Per Request

Special K has requested that I comment on the following two quotes for reasons known only to her and the physician who dispenses her drugs from the trunk of his car late at night. The first is a pithy thing from Ayn Rand - and yes, I do occassionally lisp. It reads as follows:

Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire
philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself.

Before I comment, I want to clear up a thing that has confused people for years. Ayn Rand's first name is pronounced Bob.

Most men I know, particularly those between the ages of twelve and death, find almost anything that walks upright and lacks a penis sexually attractive. A few don't even have those reservations. If from this, Ayn can tell us our entire philosophy of life she is a better man than I am. From what I've read and been told this better man thing is probably the case anyway. As far as telling her the woman we sleep with so she she can give us a grade or a gold star or whatever her idea of valuation is, well I say it's none of her business. Unless, of course, you are Elin Woods. I'm told she is going to get Tiger's entire list.

Andre Maurois, the French author of the other quote tormenting Special K's semi-consciousness - she meditates a lot and sometimes does it in mixed company - has a real name of Emile Solomon Wilhelm Herzog. He changed it because he traveled frequently and Emile Solomon Wilhelm Herzog took too long to sew in his underwear. What he said is this:

"A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt everyday."

An edifice, as we all know, well, those of us who looked it up anyway, is a large imposing building. I say, if you're married to a large imposing building you will most likely be found inside it, probably in restraints or a room with thickly padded walls. If you just think of your marriage as a large imposing building that needs rebuilding everyday, my question is, who keeps tearing it down? Is Emile alias Andre doing it himself? Is he a man who really digs make-up sex or just a guy who likes using his tool? Truth is, it doesn't really matter because he's wrong about the whole subject. A successful marriage is not an edifice, it's a traveling circus with a baffled, out-of-his-depth Ringmaster trying to make sense of the mayhem while small, young clowns run amok everywhere. Eventually the clowns slip off to start their own circuses and the Ringmaster retires with either the fat lady, the exotic dancer or the wily babe who reads palms and enjoys crystal balls. His in particular.

So there you have my thoughts on the quotes Special K. I hope they've been of help.
Clarification is, as you know, one of my fortes. When drinking tequila I can even give you fivetes or sixtes.

Seagal and Zombies.

The meek may inherit the earth, but in the meantime I have noticed that people cut in front of them in lines.

I saw another Steven The House That Walks Seagal movie the other day. I can't seem to resist them. This one had production costs ranging in the dozens of dollars and concerned a post-apocalyptic world where zombies roamed the streets because, I suppose, cars didn't work anymore so why bother with sidewalks. A goodly number of the life-challenged creatures had also made their way into a hospital where they periodically leaped upon unsuspecting living people who were hiding out there. The people either fled or died but in both cases they screamed a lot to swelling horror movie music. Fortunately, I am a Ninja quality remote control user and I was able to instantly lower the volume to less than blood curdling levels. Curdled blood looks like cherry yogurt gone south in case you didn't know. They'll be none of that in my house. Outside the hospital, amidst the roaming zombies, was a group of people who called themselves "The Hunters." This group included the mandatory black guy and woman, The Great Wall of Seagal and a couple of other guys thrown in to be done in. Armed with guns and swords, they felt it was their role in life to rid the world of people who were already dead but hadn't yet noticed. We the rapt and completely attentive, apart from getting up to get more wine, snacks, surf the web and check our email, viewers also learn that there is a military compound where plans are being made to bomb the zombie infested area. A civilian - who was either a scientist or a Liberal - begs the commander for more time. Time that is, for the Hunters to rescue the people in the hospital. He doesn't get it, the planes are dispatched and everything gets blown to hell. Well, not quite everything. A few people, women and children of course - it's good to be one of them in this kind of flick, but risky in slasher movies - are saved at the cost of all the Hunter's lives except Seagal. At picture's end he even refuses to leave with the truck sent to pick up the post bombing survivors. Instead he says something manly like, I'm a hunter, I've got a job to do, and then walks off into the darkness, alone, one man against the world...of zombies. I tell ya, Dudes and Dudettes, there was a tear in my eye as he did so. I choked down the urge to holler "Shane. Shane. Come back Shane." but it was too late. He was gone. And besides that, his name wasn't Shane.

A note for the few people who will understand it: Large parts of the movie and even the personalities of some of the characters seemed taken from the DC Comics series, "The Walking Dead."

Turkeys Galore

Countdown to the Super Bowl begins now. I estimate four hours. I'm talking about the bowl of gravy that will be placed next to the turkey that Woowoo Charly will be roasting today for the simple reason that you can never have too much of that big bird. Unless, of course, as my mother once told me, provoking a sleepless night as I pondered its meaning, "your eyes are too big for your stomach."

I would hope that the other Super Bowl, the one pitting a bunch of baby horses against people canonized by the church, this coming Sunday (Sunday? Shouldn't playing on that "holy" day give the Saints an unfair edge?) turns out to be as good as our roast bird and not just another, well, turkey.

Interjections: Our dogs have decided that barking is a form of exercise. Each one, not wanting the other to get in better shape, barks along with whichever one starts the cacaphony. Swell.

The founder of my Writer's Group has changed our name to The Writer's Guild. I told him my dick felt bigger already. He wrote back and said the name change gave him a "guildy pleasure."

Back to the text.

Woowoo Charly is a Grammy a few times over, so she stayed up last night to watch other Grammys get some kind of awards. A few Grampys were honored as well. I joined her for a little while to see what the fuss was all about, but had to leave after watching a group called the Black Eyed Peas do something on stage that was incomprehensible to me. If they were supposed to be dancing they weren't very good, jumping around as they were to the only noticeable musical instruments, the drums and if they were singing, well, that would be silly as they mostly just shouted and pointed at the audience a lot. I guess they did something, though, that I missed, because they did get one of the awards. Earlier in the show a very attractive woman named Pink, who wasn't, came on stage in a nice white dress and began to warble what I thought was an actual song. She was doing pretty well I thought and even when the heat of the stage lights must have gotten too much for her and she felt compelled to take off all of her clothes, I didn't mind a bit. It was when she got trapped in a lacy net of some sort, the modern equivalent of the old fashioned hook from the wings I suppose, that I became concerned for her safety. But not to worry, she trooper-ed on and continued singing while she fought to be released. I don't know if she won an award or not, but she certainly deserved one for the effort.

I left the Grammys to Grammy and retired to our guest room where I searched the TV there for something else to watch. My on-screen guide offered among other things a movie entitled, "Crepuscular." I liked the way that Spanish word sounded, so I clicked it on to see if I could determine its meaning without looking it up in the dictionary or on Funk and Google. The movie was "Twilight." As words go, I like them both. Every English speaker knows that at a certain hour of the day the light gets twi, hence the name for that time of day. It also sounds like something Elmer Fudd might say if you said to him that the beer was too heavy. Crepuscular, on the other hand, sounds like a description of someone with open sores. (One reason for me tuning in.) "His body grew increasingly crepuscular from the vicious zombie bites." I remember falling asleep to the movie back in New York last September having tried to watch it after a multi-margarita lunch. I fell asleep to it again last night, but promised my self another viewing attempt should it pass my way again. The movie, as almost everyone knows, is a teenage vampires in love saga that has, to hear all the talk, apparently moistened the panties of teenage girls and young women throughout the known universe. Having some vampire in my DNA - I don't like garlic, crosses don't repel me, but they don't mean anything either, and my image in the mirror is fading more everyday (although this may have something to do with my eyeglass prescription) - I need to catch up on all the new moves in case I come back as a blood sucker in my next incarnation. I do, of late, find myself liking the color red more and more.

Especially when it's my cranberry sauce.

The Saga

Wednesday.

"Nice to meet you" says Doctor Rafael Rodriguez offering me his hand across the desk.

I'm partial to alliterative names, my first real girlfriend was named Laurel Larson and my father went through life as Walt Walton. I like Dr. Rodriguez right off-the-bat for his warm smile and firm hand shake as well as his mellifluous moniker.

"What can I do for you?" he asks as we settle into chairs at his desk.

How do I put this?, I think. "Well" I say, "I have a sort of mystery illness that latched on to me last October and won't let go."

"Tell me about it," he says, so I describe my symptoms in detail and emphasize the one that bothers me most, my freakin' fatigue. "I have no energy, doctor, and I tire faster than a fat guy in an uphill marathon" Truth is, I'm taking more naps than Rip Van Winkle." We then chat about my previous lifestyle for ten or twelve minutes before we get back to business.

"What medications have you taken to treat your problem?" he asks and I list the antibiotics, inhalants and steroids I've popped over the last three plus months in the so far fruitless attempt to exorcise my be-sicked bod of its demon.

"Hmmm," he says, "are those your X-rays?" They are. I've brought them along even though I had been told by two other physicians that they don't show anything of interest other than that I had smoked for three or four hundred years. I hand them over. There are two, both chest X-rays, one taken in October the other a month or so later. As he takes them from their enormous envelopes and hangs them on his light screen, I tell him they've been dubbed normal.

He looks at the oldest first, then the other. He goes back and forth between them a few times and then says succinctly, "These are NOT normal." He waves me over to his side and points at a circle of light on my left lung appearing in the October X-ray. "This" he says, is pneumonia." He then replaces that X-ray with the November one and notes that the pneumonia is gone. Nice, I think. No problem there. He then points at another circle of light emanating from higher up on my lung and says, "This is what concerns me." He shows me that the spot exists on both x-rays. Although I like to be creative from time to time, my next question was the same one that everyone on the planet would ask, to wit, "What is that?"

"I don't know" he answers. "It's a mass of some kind...Let's sit down."

A MASS! A MASS! I DOAN NEED NO STEENKING MASS!, I'm thinking in large neon letters as we get back to our seats.

The doc says, "My first thought when you described your symptoms was that you might have Myasthenia Gravis. Do you know what that is?"

I do. Well a little bit anyway. It's a muscle disease of some sort. I nod my head. I'm still mostly thinking, A MASS!

He says, "And that may, in fact, be the problem, but I need more information. What I am going to recommend is that you get a Cat Scan so we can have a closer look at your chest and then we can decide how to proceed. We have to know what that mass is."
I note that he is avoiding all the scary words like tumor or cancer, but he does say something about "and whether the mass is benign or not."

Being the well-heeled fat cat that you all know I am, living as I do on the ginormous amount of money Social Security pays me each month, you can guess my next question.

"Not much" he answers.. "About three hundred dollars." (It turns out to be three-forty.)

I tell him I can handle that and we schedule the scan for Friday morning, nine A.M. as I need to be in David that day anyway for a skin check and stitch removal by my friend and yours the Abominable Doctor Panagas. I had had a skin cancer on my back incised by him on Monday.

My new pal in the medical profession, a profession I really don't want to have anything to do with but, hey, what else CAN you do, Doctor Rafael Rodriguez, then writes me a couple of scripts to clear up my lingering pneumonia/bronchitis symptoms, a cough and phlegm, and off I go. RTGFKAR is waiting for me in the cleverly named Waiting Room admiring the receptionist's butt, a thing I can't blame him for as it is truly an eye magnet. I follow it all the way to her desk where she sits and I pay her thirty-five dollars for the visit.

Thursday is uneventful and passes slower than usual as I ponder the word "mass" and what it might mean.

Friday morning I wake up with the answer. It must be the skin cancer I had removed from my back Monday. It was more or less in line with the spot on my X-rays. It would have been there growing gradually back in October and November when the rays were taken. I make a note to ask the doc if this might possibly be the answer to what the mass is.

And I would have asked him had he shown up that day. While waiting for my turn at the Scanner, Lovely Butt calls and says the doctor needs to reschedule for Monday, nine A.M. Alrighty then, I say, I'll wait until Monday.

"Where's your cat?" the Scan tech asks me as I peel off my shirt.

"What cat?" I ask in reply.

"This is a cat scan" he tells me. "I can't scan your cat if you didn't bring it."

Okay, that only happened in my mind.

In reality I climb up on the table and the tech and I have a quick conversation in Spanish about me not moving and when I should hold a deep breath and when I should breathe normally during the scan. The table moves me electronically under a huge plastic arch where I hear nothing but do see some spots of light blinking across the front of the scanner. In less than three minutes we are done.

Woowoo Charly is with me on this day and we next truck along to the La-bor-a-tory where it is colder than an Igloo and where I have a quart or two of blood removed from my arm for some other tests old Doc R.R. has ordered. After that, Woowoo and I head for breakfast. I had been warned not to eat before the scan.

After breakfast, still having hours to kill before my appointment with Panagas, we wander over to the Casino across the street from the Gran National Hotel. Armed with five rolls of nickles each, we assault the slots. Playing Deuces Wild Poker on one of them, I hit a Royal Flush (with three deuces) and win 125 nickles. I'm thinking my luck is still holding in the good to excellent range since I won a raffle drawing at La Reina Department Store before Christmas. The machine asks me if I want to go double or nothing, high card wins. I say you betcha. It goes first and draws a king. So much for good luck. My nine of hearts comes up woefully short.

Later, at Panagas' lair, he answers my question about whether my skin cancer could be the spot on my X-ray with a decisive, "No way, it's not possible." He also tells me that the biopsy on the chunk of my back he shoveled out Monday had not yet come in, so he was unable to clue me if it was one of the "bad" cancers or just another basal cell, my usual.

It's going to be a limbo weekend all around, I think. I'll have plenty of time to watch college hoops, NFL football and further contemplate that peculiar word "mass." Curiously, I'm not worried. I don't feel bad, I have no pain and I'm just a little tired. Despite my double down result, I still feel lucky.

The above was written Saturday morning.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Monday 1:30 P.M.

Fat! Fat! Who woulda thunk it? Placing the scanned cat on his light board Dr. R.R. points at the suspicious mass and says, "This is just fatty tissue, a thing not uncommon in people your age." Behind me I hear a quiet but still audible "pheww." Woowoo Charly is standing there. As for me, well, I knew it was nothing all along. I do admit, though, to not spelling relief R-O-L-A-I-D-S but rather with a lower case a-l-r-i-g-h-t-y t-h-e-n!

That worry now gone I can return to fretting over the Broncos not having a franchise quarterback, Carmelo Anthony's latest ankle sprain and what-the-hell is wrong with me anyway. "Let's talk some more" is Doc R.R.'s suggestion.

He has no answers for the Broncos or Melo so we get back to me.

We rule out depression and any connection to my pulmonary problems. My symptoms with the latter are almost gone. We mostly rule out my on going, seemingly life-long stomach woes, but I do get a script for Nexium. I'm also handed a script for an immune system booster aimed at people with bronchial problems and a new inhaler. Pharmacies throughout Panama are considering parades. My fatigue, the one remaining symptom, seems to emanate from somewhere along my upper spinal column. This, I'm told, could mean a neurological problem, IE; nerves or muscles. I don't have Myastenia Gravis or even not so Gravis, but I might have something that mimics the symptoms of same. For this reason I am referred to yet another doctor for, whoopee, more tests. If I wasn't depressed before, the mounting cost of this fiasco, has me heading down that road. So there I am happy about not being terminal or, at least no more than the rest of us, but upset over the cost and lack of a medical conclusion. Let's just say I'm conflicted.

When we leave the office, WooWoo Charly cries a little. I don't know how I feel about this. I mean, I'm glad she cares that much, but I didn't want her to worry so. I feel bad that she did. I am, wouldn't you know it, conflicted de nuevo, (again). Chuck, though, is relieved and I'm happy about that.

We now return to a deja vu scenario. After locating my new doctor's office elsewhere in the building, we learn he is not there. Nor is his receptionist. We are told to return in an hour which we do to no avail. Neither person has made the scene. How familiar is that? We do, however, manage to score a telephone number. I will try to make a cita (appointment) later today. No need to wish me luck. I'm already up for another double down.

So there you have the latest chapter of this mind numbing saga. Sorry to bother you with it but, you know, I can't help myself. The Monkeymind carries on.

Lost in Nowhere

A.A. Milne says there is no harder work than fetching an idea from nowhere. Tell me about it. Probably headed for A.A. Walton says it's even harder to find a funny one. How 'bout this? I remember when 'roids were hemm and not sterr. That's funny, right?

I haven't touched my guitar since last September. It sits in the corner dying from lack of affection. (The verb for to touch in Spanish is the same as the verb for to play an instrument, tocar.) Since I contracted my less than magical mystery ailment dubbed Moses for its longevity, I have lacked both the focus and the energy to play it. Shame on me I say, and shame on Moses. No golf, no guitar. Maybe I'm just giving up on things that start with the letter g.

In the information for no reason department there is this: I read on Yahoo this weekend that most running shoes are as bad for your legs as high heels. That's good to know. Now we can all chuck our sneaks and be taller.

The NFL playoffs are down to four teams only one of which has never been to the Super Bowl, New Orleans. Go Saints. I like their Fleur de Lis logo.

Okay, I've now spent half an hour and two cups of coffee wandering around nowhere trying to fetch an idea. I don't think there are any good ones in my neighborhood. Wait! What if I wrote about a boy and his stuffed toys. I could name his bear Poo and his tiger Tygger and the boy himself could have a catchy name like Christopher Robin. What, you say? Milne has already done that? It is as I suspected. All the good ideas are gone.

I guess I'll just have to write about 'roids. Which kind do you want to hear about?

Blithering

Sometimes I write a blog just because I peer in at Monkeymind and see my last one sitting there looking stale and outdated. Today is one of those days. I don't have anything in particular to say, but then I rarely do, so there is no news there.

It is Friday of a week that slid by almost undetected. For most of the week we Boquete denizens were holed up in our houses avoiding the wind and rain. RTGFKAR, Woowoo Charly and I did slip out for a Daveed run ostensibly to see the Abominable Doctor Panagas, but also just to catch a few rays and warm up. Temps around our place have been in the Sixties and that just won't do. Especially for Woowoo Chuck and I who have, as I've noted before, lizard in our DNA. Panagas never showed. I sat in his very crowded waiting room reading an Elizabeth George mystery and chatting here and there with his beautifully smiled receptionist while RTGFKAR and Chuck made a Pricsmart run. They were back and I was gone before Panagas made an appearance in the building. He was, according to Diosylyn, the receptionist, a la mitin de Ministerio de Salud. A meeting at the Ministry of Health. I am rescheduled for Monday.

We did play a couple of games of Scrabble this week (a thing I wouldn't have mentioned had I not won both games) and we watched several movies, the worst of which was the latest version of "The Day the Earth Stood Still." The movie, a real stinker, did, however, provide Keanu Reeves an opportunity to display his full range of facial expressions, both of them. Other than that highlight the movie had nothing to offer and this reviewer says, don't bother. One odd, but curiously interesting movie that we stumbled on accidentally - the title certainly was not the lure - was "Lars and His Living Doll." You might want to check this one out if you like good acting and an offbeat script.

Three indios were killed in a machete fight a couple of nights ago on the street in front of the Flower and Coffee Fair that is going on all this week. I would tell you more but that's all I know. Of course I could make something up.

Cyrano De Guimi stood back to back with Dartagnon de Kuna. Their machetes were unsheathed and at the ready. Around them the president's personal guard crept carefully forward urged on by the evil and cunning Captain Richalulu. "There will be no escape this time," he cries out. "Your coffee beans will be ours." The guard closes in, blades begin to flash.

Something like that would probably be better than another movie review.

Sense Dancing

"Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense dancing." William James

I gotcher sense of humor right here, Willy. It's Monday morning and crosswise rain is being pushed along by a wind so noisy it's hard to hear my own thoughts. Is this any way to start a week Willy? I don't think so. Throw in throw-up, yeah two of my dogs have done that this morning, and a puddle of puppy pee in a corner and I just don't see any sense in it at all, common or otherwise.

That's right, I'm depressed Willy. Even though I will probably be sitting here writing, which is a euphemism for staring off into space, which is in itself a euphemism for the contents of my mind, for the next few hours or so, making the weather irrelevant, I feel it might be more cheering if I could glance up from my reverie now and then and see sunshine lighting up the out-of-doors. Is that too much to ask Willy?

Oh sure, I know it could be worse. I could be a Green Bay Packer fan this morning or even worse than that, actually live in Green Bay, so I probably shouldn't complain, but come on Willy! To quote another deep thinker, Dean Martin, "the weather outside is frightful!" While you're over there making common sense dance, I have important chores like edging the lawn, washing the car and walking the dogs stacking up. What if it is still raining tomorrow? I'll be at wit's end or, at least, somewhere past wit's middle.

So what I'm trying to tell you here, Willy, is to save your happy quotes for another day. On the other hand, if you've got something grim, something Poe-ish, something along the lines of "while I pondered weak and weary" then we here in the land of "I might as well go back to bed" might be interested.

(Okay, I'm just kidding, my common sense is dancing. Someone is shooting bullets at its feet.)

Movies, Sports and Books

Spawn of Wrayjay (RTGFKAR) has returned to the States and we miss her already. Such a sweet kid. True dat. (Statement of complete accord. Synonyms, word up, ditto, mos def, word is bond.)

I'm looking forward to all the new movies that HBO and Cinemax are going to show this year. Some of them I'm told are only five or six years old. For want of anything better to do last night I watched another Steven Segal flick called Pistol Whipped or Riddled With Bullets or something else along those lines. (Okay I admit there were lots of better things to do but I was hunkered down in a recliner with a glass of wine in hand and, curiously, none of them came to mind.) In this movie Steven, who is roughly the size of a house give or take an extra bathroom or two, was often dressed in leather jackets. I'm no expert but the jackets looked like real leather so I figure the material was the largest part of the production cost. If the producers had used synthetics they might have been able to squeeze in another car chase or afforded a better director.

Mike Shanahan, the former Denver Bronco coach, gets a five year contract from the Washington Redskins at seven million per season. I'm thinking if a coach is worth thirty-five mil he ought to be able to take a junior high team and school the Patriots. (school = to trounce or beat.) I mean really. With thirty-five million you could make ten or twelve Steven Segal movies.

Lest you think my entire day was wasted watching and contemplating sports and movies let me also point out that I finished a Jim Harrison novel called "True North." It's called that, I suppose, because that is its title. The book's protagonist is trying to write a history of his family's role in screwing up their part of the world, northern Michigan, with mining and clear cutting. A woman poet and lover of his tells him that as a writer he will never be more than a pretty good amateur. I thought about the description "pretty good amateur" for a long time and decided that it fits me as well.

I can live with that.

Off and Monkeyminding Again. (Mostly Off)

Fo' shizzle means for sure. It is important here to also know the synonyms starting with mos def. The others are, tizzite, tellivizzle, rizzle, shiznit, hizzouse, bizzatch, brizzle and weezy in the keezy. New Scrabble games will include multiple zees to accommodate these words.

Alrighty then, the new year is underway and drama lurks 'round every corner. Will Elin and Tiger pass health care reform, will Brandon Marshall and Josh McCoach oust the Taliban from the lockerroom, will Obama insist on a playoff system for Tiger's girlfriends, will Skanky Spice leave Beckam and sign with the Sox, will the U.S. soccer team be rank or ranked at the World Cup, and will all be quiet on the western slope? These are the questions on everyone's lips that need to be answered or removed with alcohol and q-tips. Stay tuned as 2010 unfolds and despite all odds and even some evens the earth and politicians keep on spinning.

I will now put the monkeymind on a leash and and walk it to a cage.

New Year's Day was uneventful. Okay, that's not true, there were events. Football games, parades, fireworks, suicide bombings and Book Fairs come to mind and that's not even to mention Brangelina and Madonna adopting more kids. What I mean, I guess, is that I sat on my...sofa all day as I practiced my resolution to sit on my...sofa
more often. Sofa is, of course, a euphemism for...recliner. (For some reason I just can't get myself to say ass.) A euphemism for recliner is...desk chair, the thing I really want to keep my...donkey on more often. I read this morning that Isaac Asimov wrote over 400 books. Now there is a guy who clearly liked sitting on his...duff fo' shizzle. Duff is a euphemism for...gluteous maximus or, in my case, gluteous minimus which is in itself a euphemism for my ass (there, I've said it) has fallen off. 400 books! I think it is Highly Selassie I will catch him in 2010, but watch out for next year when I get the hang of this sitting on my...tush.

While I'm waiting to acquire this keep-your-...butt-in-the-chair skill, I think I will go walk the dogs.

And that's mos def.

Old Out, New In

Some of you, unlike Yers Trewly who is always dank, are not up to date on the latest "in" vernacular. To help correct your deficiency in this area, I will define a term for you here and there throughout the new year. Dank, for instance, means possessing ideal properties. Example in a sentence: That is one dank suit Biz-natch! Synonyms: kick-ass, tight, fly, sick, and phat.

New Year's Eve morning. Rainbow doing its colorful arcing thing to my right, chicken clucking "ba-doc ba-doc" somewhere off to my left. Dogs barking at my back. QUIT THAT! Other household denizens still abed. Wait! One of them is stirring. A microwave oven meep meep meeps in the kitchen announcing tea water is hot. Our plan to celebrate the year past and welcome the year lurking round the corner is an early dinner out at El Pianista, an Italian place not far from here. An hour from now would be good for me, but I doubt Doris the owner opens the door this early. Yup, one last pasta blowout before I endeavor to make my profile appear a couple of months less pregnant than it does now. That's my New Year's Resolution. Well, that and achieving world peace, bagging a hole-in-one, tomahawk dunking over Lebron, writing the great Panamanian Novel and returning my new flashlight to La Reina because it doesn't work. A man has to have goals afterall. What pray tell, are yours?

I will miss 2009 in many ways, although certainly not its last quarter when I was besicked. I wrote a lot, more than in any other year and my output included genres I had never tried before; sci-fi, horror, noir and even a truthful accounting of an actual event rendered as a Twilight Zone episode. Big Fun all. I think, though, that in 2010 I will "go long." I have a project already under way. I will continue to blog, but, likely, with less frequency.

Happy New Year to everyone. Don't get too faded tonight. (Faded: intoxicated. Synonyms: bent, baked, blunted and blazed.)

2009 Book List

BOOK LIST 2009


1. The Given Day Dennis Lehane Boston cops, Labor unions, Babe Ruth and racial strife leading up to the 1920s, make for an entertaining read.

2. Milking the Moon Eugene Walter as told to Katherine Clark Eugene’s life told through his own entertaining anecdotes. Talented seven from Mobile Alabama goes to NY, Paris, Rome, befriends artists of all sorts and has a fun life.

3. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle David Wroblewski A mute boy and his mother and father raise and train their own breed of dogs. Father dies. Boy knows why. Drama begins. The dogs role is key to story. Brilliant first novel. Loved it.

4. Indignation Philip Roth The old guy – what is he, a hundred? – has still got it. Here he writes a tale about a teenager that’s perfectly believable. Good read, hard ending.

5. Eats Shoots and Leaves Lynne Truss A book about punctuation that is – believe it or not – a page turner. Well, at least for those of us who care; helpful and funny throughout.

6. Cesar’s Way Cesar Milan TV’s The Dog Whisperer’s “as told to bio and philosophy” to Melissa Jo Peltier. Helpful in understanding dogs.

7. A feast For Crows George R.R. Martin Fourth book of the Fire and Ice Series Story of derring-do and intrigue continued.

8. O’Hara’s Choice Leon Uris Tight little “love against all odds” story. The “choice” was not what most people would expect. I though, ta daa!, was on to it.

9. On God Norman Mailer with Michael Lennon A conversation about Norman’s take on the big picture. Old Norm’s thoughts are always interesting.

10. Widow’s Walk Robert B. Parker Spencer, Hawk and Susan are always a welcome respite from “serious” reading.

11. The Inheritance Details the crap Obama was left to deal with. It’s not looking good for the good guys. Peace and prosperity seem doubtful.

12. Cryptonomicon Neil Stephenson The book makes the title seem tidy. Long enough for four books (1152 pages), it alternately engaged me and passed by over my head. In the end, I plowed to the finish by sheer determination augmented by skimming.
Among the plots were code breaking, winning WWII, finding Nazi gold, laying telecommunications under the sea to the Phillipines, dodging rivals and linking a diverse group of people from different eras. Well done…I think.

13. South Beach Brian Antoni My kind of book. Offbeat characters doing offbeat things in an offbeat setting.

14. The Lost City of Z David Grann Non fiction tale of explorer P.H. Fawcett’s attempts to find a mythical city in the Amazon wilderness and the author’s subsequent attempt (as well as many other’s) to find Fawcett and his son who never came back from their last trip there.

15. Pandora in the Congo Albert Sanchez Pinol Entertaining “off the wall” account of a Congo adventure, a love story, a subsequent murder trial and a young writer’s struggle to deal with all those events.

16. The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford This tale of love gone awry among the leisure class, published in 1927, holds up well. Common human flaws bring a bad end to all.

17. A Great Deliverance Elizabeth George The first of many mysteries by Liz that I will have to read. Great characters, believable plots, terrif writing.

18. Payment in Blood Elizabeth George Mysteries intertwined with mysteries. All unraveled nicely. Great stuff.

19. Can’t Buy Me Love Jonathan Gould Comprehensive biography of the Beatles and their Times. Well researched, well written.

20. Is Tiny Dancer Really Elton’s Little John? Gavin Edwards. Subtitled, “Music’s most enduring mysteries, myths, and rumors revealed.” That says it all.

21. If You Didn’t Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat? Bill Heavey Humorously told hunting and fishing stories. Misadventures for the most part.

22. Dave Barry’s History of the Millennium So Far Often laugh out loud funny.

23. Well Schooled In Murder Elizabeth George The mystery is solved, the murderer caught and the continuing cast of characters…continue.

24. Ser Como El Rio Que Fluye Paulo Coelho (Read in Spanish, of course) Paulo’s thoughts on this and that as he travels the world in search of spiritual truths.

25. Dude, Where’s My Country? Michael Moore. A lot of the book that was good stuff at the time (2003) is now dated. Much remains, though, that is still interesting. Reasons, for instance, why Nixon was our last liberal president and that one million Americans have been killed by guns since Kennedy was assassinated. (More than if we had fought Viet Nam 15 times.)

26. The Walking Dead This is a comic compendium whose authors I diligently wrote down and just as diligently misplaced. Plague survivors against zombies and each other. Quite compelling, actually.

27. A Suitable Vengeance Elizabeth George More murders and mayhem in Jolly Old with the usual cast sorting things out.

28. Cold Skin Albert Snchez Pinol An island, a light house, monsters from the sea and madness make this another Pinol whacko wonder. Strange, but nevertheless entertaining read.

29. The Last Duel James Landale A tediously told story of the last duel in Scotland and a history of dueling in general. Interesting here and there.

30. Stillness Speaks Eckhart Tolle Old Eck, his friends call him Eck, joins a long line of spiritual guides telling us To Be Here Now. Ram Dass (not pronounced rammed ass) was the first one to get to me. I’ve been trying ever since. Sometimes I’m successful.

31. For the Sake of Elena Elizabeth George Liz’s fifth and best book so far in her write-em-until-I-die-ogy. Murder solved, human relations resolved…for now.

32. Consider the Lobster David Foster Wallace I can’t define brilliance, but like a Supreme Court Justice once said of pornography, “I know it when I see it.” Brilliance is displayed here and there in this book of essays.

33. The Appeal John Grisham Predictable. Kind of a fictionalized version of “A Civil Action.”

34. Electricity Ray Robinson A British woman with fierce epileptic seizures searches for long lost brother. Very unusual narrative voice.

35. The Old Fox Deceiv’d Martha Grimes I love these British murder mysteries. They are so….civilized. Most of the time…even the murderers. Grimes and George together with Dick Francis, my cup runneth over.

36. The Book of General Ignorance subtitled Every thing you think you know is wrong. John Lloyd and John Mitchinson Fun facts about stuff you think you know but don’t really.

37. The Inimitable Jeeves P.G. Wodehouse The second time I’ve read this book. Needed a P.G. fix and couldn’t fine any I hadn’t read here in Panama.

38. The Satanic Verses Salman Rushdie I can’t say I fully understand this book; there’s mythology and fantasy alternating with reality and an unclear (to me) timeline, but the prose is spectacular and very readable.

39. Greenwich Killing Time Kinky Friedman Funny, somewhat Elmore Leonard-like prose. Reminds me of me, only Kinky is better.

40. The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera Non-typical love and philosophy during the Czech occupation by the Soviet Union. A deep read.

41. The Reader Bernhard Schlink A boy’s affair with an older woman leads to a Nazi back story, a trial and a sad ending. Good stuff.

42. Odds Against Dick Francis Well told, well plotted, well done.

43. The Farmer’s Daughter Jim Harrison Three novellas featuring less than main stream characters. All are sexually charged. Jim has grown more ribald with age.

Good Ideas

Yahoo, from which I derive all my news except for the news I get from other places, recently had a list of the five foods you should NEVER eat. These were as I recall, Strychnine Coated Cocoa Puffs, Arsenic Almonds, Other Human Beings, Doggie Doodoo Doughnuts, and micro-wave popcorn. Yahoo was particularly adamant about the popcorn. Eating micro-wave popcorn will, apparently, cause bad things to happen like heart hernias, hip hemorrhaging and home team defeats. Because I believe everything I read on Yahoo - extra terrestrials ARE targeting Mississippi high school drop-outs fishing in remote places - I went directly to my nearest hot air popcorn popper store and bought one. Popcorn popped by this machine is perfectly safe for children and even adult users if precautions are taken. Salt and melted butter must be applied to the popcorn in the right order. For those of you uncertain, here it is: Butter first, salt second.

So there I was munching my safe, healthy treat and washing it down with liberal quantities of safe, healthy, pain relieving vodka, Advil and OJ, contemplating my navel and my liver while watching my beloved Denver Broncos fall short in a late game comeback attempt against the Philadelphia Eagles. The Eagles, I noted, held an unfair advantage in that their players were better than the Broncos' players. And, in addition, all the game officials were born and raised in the City of Brotherly Love and had promised their neighbors a sure fired Eagle victory. Money had changed hands. My proposal that each team captain alternately choose a player from either squad to make up their team, as is done on the playgrounds of the world, to make for a fairer and more competitive contest was ignored much to my chagrin. My chagrin, by the way, has now left me and is moving to Philadelphia.

Another of my great ideas that has been left dangling in the wind concerns the inability of white adults to appreciate the forms of music known as hip-hop and rap. (That's right, I am changing the subject.) The lyrics of many hip-hop and rap songs shock but fail to awe the Caucasian populace, telling, as they do, tales of violence, drugs and bad things done to ho's, yo momma and yo sista. They are often sung by threatening looking black men who wear their baseball caps askew, their pants below their butts and too much jewelry dangling from their necks over their sports team jerseys which serves to further distract from the message they are trying to impart. My proposal is this: You know the scene in almost every Disney movie where butterflies are fluttering around flowers, bluebirds are alighting on fences, bunnies are cavorting playfully in the grass and squirrels are chasing each other around tree trunks? If you can remember those scenes, than remember also the music that is playing while all that frivolity is going on. It is a chorus of high voiced, chirpy women who sound just a touch more human than Alvin and the Chipmunks. Why not have this chorus singing the hip-hop rap lyrics? Why not have them singing castrate the cops and spank yo ass? I think this would be so palatable to white listeners that they would no-doubt-about-it end up playing the tunes in dentist offices and on elevators.

"Would you push three for me please?" Altogether now in your best falsetto, "Fuck dat, you skanky ho."

That's all for now. Go Broncos, beat State.

And The Winner Is...

"Halo. Senyore Dough Nald Wall Tone por favor."
"Este es Dough Nald."
"Senyore Dough Nald soy (unintelligible)de La Reina. Le llamo decir tu gana el premio."
"Really? Cuantos?"
"Doscientos dollars."
"Well alrighty then! I mean, thank you, er gracias. Yo voy ahi hoy."
"...taluego."

La Reina, bouncing, bubbly, beautiful Boquete's (too much Bing Crosby alliteration over the holiday will do this to you) small department store had a promotion for Christmas. For every ten dollars you spent in their store you received an entry for a drawing they would have two days before the big event. I filled out a handful a week or so ago and dutifully put them in the raffle box. After that, of course, I never gave it a second thought. Now in truth, and in general, I consider myself a winner because of all the good I have and have had in my life. But of contests? Fat chance. Seven or eight hundred lottery scratch off tickets later I'm down a couple thousand bucks and hoping to get back to even. My chances of having an entry of mine picked in a drawing ranked right up there with the well known cold day in hell. Not that I had never won anything mind you. I could think back and remember a turkey I'd scored by bowling "best over average" one Thanksgiving eve and Denver Nuggets tickets I pocketed by winning a free throw shooting contest at my local gym. But a blind luck, pick it out of a hat kind of thing? No way Jose.

Well wrongo Raffle Breath and yes way Jose as the phone call written above attests to. That's right, me, Dough Nald - I had to use my passport name to qualify - was now officially a winner of two hundred balboas or, actually, two hundred dollars worth of merchandise. Whoda guessed it?

Now before I move along to far less important stuff than me being a winner, like the annual day in which several billion people celebrate some dude's birthday for instance, I want to add that when Woowoo Charly and I went to retrieve the winnings, there was a parking place directly in front of the store's doors. (Store's doors? Say that five times fast.) How often has that happened to you? And then, after walking around and filling up our shopping basket with what we estimated was in the neighborhood of two hundred bucks, Woowoo and I deposited the merchandise on the counter and had the cashier add it all up. The total? Two hundred dollars and ten cents. Now that Sportfans, is good shopping. We then paraded most of the goodies over to another counter where we got FREE gift wrapping! Really! It is good...very very good to be the king in a store named "The Queen."

And speaking of good. Christmas day was a blast. Good friends, good food, good fun, good times. What more can I say? (Did I mention I was a winner?)

Keep on Turning

From the Department of Corrections Department comes this: It was the SHORTEST day of the year, YOU IDIOT!

And RTGFKAR adds that every year that passes is shorter than the year before because the earth's rotation is slowing down! So, the shortest day of the shortest year so far, has just zoomed by. My question is, if you walk in the opposite direction the earth is spinning, can you slow the slowing down? This is a question that needs to be answered by the Department of Physics Department.

From the Department of Clarification and Definition Department I would like to get an answer to this question: Is a Concentration Camp a place where people suffering from ADD are sent to learn how to focus?

We split into teams yesterday to tackle two chores at the same time. Both teams failed. RTGFKAR, the team of one, was sent to pick up Spawn of Rayjay at the airport while Woowoo Charly and I invaded the lair of Angry Zola. Spawn missed her flight from Pan City and Zola never showed. RTGFKAR's team went into overtime and picked up Spawn several hours later. Woowoo Chuck and I jointly said, "#*^# this!" (select the profanity of your choice) and mentally fired Angry Zola. See, the thing is, we know Panama is a process country; that is, one where the process of getting to a goal is to be enjoyed as much as achieving the goal, if not more so. In other words, "slow down, you're going too fast, you've got to make the moment last." Our goal, on this occasion was to see Doctura Anguizola at our specified appointment time of eleven AM. Zola's office had called me, in fact, earlier in the day to remind me to be there. Scroll back now to a time when the earth was spinning faster. Our first visit to Angry Zola's found her in Pan City. On our second, we waited an hour and forty five minutes beyond our appointment time and on our third, the receptionist scheduled me with the wrong Angry Zola, our doc's husband, who is a doctor of a different sort. Sheesh. This trip we checked in exactly on time - we are always on time, it's a disease - and waited for an hour. At precisely noon we uttered the above mentioned oath and fled the premises. Process my patootie! I'm finding another doctor.

Alrighty then. And in the evening, it rained. It was supposed to rain on a part of the world just beyond us, but because the earth is rotating slower, we got the downpour instead.

Denver, Time and The Longest Day

My heart was broken, my hopes crushed like a stomped on grape. The evil Oakland Raiders had come into Denver and defeated the home eleven 20 to 19. The sky had fallen and a silence deep as the grave hushed the faithful. Tears and drooping shoulders were worn by all who dreamed of playoffs; playoffs now but a distant, barely flickering hope. Alas, so sad, so sad.

But that was yesterday!

Today this Bronco fanatico is feeling fine and probably dandy too although I'm not sure what feeling dandy really means. It's the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and if that signifies the area above the equator, than by-cracky, by-jiminy and by-other expressions no one uses any more, Panama is part of it and I don't want to spend the longest day of 2009 mope-ing about. To celebrate the longest day, I've selected a larger font for the blog. Okay, this is not exactly a Mardi Gras of celebrations but, come on, I'm going with what I got. (I was also going to make a list of all the things I was planning to do with the extra time, but apparently I've used it up writing this paragraph. I'll be more frugal with it next year.)

It is exactly 9:AM here which is something like 3:19 in Bangkok by the airport clock of my mind and Bangkok may or may not be in the Northern Hemisphere. Only the Bangkokians know for sure. Bangkokians, by the way, is fun to say. Why I bring this up, or rather make this up, is a question pondered by well known psychiatrists throughout the world, or should be. Bangkokian shrinks especially. For those of you who prefer more precision, I will point out that the hour in Greenwich is, at this moment, unknown. Greenwich is sitting in a corner taking a timeout for being mean.

It's back to Spring cleaning again today although the two days of Spring have been supplanted by the twelve days of Christmas and the five steps to a new and better you.

As you may have noticed, I don't really have a thing to say on this the longest of days. I just wanted to try out the new font (another funky word to say) and air out the monkeymind. It was getting dusty.

Cheers. But not for the Broncos. The stiffs.

Walking the Perimeter

Right around 7:30 at night my dog Raffi begins to put what is called in the restaurant business the fish stare on me. The fish stare is used by waiters to encourage people who are dawdling at their table post dinner to move along: other people are waiting for the table. Raffi uses his unblinking gaze to encourage me to open a door so that he and our other two mutts can go out and check-the-perimeter. Checking-the-perimeter is a practice I instituted with our former dog Gus. It's a euphemism for walking around the property three or four times so that the dogs will have an opportunity to squat and fire before coming in for the night. They, of course, think they are out there to hunt anything that moves, bark maniacally and generally be a nuisance.

At roughly the Witching Hour, eight o'clock, (Boquete's witches party early because nobody is up to mess with at Midnight) I rise from my recliner saying "calm down, calm down" a necessary, but wasted effort on my part, as the moment there is discernible air between the chair and my butt, Raffi goes berserk. He leaps up at me, runs in circles and then hurtles himself at the door. I can't get it open fast enough to suit him. When the door is, to his way of thinking, FINALLY opened wide enough, he runs through it and then turns right around to snarl at Matti and Finni who are trying to follow him out. This, I'm told, is "Alpha" dog behavior. He then runs off into the night in search of any mayhem that might be running around loose.

My job, after that is, with flashlight in hand, to open the yard gates so that the dogs progress around the perimeter is not impeded. When that task is accomplished, I begin walking the perimeter myself in a much tighter circle. I smell the night air, check out the stars and talk to the dogs as I do so. Periodically, either Raffi or Finni will appear briefly in my flash beam before scurrying off. Matti, being a black dog, becomes invisible in the dark and even when she passes through the light beam seems nothing more than a shadow.

On my third or sometimes fourth trip around, being the clever fellow that I am, I close a yard gate behind me. The dogs, always to my front, are unaware I do so. When I've completed my circle, I pass through the remaining yard gate and call the dogs from there. When they are all in, I close that gate as well, trapping them in the yard. Last night, I was particularly proud of Raffi and Finni as they came streaking in on the first call. Matti, I thought, was being stubborn. I called her name several more times while getting annoyed and wondering what the damn hold up was. I became aware then, of a slight shuffling at my feet. I pointed my flash beam down and there she was, sitting and looking at me like I was an idiot. Black dogs can be downright spooky in the dark.

As soon as we are all back inside, I say the magic word "cookie" and the dogs sit like GOOD BOYS AND GIRLS while I give them each a dog biscuit. After that, well, we settle in for the night.

And so we come to the end of another riveting chapter in the exciting chronicles of old Doc's life. Stay tuned for tomorrow when Doc reveals how he sweeps up dog hair on a regular basis.

Movies and Television

Beware of movies that have only a piano being played with the right hand as the background music. These movies usually feature bearded and bespectacled men wearing turtleneck sweaters under their sport jackets. The women players are either leotard clad or dressed to the nines depending upon the time of day. Any time beyond noon will frequently find them drinking too much. The movies will consist of mostly pseudo intellectual banter and have no clear purpose. There will be a beginning, there might be a middle, but a straightforward ending will always be lacking. I won't say these movies are boring, because six people living in a well kept old mansion with unused tennis courts and tended gardens outside of Boston will simply "adore" them and who am I to say they are wrong? Nevertheless, I feel it is my duty to caution others. Movies of this type have been known to cause painful brain cramps and spark deep feelings of inferiority. Take my advice. When the opening credits roll and the piano tinkles something vaguely jazz-like, reach for the remote without further ado. Your mental health is in danger.

Alrighty then.

Here's a stolen line from a good movie I used on Woowoo Charly last night: "We make the perfect couple," I said, pausing for timing's sake before adding, "Beauty and the Beast." She looked at me tenderly then so I delivered the punchline. "Of course if anyone else calls you a beast, I'll rip their lungs out." (Jack Nicholson as the Joker in "Batman.")

Have I mentioned that I watch movies in lieu of regular television and, in fact, pretty much any movie will do; even the dreadful kind like those Ive described above. (Aside: I like to use semi colons whenever I think they are called for on the off chance that every once in awhile it will be the correct punctuation.) I know there are good, well written, well played, meaningful television shows, and probably, with the plethora of channels, more now than ever before, but...and here I pause to contemplate my use of a very strong word...I HATE commercials. Lest you think I am missing out on a good thing, I should point out that I do watch some shows in reruns while I pedal my elliptical glider. I mean I want to keep abreast of the latest happenings and not get too far behind the times. That Friends show, for instance, is really good even if I do have to suffer through the ads. It's still on...right?

Memories, And I'm Not Talking Nostalgia

Not that I'm worried, mind you, but last week I forgot my ATM pin number. I've only used it a thousand times or so, so it wasn't really etched in my memory like, say, my wife whatsername's name, but really, I thought I had it down. I stood there bewitched, bothered and that other one that starts with b and wondered if I was losing it. I don't really remember what IT is, but whatever it is, I'm sure I want to keep it. There are things we seniors? elderly? fogies? are supposed to do to preserve our data banks; things like doing crossword puzzles, learning a new language and memorizing stuff. These are not only puted, they are reputed to keep the old gray matter sizzling. Well I do all those things and still I forgot my pin number. For now I'm going to blame it on the rain. I'm going to put one of those "slippery when wet" signs on my forehead to explain why this and that slip my mind. Later, I'll come up with a better excuse. Remind me.

Aside: One thing I've noticed about crossword puzzles is that very few of the words are actually cross words. Most of them are quite benign.

I've completely forgotten what I was going to write in this paragraph, so I'll skip it and go right to the next.

As for learning a new language, now that I have mastered Spanish, (Yeehah!) I'm considering tackling English. There are a lot of movies shown on television here that are made in England and I would really like to know what the people in them are saying. Woowoo Charly and I continually turn to each other during these movies and ask, "did you get any of that?" The answer is always, "not a word." I'm told that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn along with Chinese and Australian, but I figure if I want to keep the old synapses (I forget exactly what synapse are) firing, I should take on something challenging. So... English it is.

Dawn of the Damp

My dogs are sick of it. "Hey," one of them told me this morning, "we get you up everyday at dawn so we can enjoy the sunrise together, but what do you give us in return? Rain...and wind... and, and, general unpleasantness, that's what. It ain't fair, I tell you." I've tried to explain to them that I'm not in charge of the weather, but they don't understand. After all, I appear to be in charge of everything else, providing food, opening and closing doors, walks, rides, snacks, even making it light in the house when it's dark outside. I tell them to have patience the day will improve, the sun will rise, the wind and rain will abate, and even memories of the Denver Broncos latest defeat at the hands (in particular the right hand of Peyton Manning) of the undefeated Indianapolis Colts, will wane. They doubt it. Dogs aren't long on patience. I point out the rainbow that is arcing as it does every morning this time of the year in the vicinity of Volcan Baru as evidence of the day's improvement and all three dogs look skyward and say, "Yeah, so?" Dogs care as much for rainbows as they do patience. "Look," they tell me, "we did our job. We got you up, barked at nothing to be sure you were wide awake, hounded you (no pun) until you fed us and now, well, we're tired. We're going back to bed. Good luck with that computer thing. Oh, and, could you do something about the weather, before we get back up?"

The definition of eclectic reading: I'm reading Kinky Friedman in English, Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Spanish and Milan Kundera in English translated from the Czech. "Greenwich Killing Time", "El Amor En Los Tiempos Del Colera", and The Incredible Lightness of Being", respectively. Two of the three books are great; I've read them before. About the third, well, Kinky is a funny guy.

Alrighty then. The blogger sits at the keyboard dressed in old sweats he has pulled on over his PJ's, stare-ing disconsolately inward in search of a thought...any thought. He has none. Surely, he reasons, breaking the long stare, there must be something to blog about un-blogged about heretofore. But nothing comes. Ah well, he thinks before signing off, maybe tomorrow.

Latest Edition of This and That

Titiya Plucksataporn (I am not making this up) shot a smooth 68 and is now tied for second in the Dubai Ladies Masters Golf Tournament.

"Quantum of Solace", a poor title to begin with as it means a quantity of grief relief and that, as I see it, is not exactly strong motivation to see a movie unless you are looking for something to dampen the old hankie with, is the hands-down, no question, inarguable WORST James Bond movie ever made. The writing was abysmal, giving us as it did over-lapping story lines that were never remotely clear, the action sequences even worse, being chopped, spliced and special effected into incomprehensibility and the acting, apart from Dame Judy Dench as M, was leaden and cliche-ed. I do believe that a drama is only as good as its villains and in this movie the villains fell far short of believable. Should I mention what I thought of the background music? Probably not.

A department store named Conway, pronounced cone-why by Latinos, has opened in David. The store is a Target affiliate (Target in Panama, who-da thunk it?) and consists of three stories of STUFF. I have always made it a point to avoid places that have a lot of STUFF, because I might just inadvertently find STUFF I want there that, prior to the sighting, I didn't even KNOW I wanted. For this same reason I don't even thumb through magazines looking at the ads. I have enough STUFF to suit me and like to merely replace the STUFF I have as it wears out. Right now I could use a new pitching wedge. Not everyone feels this way, I know. Woowoo Charly, for instance, only shares my point-of-view to a degree. Although in no way is she a material girl, yesterday, as we meandered through the store looking for one of those things that fits in a kitchen drawer and keeps your silverware separated - the old one is cracked, stained and ugly - I noticed a certain gleam in her eyes that was not there before. There is STUFF here, I sensed her thinking, that I want. How do I feel about that? Great! I love it when SHE wants something. She asks for so little.

The Abominable Doctor Panagas was smiling and juggling scalpels as Woowoo and I entered his office. "Buenas tardes, good to see you again" he said as he caught the sharpened knives in one hand and offered up the other for a shake. He was eye-balling my third eye hungrily as he did so. "I see you have a new one for me" he said with a widening grin, "but how can I help the lady?" Woowoo pointed out the age spot on her cheek that had recently turned funky and the Abominable Doc's eyes suddenly shone even more eerily. "Come into my lair, I mean my examining room and we will take a closer look." First thing he does after that is measure, that's right measure, the spot on my forehead. "Hmmmm," he says. "this is borderline. I will try to freeze it, but if it is not better in a month you will have to come back so I can chop and hack, I mean, carefully remove, the damage with a small curugia." (surgery) He then whipped up a nice smoking batch of liquid nitrogen and, using a long handled q-tip-like device, proceeded to repeatedly press the nitrogen, what felt to me, deep into my scalp. Hurt like hell. He was much gentler with Woowoo Charly, saying her problem was not dangerous (don-zzger-oose his pronunciation) but nevertheless needed to be taken care of before it became so. He then froze up a few other spots on her upper chest that she hadn't previously noticed. Following her treatment, he put us both into a deep hypnotic trance and gave us a post hypnotic suggestion that said when we receive our bill we will take it immediately to his receptionist and pay it without a second thought. He then snapped his fingers and off we went. I'll see him again next month. Merry Christmas, Doctor.

Tiagra and the Third Eye

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(Well sure it needs work, but it is a funny concept.)


Alrighty then.

We are going to mosey into lovely and talented Daveed again today. I've got an appointment with the Abominable Doctor Panagas to remove yet another chunk of facial feature; this one from the center of my forehead. It kind of looks like a third eye up there, but since I can't see through it, I'll let Panagas and his evil minions scalpel it away.

My actual third eye I keep in a drawer next to the bed. I take it out, screw it on and use it when I meditate. Third eyes, as you know, can only look inward. They are supposed to give you insight. That's in-sight. Why anyone, apart from an MD would want to do that, I have no idea. I mean it's all just slimy and bloody in there. Of course, maybe mine is defective. When I meditate I pass right through all that in-sight, in-novation, in-tuition and get right to the, you know, cosmic consciousness stuff. That's the good stuff. That's where the oneness of everything becomes clear and also where Tiger Woods jokes appear.

So here's another alrighty then, because I can SEE I have nothing further to say this morning. I'll just go put my third eye back in the drawer.

Monday Shows Up Again

A low flying, dim rainbow is struggling to survive against a graying sky outside my northern exposure window this a.m. There is wind in the willows, well there would be if we had willows, and rain is in the offing. Alas, too bad, tut tut, and like that.

Several days of sunshine and already we are spoiled. To paraphrase the words of the immortal, never to be forgotten What-sis-name from the movie "Treasure of the Sierra Madre", we don't need no stinking rain. Sierra madre, by the way, for you non Spanish speakers, means "Yo Mama" in English.

I awoke this morning to learn that the college bowl games have all been arranged and was thrilled almost to coma to read that Marshall will be playing Ohio in the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl. Yup, there is a Pizza Bowl. I'm betting the broadcasting network of this baby just can't wait to air it's sure-to-be ratings bonanza.

In other news this morning, Tiger Woods has been implicated in the mysterious deaths of Michael Jackson, Princess Di and JFK. When asked to comment Tiger said, "Sierra Madre."

The Denver Broncos, meanwhile, have captured the attention of the entire nation by winning their second game in a row after receiving a half time, locker room, pep-talk from the aforementioned Woods and a buxom cheerleader who Tiger described as just a friend. Nike, Tiger's principal sponsor has declared it's support for Tiger in these difficult times and in an effort to capitalize on Tiger's still massive following is now offering a complete line of skimpily clad cheerleader dolls marketed as "Tiger's Just Friends" and sporting the Nike swoosh in all the right places.

Aside: Saturday Night Live may have had the best Tiger line when it, in a news flash reported, "Tiger hit a tree with his car last night and a whole lot of women fell out of it." This is funny and accurate.

Spring cleaning begins in earnest today as Spring, December 7th and 8th, is now upon us here in Boquete, land of the wild gringo and home of the humming bird-brains. My plan is to do the windows last. I don't want to look at the rain.

Tiger's In The Woods

Tiger Tiger Tiger. Far be it from me to cast aspersions upon my fellow man for succumbing to temptation and not being delivered from evil, but this time the situation has gotten out of hand and something has to be said. When I learned of Tiger's marital digressions, I was appalled only to the extent of a quiet tsk tsk tsk, Tiger Tiger shame on you. But when it was later revealed that he was a partner in Michael Vick's dog fighting business, I was truly up-in-arms. Still, because I am a generous man, I was in a mood for forgiveness. When it was further revealed that Tiger fixed up Mike Tyson and Kobe Bryant with dates, I began to wonder about his serial improprieties. Late breaking stories that include Tiger's participation in the introduction of steroids to Bobby Bonds, Roger Clemons and others have seriously damaged my degree of fandom for the king of golf. When I also learned that Tiger is part owner of a bed and breakfast on the Appalachian Trail where Republican Congressman who weren't actually there could be signed in so as to appear present when, in reality, they were off cavorting elsewhere with dates that Tiger had arranged, well, I began to doubt my own loyalty to Tiger Nation. Although Tiger has been mostly lips sealed on his political convictions, new information, just now coming to light, has him linked to Katherine Harris in the 2000 Florida scam to get Dubya elected. Tiger will be quoted by a reliable source as saying, "Katherine and I were just friends, but I truly admire her skill with mascara application." In 2004 Tiger is credited with creating the "swift boat" fantasy and again aiding the Dubya campaign. As for 2008, what can be said? Of course Tiger and Sarah were an item, no secret there, but until the sordid facts are outed I will have no comment beyond saying the world will be shocked.

All this has added up, I am sad to say, in my jump from the Tiger Bandwagon onto that of Phil "Ficklehead" Mickleson's. The rumor that he and Tiger are much...closer, shall we say, than they appear, just can't be true, can it?

A Big Fun Day

We bought a Christmas Tree yesterday, or maybe, given our hazy religious predilections, it should be called a Buddha Bush, a Taoist Decoration or an Agnostic Arbol, but anyway we bought one of the save-the-planet artificial varieties along with several silver wreaths and a box of silver and blue...ornaments. (I was going to say blue balls, but then I would have to go off on a tangent that isn't Christmassy at all.) Woowoo Charly (Maybe our tree should be called Woowoo Wood) likes blue and silver...everything.

We found the tree in our small, local department store, La Reina, (The Queen) which dedicates about a quarter of its floor space to exclusively Christmas stuff. The tree was in a row of other artificial pines all decked out to show potential customers how nice they could look. When I pointed out the one we wanted to a salesgirl, she said it was "unico", the only one, and then went off to find some sort of container. While she was gone, Woowoo Charly and I, not ones to stand idly by, set about removing all the ornaments and other decorations from the tree. We had just neatly polished off the job when the salesgirl returned with a brand new tree in a box. The one we had undecorated, it turned out, was not "unico" after all. Ah well, "No te preocupe", don't worry, we were told, "No hay una problema." Alrighty then.

Earlier in the day, Woowoo Charly had gotten her hair cut and colored. Following that, she and I had a nice lunch at El Oasis Restaurant where she told me this story: She had a bug bite on the back of her head that she had scratched repeatedly. While in Roxanna's, the hair stylist chair, the bite began to bleed a little. Roxanna asked what it was and did it hurt. Woowoo Charly showing off her Spanish said "no porque estoy fuente." Roxanna laughed at that and Woo Charly didn't know why until I explained to her at lunch that she had said, "no, because I am a fountain." She had meant to say "fuerte" which means strong. Ha! Charly also told me that before she went to get her hair cut, she had looked up the Spanish word for layered so that she could explain to Roxanna exactly what she wanted done. When she got there and proudly served up the word, (I don't know what it is) Roxanna said, "Oh, you want it layered" in English. Big fun.

After the haircut, the lunch and the tree buying, Woowoo Chuck and I were having too nice a day to head directly home, so we drove over to the Panamonte Hotel/Bar/Restaurant to have a Cappuccino and Gran Marnier. While we were there, we ran into a friend of ours, who upon hearing of my recent health woes suggested (having had the same problems herself) the course of treatment that worked for her. It involves a steroid called Prednisone that you take seven of the first day, six, the second, five the third, etc. I started the plan at six this morning. It is now nearly ten. At noon I am going to go out, pick up my car and carry it to town. These pills are awesome.

The Affair of the Bees And Taking the Cure

The affair of the bees was... anticlimactic. I climbed up to the top step of my Three Step Stool, aimed my Black Flag Killer Can and fired. The wet spray soaked the hive in half-a-second and the bee/wasp/hornet bugs dropped like, well flies. Special K suggested, too late, that I smudge stick the little buzzers and ask them nicely to relocate. I don't know why I didn't think of that myself. The only real drama occurred shortly after I had knocked the hive down. It shredded into paper thin pieces and even though I swept up most of them, our dog Matti managed to grab a hunk to chew on. I got her to give it up quickly and it was not a particle that was spray soaked. I, nevertheless, kept an eye on her the rest of the day. She's fine.

Saturday, I awoke to, and here is a redundant theme, the feeling of being sick. Late in the afternoon while watching parts of college football games I didn't care about, I pondered this question: If you are feeling sick, is there some other way to feel? The answer I deduced is yes. Drunk. I grabbed a Heineken from the fridge and poured myself a couple of fingers of Jim Beam into a small glass. Jim Beam is the best selling bourbon in the world, which beats me, as I think it tastes like rot-gut. It was, however, the only whiskey we had in the house. After I had achieved the desired state of inebriation, I grabbed by iPod player and retired to the patio to enjoy some music and the feeling of drunk instead of sick. A good time was had by...me.

Sunday, of course, I got to feel another feeling that was not the feeling of sick but seriously akin to it, the hangover. The great thing about hangovers that isn't true of sick, is that you know for certain it will be gone on the morrow. All that needs to be done to enact the cure is to pass twenty-four hours with as little movement as possible. A sofa or recliner in front of all day Pro Football is a great aid in this regard.

It is now a diamond bright Monday morning and I am devoid of hangover and measurably less sick than I was on Saturday. I'm thinking of writing a treatise on how to feel not sick when you are...sick. The medical community is apparently not on to my method and there may be a Nobel in it for me once my cure gets around.

While I'm waiting, what with the sun out and all that, I think I'll mow the lawn. Or, I suppose, I could wave a smudge stick over it and ask it to relocate. If that works, there could be a second Nobel headed my way. I'll share that one with Special K.

T-day and Movie Stuff

"Someone's in the kitchen with Rah-Moan, someone's in the kitchen I know oh oh oh, someone's in the kitchen with Rahh-Moannnn, strummin' on the ole banjo."

Actually he's in there by himself, baking bread for today's festivity, Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is the day when all we expats give thanks for being expats. Not that there's anything wrong with the old USA apart from its well documented troubles; I mean it was, afterall, an okay place to trip the light fantastic for most of a lifetime, but, truthfully, now, I'd rather be here, so expats, let's drink to that. (A bit later in the day, of course.)

I never did get to that wasp thing yesterday. It rained at dusk and that in combination with the enervation of my dog walk, put the project on the back burner for now. (Hmmmm, back burner. Are they less hot or less urgent than the front burners?)

In lieu of hive busting I watched a creepy movie about creepy boys in a creepy private school in England. I know that describing a private school in England as creepy might seem a little redundant, but this one was especially so. The movie was shot in color, but it came off feeling like black and white and at least somewhat noirish. There was the usual undertone of homosexuality that is almost a cliche when it comes to private school boy movies, (private girl school movies seem charged with heterosexual overtones...or is that just me?) but it served only to add to the film's overall creepiness. One of the boy leads is dead of a shotgun wound at movie's start, while another is a suspect being interviewed in depth by a woman psychologist. The movie flashes back from this interview until all is revealed. The boys are attractive, upper class and both quite brilliant, although in different ways. There is a kind of Leopold and Loeb arrogance about them that adds to their creepiness, but the actors are competent and I was drawn to them in the same way a small child will watch a bug caught in a spider's web; it's horrible but you can't take your eyes away. I would like to tell you the name of this movie so that you can be deliciously creeped out as well, but I don't remember it. This is not an important detail in that even if I did remember, it would probably not be the movie's actual name. Most film titles here in Central America are changed from the original to refelct, I suppose, something more understandable to Spanish speakers. "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" for instance, might be "Adventure Man In India." Maybe you can go to your neighborhood video store and ask for creepy English private school movies. The clerks may look at you differently after that, but hey, it's a small price to pay for a good movie.

If you are now wondering why I brought this up in the first place, I will let you in on my closely guarded secret. Are you ready?

I have no idea why. Just something to write about, I guess.

Have a great T-day.

"They're singing, fee fi fiddly I oh, fee fi fiddly I oh oh oh oh. Fee fi fiddly I ohhhh, strummin' on the ole banjo.

Sunshine Came Softly through My Window Today

The sun is shining (for me and my gal). Okay, you have to be a hundred to understand that parenthetical comment, so for those of you coming in at less than that, let me enlighten and tell you it is a line from a song...an old song. I don't really know any lyrics from new songs unless you count "who let the dogs out" as new. There is also "sirvame la copa rota" which I learned six years ago, but I seldom get to use as it means, (bartender) "give me the broken glass.)

But I digress. The point is, the sun IS shining which is supposed to be a daily occurrence here in Paradise the Panama Edition, but has been a thing, instead, mostly absent of late. Well for sure it has popped out here and there, from time to time, now and again, and I'm not complaining, but I need sunshine like a junkie needs a fix. Don't give me a "taste" when what I need is a blast. Shine Baby shine and hook me up.

I have plans for the day if old sol continues to hang right there polishing the greenery; a dog walk in the afternoon, an assault on a hornet/wasp/bee nest at night. Okay, these are not exactly storm the Bastille kind of plans, but if you have been moping around sick for a couple months like I have, these plans will sound downright ambitious to you. The dog walk - I'm taking just one as all three requires a feat of strength beyond me at the moment - is one of my favorite pastimes as I find it meditative and exhilarating all at once. Lots of being present and lots of deep introspection alternate along the way.

The wasp/hornet/bee - we don't know what-the-hell they are - adventure will commence shortly after dark, (the recommended procedure) if it is not raining. The hive/nest has been growing and is now of softball size. It dangles from our patio overhang and looks quite menacing, but until last Friday, when our cleaning lady and friend Maria was stung on the cheek, has not been a problem. We have been unable to find a specific spray for hornets/bees/wasps to try on our little buzzers (they look like a cross between a fly and a wasp) so the matter has gone unattended. Yesterday I scored a Black Flag six megaton shoulder fired spray missle reputed to do in anything from bees to invading mongol hordes. I am ready for action. Aside: Our telephone ring tone is "Flight of the Bumblebee", so if you call me right after dark, I'll have the proper background music for my assault.

Let the fun and games begin.

Night Rains

Night Reigns would be a good title for a vampire movie.

Night rains, on the other hand, like the kind we've been having here in beautiful but soggy Boquete would deter even the hungriest of the neck biters.

Renfield lifting the lid of Dracula's coffin, "Yo Boss, what say we step out for a pint or two of plasma tonight?"

Drac, "Renfield you idiot, do I look like a blood sucking duck to you? Bring me back some take-out."

It rained hard enough to wake me last night. Our roof absorbs most of the sound but last night the rain slapped so insistently against our windows that it sounded like someone trying to get my attention. "Psssst. Pssssssssssst! Dude, wake up." I did, of course, wake up that is. I laid there listening to the sound of the rain for, oh I don't know, maybe half a minute and then, being a man of the age I am, my bladder spoke up. "Listen," it said, "as long as you're awake, you might as well relieve me of this wine residual I'm carrying around." Good idea, I thought as stumbled to my feet and headed across the dark to the bathroom, good idea.

That's when I tripped over the dog.

Finnegan, our Golden, has no special place he prefers over any other to hunker down at night. Or in the daytime for that matter. As I write this, his head is under our bed while his body lies splayed on the floor at bedside. He looks like a palomino throw rug. Last night he chose to recline broadside directly in my bath to the john. Although I was not moving very fast - it was pitch black in the room - I had some forward momentum and I caught him square enough that my balance was compromised enough to begin a fall. What anyone would do in a situation like that is to bring the other foot forward rapidly to gain purchase with the floor and remain upright. That is exactly what I, being the fast thinking, superbly coordinated athlete that I am, did. Finnegan, however, is a very thick dog. My second step was not even close to clearing him, especially as my first thud into his body had awakened him and he was now in the process of rising to his own feet.

I was now at a forty-five degree angle to the floor and falling rapidly. I knew though, from countless other trips (no pun intended there) to the "can", that the handle to the bathroom door was just ahead and to the left of me. If I could reach it, I could slow my fall and lessen the impact. I was not wrong. What I didn't count on was my inability to latch on to that handle. My desperate grab served only to open the door so that my swan dive took me into the bathroom itself where I landed surprisingly soft. I suppose it is not really surprising in retrospect, because I landed on the dog.

Finnegan, I must say, was quite gracious about the whole thing. He merely shrugged out from under me, licked my face once, then drifted back into the dark bedroom to find a new place to circle round three times and lie down.

As for me, I just got up, peed and went back to bed.

Outside, it was still raining.

It's True, They Sucked Rocks

I hate to see a Monday pass without having posted a new blog. Writing something first thing Monday morn sets the tone for the rest of the week; gets it off to a good start, so to speak.

The Denver Broncos SUCKED ROCKS yesterday and I just wanted to throw things at the TV screen.

How's that for tone?

I've read that there are more instances of spousal abuse after football games than at any other time during the week. Hold on a minute while I go beat up Woowoo Charly.

@@#%&^*$#%$^%^^%%^#&%*^%$#%#$#@$@!%$$%$%#%#$!@%$#^&^%#$^&$%#@%!%#^&*#%@$@!@#%^

Okay, she bloodied my lip, kicked me in the knee and put me in a step over toe hold that made me scream she's my daddy. I've got to stop reading stuff like that.

I was happy to see Michelle (The Big Wheezy) Wie, birdie the eighteenth and win her first LPGA tournament before she died of old age. I mean the girl is twenty already. That brightened my Sunday a little bit after watching the Broncos ineptitude. (Ineptitude is a fancy way of saying SUCKED ROCKS that I'm using to keep from repeating myself.)

Yesterday the Denver Broncos SUCKED ROCKS. (Oops, I can't seem to stop.)

There were other sporting events yesterday I'm sure. For instance, somewhere in Spain some guys put numbers on their chests, donned silly helmets and raced on bicycles. Or maybe it was Italy. My new pal Joe can tell you all about it. This, however, does not take away from the seemingly ever present new knowledge that the Broncos SUCKED ROCKS yesterday!

(That's it, take deep breaths, count from ten to one backwards and calm yourself. Better? Now tell us more.)

In other news, Jesus returned yesterday, riding a glorious long maned white stallion just as predicted in Revelation and other well read texts like USA Today and The Bayonne Inquirer. Behind him were heaven's minions and they were making short work of sinners throughout the Asian, African, and European continents. Included among the slain were bicyclists whose only sin was wearing goofy shorts. Although it was clear that Jesus and pals were working their way towards the western hemisphere and should arrive sometime early Tuesday, nobody cared... because... the Broncos SUCKED ROCKS yesterday.

The Dragon of Avelox

"...a more congenial spot, for happy ever-aftering than here in Avelox."

Acute bacterial infection with chronic bronchitis, to put a name on it, is the rogue dragon tormenting my kingdom.

Avelox is one of five brave knights sent forth to slay the beast. It comes in pill form in a push-out package that reads "Made in Germany by Bayer AG for Bayer of Mexico SA de CV, packaged in El Salvador. Alrighty then, this is one well traveled Knight.

(Aside: I popped one of these dragons slayers about two hours ago and I got so wired I had to lay down while my stomach tripped the light fantastic. Whoa Nelly.)

Bold Knight Sir Spirivia also marches forth from Germany and is an anticholinergic secret agent. It's good to have one of those on your side. This knight's job is to prevent "bronchospasms", a thing I am prone to every time a Bronco misses a tackle or drops a pass. In order to utilize this knight, I put a capsule into a HandiHaler where, by pushing a button a few times, the capsule is crushed and turned into powder. I then, you guessed it, inhale the powder.

With that knight positioned for action I then call upon Sir Cam, which is what we call him for short as his real name is Betamethasone. Cam is a glucocorticord steroid antiinflamatory we bring to the fray because we don't want any of those wily inflamatories gumming up the works at the last minute.

The brave Lady Miflonide from the Netherlands via Switzerland arrives in the nick of time to slay any asthma-like assaults by the dragon. She flies into battle with the use of an Aerolizer, another pill to powder gizmo that I will introduce to the fight twice a day.

Last but not least from Mexico comes Sir Mucosolvan The Latino knight. His task is one of the most difficult of all. He has to, and here I quote exactly from the military manual, "dissolve the sticky phlegm." It takes a knight of great courage to bring down the dragon's mighty phlegm.

The battle is enjoined. Wish me luck.

The Elusive Angry Zola

Here's a line I've thought of, but have never had the opportunity to use: "Aw gee, you don't mean that. You're just saying that because you're sober. That's just the lack of whiskey talking."

We drove into Lovely and Talented Daveed again yesterday to take another shot at seeing Doctora Xiomara Anguizola. (Try pronouncing that one you Spanish beginners!) This time she was not out of the country as she was during our last attempt, but she was out of the city. I asked if there was another pulmonary especialista I could see and was told no. Alrighty then, I said inquiring, when can I see Angry Zola?

See, the problem here starts with the telephone. When I first called for an appointment early last week, I talked to a woman whose Spanish was far too fast and far too sophisticated for me to understand. I hung up the phone thinking what she had said was the fandango is the dance of religious fanatics in heat and I should come in tomorrow, in the morning. When I did show up the next day, Angry Zola was fuera de pais, out of the country. "She would be back Monday...probably." That ellipsis there, those three dots, represents what was a very long pause before the word probably. When I called on several occasions Monday, there was no answer. Tuesday was a holiday, so we waited until yesterday to try again. I thought unwisely, my usual mode of thought, that if Angry Zola wasn't in, I would see someone else. Well fat chance Lizard Lungs! There is, apparently, only one of each kind of doctor in the greater Daveed area. Despite the fact my ears were plugged from the combination of my ailment (whatever it is) and driving from altitude to sea level, I persisted through the "repeta por favors" until I was able to obtain an actual cita (appointment)from the two young nurses person-ing the desk in a hallway outside the doctor's office. One of them, I should mention, was making swabs from a bundle of cotton and a bunch of sticks. A penny saved is...not much, but idle hands are the devil's tools or workshop or something like that, so let's keep busy. The problem with this appointment, if there is one, is that it is for noon Friday. I'm thinking Angry Zola will be out to lunch.

The delays, in truth, don't bother me. I keep thinking I'll wake up one morning and the evil crud demon that has taken hold of my air in-take apparatus will be gone, saving me large quantities of balboas (dollars) that I would otherwise give to the Panamanian medical industry. Sure, the demon is still there today, but hey! and c'mon! and like that...I've still got tomorrow!

Do I really mean that or is it just the coffee talking?

Down Memory Lane...To The Bar

I sometimes miss going to bars; the soft lighting, the music, the conversations (often inspired, or at least they seemed so) with strangers, the hale and hearty, (and I mean hearty not hardy although that can work too) well met, good show, camaraderie of it all. "Let me buy these fellas a round." There was always smoke in the air and one in my hand and I miss that too. Bartenders and cocktail waitresses are for the most part friendly people whose job is to help you have a good time no matter what mood you might have brought to the room. And over the years I brought every mood in my repertoire from feeling low to feeling good - okay, those are my only two - at one time or another, and I seldom left without having them altered to the high side, no pun intended.

Nowadays we go to the bar, Woowoo Charly, RTGFKAR and I, to meet friends for a civilized cocktail or two and we sit at a table while making our small conversations. Don't misunderstand me, it is quite nice and I look forward to those occasions. Sometimes though, if I can see the bar from where I sit and there are people there drinking, laughing, interacting, I feel the urge to join them, hear what they are talking about, have a laugh or two myself. It is, I suppose, "remembrance of things past" that inspires the urge, because I know it is not a rational desire. I know the bar "scene" is for younger men and unless I'm in the company of centenarians, I can't be counted as among that group. (Among is a funny word to say repeatedly.) My group is the one that has a hangover after four drinks not fourteen.

I can't remember the last time I went into a bar with no agenda and, here's the important part, no timetable. I could stay as long as I wanted to or as long as I was able to. Most of the time the nebulous concept of "tomorrow" was enough to keep me from "staying too long at the bar" but for sure there were times when it didn't. It is not the latter of those two that I miss. It's the former. It's leaving with a head full of new jokes, tidbits of conversations to be passed along, and a lighter heart that are causing me this morning to "wax nostalgic."

Hmmmm.......but now I'm done. The nostalgia is polished to a high shine and I'm ready to move on. So here's to the good old days I say as I raise my coffee cup. And here's to tomorrow. Best of all though, I say raising my Cafe Ruiz "Volcan Baru" mug even higher, here's to now.

The Past was fun, but the Present is always the best of all. I know because the Woowoos tell me so.

Some valuable Info and Some Not Quite So

My favorite new piece of information garnered while lying about or waiting my turn at the Scrabble board is this: Darkness consists of nothing but you can't see through it.

Other tidbits of equally memorable import are these: Nero didn't fiddle while Rome burned. The fiddle wasn't invented until the 15th Century. There are an estimated 3000 to 4700 tigers living in India. There are over 4000 tigers living in captivity in Texas alone. There are an estimated 12000 being kept in private residences throughout the U.S. Mike Tyson has 4. A barnacle has the longest penis of any animal relative to its size. It is seven time longer than its own body. Half the human beings who have ever died, perhaps as many as 45 billion people, were killed by female mosquitoes. The males only bite plants. The second greatest killer of humans is the marmot. It carries bubonic plague and spreads it around by coughing on fleas, rats and ultimately, humans. The largest living thing on earth is a mushroom. There is one in Malheur National Forest that covers 2200 acres.

I could go on, but I have examples of notes I made to myself during "An Evening With Margarita and Friends" that I now have to decipher. The first says, "so lacking in talent to describe the fog, the gentle rain, the grass, dogs, feeling of it all. The conversation, the Joy!" I deduce from this that I was having a good time.

The second says, "I hate that I have to get semi-drunk to appreciate the world around me. (To get out of my head.)" Hmmm. I do seem to see things in a more mult-dimensional way when I am, ah, less than straight. I think that is what this note is telling me.

Then there is this one, "Sick is like feeling hungry. How do you explain it?" I have no comment on that.

The next is a bit more cryptic. "Love the way my wife gives toys to the dogs. Penguin, heads, arms, legs, evisceration." She bought them a half dozen stuffed toys yesterday. Not dog toys, regular stuffed toys for children. I don't think they will make it through the weekend.

The next note is very scribbled and I'm not sure exactly what it says but it looks like, "My alter ego never - two indecipherable words - my actual ego says?" That could have been a fun thought. Dueling egos, both mine. I wonder what it really means.

The last, and I am surely in my cups at this point, says, "Show me a culture that does not revere animals, especially dogs, and I will show you a culture without love." Oh my. I do get sentimental.

In 1945 a chicken in Fruita, Colorado had its head chopped off. It lived almost two more years and was featured in Time and Life magazines. It was fed and watered using an eye dropper and gained six pounds after it lost its head. Just though you might like to know.

Heelboy and Questions Posed

"Hellboy II" Now we're talking. This flick is a nifty marriage of drama and wild imagination made visual by special effects unheard of even a decade ago. The creatures shown here make Hellboy himself appear normal, although some of that may be attributed to Ron Pearlman's very human interpretation of the character. The whole movie is played not quite tongue-in-cheek, but less than serious for the most part. (There is a bit of pathos at the end.) My rating on the Fun Scale (No Fun, Fun, Big Fun, Freakin Fabulous Fun) is Big Fun. Check it out.

I recently read that it takes the average person seven minutes to go to sleep; this, of course, after turning out the lights and hunkering down for that very purpose. Seven minutes seems about right to me. My dilemma occurs during that short interval because I start the slip down to sleep process by thinking of some bit of writing I want to do. Quite often I get an idea that strikes me as worthwhile. I know from past experience that even if I tell myself to remember this bit of worthwhile in the morning, it won't happen. The idea will be lost. My choice then is to let it go or turn on the lights, get up and write it down. If I do the latter, the seven minute process will have to begin again, but this time from a more awakened state than the first time. Seven minutes will likely grow to double that or more as I now have an idea fully formed and ready to chew on. Since I doused the lights, plumped the pillow and pulled the blanket to my chin ready for sleep in the first place, and further, knowing that many of the ideas I have written down on other occasions turn out to be not-so-hot anyway, I most often choose to let the idea slip away. In the morning, though, I can't remember the idea, but I always remember that I had one and this makes me frustrated and guilty about my laziness even though I know that lying in bed not being able to sleep is a frustration of a much higher order. What to do, what to do.

Another bit of frustration (I prefer the English pronunciation, frus-TRY-shun) just occurred. A little square of something popped up in the lower right hand portion of my screen. This happens quite frequently and I don't know what it is as I never see it appear. I only notice it as it blinks off. What in the world is it and what am I missing? Anybody know?

My last chunk of unresolved problems - that's right, problems not issues - concerns my health or lack thereof that I promised myself I would no longer write about, although I appreciate the material it has given me. (If I'm going to break a promise, best it's one to myself.) Maybe this has happened to you. Have you ever felt that you were sick, but not nearly sick enough to go to a doctor and found that the small sick persists...and persists.

I wonder what Hellboy would do.