The Daily {W}Rite December 2o15 WK o1

Yes! The very first day of December. The word even feels cold when you say it out loud, Decemberrrrrrrrrrr! But the good thing? I got my heavy, very warm coat out of the closet and set on the back of my computer's chair to slap on whenever I need it. And if my winter coat could smile, it would definitely be giving me a big zipper-tooth grin cause it likes the cold much more than I do!

We finally got back to the gym. A good workout. That's why I'm typing with flashy speed fingers! My digits enjoy a feisty jog across the keyboard's face. My mind, however, doesn't quite feel the joy that my upper body parts are feeling. It's in a bit of a slump right now. It has no desire to think and is having a difficult time coming up with ideas for my fingers to type out. Come on, brain! Get with the program!

Wednesday, December o2, 2o15

Another mass shooting today and another, I've heard in Los Angeles, or Texas or someplace. Didn't get more info than that 'cause MSNBC was so focused on San Berdo. Right now the count is up to 336 mass shootings in America in this year of 2o15. My little "meme" blames who it blames because THEY  will do nothing to stop the mass murders going on in our country. The NRA the most guilty, I suppose, but that the governing body does NOTHING to stop domestic terrorism is the bigger sinner. The NRA? I can see why they don't want to stop gun violence, hell, that's how they make their money. The more mass murders there are, the bigger the payday for the gun manufactures. You see how it works right? Somebody (or somebodies as in todays massacre) goes into a school, a mall, a church, a movie theatre or Planned Parenthood facility and opens fire and kills as many people as they can. And the public gets nervous and buys more guns for protection, or gets angry and tries to get laws passed to cut down on the violence and . . . well, then gun owners run out and buy even MORE guns just incase the government tries to pass any laws against gun ownership, or try to make it more difficult to walk in and buy up as much firepower as person can get in any gun-shop or gun fair in America! Good racket. The more mass murder the more cash going into the pockets of the NRA and U.S. Congressmen! I was hesitant to post this meme. Didn't know how folks on Facebook would take it. To tell you the truth, this one is a bit softer than the first idea I came up with, which was a picture of me tipping my hat and a caption which said, "At least 14 dead, 17 injured! A tip of the hat to:  The U.S. Congress, The Republican Party, and The NRA! Congratulations."

So, the battle to go to the gym is pretty much a daily thing between me and David. We got off the schedule (Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday) and went to a Tuesday for this week. I don't like that. It really throws me out of sync with the universe. So, today we didn't go . . .

In the Car With David

David: I see what you did this morning.
Woodie: What? What did I do?
David: YOU didn't want to go to the gym so YOU made it look like it was ME that didn't want to go.

Woodie: I did?
David: Yes, you did! On the phone you asked me "What do you need to do today?"
Woodie: Yeeeah, and you said you needed to get gas for the car.
David: Yeeeah, and YOU took it for granted that I didn't WANT to go to the gym so YOU didn't have to take the blame because YOU didn't want to go to the gym. I see what ya did there!
Woodie: (laughing) I'm not that damn smart, David. I really thought YOU didn't plan to go to the gym today.
David: Yeeeah, I see what ya did. (David laughs)

Brendan is right. Me and David . . . like an old married couple. {smiles}

Thursday, December o3, 2o15
The gym warmer than my body anticipated, it begins to shrivel up into dead grape thing, a glob of gamma globulin. Grunting out about ten more set-ups, my lungs in full rebellion burning up the gym's stale oxygen. I stand up into a spinning world. Out of control my legs, my drunken legs tittering towards a chair. I try to breath in deep, but my lungs still not cooperating, a thousand tiny men moonwalk across the inside of my balding head, which starts to cry in waves of stinky sweat that run sprints into my eyeballs. Enough workout for me today. I think I'll go for a walk while David finishes up.

Saturday, December o5, 2o15

A gentle whirling sound, my eyes close a tiny bit. I could sleep even though sudden bumps and a feeling like falling keeps making my body straighten up and forces my eyes to look around. We don't take the freeway much these days when we head to a movie at The Warrren. A nicer drive through open fields, no longer green but they still make me smile. Yellowed grass, the barren trees. Not a lot of nature anymore on this road to Moore. Lots of new, expensive townhouses, some of them ready for owners others not quite finished.

Yesterday was depressing with all the talk about terrorists and gun violence on the TV. Even more distressing all the politicians, the "experts" with their heads up their asses . . . nothing to be done. These are the guys who are suppose to trouble shoot our many problems, come up with ways to protect the United States and its citizens but none of them have a fucking clue how.  Yeah, yesterday I just couldn't get my head around all the crap going on in our world  . . . and then I looked out the window and saw one of the loveliest sunsets, and though it was colder than hell, I grabbed my camera and in my stocking feet ran outside to snap a few pics. Okay, the problems of the world weren't solved or anything . . . but it did give me a few minutes to breathe and forget about everything except for how beautiful the sunset was.

I guess life is bad, really bad a lot. But I guess you have to learn to live with it, try to fix it when possible but live with it no matter what.



Sunday, December 6, 2o15
The phone woke me this morning at 9:30a.m. It's not too pleasant a thing to have a plastic, inanimate object wake me up. There's something . . . inhuman about it. I didn't answer it as is usual. I let the answering service pick it up. A metallic version of my sister's already raspy voice calls out on the message machine, "Hello, brother, just call to see if you want to go see Stars Wars when it comes out." End of message. What the hell? It's only the 6th! Why so urgent to call at this "ungodly" hour just to make a date to see Star Wars when the opening's twelve days from now? Besides, we wouldn't be able to get a ticket for it because The Warren has already sold out every show for at least the first weekend . . . Well, I call her back and we do make plans to see it sometime . . . and off hand she tells me that it's her birthday . . . today. Damn! Her birthday? I never knew the date of her birthday. I'm a lousy brother.

Had to go to "The Earth" for breakfast with David's kids. The fuckin' Earth! I hate that fuckin' place. They call it "The Earth" because the food tastes like dirt. No, that's insulting. I apologize. Real dirt tastes better than anything served as food at this overpriced "Gee-I-Miss-The-Sixties" restaurant. The best thing that I can say about "The Earth" is they did finally take down their every so pretentious No Smoking sign they had on the back door.

"Woodie thinks 'The Earth' is pretentious!" David says this loud enough so that not only does his kids hear it, but the entire Hippie waiting staff and every wannabe Hippie customer (I mean, come on! These kids weren't even alive in the 60s.They can't be Hippies!) in the place could hear him. Fuck. I gotta stop telling David anything I don't want someone other than him to know! Besides, I don't really HATE "The Earth." It's okay. I did try the "Vegan" chili. Weeeell, not spicy enough, but okay.

I'm not going to go into the rather heated discussion I got into with David and his kids over gun violence . . . Okay, the only one getting heated was me . . . yeah, I made a bit of a fool out of myself. But I am so tired of both sides, Right and Left, telling each other that their side is right! Nothing gets done that way. We can't stop gun violence if we're going to be at each other's throat over the fuckin' 2nd Amendment! Yeah, I came to the conclusion that I watch way too much TV news. May give it up. Or maybe I just need to relax a bit more. All my irritation with what's going on in the world is just a reaction to how big a mess America is in,  and how it's too big a mess for me to correct, and maybe my HATE of "The Earth" is just an extension of my inability to fix the world. Still, the "Vegan" chili wasn't all that good. {smiles}

Monday, December o7, 2o15

Remember Pearl Harbor? Or maybe you read something about it in you high school American History class? Oh, surely you've seen From Here to Eternity? Ben Affleck's Pearl Harbor? The beginning of WWII meets CGI. The production team on that film made "a date which will live in infamy" look like a Bugs Bunny cartoon.  Naw, I guess we don't remember it much anymore. Over 2,4oo people perished that day. Most of them sailors. Met an old guy who was there. Fortunately for him he was on land and close to a bunker. He didn't talk about it much, but you could tell by the way his eyes sort of glossed up when he talked about it that . . . well, he looked dead all over. In the 90s I wrote a play titled a man in morning. Never did get it produced.  Had a monologue in it based very loosely on the story the old guy told me about the attack on Pearl Harbor:

CHICK

Okay, so it's the night before Pearl Harbor. me and my shipmates are on liberty in Honolulu. We go to this cocktail lounge, the Waikiki Club. A real scuzzbucket of a place, off limits to sailors, but what the fuck, right? We were young. We didn't give a damn, right? Anyway, that's when I met and fell in love with the Melon Sisters. Sonya and Betty. Identical twins from Camden, New Jersey. A lounge act. They use to sing these comedy songs like, "Oh, I wanna get back to my little grass snatch in Hawaii." A couple of real artists. And they wore these grass skirts, long beautiful blond hair flowing down to their butts, and two sets of the biggest wazoos you ever saw. Earlier in the evening, I confessed to a mate of mine a dark and horrible secret: at the ripe old age of twenty-two I was still a virgin. Whatever you do in this life time never admit to anyone that you are a virgin, not even your mother. They'll use it against you the first chance they get. My buddy moseys over to the piano bar and gleefully tells Sonya and betty about my "sexual predicament." I could have died. The girls bounced over to our table and bombarded me with a barrage of highly suggestive innuendos and dirty gestures which cased me to blush a beet red , and in turn, made everybody at the table fall down laughing. before the girls left to do their next set, Sonya bends over me, tongues me in the ear and whispers, 'Come back tomorrow night, little boy, and we shall make you a man." Oh, man! Back on base I laid in my rack and imagined, as best as a virgin could, a multitude of horribly delicious things they had in store for my unspoiled body. Then, at the height of my ecstasy, I felt the earth quake beneath me and I thought to myself, Jesus Christ, if I get this excited over a fantasy, I'll never survive the real thing." And then the earth should again and I realized something was terribly wrong. I staggered to the door of my hooch, look out and I saw hell. Bombs, hundreds of them, thousands of them, Japanese bombs pounding the ground, the earth exploding around me. There was a bunker a hundred yards or so away, so I made a beeline for it. I ran, and I ran, and it seemed to me that the harder I ran the farther away that bunker got. There was a loud "BOOM" to my left . . . maybe it was my right . . . anyway, something popped me upside the gourd and I went down hard. I couldn't get up. I couldn't move. My legs had turned to instant shit, fire in my lungs. I just couldn't get up. And that's when I saw them. The Melon Sisters. Standing on top of that bunker with their grass skirts raised over their heads, bumping and grinding their hips. And I swear I could hear them yelling at me over the noise of the bombs exploding, "COME AND GET IT! TIME TO FEED THE KITTY! COME AND GET IT!" That's when I had the most horrifying thought . . . my god, I'm gonna die here a fucking virgin. Well, that seemed to do the trick. I got to my feet and some how managed crawl into that bunker. I stayed down in that dirty, stinking hole for what seemed like years. Curled up in a ball with my head tucked between my legs, listening to the world die around me. So. Never underestimate the power of pussy. It damn sure saved my life.