taking a sip

what's the harm

who will know

just a taste

after the dance

just a touch

no pain all gain

we can manage

a single kiss

ain't no trouble

have one more

just a sip

give it time

give us time

for one last hit

before the slip

lurks a lie

has a name

shiny bauble blaze

sends a scent

and hides a truth

of fire and rain

flame and fury

crashes to ashes

rust to dust

Acute Abysmal Chronic Human Wasting Disease (AACHWD)

Acute Abysmal Chronic Human Wasting Disease (AACHWD) is a progressive yet rarely fatal condition classified as a transmissible modern malady (TMM). Symptoms include obsessive-compulsive repetitive behaviors, such as rapid thumb movements, frequent finger-tapping and swiping, bursts of excitement, aphasia, and neuropathy of fingertips. Other observable phenomena linked to AACHWD include voluble cursing at video or digital-device screens, memory loss, insomnia, and rapid heartbeat. Withdrawal attributes include adrenalin letdown, irritability, sullenness, anxiety, moroseness, lethargy, poor appetite, restlessness, and social withdrawal.

Geographic Distribution and Origins

The geographic extent of AACHWD has changed dramatically since June 29, 2007, the date of the inception of the iPhone. Since 2007, the disease has been found globally in free-ranging humans in loci with either concentrated or sparse concentrations of adult homo sapiens. The disease has been increasingly identified outside of the original endemic areas of the United States and industrialized nations. Earlier manifestations of the disease were seen in 1980, first in Japan, coinciding with introduction and popular use of the video game Pac-Man. Designated “eradication zones” around the areas where it was detected have proved ineffective and fruitless. Scientists doubt whether such aggressive management will succeed in eliminating free-ranging foci of AACHWD.

Transmission to Other Animals 

Concerns have been raised about the possible transmission of the AACHWD agent to domestic animals, such as dogs, cats, parakeets, canaries, fish, salamanders, cattle, and sheep, which may come in contact with infected humans. To date, no such transmissions have been observed or reported.

Diagnosis and Treatment
 

To date, no histopathologic, immunohistochemical, and Western blot testing of brain biopsy and autopsy samples have confirmed a AACHWD diagnosis. Clinicians have relied on anecdotal observations of the aforementioned symptoms, but no accurate measurement protocol, regime, or scale exists, leading some scientists to doubt the existence of a verifiable disease.

 

Recent studies have shown limited treatment success correlated to separation from environmental sources of infection, including exposure to smartphones, tablets, laptops, and gaming devices. Even in clinical trials of treatment, however, some patients continued to exhibit progressive aphasia, memory loss, social withdrawal, vision disturbances, and seizure activity leading to status epilepticus or induced coma.

'No' Is a Complete Sentence. Or Is It?

You can debate it. You can logically and persuasively argue yes or no as to whether "no" constitutes a complete sentence. Your answer depends on context, communication theory, and linguistics. (Go ahead and Google away at "the Gricean Theory of Conversational Implicature" as you're waiting for your Americano at the coffee shop.) Also entering the equation (oops, that's math; wrong subject) is whether you are a strict or loose constructionist in how you define a sentence.

Yes or no, either one works for me. I don't care, as long as I can continue to say "'No' is a complete sentence" and apply it to the matter at hand.

And what exactly is the matter at hand?

Two matters come to mind:

1. People who have a hard time saying no to demands imposed by others
2. People who feel the need to explain, defend, or justify their refusal of a request they want to reject but can't 

Enter a play within the play, as in Hamlet:

Can you lend me $500?

No, I can't because my counterfeit money-making machine in the basement stopped printing when the black-ink cartridge ran out, plus I need to reorder the special paper from my 'friends' at Treasury.

No, the triplets need formula, diapers, binkies, onesies, and meds. And I owe our upscale, artisanal photographer a down payment for the quasi-royal official portraits of the triplets.

No, not today; can I get back to you after I check with my accountant, my lawyer, my therapist, my Zen roshi, and my local arms dealer?

How about $300. Can you lend me that?

No, I'll never get it back.

No, I just spent my last $275 on Mega Millions, and I have no gas in my car, and I forgot to buy my pain meds.

No, I won't. I would but I can't. No, I might but might not. Not sure. I sometimes can and sometimes do but I usually can't and don't. 

Dude. Just give me fifty effing bucks until Monday when my effing ship comes in, okay? Can you do that?

No, my ship is coming in too, at the same dock.

No, because when your ship comes in I'll be at the airport.

No, because Monday I'll be tied up all day in bankruptcy court.

Dad/Mom, can I have the car?

No. Dad has a date.

No. Mom has a date.

With each other?!

Now, answer each of these questions with the monosyllabic no.

Start with an interior whisper to yourself.

No. 

Practice it.

Out loud now.

Mantra it.

No. No. No.

How do you feel now? Feel better?

Yes. 

"Because if you can't say no, your yes doesn't mean anything." Regan Walsh

Getting Even, Going MAD

During the Cold War, military strategists concocted the notion of mutually (or mutual) assured destruction as a deterrent to nuclear war. The prospect — no, the potential and imminent reality — of nuclear war allegedly would be so ghastly and unthinkable as to stop each side from pressing the button, if in fact buttons would be pressed instead of dials turned, detonators plunged, or switches flipped. The concept was known by the suitable acronym MAD.

As the folks at Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (nuclearfiles.org) succinctly put it, “Whoever shoots first, dies second.”

According to one report, the term was coined in 1962 by one Donald Brennan of the Hudson Institute, which was led by Herman Kahn. The 1964 Stanley Kubrick movie “Dr. Strangelove” wickedly satirized elements of Kahn’s strategies.

I am not qualified to comment on whether MAD is or was a viable option. (“Viable option” seems oxymoronic at best.) I am not schooled in war theories or military history; during the Vietnam War, I applied for conscientious objector status. 

But I do claim to be a wordsmith, so let’s start with that.

Mutually assured destruction. Does it work as a relationship tool? Let’s see. Person A threatens to blow the relationship up. Person B counters with, “Go ahead! Go nuclear. Then we both have nothing. We both destroy the planet we currently inhabit.” Kids, house, income, savings, two dogs, three cats, and the pet iguana neither of you ever wanted but the child insisted on all go up in smoke, more accurately it all turns into domestic shrapnel sent flying from your respective attorneys’ offices.

Sound familiar? Veterans of divorce understand this scenario. They and those in their nuclear testing zones intimately and tragically know the radioactive fallout of this strategy when it fails. “Fails” may be the wrong word. It’s safe to say the approach may have worked in the short term — even for years or decades. “Worked” is putting it kindly. It held divorce at bay, the way religious strictures and stringent civil prohibitions against divorce once prevailed.

One need not go the marriage-divorce route to comprehend this. It might just as easily go from threats of infidelity to actual carnal misdeeds, ending with one’s worldly possessions on the curb in the rain.

It all might end with the clanging silence of ghosting, a muffled neutron bomb without detritus.

Maybe MAD works infinitesimally better in domestic relations than on the world stage. An after-nuclear-war planet presumably doesn’t have second and third chances. But uncoupled and divorced people connect anew or remarry all the time, getting a chance to try MAD all over again. Or they trod a lessons-learned path, such as mutually assured security (MAS),  albeit another military analogy.

If you like, carry this same MAD metaphor into the workplace, financial markets, parenting, legislating, and sports. Game-theory enthusiasts and negotiation experts already have.  

Does all or nothing, “whoever shoots first, dies second” ever work in any context?

In the field of substance-abuse and addiction recovery, there’s a tough-love tactic that says, “Maybe you haven’t had enough. Go out and try some more.” Even if it kills you. It’s all or nothing. No half-measures. You don’t hear this much — how else would rehabs make money? Would this be provisionally assured destruction and reconstruction (PADAR)?  

Being twice divorced and not wishing to add the adjective “thrice” to that past participle, I will not suggest strategies for domestic harmony. But as for MAD as a useful gambit in other realms?

Who knows.

The fateful question is: Are you sacrificing a pawn or a king?

Iceland, day 1 (catching up)

Today is day 3 but I am still chronicling day 1. Like all memory, it is now filtered by experience, colored by perception, stained by mental re-vision.

The shower.

Futuristic, to me -- perhaps not to Icelanders, Scandinavians, Europeans, Asians, Latin Americans. (I later learned the owner of the building, who also owns the Black Pearl, employs Dutch design.)

In the bathroom, the shower is not a separate entity. It is a portion of the room, partitioned by one glass door that bends to open wider or fold into the watery flow. The room, on the fourth floor, has several windows, less than a foot square, that sit in a vertical column looking onto the street. I am across from Volcano House (a museum with a restaurant, shop, offices), a construction site, the library. I doubt that anyone can see in from the street below and it does not bother me anyway. Back to the shower. Trying to turn the right metal dial, I was like the Woody Allen character in Sleeper. Water poured from five overhead metal "flutes" with holes. By mistake I first launched a wand next to the dials, splashing me and that side of the room. Finally, I got the water to warm up, and luxuriated in the cleansing warmth. A squeegee on the floor allows one to coax water, if needed (needed), down the drain, a slit in the floor, near the wall. 

Light switches. More sci-fi. Find out which white switch on a white background does what, if anything. I am in a Haruki Murakami novel, except the labels are in Icelandic, as they should be. White switches for room (ceiling) lights are demarcated by "loftljos." The room thermostat does not go above 21 degrees C. (69.8F). Sounds about right, in accord with home, even warmer, given my costs. Press to the right or left. (After two days, I learned a quick press on the left is off, to the right is on; pressing slowly or without a quick release is to dim. Or vice fecking versa.)

A great feature near the shower, discovered accidentally, is an S-like metal tubing on the wall. It is heated! It warms towels, or the foot mat. I used it yesterday to dry my swimsuit after the Secret Lagoon experience.

I took a nap, not more than an hour.

I ventured out again.

I met friends, by the lake.

I did not know the names of these friends, whom I was confident of meeting. But I did learn their names.

They saved the day.

And me.

-ism

I see that Merriam-Webster for the first time selected a suffix as its Word of the Year: -ism. Their selection criteria include various calculations based on lookups and combinations of lookups and year-over-year increases etc. So, 2015 evidently saw a lot of search activity (lookups) related to socialism, communism, feminism, fascism, racism, terrorism, and capitalism. I am mildly surprised not to find "alcoholism" on that -ism word-lookup parade. Am I being a grouchy growler (hate that word, though why should anyone hate any word?)? As for "-ism" and "alcoholism," there have long been clever and insightful pop-culture associations, with "-ism" representing the solipsistic "I self me" of the disease or the "I sponsor myself" approach that is said to thwart recovery.

recovery

You hear the word recovery and you wonder.  You muse about what it means, and you do this by a series of questions, not tidily posed out loud, or even sequentially whispered inaudibly merely to your self and no one else. No, you wonder, after the fact; in repose, after you have heard that word recovery more than once, in various guises and contexts but most likely only in English, but maybe in German in Berlin, that time you exposed yourself to a recovery context there. Your series of untidy questions (and let's face it: there really were no questions; this is just a convention, a trope, a trick, a syntactic regime to get your point across, to attempt to get your ponderings on paper, digitally speaking). Questions in and around and above and under and alongside and through recovery such as: what was covered that needs to be covered once again? the naked self? the masked self? the unwalked terrain of sobriety? The overwalked geography of drunkenness? Who does the covering or the uncovering or the recovering? Is not recovery more a verb than a noun, despite its declension, a verb with all its active and passive voices, its tenses, its dynamic, its past perfect, imperfect, pluperfect, and embedded promise of future? And in the end, even in the beginning, aren't you glad recovery defies the straitjackets of category, definition, demeanor, steppes, solitude, sunrise or sunset, and syntax?

And for fun, there's this: recovery.

think feel see

"The wise reject what they think, not what they see."
-- Huang-Po

But who said I am wise or aspire to be or that I think or even see? I get it, what you are saying, H-P. Or at least I think I have the willingness to be willing to get what you're saying, or said, or wrote in masterful brushstrokes of calligraphy, maybe hundreds of years ago. (Who are you, H-P?)

Thinking? What is it? In Descartes' Error, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio makes the case that neurologically speaking thinking is not divorced from thinking; we can't think without the feeling supplied in all those neurons that make up the central nervous system; the popularly believed thinking vs. feeling dichotomy does not exist in anatomy, in our biology.

But I get, or seek to get, what you're getting at, H-P.

See things for what they are feel the world for what it tastes touch the tongue of reality's open secrets lick the corners of the cosmos on the blade of grass smell the earwax of my dumb questions.

It has been said, "you need a meeting." A meeting of mind and matter, not mind over matter; a marriage of true minds and emotions, not divorced or legally separated from out there or in here, from the business of is-ness.

Something like that, but not quite, H-P. Calling H-P.

Runes of Ruination

Maybe my note-taking skills (or lack thereof) kept me out of Harvard, Yale, Ox-bridge, Stanford inter alia. Maybe my aversion to linear progression (well evidenced in this forum), be it attributed to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or attention surplus-intensity syndrome (AS-IS), is the root cause of my hieroglyphic notes.

Case study: I was on the phone a lot at work today. It's a significant part of the job, some days more than others. Deals, no deals, teaming, partnering, quasi-partnering, exploring, overcoming hurdles, assessing, flirting, filtering, figuring, eavesdropping, handshaking, handwringing, salivating, and palaver-ating. You know, "The Office" in real life.

Then I looked at my notes.

Runic scribblings.

Runes of my ruminations.

Gawd, help me!

Cross-outs, single circlings, arrows, loops, squiggly lines, wavy cross-outs, yeses, nos [correct? I don't know; I'm not into proper spelling or grammar right now; I'm off the clock], question marks, underscores, rectangular doodlings, imperatives to myself, triple circlings, karots, purple ink, orange ink, black ink, reverse and forward arrows, glosses, margin notes, names, phone numbers.

This scrawl on one page of standard yellow legal pad will make no sense to anyone if I get hit by a bus tomorrow morning before entering the portals.

It barely makes sense to me now!

Get me to an organizational rehab.

"Hi, my name is Pawlie. I'm a helter-skelter, higgledy-piggledy nonlinear, chaotic, ADHD-, AS-IS-riddled feckless factotum."

"Hi, Pawlie."

"Are, um, your 12 Steps in any kind of order?"

"That's a start, Pawlie. Why don't you just sit back, relax, and listen."

"In that order?"

Maybe it's all because I'm left-handed.

And I was a preemie.

Yeah, that's it.

And not any German-Austro-Teutonic lineage, either.

Reentry

Actually, I loathe it when debaters or essayists or smart alecks prissily intone, "Well, according to the dictionary . . . " Or they say, "According to Webster's..."

Which feckin dictionary, mate? Which Webster's? (Did you know "Webster" and "Roget's" can be used by anyone? Hence, those 1,200-page Webster dictionaries on sale for $3.99.)

Dictionaries vary, often widely.

Anyway, I digress, even before I progress. My reentry today from my bed-ridden torpor was rocky and woozy. At times I figured: "Wow, I guess I really was sick and not just lounging around on Cayman Brac."

According to Merriam-Webster:

reentry

Main Entry:
re·en·try
Pronunciation:
\(ˌ)rē-ˈen-trē\
Function:
noun
Date:
15th century
1: a retaking possession; especially : entry by a lessor on leased premises on the tenant's failure to perform the conditions of the lease
2: a second or new entry
3: a playing card that will enable a player to regain the lead
4: the action of reentering the earth's atmosphere after travel in space

Notice, it ain't re-entry. Most stylebooks and dictionaries go for the compressed modern and minimalist no-frills, sans hyphen form.

In my postreentry (I'm just not into hy-phen-at-ing to-day, o-kay?) mode, I'll keep things brief by responding to those four diverse meanings (known to lexicographers as senses) listed by Mr. and Mrs. Nigel Graves Merriam-Webster III, Esq., above.

1. My retaking of my work demesne barely exorcised the demons or exercised the day's multiplicity of mandates (translation: it was unnerving just to catch up on e-mails and voice messages). Alas, I greeted Botanist Colleague and thanked her for her concerns and good wishes, bowing before her, and was pleased to get a call and some direct kudos for helping to secure a great article about the firm in Sunday's paper).

2. Yes, yes (yassssss, yassssss, for Kerouac fans) my entry was new, as if undertaken by a new person, some kind of airy and unbalanced alien creature unused to formulating footsteps on strange terrain.

3. That would be The Joker, Monsieur le Kokonuts, eh?

4. Man! The heat shield was wobbling today! Whew! Made it!

Before signing off, let me note:

a) While in bed the first 36 to 40 hours, I didn't stir. No reading. No TV. No nothing. Not even sex! Then, I started vegging out on some TV. The movie "Armageddon" was on TV Saturday night. I just could not bear that movie - not even the channel-surfing version. It is painfully bad. I did like the channel-surf-abbreviated version (CSAV) of "King Kong" (a misnomer: should have been called "Crashing Taxis") and a made-for-TV piece on the Kennedys' wives (schmaltz is part of the reentry process; plus, there's a connection: reentry + Kennedys + space race + reentry to the world; something like that).

b) I did walk the dog tonight. Briefly. I didn't even look for the LIFE graffito. Ooooops! Is that an omen? Or Zen detachment?

Nice seeing you all again.

Need more meds.

Or bed.

P.S. Someone queried me about a "driving the porcelain bus" reference, asking for clarification. I said, "Kneeling." That was, um, enough.

The Litany of Social Contagion

War and peace
Talk and silence
Addiction and recovery
Driving vs. walking
Being rather than doing
And vice versa.

Work and idleness
Innovation and lethargy
Blogging vs. reading
Punctuation and anarchy
Kierkegaard and Kant
Voting rather than complaining
Blogrolling vs. not
Love or hate or apathy.

Faith and fear
Acceptance and control
Will and surrender
Community and solitude
Commenting and commuting.

Peace.

Coachez-vous avec moi?

Have you heard about this one? You can hire someone to make sure you stay clean and sober. But it might cost you $1,000 or more per day to enlist the services of such a provider, called a sober companion.

Let me pause here to note how I discovered this fact: The hugely entertaining Sunday Styles section of The New York Times, which spotlights the glitterati, ran a piece on this phenomenon. You've got to admire their pluckiness. Last Sunday's edition featured a section opener on a designer, Anand Jon, who always found himself aswarm with barely (pun intended) nubile wannabe models and who now, um, faces multiple charges of rape, sexual battery, and lewd acts (big shocker); an article on fancy inventions, such as slippers that double as mops; and the piece on sober companions, featuring a profile on an ex-con, ex-user named Ronnie Kaplan. Oh, and the bottom of the page is anchored by a large banner ad (say, 14 inches across by 6 inches deep) by Gucci, for an "indy" silver leather bag: $2,590 for the large and $1,990 for the medium; roughly the cost of a few days for a top-drawer sober companion.

Apparently some of these sober companions come out of the entourages of celebs. Hey, they get sober and why not be a smart entrepreneur and combine the skillset of bodyguard, therapist, coach, pastor, and cashier! A sobrepreneur! (I take credit for coining the term.)

It should be noted that part of the sober companion's services typically involves attending with the client meetings of free 12 Step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous, or AA. And it should be further noted that AA encourages and suggests that the new person find a sponsor (also for free). The sponsor is someone who shares his or her "experience, strength, and hope" about sobriety (but not about film deals, fitness tips, financial planning, or tattooing techniques).

One of the firms that offers these services is named the brilliantly marketable Hired Power. (Why didn't I think of that? Conscience? Envy? Not quite enough shamelessness?)

Incidentally, this all reminds me of some of the scenes in "The Player," the acerbic and first-rate movie by the late Robert Altman, where the guy pitching movie screenplays is told AA meetings are a hot place to shop scripts.

May I discreetly and delicately mention that (as readers who have read this journal can discern) I have some "credentials" in this arena? Ergo, I hereby offer some suggestions for other sorts of companions along the same lines. Alas, someone undoubtedly will take these suggestions and run straight to the ATM with them.

Labor Coach -- (No, not the one for labor and delivery of babies.) A professional to keep one on task during the workday, making one productive, happy, and whole. (I'd make a great one -- for someone else.)

Lustwaffe -- A personnel weapon, or battery of tools, to assist one in navigating through issues of concupiscence (I just love that word from my seminary days; come to think of it, seminary itself is such a richly layered word, too, in't?).

StepMaster or StepMistress -- Just another name for a sober companion, perhaps skewed toward sub-dom addicts.

Better Up -- Aimed at helping compulsive gamblers or impotent sex addicts or persons with low self-esteem.

Lip Service (or Imus-n't) -- Someone to protect you from saying the wrong thing at the wrong time (not that I'd ever need that, oh no, not me).

By the way, The New York Times article ends with this observation by Mr. Kaplan, "The lifestyle, most of it is a facade....Most of them are miserable. I try to bring meaning to their life." [Some day, I should do a post on the word "lifestyle."]

Excuse me, the phone is ringing. If it's Lindsay L., I've got to turn her down. Men with men and women with women. I know, sounds kinky. Hey, I was just in Berlin!

Free At Last. Maybe. Kind Of. Sort Of.

Well, "they" let me out of the chip rehab. Somebody asked me if I wanted "to get with the program" (or did she, Nurse Ratchit, say "programme", thinking I was an Anglophile?); I thought she said "reprogram"; and that's what they did. They reprogrammed me; put in a new chip. I'm cured.

Of potato chip addiction.

Not that I've ever exhibited any other type of addictive traits.

I just said that for laughs, of course. (It's part of my blog description, part of the nomenclature, nominally.)

I am a little worried, though.

I may fall victim to what novelist Stephen King termed the old-couch syndrome, or words to that effect. What he meant was, tamp down one addiction, and another one is sure to pop right up, just like the springs on an old couch. Hmmmm. What the heck could those other addictions be? Do you have any?

Based on the minimal number of comments I received when I was in chip rehab, I'm thinking that many of you either a) didn't give a rat's ass, b) didn't believe me, c) didn't care or d) were simply dumbstruck. I don't blame you in any event. There's a lot more pressing stuff in the world than alleged potato-chip alleged addiction. Isn't there? (Gosh. I'm glad I didn't tune in to Ersatz Presidente Bush last night; that would've driven me straight to the 20-ounce bag of kettle chips.)

No one called while I was in chip rehab. Not even The Cornflake King.

Maybe I wouldn't've answered anyway.

Are you like that? I do not like to have anyone answer the phone during suppertime. It's sacred (the eating event, not the phone). Not cellphones or land lines or any phones. They (the eating-event participants, sometimes called family; not the phones) all ignore me anyway. Even I ignore myself sometimes.

Anyway, it's late, and I sound hungry, angry, lonely, and tired (at the rehab they told me to be careful of that, and told me to remember it with an acronym: HALT).

Whew. I sure could use a juicy, greasy, salty potato chip. Just one. Please? Pretty please?

Just be patient with me. They say it takes time for the new chip to start working properly. It'll take a while for me to get back to alleged so-called quote normal unquote.

Laugh. Or....

Else.

p.s. I got new glasses today. Very Euro, whatever that means. I've never had so many compliments so rapidly and uninvited for a new pair of specs. Maybe vanity is my new addiction.

Chipping Toward Gomorrah

Dear Blog Readers,
I am writing this from a chip rehab. That's short for The Sierra Mesa Pines Chipaholic Rehabilitation Center. Location: Cannot be revealed. This lovely high-security prison is more or less a degreasing facility for poor slobs like me who can't overcome their addiction to potato chips. (They are called crisps in England and Ireland, right? Sounds leaner to me. I wonder if that gang called The Crips got their name, as well as their ferocity, because of potato chip addiction?) Oh, you know how it goes. I'll have just one. In my case, that would mean "just one 11 oz (311g) bag, thank you." Or just one hour at the potato chip trough. But the bag declares, "No Cholesterol. All Natural." I think I am going to be here longer than the typical 30 days. They keep wanting me to take something called The First Step, and all the while I keep wanting to take The First Chip. Little commandants walk around murmuring, "You need a meeting, not a chip." Maybe you can send me some chips of love over the Internet. Oh, you saw it coming all right. Yesterday, he's blogging about free will (or the lack of it). Today, he's crying the blues. Blues over chips. Blue-chip blues. (Excuse me, the rabid wordplay must be a side-effect of the detoxification process.) They've intentionally left some reading material in my little monastic room. One book had writings of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard with the book's spine splayed open like Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan getting out of an SUV, with this passage highlighted by felt-tip neon marking pen: "Ah, one speaks of so many various things which a man may love most dearly: a woman, his child, his father, his mother, his fatherland, his art, his science: but what every individual loves most, more than his only child, the child of promise, more than his only beloved on earth and in heaven--is his own will." Some wise guy added "potato chip" to the list of loves posted by Kierkegaard. Hahahaha. Very funny. Salty humor. The (potato) eyes have it. No skins off my back. Then the smart-alecks who run this chip-free resort left a Zen Calendar in my cell with its convenient little January 8 "scripture" that blares with a quote from Henry Miller: "I know what the great cure is: it is to give up, to relinquish, to surrender, so that our little hearts may beat in unison with the great heart of the world." And some smart-ass scribbled by hand: "while your little heart still beats, Mr. Chipaholic" -- accompanied by one of those saccharine smiley faces (it's a good thing sweets aren't my addiction). (Henry Miller? Whew. I thought he was addicted to something else; and it wasn't pussywillows.) I was going to write a haiku about potato chips, but it only increased my carbohydrate-laced craving. Some lecturer this morning told us we have a thinking disease, not an eating problem. I think not, Herr Rehabmeister. Anyway, I say, "A chip, a chip, my queendom* for a chip."
Yours,
Pawlie Kokonuts

*Since so many of my readers are women (or pretend to be), I thought I'd throw that in there, for sympathy. I ain't getting any (sympathy, that is) in this chip rehab. No sirree, baby.

Unperson of the Year, 2007

Well, today it is things back to normal, more or less, back to not being Time magazine's Person of the Year 2006. In fact, it is back to being Potential Person of the Year 2007, or Potential Nonperson of the Year 2007, or even potential person, or potential nonperson (I threw that in for existentialists and FOSK [Friends of Soren Kierkegaard]).

And what is "normal" on New Year's Day, anyway? It is not a normal day. It is a day groggy with the hangover of the memory of ancient hangovers, after a night of no imbibing, except for the intoxicating vision of numbing television, including the watching of the Waterford cystal ball falling, by increments of seconds, backwards-counting seconds, like those manned-spacecraft or unmanned (neutered?)-spacecraft launchings we watched in my youth. This, a scene from the new, Disney-fied Times Square, a far cry from the ancient, tawdry carnal "Midnight Cowboy" fleshpot carnival of yesteryear, though I admit to sometimes missing its vulgar, if menacing and perilous, "atmosphere" and allurements.

New Year's Eve. The memory -- my memory -- of retching mercilessly by the clock at Grand Central Terminal (frequently mistakenly called Grand Central Station, which is a post office), slobbering onto the marble floor, oblivious to the star-spotted cerulean blue, majestic ceiling. New Year's Day. "I'll never do that again. I promise." Those powerless vows. One such first day of the year taking the train from that very terminal (not the day after the oblivion onto the marble), drinking again, cavorting, parading, mock-marrying, annoying, dancing, falling, menacing for four, five, six hours. And then after the train ride making the rounds by car and foot and lechery through blurry strip clubs, Marvin Gaye music, a crack-up somewhere, knocking on strangers' doors at 5 a.m., fearing I was in Brooklyn (where I had never been). And then deigning to go to work the next day! These days, I'd have been fired on the spot -- and arrested too perhaps (cardiac or otherwise).

And so this sometimes unperson surprises no one when he says his New Year's Eves -- and the other 364 eves -- demand at the very least a modicum of sobriety, not so much as a virtue but as a personal, communal, and redeeming necessity. Achieved only by surrendering to and embracing grace, with an uppercase G, never the less. But always enough. An Abiding One-Day-At-A-Time Unearned (except by pain) Grace.

So what was "normal" today? Getting up around 10:30, everything thrown off. Sitting outside Toys R [with that obnoxious backwards, Cyrillic-alphabet-like inverted R] Us and laughing out loud at Steve Martin's genius novella The Pleasure of My Company. Laughing out loud as chubby suburban wives and surly dads and restless children run into the store and see an older man in a car reading a book -- and laughing. Do they think me a potential pervert? A molester? Let us hope not. (And somehow I think such miscreants are not inclined to wholesome laughter. Roaring laughter. Laughter at sheer humor, as well as the utterly distinct pleasure of reading someone whose style you love, whom you'd love to emulate, who just-plain resonates with you. Me, that is.) (The novella reminds me of Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine for its vision of daily minutiae.)

Did some dishes.

That's normal, isn't?

(We do not have one of those dish-washing machines, and I am glad.)

One never knows, you know? Today, in checking my emails, I found a very nice note from one of the authors on my list of 14 books, and authors.

Yikes! Who reads this stuff! question mark

It could be anyone!

Case in point: In November, I got an email from BBC Radio because I once mentioned A Perfect Spy by John Le Carre -- and they invited me to ask him a question for a radio show. And I did! I talked to him by phone! (enough of the exclamation points, dude)

Whew.

Merry New Year.

Laugh. Or....

Else.

p.s. Thanks for stopping by, Mr. Mystery Author Author. Clue to readers: I enjoyed The Nervous Breakdown.