CALL ME RIP VAN WINKLE

It's been so long since I posted anything on this blog I wouldn't blame all my loyal followers (both of them) for having wandered off into much greener cyber-pastures.

Over the past year, I got mildly addicted to an interactive storytelling site called "Cowbird," which seemed to start out as a thoroughly joyful and enjoyable forum for swapping stories about just about whatever came to mind, with non-judgmental feedback in the form of "Love" notices and, more recently, "Retells," which seem to be where the trouble crept in.

Cowbird has become almost nauseatingly saccharine — lots of weepy politically-correct claptrap about love, peace, meditation, Obama worship, limp-wristed liberalism, dying loved ones, alcohol and drug recovery programs, self-aggrandizement, and lots and lots of finger-wagging from people who seem, in typical Big Brother fashion, to know what's best for everybody.

In the beginning there were a number of interesting, quirky, outspoken writers who contributed material to Cowbird.  Some of the more robust have changed their electro-identities, and continue to drop interesting little bombs into the midst of all the handwringing and whining about — well, let's see —

The wonderfulness of being a federal pencil pusher who fancies himself a Natural Leader, who is also a Gifted Storyteller and can go on ad nauseam about the wonderfulness of his adventures as a drug-bum deserter who went AWOL from active service in the Navy and somehow avoided getting his ass court-martialed;

Endless droning about the Bible — most recently a tedious exegesis on the Book of Job, together with a lot of other self-righteous claptrap, all accompanied by annoying, loud music (yes, you can put music on Cowbird);

Lots and lots and lots of meaningless "poetry."

Well, dear Reader, you can see that your old friend, the Curmudgeon is alive, kicking, bitching, griping, and loaded for bear.

Roger, out…

In Praise of Good Food

The weasely little corn-rowed guy with the mop and the yellow plastic "Wet Floor" sign always seemed to want to swab the deck around my table while I was trying to enjoy my daily late-afternoon Flame-Broiled Double Whopper® with Medium Fries and Large Coke®. I’m all for cleanliness and industrial hygiene, but this did dampen my appreciation of the ambiance just a bit.
Thank God the food was so good. I mean, who cares about a little gastro-esophageal reflux, a little intestinal gas, a little weasely corn-rowed guy with a mop and an attitude, when you can look forward, every day, to a delicious, nutritious, succulent Flame-Broiled Double Whopper® with Medium Fries and Large Coke®? Lord knows, I didn’t always dine so handsomely. I used to eat a lot of junk, I’m sorry to say – oatmeal, bran muffins, leafy green vegetables, fruit, chicken, fish. Garbage like that. Just remembering it makes my stomach queasy. My favorite meal in those days consisted of wood chips, fat-free dried celery and diet water. I kept a framed picture of the Official Food Guide Pyramid® taped to the ceiling over my bed, so I’d be sure to see it last thing before lights-out at night and first thing at reveille in the morning. I just knew that, by sticking faithfully to the Gospel According to Today's Current Food-Crank Fad, I stood a good chance of adding a month or two to the life of my carcass – assuming I didn’t get mixed up in a nuclear war or a collision with an eighteen-wheeler.
I know, I know. I was misguided. I bought into all the stuff the Nutri-Nazis were ramming – literally – down our throats. All that stuff about how a little dab of real mayonnaise would make your coronary arteries clog up like a sink drain full of cat hair. Respectable citizens shunned people who abused their bodies this way, and cast them into outer darkness (with weeping and gnashing of teeth – can you blame them?) for even UTTERING the phrase "red meat." Doctors insisted the words alone were carcinogenic.

Can there BE a Politically Incorrect Joke?

I had the bad taste and poor judgment recently to forward to members of my writers' group a couple of jokes I received online from some rather outspoken friends. I thought they (the jokes, not necessarily the friends) were pretty funny. They were OBVIOUSLY intended as humor. I thought "writers" (of all people) would appreciate a joke -- the more outrageous and politically incorrect the better. I certainly wasn't endorsing or advocating the content.

Imagine my surprise when a couple of these literary colleagues put on their Holier-than-Thou hats and took me to task. It seems some of these incredibly articulate and smarter-than-everybody-else wordsmiths have pretty thin skins when it comes to people taking playful jabs at their sacred cows.

Well, I'm a writer, too (and therefore, in my own opinion, smarter than everybody else)(what the hell is a "writer", anyway? Can't everybody do it?), and I intend to keep on sharing my own notions of humor, tasteless as some self-righteous people might find it. That's why there's a "delete" button on the desktop, Your Collective Holinesses.

Of course, we can keep up the dialogue, too, as long as we keep personalities out of it.

Yeah, RIGHT...

A Partially Accomplished Mission

In keeping with my current obsession with submarines, I drove 60 miles from Reading to Philadelphia today, intending to tour the sub USS Becuna (SS-319), parked at Penn's Landing at the foot of Lombard Street. This, as it turned out, was not a very smart idea, because icy conditions had closed the entire seaport complex. So, instead of descending into the cozy, claustrophobic innards of Becuna, I skidded around on the ice and got a sense of how a Russian sailor must feel in Murmansk or Kamchatka in the winter. I can understand why they didn't want civilian tourists cracking their skulls on a January-glazed submarine deck, but still...

...it would have been fun to get aboard. Becuna is a pre-nuclear diesel-electric boat, upgraded after World War II as a GUPPY-class (Greater Underwater Propulsion Power Program) sub. Her WWII operations extended from 23 August 1944 to 27 July 1945. During this period she completed five war patrols in the Western Pacific and is credited with having sunk two Japanese tankers totaling 3,888 tons...

[Thanks, Wikipedia].

Anyway -- slightly crestfallen at not being able to accomplish my mission. I went to Chinatown and satisfied a sudden craving for Kung Pao chicken. This replaced the sting of frustration with the burning sensation of chomping down on whole red chili peppers. I'll get inside that sub some other day, and then I'll REALLY bore you with more than you want to know about submarines.

Here We Go Again

Happy new year to all who visit here! Stay tuned for more stuff, as the spirit moves.

The Morning After the Night Before...

'Twas the morning of Christmas, and up at the Mall,

No shoppers were shopping, no shoppers at all.

The mobs strangely vanished, the traffic at rest,

The sun's in the east, soon 'twill set in the west;

Then the world will proceed its quotidian way,

The serenity of Christmas lasts but one day.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, MY FRIENDS! KEEP THE SPIRIT ALIVE!

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

To all our friends out there in the blogosphere, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and ACLU-approved neutral non-sectarian season's greetings! (Of course, if it's so neutral and non-sectarian, one might be excused for wondering why we bother with the season or the greetings.) Anyway, the rough weather and the health challenges seem to have faded into the distance, for now. The only sad thing was the untimely passing-away last week of our friend and talented poet (in both Spanish and English) Awilda Ivette Castro Suarez. She lived in a dark place and hid it so well behind a wide smile and a cheerful persona that it came as a rude shock to learn she would no longer be sharing her gifts with us. We should treasure our loved ones, because we cannot know whether they will be with us tomorrow. None of us is getting out of this alive; we should live, laugh and love whenever we can -- while we can. So, blessings to all of you.