want to take rights away from women voted for the guy who wanted to take rights away from women, the other guy—not Romney—would still win, because women have the numbers.

At this point in our history, I figured that was a pretty safe bet, that at least a strong majority would vote for the other guy, and yet ... we'll have to see.

I had counted on even the dumbest fool on the planet understanding that neither candidate is going to balance the budget in the next four years. Not even close. I had counted on most people, particularly the ones getting older, with little in the way of personal savings, not again buying into the tax-cutting to a balanced budget and more for everyone bullshit.

I used to be certain. I'm not anymore. You might say I have a bad feeling ...

Still, here's my prediction: Obama wins in a squeaker (that should have been a blow-out, but everyone loves a game 7, which I, of course, didn't count on), on the kind of strong end-game/ground-game/door-to-door fighting and all out nastiness that got Bush re-elected in 2004. It's a dirty business, for a thankless job. There will be those ironies and more for the pundits and all the rest of us to talk about as we run up our cards trying again to spend our economy into health during the holiday season.

Or ... maybe Carville was right, and Obama, for one night in Denver, saw his way out of his predicament but couldn't quite bring himself to follow through.

The writer, once again, losing out to life.

In two weeks we'll know for certain.

The Next Debate's Moderator: Samuel L. Jackson

Word had it that Sam was going to run a tight ship, and there for a while, when the candidates walked onto the stage and shook hands, smiling, trying to look taller than the other, Romney whispering to Obama that he liked the shine on his shoes, that he could see up his pant leg, and Obama retorting that Romney's fly was open, chucking him on the arm then, grinning big, waving to the crowd, "Made you look," there was hope.

They went to their podiums and Jackson leveled a hard, bad-assed expression at them both. "Listen up, Motherfuckers, cuz I'm only gonna say this once," he began. "When I say you're done talking, you're done fucking talking. Are we clear? Cuz if I gotta tell ya twice, I'll be gettin up there, Secret Service or no Secret Service, and getting goddam Yosemite Fucking Sam on your asses ..."

Hearing this, Romney's eyes got wide with excitement, an excitement he hadn't felt since he hazed that sissy with the lavender hair back in prep school. He had to admit this was more fun than Old Man Lehrer, that PBS pussy, moderating. Obama, meanwhile, simply grinned in his cool, good-natured way. It was good to have a brother up there asking the questions, keeping it fair, after the other night in Denver.

"All right, then," Jackson said when he had their attention. "First question ... How do y'all feel about two mouthy, in-your-fucking-face gay brothers from the Castro, say, gettin married and adopting some Mormon kids? Not the pretty ones, mind you—I can see you're freakin out over there, Governor—but no, we're not talking about the smart motherfuckers who when they get older we'll all be so proud of and take all the credit ... no, not them, I'm talking about the more fucked up ones, the ones nobody wants, back of the 47% corral kinda kids, you might say. What are your fucking thoughts? Governor, you getta go first."

Romney looked around, not sure whether to laugh or tell this guy to go fuck himself. He'd never told someone to go fuck himself before. He wondered if it would be exciting. "Why me? I thought we were going to talk about the economy ..."

"We'll talk about the fucking economy when I decide to, Motherfucker.  Right now, however, we're talking about two brothers—hell, since I see you're wincing, that both you motherfuckers have your assholes in a pucker, let's make it two sisters. Two hot-looking dikes—I've got a couple in mind—wanna get married and adopt some Mormon kid that no one, not even the Mormons, want—"

"Why do I have to go first?" Romney asked again, a little louder than before.

"Because you always wanna go last," Jackson replied—he'd watched the last debate. "And because I'm the moderator and I fucking said so."

Obama, who'd been cool up till now, felt it was time to speak up. He was the president after all. "Sam, come on. This isn't quiz night at some dance club in West Oakland. This is a Presidential Debate."

Jackson leaned back and folded his arms. "Answer the question."

"What if I just took the kid," Romney offered after four or five seconds of silence. "And then hired someone. What if I created a job for someone, an opportunity, of the sort one can have in this country if one works hard, if my opponent isn't raising taxes on him or her at every turn ..."

"Now there's a novel idea," Obama cut in. "I'd have figured you'd buy the orphanage and let your buddy Sheldon turn it into a casino. Have the kids work the tables. Dress the place up in neon—"

"You laugh, Mr. President, but that kind of hard scrapping ingenuity worked wonders for the Indians—I mean, of course, the Native American population that had prior to that time been beaten down with government handouts—"

"And the fucking cavalry," Jackson put in.

Romney turned to Obama. "He can't say that. He's the moderator."

Obama turned to Jackson. "Sam, you aren't the peanut gallery. You're the moderator—"

"Fine, I'm the moderator. I ask a question about homosexuals getting married and adopting undesirable little Mormons and you start talking about casinos and Indians. What's a brother to think, other than, apparently, you're both cool with it—"

"Cool with what?" Romney wondered aloud. He'd never used the word cool in that particular context before. It gave him a strange tingle.

Jackson answered, "The sisters ... gettin married ... and giving the little 47% percenter Mormon boy a home."

"No! Of course not—" Romney shot back. Was this man insane?

"So what about you?" Jackson asked Obama, who had thus far kept cool on the question.

He stammered a bit, then said, "Well, I think ... yes ... possibly. As you know, I'm the president of everyone, the president to all of America, from the richest of the rich to the dirtiest, sneakiest little weasal—" He stopped himself "But I think reasonable folks would agree, that even Governor Romney would agree, that we need to consider some of the potential complications that could arise—"

Jackson leaned back in his chair, looked up and ran his hand over his scalp. "Mr. President, I am not asking you if the sisters I have in mind can be allowed to change this little Mormon motherfucker's name to some shit like Elijah, or some goofy-assed one like yours. I'm just saying, Can These Sisters get married? Like all the rest of us poor motherfuckers, right? And by the way—" He eyed Obama knowingly "—I bet that was some anniversary you had the other night, some real joyous shit to be sure after the way you let that lyin motherfucker run all over your ass the other night—"

"Excuse me," Romney remarked indignantly. "What did he just call me? He can't say that. He can't be calling everyone a—"

"He's right," said Obama, raising his eyebrows at Jackson. That no nonsense, worn-out-being-the-president-and-having-to-listen-to-assholes-go-on-all-day-long look. "Sam ... I think we need to talk about the economy. Right now. I really do. We need to talk about jobs, and giving hope to the middle class, to the whole country and not just the sisters who want to get married and the Mormon orphans and those of us who have done well and should pay a little more. And one more thing ... if you say one more word about my anniversary, I'll be turning my wife loose on you, and she'll be putting a whup ass on yours that'll make the one she put on me the other night look like a—"

"Can we talk about the economy now?" Romney interjected petulantly. "For instance, Mr. President, tell me why, if I, or someone even richer than me, someone like Sheldon, for instance, is willing to create a job for someone, to take care of this young child you spoke of, to give just one example, so that he doesn't end up in a parade some day wearing chaps—"

Obama, ever presidential, nonetheless cut in, "Now hold on, Governor, I think we can all agree there are worse things, far worse fates that any of us could end up with, particularly if you and your running mate get elected, than going to a parade wearing chaps—"

But Romney wasn't so sure. In fact he disagreed. No, you wouldn't see his children going to a parade in chaps. If anyone he hired in the private workforce to raise a child (rather than let a couple of lesbians get their hands on him) let that child go off to a parade in chaps, well, let's just say someone's head would roll. There'd be some firing going on.

Jackson, incredulous, was heard to say, with relative calm at first, "Did I say that either of you motherfuckers could talk?"

Perhaps he said it too softly, because both Romney and Obama ignored him. As they did, repeatedly, with Jim Lehrer during the first debate. They continued on, bickering, talking over the top of each other.

"Tell me this, Mr. President, what if your girls—"

"My girls? My girls are on a tighter leash than I am. They're doing calculus right now. Either that or they're in bed—"

"Gentlemen—" Jackson tried once.

"Assuming they've finished reading their Zora Neale Hurston for the night," Obama added.

"Who?" Romney had never heard of no Zora Neale Hurston. Figured she was probably one of his aunts from Kenya.

"Gentlemen, please—" Jackson tried twice, his tone betraying annoyance. He was not in the habit of being ignored, not even by motherfuckers with armed guards.

"I have to say I'm not at all surprised," Obama said to Romney, squaring off with him, looking, to the close observer, like he might throw down with the Mitt if he kept on. After the anniversary he'd had—or rather, didn't—with Michelle after the first debate, he really wasn't in the mood for any shit tonight. "Then again, you probably had your hands full with Horatio Alger and Dale Carnegie, reading up on how Jesus hauled ass from Nazareth to Missouri just ahead of Lewis and Clark—"

Now, Romney thought, he didn't need to say that. There was no need of that. It wasn't like he was Dan Quayle going on about Jack Kennedy. "I'll have you know, Mr. President, that while you were smoking your grass and doing your blow and dreaming about your father, I was out in the business world, stealing money fair and square and without caffeine or any other dangerous drugs—"

Obama squared his jaw, stuck out his not so intimidating chest. "What say you and I go play a little basketball?"

Romney smiled and kept on. "I was pursuing the American Dream. Paying way too much in capital gains before Ronald Reagan, and the president whose name we don't speak—"

"Would you both SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Jackson shouted.

Both candidates stopped talking. Romney looked at Jackson. "Whoa." It was the first time he'd ever said the word Whoa, anywhere.

Obama, seeing one of the Secret Service snipers aiming at Jackson's head now, waved him off. "Sam," he said with all the reasonableness he could muster, "This isn't the set for "Pulp Fiction." You aren't sitting in the front seat of a car with John talking about cheeseburgers at a Paris McDonalds. This is serious. This is a Presidential Debate. And, by the way, if I don't do better at this one, something of mine is going to be in the ringer afterwards, so I'd appreciate it if—"

"You know what I think?" Romney remarked, his eyes sparkling in the lights. "I think we're going to win this election!" He remembered Walter Mondale saying the same thing at a debate with Reagan back in 1984, after he'd imagined he'd wiped the floor with the president, who was probably in the early stages of Alzeimer's at the time. At least he acted like he was. Then and after he beat Mondale in a landslide—it was a memory Romney only wanted to see out so far.

Jackson, hearing him, turned to Romney and said, "I'll bet you a hundred fucking dollars that you don't."

 Romney thought a moment, and wanting so much to be cool like the president, stepped out from behind the podium now and walked toward the front of the stage, toward the moderator's desk. He held out his hand. "Brother, you're on."

Jackson stood up. "Who the fuck you calling brother, Motherfucker?"

There was the sound of guns cocking. Lots of them. Obama, once again, made the kind of gesture he did with his girls when they started back-talking Michelle at dinner; the Secret Service stood down. "Guys," he said, "you can't be placing bets on the election. This isn't Las Vegas—" He frowned and looked to his handlers, to the sniper with the rifle. "We're not in Las Vegas, are we?"

"We're in an Alternate Universe!" someone from the crowd yelled.

Obama looked into the audience, dead into the camera as it turned out, and offered his best smile of the night. The pundits later on would say it was his best moment of the debate. "So what about gambling?" he asked—to crowd, anyone. "Can folks gamble out here, in this Alternate Universe?"

No one was sure whether they could or not. Apparently a lot of things were still getting ironed out. Laws and regulations, just how much a citizen could get by with in this Alternate Universe before it became a problem for the others. Obama looked to Romney, fearing that Mitt might try to shake hands with Jackson soul man style to seal their bet (he tried so hard—it was touching, really, as he'd told Michelle the other night, after which Michelle told him that if he ever wanted to get touched again he'd better wipe the floor with this equivocating clown tonight) and having already called the Secret Service off twice, put his arm around him, his less hapless than before challenger, and said, "Come on, Governor, time for you and me to clock out. You don't want to end up like Pete Rose, do you?"

"I can't have lesbians raising one our children," Romney confided. "The base would shackle me in a dungeon somewhere."

"It'll be fine," Obama assured him. "Sam got a little too far over his skis on that one."

"Let's make it a thousand!" Jackson shouted menacingly as the two candidates headed arm in arm into the wings.

"Are we going to have him again next time?" Romney wondered, mortified at the possibility.

"I don't think so. I heard we got Rachel Maddow next time."

Romney gasped—even while he was secretly excited. He had a thing for Rachel Maddow. It was something he'd never shared with anyone. He'd see her on the television and want to reach inside the thing and kiss her. It made no sense at all.

"Really?" he said.

"No—" Obama gave him a light elbow to the ribs and shook his head. "It's a presidential debate, Mitt. We can't be having lesbians moderating a presidential debate. Not even in an alternate universe does that happen ... yet." He watched Romney's expression and swatted him on the arm. "I'm just messing with you."

Romney chuckled nervously. It was hard to tell sometimes.

Just then two African-American knockouts, legs as long and beautiful as the dancer Stephanie Pope's, walked up, handed each of them a cosmo and walked away, holding hands.

"I like it here," Romney said, taking a sip—it was an alternate universe, after all. The rules regarding Mormons were still getting worked out.

Obama, wondering if it would hurt him to sneak a cigarette, if not a joint, had to admit he found the place agreeable as well. "Helluva a lot better than Denver," he sighed.

"All we have to do is keep it interesting," Romney reminded him.

Obama, tired, wishing it were otherwise, nevertheless raised his glass. "To a satisfying pageant!"

Cheers!

Selling the Book: The Attention-Getting Query Letter

Dear Editors:

As with the hundreds of other emails you will get today, requesting the very same, I have a novel, the working title of which is Dearly Departed, which, unlike the hundreds of other requests your wearied eyes will consider today, is actually pretty good. I won't bore you with even a line or two of details, since there are many who can write jacket copy who can't write an affecting line much less an affecting novel, so, please, to save us both time and needless torpor, read the rest of this, my query ... and then, contrary to habit and probability, write me back and ask that I send you, per the custom, fifty pages, for you to read and consider.

Having then read and considered them, ask for more. At which point you will come to the reasonable conclusion that they are quite a lot better than almost anything you see on a daily basis: that the writing is excellent, the narrative drive compelling, that, along with real-life gore, and sex, and interestingly fucked up characters getting under each other's skin in ways both nuanced and not so, there is even a well-hung midget, albeit deep into the book, one who, granted, we never actually see, but nonetheless, a well-hung midget is a well-hung midget—one I wouldn't be averse to mingling in the action a little more if it suits you.

Which is to say, on certain matters, I'm flexible.

That said, on the actual point of whether or not you decide to read and publish my book, I am not so flexible. On that point I am actually quite insistent. Which is to say: you will like and publish my pages, my novel, please, or so help me God I'll blow my fucking brains out.

Let me explain ...

But before I do, before you note my address and panic—OMG! He's from Colorado! A nutjob threatening us from the state currently at the top of the A-list for nutjobs!!! WTF!!!!—let me assure you that, should you decide NOT to publish my novel, I will NOT, I promise, shoot or otherwise harm, in any way, anyone else, this despite what would surely be considerable disappointment on my part.

Furthermore, I have a wife and two young children, and am certainly not going to blow my brains out in the house where I currently reside ...

Frankly I don't even own a firearm (for reasons that should be obvious by now), which is not to say I couldn't get one pretty easily (need I say more on THAT subject?), or that, on the contrary, I'm looking forward to my children one day getting older and looking at me, ensconsed in my study, ignoring them—"radically wasting time," as the great Annie Lamott once called it—and coming to the stark, hateful conclusion that this is why we no longer have any money, why we are having to, conceivably, sell our house and move to a small apartment far away from the fine neighborhood and school district that is currently ours, why there are no vacations to Hawaii and New York City anymore, why they can no longer partake in the kind of expensive activities that their older brothers took for granted—because Daddy is a writer who had to write a book, one that when he finally finished it he couldn't fucking sell!

Regardless of your circumstances, dear editor, you can surely understand how a responsible parent (such as the term is generally understood in our better communities) wouldn't exactly look forward to such an eventuality. Enough that he might consider, on occasion—now, for instance—doing something that many would consider a bit extreme. Especially when one considers that even if you publish my book, and it enjoys modest success (as the term is generally understood with regard to first-time literary novels), that modest success will only provide me, the writer, with enough money to pay, with any luck, next month's bills, this depending on whether someone had to go to the hospital, or the dentist, whether ice fees for hockey were due the previous month ...

And—AND—surely, you being the sensitive, at times neurotic literary type you almost certainly must be—working for free, yes? reading scores of mediocre to poor manuscripts, imagining yourself on your better days, nonetheless, as a kind of Soulmate to the Monks, in the Dark Ages, keeping literature alive!—you despair over the staggering amount of drivel, the wincingly, cringingly tepid, self-indulgent, uninspired (if occasionally "well-crafted") shit, much of it from cash-flush MFA programs, getting slung around to scores of agents and publishers like yourself, many of whom are dependent now more than ever on reading fees and handouts from those few wealthy souls who haven't already handed out all they are going to hand out to cure cancer, to feed the starving, support their candidates, their causes, not to mention the local orchestra and theater, who have, magnanimously, left a little back to support LIT-RAH-CHOOR. You have to admit you are thankful that most of them aren't readers, that they simply like the idea of supporting LIT-RAH-CHOOR, kind of like you like the idea of being an agent for, an editor of, LIT-RAH-CHOOR—

Except that on some days, my fucking God ...

Still, and despite your own unsettling moments of despair, you have to admit it would bother you if you were to find out not long after you insouciantly deleted my email query that I did in fact blow my fucking brains out. Even if I didn't do it in my home, or under a tree outside your office (think about that! you who thinks woodpeckers and pigeons are annoying), even if I went out into the woods, or way up in the mountains, and didn't make a mess that someone like Amy Adams in that movie "Sunshine Cleaners" would have to clean up (a profession, btw, should you be looking for a new one, where one can make serious bank).

It would bother you the worse for the fact that, once I was dead, someone, probably several, would actually be asking for the manuscript, looking at it, reading it, considering it, the new platforms post-suicide, the money, and wondering why no one—YOU—ever bothered to ask for it, a mere fifty pages, from a suicidal author!

Soon, all over Twitter and Facebook ... Tumbler, all those sites that have contributed to our fragmenting attention and made your particular failing, antediluvian industry an even poorer, more depressing economic bet, there would be the easy, predictable comparisons to John Kennedy Toole, who, likewise, killed himself after not being able to publish his novel ... a novel that later went on, after his mother (who doesn't come off well in the book; one must admit the pathos is heartbreaking) showed the manuscript to the estimable Walker Percy, at LSU, to win the Pulitzer Prize.

And keep in mind that the late John Kennedy Toole never had children to be ashamed of his failure, or a nice house in a desirable neighborhood in the best town in the country to raise a family and buy locally produced art, to lose—no, he was merely a misfit radically wasting his time with a Big Chief tablet in his mother's basement, trying to publish when, let's be honest, it was quite a lot easier to get published.

Keep in mind: You don't want to be that person. You want to be the person who says, Don't be an asshole! Don't run off to the mountains and kill yourself! Send me your pages to me, and I'll read them! I'll publish you! I mean, why not? Who the fuck will notice, right? We'll publish you and afterwards leave you to continue on in your Sisyphean way, to radically waste time, to make sure that your children look to your example one day and think: Fuck that, I'm going to medical school.

Only then will the success of your insensible enterprise become apparent.

Yes, you want to be the person who says all that, if not much less. Who, after publishing my novel, can go on television and maybe write a book yourself one day, telling how you saved another writer's life. Maybe put a well-hung midget in there, one with fangs. A well-hung, walking dead midget with fangs who can travel through time and has a dog who can quote Shakespeare and philosophize on a level that people who aren't terribly philosophical might think is brilliant.

You could be the person who might one day, from a podium somewhere, thank me.

Looking forward, expectantly, to your reply.

All the best,


The Author

  

Why I'm Done Posting Political Point of View On FaceBook

Well, to be perfectly honest, it's because as best I can tell nobody cares—or reads it.

So that's one reason.

Also—and again, a smart person probably wouldn't admit this, or at least go announcing it as if he were some prescient smarty-pants, but—Romney's toast. He's probably the worst politician either party has seen running for president in my lifetime (and that's a pretty long time, going back to Eisenhower's last year in office), with the possible exception of Mike Dukakis. What's worse, his political team, his advisors, are made up of the kind of hacks and discredited fools that would give the management of the Colorado Rockies a run for its money. Again, if I were a smart blogger, interested in growing my audience of like-minded souls at a time when most of them are just starting to pay attention to the political race, so that I could one day end up on the Huffington Post ... well, no one ever accused me of having a lot of sense that way.

And even if I did, no one (not really) wants to read about it on FaceBook. As my dear wife has heard me say ad nauseum: FaceBook's brilliance is that it took everyday banality to the next level, allowing many of us the illusion of connection without having to actually smell the person and worry whether some of his or her saliva was going to hit you in the face when he or she told you—live—what was going on with his or her children, or home repair, or where they'd gone of their vacation, and instead of, say, smiling while at the same time seething with envy over whether that person's vacation was cooler than yours, you could simply huddle with your device and privately, very privately, and quietly (or not, if you're home alone, as I am now) say to yourself: Fuck you and fucking vacation you fucking fuck!!

Which sounds smug, and pompous of me, I know—and it is!

But here's the thing. As much as most of us, when we aren't on some cool vacation ourselves, don't especially want to hear about someone else's vacation, we'd rather hear about their vacation, or even their children's activities, than listen to them go on about who they're going to vote for in November.

I mean, I know its part of the human experience to find out that someone you really think a lot of, and respect, "Likes" something, or someone, you don't like, or think is a fucking idiot. I know that happens, and I really shouldn't expect the sort of perfect world where, at least on FaceBook, it doesn't happen. But what I've decided is that it doesn't need to be a reason for despair. For thinking less of that person (anymore than I would want them to think less of me). Supposedly Reagan and Kennedy got along famously, as did William F. Buckley and John Kenneth Galbraith. I know it isn't fashionable these days to be so cosy with those you don't see eye to eye with on economic issues, that practicing Catholics ought to get the better seating in the pews than the ones who only go to church when their mom is in town, but nonetheless, it wouldn't hurt us—it wouldn't hurt me—at a time when people are getting killed over some not even B-grade movie to say WTF ... WTF do I care if someone I really think highly of, and would do anything I could for if they needed help, or someone had hurt their feelings, or fucked with them in some way, is reading the entire compendium of the "Fifty Shades of Grey" series? Does it really matter if a person who almost all the time makes me smile "likes" Paul Ryan? Am I not someone who embraces irony, paradox? Is my own life not one great big example of both?

So, you ask, WTF is your point?

Well, in short, I'm done, on FaceBook at least (if you want to read my political stuff, in 140 characters ore less, no less, follow me on Twitter @BPithyCB), pushing my point of view on people and imagining that they're going to give a shit. I'm going to stick with anecdotes, preferably funny ones. And if I tell you about my vacation, and include pictures that might make you for even a second want to strangle me because you're stuck breathing smoke in 100 degree heat after your child just dumped a bowl of cereal on their homework, I'll try to include at least one horrible thing that happened to me that day. Something we can all relate to and not feel too murderous about, to each other.

Anyway, I'm going to try.

The (Surrealistic, Barely Avoided) Conversion of Paul

"But what are we to do with the weak?" Paul asks, his pupils having strangely grown to the size of dark quarters since the reception that followed Mitt's big speech. "What do we do with the losers, the screw ups, the ones who can't be whipped into shape, who buy high and sell low, who don't respond  to reasonable incentives ... "

"Are you out of your fucking mind?" Mitt wonders, frankly, frustrated, sitting his glass of plain water on the coffee table and leveling a severe pair of non-dilated eyes at his young companion. These odd, incongruous questions from Paul are very perplexing, particularly after he, Mitt, has just given a speech that was nearly as memorable as Clint Eastwood's discussion with the empty chair.

Paul, holding what looks like a Cosmo in one of those pretty glasses, leans forward in his stuffed leather chair, his head slightly askance. He appears both amused and disoriented, as if he were staring at himself in one of those old-fashioned fun house mirrors. "I thought Mormons didn't curse."

"I didn't curse," Mitt informs him. "I was being profane—adjectivally profane—which is something different."

"You know what you look like?" Paul says now. "You look like someone who would play the president in a movie where the president doesn't have much of a part ... like in that movie where Clint Eastwood plays the Secret Service agent who listens to Miles Davis ... and then puts the moves on Renee Russo ... this when he isn't trying to catch John Malkovich, who, if you ever saw the movie, is way creepy, some ex-CIA guy ..."

Mitt, bristling, gives him a good slap across the face in the hope it'll straighten him out. Paul smiles, as if he wants him to do it again. Mitt asks, "Have you been drinking? Is that what this is all about? Tell me something, why is it that Catholics drink so much? Especially the Irish Catholics. Why, when I was the governor, in Boston—"

Paul winces. "Don't mention Boston."

"What?"

"With Boston comes equivocation. The Etch-a-Sketch has erased it."

Mitt wants to slug him now but doesn't. Instead he points to the glass. "Do me a favor and tell me what you had to drink. What are in those pink things? And what are those things floating in your glass."

"Confetti." Paul replies dreamily. He looks down in his glass. "Little tiny squares of confetti ..."

Mitt gets up. "I'm going to call the doctor. I think you've been drugged—"

Paul laughs—hysterically, convulsively, like someone who has been drugged—then says, "You know what I can't understand? I can't understand why you can't drink just a little coffee in the morning, before you step in front of a microphone. I mean, your forefathers took Benzedrine—"

Mitt picks up the phone, but then remembers what happened to McGovern after they found out Thomas Eagleton had had a few jolts to his nervous system. Mitt doesn't want to end up like George McGovern in '72. No, Mitt thinks he'll just have to talk him down himself. "Listen to me," he begins, only to have Paul ignore him, run over to the window, stick his head out and yell, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!!"

"Imagine," Paul says, coming back now, his face flushed, "if people actually DID that. If they wouldn't just accept their lot in life. If everytime people like us left our homes without security we had to worry about getting our throats slit by someone who wasn't accepting his lot—"

"But people don't do that," Mitt replies, his voice soft and reassuring. "They have television to calm them. And there are many, many drugs. There are workout routines. Moreover, we DO have security. At least for the moment—"

Paul frowns. "We're going to lose, aren't we."

Mitt knows it's true, but sees no need in adding despair to Paul's situation at the moment. He regrets that he let that last part slip out. "Now, now, let's not be silly—"

"The Secret Service, for us, is fleeting. Soon we will be on our own—"

Mitt sighs, thinking this is what often happens to these true-believer types. Even Barry Goldwater went soft in the end, after he had that homosexual caregiver ... No, better to lick your finger, he thinks, and hold it up into the breeze for guidance. "We're going to straighten this country out," Mitt takes Paul by the shoulders and insists, staring into Paul's eyes, now, and seeing a full-length black and white reflection of himself. "We're going to cut the capital gains tax so I can make serious bank again. We're going to repeal that health plan that Obama stole from me, all of it except the part about covering the people with pre-existing conditions—"

"The expensive part," Paul says.

"That's right," Mitt winks. "After all, I'm not heartless.

Paul smiles, supremely entertained as he watches Mitt's entire skull expand and contract like the lobe of lung. He takes another sip of his Cosmo—he loves these things. He wonders what one would cost in a real bar. Then, suddenly, his mood slips. "The poor will always be with us. I just didn't realize until now just how much—how close—they would be. If we do what I want to do with Medicaid, for instance, Uncle Ned might be in my basement. And maybe Aunt Virginia. Those two couldn't balance a checkbook much less make sensible decisions with a Medicare voucher. Uncle Ned would have probably taken it and bought the FaceBook IPO—"

"Then he deserves what he gets," says Mitt, who is finding all this fussy talk of consequences tedious.

"What he'll get is a tent," Paul retorts. "One big enough to hold all his guns, and he'll pitch it in my yard! Until I let him have a room in my basement!"

"Make him help out," Mitt suggests, sensibly. "Who knows? If you train him right, you might be able to fire the guy who mows your lawn."

"Or Ned could shoot me in my sleep."

"Well then there's always Virginia. You did say Virginia, right? Maybe she wouldn't be entirely useless. Maybe she could pick up the slack for Ned. Does she do floors? The person doing my floors at the moment is ... let's just say he isn't doing much of a job."

"Why don't you fire him?" Paul suggests, looking a bit more himself, Mitt thinks. "I thought you liked firing people."

"I would," Mitt admits, believing he may have seen the turn, "but he frightens me."

Paul stares at him indignantly and shrugs. "So don't call him again. Get someone else to do your floors. Get a dog, an alarm system. Hire someone else."

"But he hasn't left since the day I let him in."

Paul is at once intrigued and aghast. "What do you mean he hasn't left."

Mitt isn't entirely sure this is working, but keeps on. "I mean, Paul, that I have a big house, and the guy who does my floors, or did, once, is living in one of the rooms—the one farthest from mine and Ann's. I got him a flat-screen TV with all the premium channels and I have my chef cook him whatever he wants when he wants it. You could do the same for your aunt and uncle. Maybe build your uncle an underground firing range, so that he leaves you alone—"

"But I don't have that kind of money, Mitt. I'm not as rich as you."

Mitt scoffs. He's tired of people telling him they aren't as rich as he is. "Well then, fire your maid. Get a job manipulating resources in the private sector. Be practical."

"But I want to be vice-president! If I was vice-president, and maybe, someday, the president, then I could have the Secret Service take care of Ned—"

"Or—I'm just saying, OR—you could make Ayn Rand up in Atheist Heaven proud, and get your spoiled by government work self to work in the private sector, and make millions, and buy an island somewhere. How well does your uncle swim?"

Paul, who could swear that the room they're in has just turned into a jumpy castle, thinks about this and says, "I'm not sure."

"Stick with me," Mitt finally says, not at all sure if it is good advice or bad at this point. "Once we're done handing out favors we'll be able to get you an island for a decent price. We'll get you set up better than Dr. No."

Paul smiles at the James Bond reference. He likes James Bond, how things always seem to work out for him, how James is a government employee, too, but nobody makes fun of him, because he's James Bond and would kick their ass if they did. He offers Mitt a drink from his glass."

"No," Mitt says, a bit shocked. He waves his hand and makes an attempt at a joke. "You know us Mormons. If it isn't Benzedrine, it's crap."

"Benzedrine?" Paul has forgotten about his Benzedrine remark.

"Never mind," says Mitt, adding, "What do you say I freshen up my water and grab my Book of Mormon, and you grab your copy of Atlas Shrugged, and we see which book will put us to sleep first."

Paul, much to Mitt's relief, thought that was a great idea. After a little bit, Paul asked, "Do you think I could do a mission to Africa some day? Get away from all these government jobs ..."

"This is America," Mitt answered, distracted and overwhelmed by the torpor of Rand's prose. "You can do anything you want here."

"That's what I was hoping."

And in this way, the universe was righted once more.

Those Fundamentally Different Paths

I'm going to make this quick (I know, bullshit, but one must try), since I have a woodpecker banging on the side of my house that I need to go outside and shoot, before I pick up my mower from its annual physical, and maybe go sell some gold to pay for my health insurance premiums, which have recently gone down, considerably, though I no longer have "behavioral health" coverage (which some of you might find astounding, or at least unwise, given certains tics and tendencies you've observed in the author's recent posts), and am currently waiting on my refund of the difference, which, well, if you want to see an insurance company dilly-dally, and flat out lie to you, ask them when you can expect your refund (hint: not in time to pay your American Express bill, chumpie).

So not only did I watch Obama speak to the DNC last night, but I saw him again today addressing some "folks" in Portsmouth, NH, essentially repeating the same speech as last night, though this one had a little more humor in it (joking on making Bill Clinton the Secretary of Explaining Stuff).

I don't care what anyone says: he's an incredible speaker, doing just exactly what he needs to. Unlike his opponents, he's cool, self-deprecating, and yet ... he's quite ... presidential.

Anyway, that fucking bird is going to have a hole in our cedar big enough for a bear if I don't get out there (he sees me even peek my head out on the deck now and he flies away, that's how scared he is of me), so let's get to the matter at hand ...

In short, what no one tells you, is that the consequences of continued tax cuts, or further concentrating the wealth among the wealthy while cutting programs (to finance the cuts) that overall serve to stabilize the fortunes of the unfortunate, is going to be a lot more strife. You can run a professional sports team on the principle of Winners Only. You can run a Gulag or a Concentration Camp on the principle of Only The Strong Survive (to do more work, for those running the camp). But if you aren't willing, or don't have the stomach, for such strong, highly un-Christian measures, then you need to accommodate the entire population. Which is to say you need to govern a society, and not pretend that you're fielding a team of olympians and when all is said and done there will only be beautiful and talented people using the 15,000 condoms provided for the Olympic Village.

No ...

There will be people with no athletic skill at all, who don't fuck well or maybe don't fuck at all, but who will nonetheless be stealing the condoms because, well, fuck those pretty, talented people because I'm not one of them ...

This is not going to change by making these people exercise more. Not everyone is, or ever could be, an olympic athlete.

Is this not obvious?

Similarly, not everyone is going to "win" at capitalism. Not everyone who gets a big line of credit is going to behave sensibly with it. And we can let those people go broke, and bitch about how unfair it is that our tax dollars have to pay for these fucks ups and all that, but unless we take them to a ditch and shoot them—and everyone else who fucks up, who doesn't have a respectable Win/Loss record—then we have to deal with them. As scripture says: The poor will always be with us.

So, all matters of decency, and compassion, Christian charity and all that, aside ... would you rather leave it up to these folks to wisely use a grossly indequate voucher to sensibly buy their health insurance in their dotage, from unregulated (or far less regulated) for-profit insurers, or should we make sure that we do what we can to keep Medicare funded?

Should we ... spend more money than the Pentagon is even asking for (and not on soldiers, but to make happy the various pigs at the trough of the "Military-Industrial Complex" Eisenhower, a Republican, warned us of over sixty years ago), and take it from Medicaid, from the real losers in the system, many of whom don't even vote, and then, what ... make them go out and get jobs? Where? And what about when Dad's money runs out and it's either Medicaid paying for his nursing home or you bringing him home and setting him up and, well, that's going to do wonders for the disposable income you could otherwise use to stimulate the economy. Though it might be good for you as a person. Or it might not. Maybe some pretty ugly things inside you might come out, things you might have kept inside and never been made aware of until Dad was asleep in his grave. Though you would have the consolation of knowing the wealthy had gotten wealthier while you were learning these things about yourself rather than, say, going out to eat from time to time, or taking a vacation, or maybe even paying for your son or daughter to play hockey.

The game with Republicans, since St. Ronald, has been, in theory, to choke the beast—government—though, as Clinton's numbers (verified by Bloomberg News the following day) indicated, they've done a terrible job. Government has grown, considerably, under every Republican administration including St. Ronald's—one could say St. Ronald took the idea of growing government to new levels, levels never seen before. And yet our new disciples sing his praises.

What they did was give the tax dollars to different people. That's all they did. And it seemed to work out all right while the economy was in a generational expansion ... which is to say, a natural leg up, and the stock market we were all encouraged to buy into was going up, up, up.

But what goes up, must, at the very least, take a breather, a pause; these pause, when you measure them closely, last about as long as the legs up. Politicians hate them, since during these fallow times difficult decisions need to be made that don't sit well with the people doing the voting.

The endgame to the Crisis of 2008 has always been whether we would end up getting suckered out of programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and probably VA benefits, so that the wealthy can continue to make respectable year over year gains in the stock market at a time when the market should, in a free market environment, be selling off, getting cheap, until a new cycle begins, or whether we embark on a different sort of arithmetic, one less the calculations of the gulag, and more the calculations of the neighborhood. Woodpeckers and all.

The Junky Awaits His Fix

No, this isn't about drugs—well, not really. Not literally. This is about the money-changers, and what they're hoping for, and probably won't get ...

From Ben (Bernanke, tomorrow), and then Mario (Draghi, September 12th).

All these free market folks hoping for a little government boost, to help keep their markets (which would otherwise be sinking like bricks) afloat, the price of gold rising (as the dollar and the Euro get further watered down), and to perhaps (for the more earnest) stimulate growth in our otherwise intractably moribund economies.

One thing I agree with the Libertarians on: you can't stimulate growth in a debt-soaked culture by adding more debt to it. As with someone who has already rung up his credit cards to the limit, one can raise the limit to keep him going (and out of your hair, your basement, your wallet) a little longer, but that does not solve the problem. Still, if you don't want him in your basement, or stealing your stuff, and  by raising his limits on a card or two you can keep him at bay for a little while longer, maybe, among a bunch no hope solutions, it isn't the worst.

Still, don't call it a strategy for growth.

And if you're Paul Ryan—a pretty much lifelong employee of the taxpayers, don't forget—don't act like fixing the problem is as simple as telling the guy to live within his means. Especially when you're still insisting that he keep up his bar bill at the place where you tend bar, and keep buying his leased vehicles from your dad's lot, this on a salary that isn't what it once was, and that you have no intention of increasing. Your thinking is pure goofiness, too. You, in particular, should get your head out of your ass and understand that this fellow isn't going to go gently into that good night ... though he could be closer to living in your basement than you might think.

Anyway, back to Ben and Mario ...

Here's what I think: those waiting for Ben to save the day are going to be disappointed, in the near-term, if not the long-. In a mere two months we here in Ben's local economy vote for the next president of that local economy, and Ben Bernanke, given the not terrible situation the economy is in at the moment compared to, say, Europe, or where it was when we were voting for the last president, isn't going to sully his office any further for the moment by doing a solid for the political classes. Moreover, he must be tired of everyone looking to him to solve a situation that he isn't going to be able to solve without a great deal of political (read: fiscal) help of the sort he isn't getting (and let the voters, in November, decide why), and a minimum of another decade of patience from the population he nominally serves (especially if you're a banker), even if certain politicians who may or may not know better would like us to believe otherwise.

But don't get me started.

Mario Draghi, of the European Central Bank, on the other hand, might do something. Timmy Geithner (the Secretary of the Treasury—a position the European Union doesn't have, which, some would say, is a problem) has been seen skulking through Europe lately. Perhaps he and Mario, and some Germans, have talked. Mario doesn't need to worry about a conflict of interest vis-a-vis the upcoming American Presidential Election, he just needs to worry about the Germans, who, if you know anything about the Germans and the Greeks and their history going back to, say, 1940, might give you, as well as Mario, a dispiriting pause.

Still, tough love isn't isn't all it's cracked up to be—especially once you've let the fuck ups in the door. They have their pride, too ... and we've all made our mistakes.

And memories are long.

Still, right now, if I were junky looking for a quick fix, I'd be looking to Mario more than Ben.

Stay tuned!

Akin, Mitt, and How One Gets Legitimately Raped

I know I'm a little late coming to the subject, and frankly, haven't been paying that much attention to the details, but over the years I've found that paying a lot of attention to the details when it comes politics really isn't very helpful. So long as you paid attention for too long at some point in your life, you pretty much know everything you need to know. Many would dispute such a claim, and yet I would maintain that the story with politics is much like the story with soap operas—

"General Hospital," for example. My wife had a little down time the other day and happened to land on GH, which she hadn't checked in on in over a year, she claims, and lo and behold, within a couple of minutes she was gasping: some character who'd done something over a year ago was doing it again, this time with a brunette ...

Anyway, handicapping politics, it's like riding a bike ...

Go back to any of my pre-elections blogs back in 2008. I was right about practically everything. Obama was going to win. He'd beat Hillary Clinton, for Christ's sake! He was going to clean up on John McCain, especially after the financial crisis hit ...

Obvious, and I'm not even that smart, or plugged in, and yet ...

Last January, I predicted that Romney would eventually emerge as the nominee for the Republicans—obviously—and that he would get trounced by Obama in the general election in November. Again, to me, for any number of reasons, this is obvious—as it is obvious to most thinking Republicans, who are privately very concerned that this year's ticket is going to not only lose, but be a flat out disaster for the party.

My Democratic friends, on the other hand, are mostly doing what they always do: wring their hands and worry that over half the voting population is going vote for someone like Mitt Romney. This despite the fact that Mitt Romney, not to mention the earnest Ayn Rand disciple who voted for nearly all of Dubya's budget busting policies back when it was popular to do so, Paul Ryan, are even poorer candidates than McCain and Palin were—which is to say that more gaffes, and yet not as fun, or funny, is a bad follow-up to 2008, and is going to lead to a result, regardless of what the economy does, that is going to cause some soul-searching in the Republican Party.

At least it should.

But hey, we were going to talk about rape, right? Not listen to me pontificate about politics.

Fine. So here's one reason (bear with me) why Romney, from a political standpoint, isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer: after being for a woman's right to decide what kinds of things happen or don't happen in her  womb before he was against it, he is now, according to my Twitter feed, straight from the convention, supposedly, in favor of women having a limited amount of say over what happens or doesn't happen in their wombs, but only in the case of rape and incest.

A much more reasonable stand, supposedly, than that radical right-winger Ryan, who thinks, and is on the record as saying, that abortion should be outlawed categorically. Never mind if Uncle Ned had relations with your 15-year-old daughter, whether he raped her, legimately or illegitimately ...

And here is where, I'm sorry, we have to pause, briefly—again—to define some terms that even if you had paid a great deal of attention to politics and pundits of late, you might still be confused on just what constitutes legitimate rape as opposed to the other kind.

Thus, so we are clear, legitimate rape is the kind that involves people like Freddie Krueger (is that how it's spelled?), which is to say, real monsters, killers, forcing themselves on you. In fact, most women who are legitimately raped either die or are left for dead afterwards, and that's how you know they were legitimately raped. Kind of like with the witches in Salem: if they didn't drown, they must be witches.

Which brings us to illegitimate rape. Which is basically the kind of rape that happens when you survive it and can still talk coherently and don't have any cuts or bruises or serious amounts of blood running out of somewhere. For instance, let's say you meet a big professional athlete for the first time and you think he's kind of cute, and therefore, since you didn't spit in his face or tell him to fuck off right away when he started chatting you up, you probably led him on, and then, well, he doesn't just want to have sex with you in the one hole, but all the others, too—and he's fucking huge, right? Well, unfortunately, that's still illegitimate rape, and he doesn't go to jail, and still gets to play his sport and make millions and be well thought of again, because, let's face it, you tried to kill yourself a couple of times in the past, over totally unrelated issues, but still ... if he'd really raped you, he'd have probably strangled you too, so you wouldn't tell anyone, right?

Or here's another example: let's say Biff and Muffy—Biff is a college freshman, and Muffy, say, is a high school senior—really like each other A LOT, and really want to do it, but unfortunately Muffy's parents, rather than buying her a horse, or sending her to a convent, bought her a pretty expensive promise ring, with diamonds and her birth stone, with the idea that if they bought her this ring she wouldn't have sex with anyone until she was married, and practically passed out after the reception ... and well, she could fuck then but not before.

Anyway, turns out the two one night when Mom and Dad are out having sushi, or maybe off in a hotel somewhere fucking themselves, can't control the rage of their young hormones, and then the condom breaks, and holy moly, lo and behold, in a couple of months they've got a situation on their hands. And Mommy and Daddy are pissed. Especially Daddy. And let's say, for the sake of argument, that this is off in the future, and that contrary to all my smug predictions, Romney and Ryan end up in the White House, and they appoint a couple more anti-abortion judges, who overrule Roe vs. Wade, and now we're back to either flying Muffy to Europe, or Canada, or to the Bahamas or Bermuda, or getting out the hanger, or ... Muffy taking a pass on her first year at Princeton to have a baby that would one day grow up to know that he or she came about because the condom broke, and Dad—Biff—well, he lost interest, funny how that works, or ... Muffy could come to understand, after significant pressure is applied by both her mother and father, but especially by her father, who has made a lot of fucking sacrifices and saved a lot of fucking money so she could go to Princeton and not be raising a kid straight out of high school, in their house, that Biff in fact raped her.

And from there ... Mother and Father and Muffy take the case to the newly established, tax-payer funded, Abortion Tribunals, where it would be decided based on standards hammered out after a great many committee meetings, by a select group of experts appointed by someone who may or may not have a womb or a vagina, and who, themselves, may or may not have either, or agendas, or be having a particularly good day for that matter, whether or not the accused—Biff—did in fact legitimately rape Muffy, thereby, possibly, allowing her to go off with a signed, notarized document allowing her to get a legal abortion done right here in the United States, if not necessarily at Planned Parenthood.

Which is why I like Ryan's approach better. If it's all about killing and love of the unborn, then you have to love Uncle Ned's fetus, too—and Biff's.

Even Freddie's.

And if you aren't willing to tell your daughter to suck it up and remind her that she after all shouldn't have had sex in the first place, let alone let Ned anywhere near her, or Biff play with her boobies (which she ought to know leads to other things), that she should have been more careful not to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with monsters and condoms that don't break, without pepper spray or a .357 magnum ... and really, if she wouldn't have been born a girl in the first place none of this would be happening, she could lose interest, maybe write a check or two and walk away all the way to Princeton if she was lucky, but ... unfortunately, the law's the law, and too bad for you, Muffy ...

Seems fair, right? Consequences, baby. Tough love!

Still, while I can't say I'm an expert on the matter, and don't follow the subject as passionately as many do, while I'm busy raising boys, not girls, I'm inclined to think—in fact, go figure, it seems obvious to me—that if you aren't willing to look some young frightened girl in the eyes and make such pronouncements, that you ought to keep your mouth shut when it comes to someone else's young frightened girl ... and to women generally.

But what do I know? I haven't check my Twitter feed for hours ...

And wasn't Ayn Rand an atheist? All that Christian nonsense getting people to care for people they shouldn't and making a mess of things? Didn't I read that somewhere, back when I was paying more attention?

Politics, and Other Things Americans Hate

There's an article below the fold on the front page of today's Denver Post, that begins: "Americans already hate politics ..."

Yes, and we hate violence, too.

This is why we have an election cycle that is nearly as ongoing as the painting and maintenance of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Because we hate politics.

This is why, days after breaking our previous record here in Colorado for people slaughtered and otherwise shot up in a single building at more or less a single moment, we are wondering, if just wondering, whether or not it is particularly unusual for a young man ostensibly interested in the neurosciences (rather than, say, the commandant of the local wing of the National Guard) to have purchased and kept 6,000 rounds of ammunition in his apartment. Many who don't hate violence like we do might just assume that owning 6,000 rounds of ammunition if you're not, say, a Russian in Stalingrad in 1942, or a German soldier stuck in a pillbox on Normandy Beach in 1944, isn't anymore crazy, necessarily, that buying and stacking up in your home 6,000 rolls of toilet paper, or 6,000 cans of dog food, or Spaghettios, or 6,000 condoms (assuming you're not an Olympic athlete).

But we wonder, and we wonder hard. Because we hate violence.

Yet ... we don't jump to conclusions. We shake our heads and sigh. We consider the damage that might be done to individual liberties, not to mention our "well-regulated militia" that, along with Homeland Security, the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Air Force, the Coast Guard, the National Guard, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, as well as our various local and regional police forces, guards our way of life (that, unfortunately, for whatever reason, seems to include the occasional random slaughter of persons in the wrong place at the wrong time by someone frequently deranged and armed to the teeth), the slippery slope we might be descending were we to let the government tell us, willy-nilly, that we can no longer order 6,000 rounds of ammo, to put in clips as big as a hat box, over the internet, or even a counter at some store.

After all, what are they going say we can't have next?

Best, perhaps, despite our hatred of violence, to leave well enough alone, for fear of unwittingly making our already deflationary economy worse. Gun merchants need to make living, too. Just like the owners of diners in Iowa and New Hampshire. Journalists ... imagine what would happen to those already beleaguered souls if we decided to wrap up our hateful politics in a few weeks, like they do in Canada? Where they pay higher taxes than we do, but don't complain as much about them, even though they have socialized medicine run by the government, because basically Canadians are too nice and polite to complain, much less be flat out hateful, like Americans ...

Who hate paying taxes, and hate politics. But don't take anything our taxes pay for, or our guns and ammo, away, or you'll know what real wrath looks like.

As Mitt and Paul, I suspect, will soon find out. If they don't already know ...

Did I mention that the story below the fold came out of Dubuque, Iowa? Probably someone who owns a diner ... who's had it with the politicos, all the grousing, the vicious attacks and lies. So different than the previous elections, when the candidates couldn't have been nicer, and the expense accounts were bigger.

Away in Nova Scotia

We're back now, after spending the last ten days in one of my favorite places. My wife grew up in Cape Breton, and for two idyllic years—1996 and 1997— we lived in a flat on the first floor of an old house within walking distance of practically everything worth walking to in Halifax. In those days I drove a 1986 Toyota pickup that I may have started three times a month. In those days I lived like my idea of king on thirty thousand dollars a year; I learned to scuba dive, bicycled the Cabot Trail, wrote for six hours every day, read all of Dostoevsky one winter and all of Tolstoy the next. Donna, in those days, waited tables, and would come home shortly before midnight and I'd have a fire going and we'd watch old reruns of "Law & Order" (Michael Moriarty lived in town in those days, got kicked out of so many bars that he had to move), and then she'd go to bed and I'd stay up until 3:00, reading, sleep, wake up around 10:00, have coffee, eat, write, work out, walk the dog, head down to the pub where I had my own stein waiting, have some dinner, listen to some music ...

We tend remember things better than they were, but those were good, well above average days. After living in the midwest all my life, I didn't find the winters to be that cold (and I had a toasty warm LL Bean parka for the cold, blustery days). The summers were short, but beautiful—memorable and rich in the way of things that end up being short. I liked the foghorns in the harbor late at night, the wind blowing so long as I was inside by the fire ... the rain, the green, the water, all of it ... it didn't matter, I grew up in Iowa, weather doesn't make or break my day.

There are a lot of reasons I could come up with for why we don't live in Nova Scotia. Family is an argument for and against it, to what degree depends on the day, and my mood. Most notably, it would be harder, and a lot more expensive, to go back with what we have now than it was to come here with what we had then. Moreover, we live, by improbable fortune, in a community in Colorado—Louisville, not full of itself yet but getting there one has to think—that is not only one of the best places in the country to raise a family but, increasingly, a cool, cat's meow kind of place to hang out as well (with many years still before it becomes the thing it never wanted to become). The school system is great, and so are our doctors, our dentists, our insurance agent, the people we buy coffee from, our karate school; we live in a great neighborhood that we joke (though not by much) has a waiting list to get into, have great neighbors, a great house that's too big for us now that we're down to four, and that I wish I could hire a maid to help clean, a handyman to fix, a butler to keep organized, but still ... a great place, by any reasonable measure.

And yet year after year, visit upon visit, I continue to miss Halifax and the Maritime Mode ...

Probably (I tell myself) because life hasn't been anywhere near that free of strain since. There's no living like a king on thirty thousand a year anymore. No reading until three in the morning. No scuba diving off the shore in cold, bracing water, followed by pints and cigars at Tom's Little Havana (where one can't smoke anymore, not there, not anywhere). I look back and think I could have gone forever writing on thirty thousand a year, but not when the need was ninety, not for as long as we had to with everything that happened. A smart guy, I keep thinking, would have known that, and accepted it, a lot sooner, and found something more financially sensible to do with his life rather than stubbornly persisting with a novel in nearly impossible conditions, in a civilization that has largely given up on novels, where the fashion is more to push oneself to the limit physically than to, say, read a challenging book (or even one like mine) in one's spare time—that is, if one has spare time, if one is that divorced from the fashion of the times (here in America at least) and still has that thing we used to call spare time.

But one may as well cry over spilt milk ... over his lost hair and the new ones growing out his nose and ears, over that May/September romance with the girl who really wasn't that special by conventional measures but that for some reason you've never been able to get out of your mind.

Halifax ...

Would it be quite a lot different now? Would a smart guy conclude that we're better off leaving our memories of that sweet life long ago alone, and focus rather on being thankful for the many fortunes we have right before us? Probably. Almost certainly. I suspect so ... and yet I suspect I'll always wonder, and continue to miss those late night fires, the cigars, lugging that diving gear over the rocks and into the cold salty water, the foghorns off the harbor as I closed my eyes and fell asleep.