Snow, Disappointment, and George Saunders

It is the second or third day of Spring, depending on which person you ask, and a foot of snow is predicted for those of us living in The Republic. I don't know what it is about snow lately—if I've simply become Colorado-ized since my arrival in 1997 and therefore can't stand a moment of daylight without sun (my wife, from Nova Scotia, and I used to rejoice and dance around and other things on days when it rained; one gets tired of endless sun, as one probably does having a dog licking your face, loving you in their way, for your salt, regardless of what you may have done or not done to deserve it) without getting sullen and paralytic, or what—but let's just say it isn't helping. Normally, by now, I would have gone to the garage and grabbed a shovel and starting digging out. It wouldn't have mattered if it was still snowing so long as there was at least six inches of snow and I could say to myself: Better to scoop some now and have less to scoop later on. That is how a person who gets considerable sunlight on his skin almost every day, who has a good outlook here in The Republic, looks at things: do a little now and have less to do later.

But I don't have the energy. I'm not even sure I'll get to it today. I'm not sure I'll leave my study, where the fan is going, drowning out the new noise my one ear is making: not ringing anymore but more like the distant chanting of Zen monks if I was locked in someone's trunk listening to it, way off.

No big deal.

I could be at karate, sparring right now. It would almost certainly be a good thing considering how I feel, which is sort of the way you feel after you've, oh, I don't know, been involved in a situation you're pretty sure is hopelessly fucked up, but you've been involved in it so long that to admit it's as hopelessly fucked up as you have a pretty strong feeling it is is just too fucking depressing to face ...

But then, finally, comes the equivalent of a telegram from God, saying something like: This Situation You've Been Trying To Deal With For Longer Than You Can Bear To Remember Is As You Guessed Hopelessly Fucked Up Stop Worse Still All Your Efforts Haven't Amounted To A Hill Of Beans And Might Have Been Better Spent Shoveling Or Moving Piles Of Rocks From One Senseless Spot To Another Or Practically Anything Else Really Stop Please Gather Your Things And Leave Immediately Before You Go On And Waste Anymore Precious Time On Something Hopeless Stop

OOOHHHMMM OOOHHHHMMMM

At least I've got the good sense to sit down and write, yes? Write your way through it, as countless souls, themselves occasionally beset by the above, have counseled. And if that doesn't work there is always drugs. Or ECT ...

Or ... OR ... one can try George Saunders.

Specifically, his new collection of stories, Tenth of December. One can do this even if he is still working his way through another collection of stories, as well as book four of the entire Thomas Pynchon oeurve. On a day like this one, one can, and should, stop what one is doing and run to Saunders. One never knows, it might only take one story ...

The first story, entitled, "Victory Lap," seemed ironic enough. Just the kind of story, as Thomas Pynchon (who blurbs the collection, which is a bit like Christ appearing out of no where to validate someone's saintliness) remarks, "to get us through these times."

Which is good enough for me.

So I started reading. The story is told from three points of view, from the heads of 1) A pretty young girl "Three days shy of her fifteenth birthday" imagining (concurrent to italicized ballet commands) an assortment of "{special one[s]}" attempting to charm her (think: Simon in "American Idol" crossed with the girl in "The Nutcracker"), 2) Her neighbor, a boy of the same age, whose parents are crazy in the current helicopter-y, high-fuss, micro-manage-y fashion of ambitious, well-heeled, educated parents in our better communities, who has a litany of thoughts going through his mind, things to be done, and avoided, leading to a scrupulously concocted, utterly absurd reward system compliments of Mom and Dad, who love him love him love him, these thoughts punctuated by Tourette's-y blasts of swear word phraseology, one of my favorite being "crap-cunt shit-turd dick-in-the-ear butt-creamery." To these two POVs is added a third: 3) A guy dressed in the uniform of someone who reads the meter. A guy who looks like, the boy thinks, a "rooskie." A bad person, we get the feeling, with bad designs on the pretty girl, as we don't discover, for sure, until much later ...

And what will the boy who has been given mulitple "directives" by his sublimely, lovingly dictatorial mother and father do, when, after all, he isn't to be outside, on the deck, without shoes on, much less when strangers are in the neighborhood, he is to stay inside until they leave, that is what he is to do, and not mess in business that isn't his, after all, and yet this stranger has this lovely girl, his neighbor, by the wrist, a girl he used to play with when he was younger, who doesn't seem to think much of him now, or so he imagines, and is dragging her to his van, a van the Rooskie borrowed from a guy named Kenneth ...

Are you leaning in yet? I was, in spite of everything. A good story, told well, in not the usual way, whatever we might imagine that might be, can do that.

Get this: instead of saying the boy was too scared to move once the man saw him on the deck and warned that if he so much as moved he, the Rooskie in the meter-reader costume, would stab the girl with the knife he was holding (in this neighborhood where nothing "weird" ever happened), Saunders remarks, "Kyle's mouth was so spitless all he could do was make his mouth do the shape it normally did when saying Yes."

Not dry. Not parched. Spitless. It's not all in the [surprising] diction, but [surprising] diction sure can help. Funny helps, too. And Saunders is very funny. This story, believe it or not, about a girl getting dragged off like one of the girls in "Silence of the Lambs," is very funny, right when you need it to be. Humor at the swerve, when you least expect it. Pretty soon you've forgotten the sun isn't shining, that you have a foot of snow to shovel. You're feeling not all is hopeless.

I won't spoil it. You'll have to read the story to see how it turns out.

Do it if you'd like, if you must.

While I go out and shovel some snow.

Roth's Birthday, March Madness, and Iraq, Ten Years After a Big Mistake

I skied for the first time this season yesterday, a beautiful snow-grabbing, low-skid, sunny and not too windy day at Copper, went directly to my son's end of the season hockey banquet afterwards, drank a couple pints of Guinness, came home and popped two Advil PMs (not wanting to be too sore for karate at noon today), woke up at 6:00 AM, still in that soporific Advil PM stupor, made coffee and got to the 5th Grade Graduation meeting at the school at 7:30. There are over 100 kids in the fifth grade and there were about ten people at the meeting, about half of whom were teachers. I asked a couple of questions during the meeting and found out quickly that even after a cup of coffee my head and mouth weren't working well together yet. I was still in my Advil PM stupor. On the other hand, my ear isn't ringing so badly today ... not yet, at least.

It's Philip Roth's birthday to today. There's a video of him being interviewed, then reading a short, depressing passage from The Dying Animal, on PBS. This was picked up by The Daily Beast, a news outlet I follow on Twitter (something I do in lieu of reading a daily newspaper, so I don't feel so fucking old). A lot of people find Roth's obsession and utter lack of sentimentality with getting older/old to be depressing. And I suppose it is. But I prefer it over being lied to. There's too much in our society that smacks of adults trying to compensate for having their illusions shattered when they discovered that Santa didn't actually bring the toys on Christmas Eve, that the Tooth Fairy didn't actually put the money under the pillow. The list goes on. It is said that we need these comforts, but I much prefer the comfort of looking to another human being and saying, What a fucking load of shit, and having them smile ironically and nod. I prefer that over someone telling me that everything happens for a reason (Yeah? And what might that reason be?), that God doesn't give us anything we can't handle (thus the set up for their fellow human beings to judge them, when it turns out they can't quite handle what God has given them, be it a ride in a train car to Auschwitz, seeing their baby tossed in the air and impaled on the end of a bayonet, not having any legs anymore due to a decision made ten years ago by a guy—several of them, actually, who dodged their opportunity to shoot and get shot at when the stupid war being fought at the time was in Vietnam—who is in Texas now, peacefully painting pictures of his dog while the Secret Service keeps watch, while the VA stays busy).

Ahhhh, but we don't need to hear a lot of glowering despairing vitriole on this fine morning, do we? It's the lingering effects of the Advil PM. Luckily, I have karate in an hour. I'll feel better after karate. I generally do. Ten years ago I was in Kauai with my family. I went there depressed, I came back depressed. I left saying, "They're going to invade Iraq while we're gone, and it'll be over before we get back. Still, it's going to be a disaster ... " Bill Clinton had been on Letterman a few days earlier. He said he'd be amazed if the military operation took more than six days. I figured it would take maybe three or four. That all the worry about that piece was a joke. I'd been meeting with a friend on Fridays and he and I would talk about it over a beer. Despite the revisionist talk that no one could have known the mess that was to come from this, there were countless articles written on why invading Iraq was a very bad idea. My friend and I both lamented ... that while the invading part would be quick, the occupation would be problematic. Insurgents coming out of the woodwork, that sort of thing. It seemed obvious to us, and we weren't geniuses. We weren't even wonks. Still, after the quick success of Desert Storm in 1991, not many Democrats, particularly the ones hoping to become president in 2004, wanted to look soft on war. And so, helping out a bunch of neocon nuts, at least three of whom were previous draft dodgers, were the future Democratic hopefuls: Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and of course the charismatic populist with the big house and perfect hair John Edwards. This after a big tax cut two years earlier that no one of consequence really fought, after we'd briefly had a surplus in our fiscal year budget. Apparently no one saw the expense coming, starting in 2011, of retiring the Baby Boom Generation. No, this was an opportunity, rather, to starve the beast, to give everyone a three hundred dollar check.

And now we're bankrupt. (Craig, Craig, you're so negative. You shouldn't take Advil PM. Have you looked into Zoloft? Zoloft happens for a reason. It's what God has given us, along with a lot of other options, more options than breakfast cereal, really, to get through what he has given us. And thanks to the Bush-Era prescription drug plan that came on the heels of a tax cut and two wars and the TSA getting created to keep us safe of planes and still allow us pocket knives and matches, you'll be able to stay smiling well into your Golden Years, for pennies on the dollar, starting when you're 65, which isn't that far away for you anymore ... Can you hear this? Or is your ear still ringing?)

You thought when I said March Madness, that I was talking about college basketball, yes? Well, not entirely as it turns out.

Obama's going with Indiana over Louisville. I saw that on Twitter, too. I saw on FaceBook that the new Pope Francis has Georgetown, Gonzaga, Creighton, and one other one ... maybe Seton Hall (they're always in there, right) in his Top Four. Big money on it, I'm told. I like this guy already. And (this is no shit, I'm told), he can tango. The man used to dance when he was younger. I heard this at the hockey banquet last night, from a tango aficionado. John the 23rd brought native languages to the Mass; perhaps Francis will bring the tango.

Don't get me started on all this fuss over Nancy and Joe taking communion. I'm more concerned about the pederasts taking communion (Everything happens for a reason, my child, some things again and again ... God doesn't give us anything we can't handle, and if you breathe a word to anyone about any of this, I will deny it, and they will think you are crazy, and that I am right ... One day I will pray for you, that you will overcome your bitterness, I will pray that you, my accuser, my cross to bear, will be forgiven ... ).

Be careful with that Advil PM. It's not what the times call for, I fear ...

Get thee to karate!!

Have a nice day!

The Monday Warm-up

Now that my son's hockey season is over, that the other's musical, "Suessical," is through, that St. Patrick's Day is finished, that I am back from Chicago, and the AWP in Boston, that I have clean jeans and underwear and socks for the week, a ski trip planned for tomorrow, four new debit cards to register and be asked afterwards if I'd like to take a few minutes to do a follow-up survey, to then get the auto-pays switched from the old debit cards to the new debit cards, be asked again if I'd mind taking a few minutes to take a follow-up survey ...

Now that the puppy has been spayed and must be kept calm, no need to walk her, in fact don't walk her, keep her calm, the vet said, here are some pills to keep her calm, pills that won't otherwise hurt her while her stapled up incision heals and she stumbles around in slightly less of a stooper with each passing day since she's getting used to the pills—Puppy's Little Helper, Valley of the Dogs—but mostly sleeps like Keith Richards splayed out face down on the bed in the hotel room, in that photo Annie Leibowitz took way back ...

Now that I've got the fan on for background noise so I can't hear my ear that keeps ringing and has been for two weeks, the ear that is on the same side that my wife (who might have been a good opera singer had she applied herself) sits in the car on long trips, that my son who inherited her vocal chords sits fighting with his brother on long trips, the son who talks as though he has buds in his ears with Metallica playing so fucking loud he can't hear himself and thus imagines he needs to talk Really Loud, at the dinner table for instance, where he sits on the side of my ringing ear, except he doesn't have buds in his ears, he can hear fine, we know it! the doctor tells us every year and I joke that ha ha ha so you can hear me when I say do this, do that, will you please Be Quiet!! Yes, he can hear just fine. It is I, his fifty-something-year-old father who has the chronic ringing in his ear, who remembers his own dad warning him that if I didn't quit listening to Emerson Lake & Palmer at two o'clock on the dial on the stereo he wouldn't be able to hear himself piss by the time he was twenty-five—and yet, here I am, nearly thirty years later, and I can still hear myself piss, even with the fan on! You'd think I'd feel pretty good about that, beating the odds for so long. Be a good American and focus on the positive. Be glad you don't have money in the bank in Cyprus. That you aren't a woman who loves shoes living in North Korea. Rejoice! You're in your fifties, man, and you can still hear yourself piss! 

With the fan on, the ringing muted, Janacek playing like at the start of Murakami's 1Q84 now that my children are off to school and my wife is off to work and the puppy is out cold on pills after her surgery last Thursday ... what is stopping me from Radically Wasting Time?

Writing. Sitting down. Doing it.

Right after another cup of coffee ...

Oscar Predictions

First of all, there may be some spoilers in here if you haven't yet seen the movies being discussed, so be forewarned. Second, I haven't bothered to read today's New York Times, or looked over my Twitter feeds. More importantly, I haven't seen all of the movies up for consideration, but, as with politics, I'm guessing it won't matter.

Here we go:

Best Picture: "Lincoln" is going to win, and probably should. This in spite of the fact that Stephen Spielberg directed it. The Academy, for reasons that aren't completely clear, has, in the past, had a problem with Spielberg—recall, among other lesser slights ("AI", "ET", the list goes on), the year 1999, when "Saving Private Ryan" got edged out by a late-surging "Shakespeare in Love"—but there is no surging outlier this year, at least not one I'm aware of, but we'll see. "Les Miserables" has its fans, but not enough of them. "Argo" and "Zero Dark Thirty" are both very good (if not excellent), but of a similar piece: movies that are "based on actual events," actual events that happened in more or less the same part of the world, and star the CIA; neither Ben Affleck nor Kathryn Bigelow (who won a couple of years back, over her ex-husband, James Cameron, for "The Hurt Locker") got a nomination for Best Director; neither is going to win Best Picture. "Django Unchained," granted, deals with slavery, too, and may be the best Tarantino movie since "Pulp Fiction," but it is hardly a sibling/vote-dilutor to "Lincoln" and otherwise has too much Tarantino-ish, bug-eyed, nutcase violence in it, even for this country. "Silver Linings Playbook" is essentially a screwball comedy, one that is dramatically forced in parts, that doesn't cohere particularly well. In dealing with its purported theme of mental illness, it doesn't unnerve us, or stray too far from crowd-pleasing notions; nonetheless, it was a lot of  fun, and the performances, Cooper's ranking behind Lawrence's, Deniro's, and Jacki Weaver's, were superb. If there is a movie that stands a chance of beating out "Lincoln" in an upset, one that would demonstrate the Academy's new insistence on happy endings in these, our difficult times, it might be this one, but I wouldn't put money on it. "Amour" is reportedly excellent, and I'm actually coping fairly well with the fact that I haven't seen it yet; it is also up for Best Foreign Picture, and will probably take that category. "Beasts of the Southern Wild" and "Life of Pi" are both very good, I'm told, but they won't win. "Lincoln" is going to win.

Actor in a Leading Role: Daniel Day-Lewis. If you saw "Lincoln" you know why. Joaquin Phoenix, whom the Golden Globes forgot about, is the darkhorse in this category. But his unbelievable performance will almost certainly, again, get beat out by another: last time it was his Johnny Cash getting beat out by Philip Seymour Hoffman's "Capote." This time, however (unlike "Ring of Fire"), hardly anyone has seen "The Master," and of those who did, few knew what to make of it, since, among other aspects of its artistry, it doesn't play to popular themes in the way that, say, Silver Linings does. Anderson isn't as weird as Malick, but he's moving in that direction. I liked Denzel in "Flight," but it isn't a performance to knock out Day-Lewis's, or Phoenix's. Hugh Jackman and Bradley Cooper might get votes, but they mostly round out the field.

Actress in a Leading Role: Jennifer Lawrence, from "Silver Linings Playbook," following an incredible, completely different role in "A Winter's Tale." A remarkable actress. Everyone else in the category was arguably excellent, but all but Jessica Chastain were in movies that few saw, and Jessica Chastain wasn't as excellent (nor did she wiggle her ass as well) as Jennifer Lawrence was (did) in a movie that could have easily been a mess without her.

Actor in a Supporting Role: This is tougher, especially if you saw all the performances. I'm going with the obvious: Tommy Lee Jones. In a role more nuanced than meets the eye, or the ear (it isn't every actor who could carry off that kind of vaulted, period diction and make it both enjoyable and memorable to adults and 11-year-olds like mine. Alan Arkin was excellent counterpoint in a movie that might have otherwise been too serious for a larger audience, but has won recently, for a performance that had more meat. DeNiro and Hoffman, actors' actors, helped out their pictures considerably, but it is Christoph Waltz, if "Lincoln" doesn't sweep, who stands the best chance of upsetting in this category.

Actress in a Supporting Role: Hmmmmm ... I haven't seen Anne Hathaway in "Les Miserables" though I'm not sure the Academy wants to chance letting her up on stage to prattle on like she did at the Golden Globes. Nor have I seen Helen Hunt in "The Sessions" though I heard she looks pretty hot naked, for someone in her forties. Amy Adams should probably win for her excellent work alongside Phoenix and Hoffman, in "The Master," but I'm skeptical. Sally Field also did fine work as Mary Todd Lincoln. Jacki Weaver's nomination shows you that the Academy is paying attention more than you sometimes think. This is my long-shot pick: Jacki Weaver.

Animated Feature: I liked "Frankenweenie." Then again, I liked "Dark Shadows." Don't be surprised, however, if "Brave" wins.

Cinematography: "Lincoln," I'm guessing, based on the sweep model. "The Master" should have gotten a nomination in this category.

Costume Design: How about ... "Les Miserables."

Directing: "Lincoln," and Spielberg, unless the Academy wants to stick it to Spielberg a little (the ending, after the excellent surprise with Jones and the woman from Law & Order, featured a bit too much of that treacly quality many object to). "Amour," and Michael Haneke, could upset.

Documentary Feature: I'm going with the OTC/Clateman feature "Searching for Sugarman," the only one in the category I've seen. Don't have a clue about the rest.

Nor do I have a clue about Documentary Shorts ...

Film Editing: "Lincoln," as I've remarked, had too fat of a coda; Silver Linings has no business in the category ... oddly, I think either "Argo" or "Zero Dark Thirty" wins here. "Zero Dark Thirty."

Foreign Language Film: "Amour" (though I haven't seen any of the rest).

Makeup and Hairstyling: "Les Miserables" (particularly for Anne Hathaway's look).

Musical score and Original Song: I don't have a clue/Can't remember/Have never gotten over Celine Dion winning for that song in "Titanic"...

Shorts: No idea

Sound editing/mixing: "Zero Dark Thirty" ... in the former (I have never understood the difference between the two) and "Argo" in the latter.

Visual Effects: "Marvel's The Avengers."

Adapted Screenplay: "Argo." An imaginative, crisp, elementally balanced treatment of something that actually happened in a more boring, less dramatic way.

Original Screenplay: My only opportunity to vote for a movie that should have had more nominations: Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom."

Have a good night. Don't stay up too late!

Timeshare: The Epilogue

It's now been nearly a year since my mother and I have been timeshare owners. Some of you may remember the post of the letter I sent to Diamond Resorts last May, a relatively detailed and articulate rant composed at the urging of a group that I'd engaged to get me out of the arrangement, one that had gotten too expensive to justify. For those who haven't read the letter, it's informative, and germaine to what follows:

http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5814647557969361869#editor/target=post;postID=69679870050537002

As I said, the letter was written at the urging of a group that I had paid seven months earlier to help me get out of my timeshare arrangement. This after speaking with real estate lawyers, friends, the resort, after finding out that there was no secondary market at all for the ersatz "property." By this time I was fairly certain that the group I'd paid, that guaranteed me in writing they would get me out of this arrangement and with no consequence to my credit rating (this was the worry, the only one, really, and the one thing no one else I spoke with could give me any insight on), were in fact a bunch of low-grade scam artists. Nothing they promised me up front, before they got my money—something I never should have done, that YOU should NEVER DO: give anybody any money at all, up front, to help you with your timeshare problem—had in seven months time come to pass, and by now I was simply pestering them endlessly, seeing what new absurd, ineffectual advice they had for me now that I had finally gotten a letter of foreclosure from Diamond Resorts. I was curious how the final innings would play out. What was the scam? How did it work? How were they still in business, nice people, it seemed, with a solid BBB rating (like many other groups promising the same)?

It took me awhile, but I finally discovered the smoking gun. I got my answer, in fact, from Diamond Resorts, and only because I was now in the "foreclosure" process. As I note in the letter, linked above, I had on at least two documented occasions tried to give the property back to Diamond—two weeks of de facto oceanfront, currently going for around $40,000 a week if you were to buy on the resort, at one of their presentations—and they had refused, saying that at this time they were not accepting "voluntary surrenders."

So, rather than pay the latest "special assessment" of around $20,000, this on top of the yearly maintenance fees, which had gone parabolic in the last few years, I was letting them foreclose on me. This, I was told by the group ostensibly assisting me, was part of the process. Once that happened they would really get down to business with cease and desist letters, and all manner of other legal tactics that would put this huge corporation, Diamond Resorts, on the ropes, whereupon they would finally yell Uncle and let me off the hook, not ruin my credit. Despite my amused skepticism at this point, they insisted that all I had to do was be patient and have faith. And write this one letter ...

"Why should I write the letter?" I had said. "I'm paying you. For you supposed expertise. Why don't you write the letter and cc me a copy?"

Well, it turned out that, contrary to what I was told, it was important that Diamond didn't think they were dealing with professionals. Thus what this group did was serve as expert advisors.

"Hand-holders, you mean," I said. "$3000 per week hand-holders, is what you're saying."

"Just be patient. You'll see—"

About a month after I wrote the letter, I called the number to Diamond Resorts "foreclosure unit." There was no phone bank to navigate, no Wagner-esque vacation soundtrack in the background. Just a woman who picked up the phone and said hello. I told her who I was, explained my situation, then added that I hadn't called to yell and scream at her, but that frankly I was looking for clarification on what was coming next. How this thing would play out. I told her we had, unlike many, gotten many good years and memories out of our place in Kauai, and that from my point of view the arc of that storyline was simply coming to an end, due largely to the fees, but nonetheless. In addition, I said, "I'm fairly certain I'm being scammed by a group that is claiming they're going to get me out of this thing—"

At this point she sighed. "There are a lot of crooks out there. The one thing I tell everyone is: Don't give anyone any money—"

"Unfortunately," I said, "It's a little late for that."

She paused a moment and said, "Listen, since you're the first person today who hasn't yelled at me I'm going to tell you something. I'd tell anybody this if they just knew what to ask and didn't yell and rant about things I can't help, but here it is: We are not going to list you with any credit bureau. We don't do that. It costs money to list an individual with a credit bureau and frankly we foreclose on so many that it wouldn't make any sense. What will happen," she added, "is you'll get two more letters. One indicating the foreclosure is imminent, the last being the one saying it is done. And then you're done. There will be a record in the courthouse in Lihue, along with a pile of others, but unless you're planning to buy property in Hawaii, it's nothing that is going to follow you around. No one is going to be calling you, or your mother, on the phone, wanting their maintenance fees. These guys prey on people who worried about their credit being ruined, and frankly, my group encourages those worries so that the owners continue to pay their fees, but the truth is nothing is going onto your credit rating—"

So, there it was. I asked if she'd send me an email documenting what she'd told me. She did. I told my hand-holding helpers in Orlando what I'd just been told, and that I had it in writing, and along with emails from their group that were, frankly, pretty damning. The woman who was my "case manager" now insisted that I was mistaken, that being foreclosed on was actually a good thing. "It means you've been released!"

She actually said that in an email.

I shared all this with the owner, all that I had in writing, particularly from his sister, the one who had initially pitched me, the one I told, quite candidly, that I was not the sort of person who would simply throw up his hands and go away if this turned out to be a scam; I was a writer, someone far more desperate and resourceful and potentially crazy than that. I would turn this into a based-on-a-true-story thriller, with her as the sexy villain, if she fucked with me, I had told her, in a more friendly way.

I told the owner the same, now, that his sister would be the first one I came after if I didn't get every last cent of what I'd paid them seven months earlier returned to me, right soon.

Many who heard me tell this said that I'd be lucky if I saw any money at all, that these people are typically pretty thick-skinned. Certainly, if I got half, I should count my blessings. If I wanted to hire an attorney, I would want to go local, get some one good. It was against the law to threaten a call to the DA ... all this added up to about a $3,000.00 legal bill, if I decided to push forward. Oddly, it seemed to me, that was the fee, per week of timeshare ownership the group promised to get you out of, that the group charged. It would cost you as much to get your money back, and most who had problems didn't quite understand what was happening to them, what had happened. They were people who had bought into timeshare, after all. Many were old. I was told all this is more candid conversations with the owner, when times were better. It turned out he was the sort of guy that if you talked to him long enough, he just could help telling you things. I'm the perfect person for someone like that, to get someone like that to finally tell you something.

I told the owner after weeks of hemming and hawing and feigned outrage on his part that I was going on vacation with my family in a week, and if I didn't have a check in my mailbox when I returned, I was booking a flight to Orlando.

That weekend some nut shot up a theater in Aurora. And now ... perhaps ... some garrulous nut writer from Colorado was coming to Orlando. I have to think that worked in my favor. As I told him, there's nothing crazier and more dogged than a desperate writer who has just finished a novel concurrent with being scammed by timeshare crooks. Trust me, I said, that person is looking for meaning wherever he can find it, and if it happens to be in Orlando, researching his next unfolding book, so be it.

And God help him if the check didn't cash. That would be a Federal Offense, as he must certainly know.

I ended up getting all the money back. I never had to go to Orlando. All I had to do was be relentless, it turned out. Relentless, and just on the careful, prudent side of crazy.

Moral of the story: Don't buy a timeshare unless you have money to burn, and value ease of use over any hope of return. And if you do, and find yourself one day without money to burn, just do what Cary Grant suggested one should do when it just isn't any fun anymore: walk away.

Walking the Dog

As some of you may know, we have a new puppy. We got her shortly before Thanksgiving, just in time to make the holidays even more interesting than usual. Her name, the one on her passport, as well as on the chip the breeder embedded inside her somewhere (with instructions to eat socks, and then chase them with goose manure, apparently) is Lexi O'Hare Bueltel, though we just call her Lexi. Almost always. 

I held out for five years after our last dog, Melville, died, explaining over and over to my children that my nervous system felt besieged, that if I had to handle the slightest bit more calamity I would end up in a padded cell, curled in a ball, cracked up like Fitzgerald—there are many metaphors, and my children were quick to relay them to strangers now that I'd finally buckled and gotten us a puppy.

For instance, on the second day we had her we went to the place in Boulder where I get my coffee beans. It was a warm sunny day, more like early September than late November, and I told them, my boys, that we were going to learn how to pick up girls. I told them to sit at one of the tables with the new puppy and I would go in and pick up the beans and an espresso and a couple of hot chocolates and by the time I came back out we'd see how they'd done. By the time I returned, two young teachers who had the Thanksgiving break off and, presumably, were trying to sober up after a wild morning, had already sidled beside our table and were fussing with the puppy. They looked up, smiling. "Your children just told us that you're a writer, that you just finished a book, that you wouldn't get them a puppy until you finished your book which apparently took a long time and you're lucky you're not in a padded cell—"

"Though there's still time!" the other one added while Lexi chewed on her hand that was apparently numbed somewhat from all the shots of tequila they'd had earlier that day, since they were teachers and had the week off.

"Oh yes, they told us everything about you!"

"You see how it works?" I said to the boys. They agreed it was remarkable, if you were into picking up teachers. Could we take her home now, they wondered, and wait for her to pee on the carpet and for me to go FUCK!!! and pick her up and haul her outside, that whole routine?

The teachers, like everyone else, wanted to know if we were "crate training" her. In the five years that I had actively resisted my fate, this sort of training had become de rigueur: someone had discovered that dogs apparently love being in a crate as much as we humans love debt, devices, houses that are too big for us to manage without despairing, and a lot of other things you wouldn't necessarily imagine we'd love. Moreover, if you put the dog in a crate, one that was small enough, the dog wouldn't "make a mess" in her crate but rather would wake you two or three times in the middle of the night to take her outside in the snow so she could "do her business" there, once she got done sniffing around, after she (and neighbors, who were trying to sleep) got tired of hearing you noisily whisper for her to hurry up, to piss already, to take a goddamn shit if she had to!

"So you aren't crate training her, then?" they said, in chorus, as if I'd told them I had no intention of fixing my tom cat, cleaning up my dog's poop from the sidewalk, composting, recycling, going gluten-free ...

"No," I said, "why would I? I work at home. I don't like a cage, why would she?"

They frowned. I imagined them thinking, fearing, perhaps, that they might be right: "One day you'll look back and realize what a mistake you made, not crate-training. Dogs who are properly crate-trained don't eat gym socks, nor do they indulge overly in goose manure. That and your nice oak floor will be curled up like dirty, filthy elephant tusks—"

Whereas if I had just done what the book said, adhered to the program ...

"Are you absolutely sure she ate a sock?" our vet's receptionist asked one day in January, not long ago.

"My son said she just pulled it from his hand and swallowed it."

"Just now?"

"No, yesterday. Yesterday morning. Right before school."

"Why didn't you call yesterday morning?"

"Because I couldn't believe it. I didn't believe it."

It was true. I couldn't believe it. Even with an eye-witness. My son who had no reason to lie ...

Then, a week later, the sock emerged, soiled from the ride through her GI tract—it looked like something you'd find in an alley, in the garbage of a shoeshiner. Three weeks later there was another one. No one had seen her eat this one. Then, on Super Bowl Sunday, Donna—a registered nurse trained to spot things like this, who hardly ever makes anything up—saw her, Lexi, eat a sock. Saw it with her own eyes and immediately got on the phone. The vet had said that if you can catch them eating it and get them in within a half-hour, they can give them something to make them throw up. So you don't have to do an x-ray, surgery, watch them die, your dog that you paid a crazy amount of money for, dead after swallowing a sock ...

So that's what we did. We took her in. I did. While Donna made guacamole and got the stuff out for martinis. Ten minutes after I arrived at the vet emergency room—$163.00 later—the vet tech came out with a slightly staggering Lexi (they give them a morphine byproduct) and a baggie with a gooey gym sock inside.

On the way home she threw up two more. Gym socks. Along with a smattering of undigested food.

I'm not making this up. 

I came home, still in awe, in disbelief—three socks! not one but three fucking socks!!—and told the boys that if I found another sock laying on the floor I was going to take away their allowance for a week and in all likelihood completely lose it on them ...

They assured me they'd pick up their socks. Just as soon as I quit freaking out and cussing so much—

Fuck you! Pick up your fucking socks!!!

"We're just kidding. We'll pick up our socks. By the way, she's peeing on the floor—"

"Jeee-zusss—"

"Why don't you go write," one of my boys said to me then. "Go hide in your office and turn the fan on so we can let the puppy run all over the house and listen to Mommy unravel. She's even more fun than you. By the way, when's this new book you keep talking about going to be done? Is this one going to take ten years, too? Are we going to starve? Lose our cable?

I said no, it wouldn't take ten years.

"Five?"

I didn't think it would take five either. At least I hoped. "Why are you asking me?"

"Three?" he asked coyly, buttering his bagel.

"A thousand days," I finally answered, so he'd leave me alone and I could go write, and if nothing came, well, I could watch the Super Bowl; I could walk the dog. "I'll have it done in a thousand days ... if you just pick up your socks, and I'm able to sell the last book and execute a film option, and make millions and hire a butler, a governess, a wife for your mother and another one for me—"

"Awesome! Can we get a parrot then?" 

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.