Drama Drama Drama.........I hate Drama

      I hate drama passionately.  IT seems to keep finding me but I hate it with both heart and soul.  I don't like the hangover it leaves me with and I don't like the fact that it places a damper on my whole world.


"There are times however, and this is one of them when even being right feels wrong......."

                                                        Excerpted in part, Hunter S. Thompson



    Today is damn cold.  Last night I couldn't sleep because of the heat and humidity and this morning I am sitting with blankets around me and it's under fifty degrees outside.  Gray clouds, wet ground.  I know forties don't sound that bad but couple it with the humidity I was talking about, and it chills to the bone.  Lisa has decided to more or less sleep all of this bad day away.  We had hot biscuits for breakfast and she just went back to bed, covered up in a comforter and started sawing logs.  So I figured Harmonica practice and blogging day.


     
Meet Brutus 3 month old Golden Lab

                                 Kody's new dog, making me remember why I like these guys so much.  Though Kody's schedule could use some improvement.  Brutus eats at 4:30 AM prompt  and an hour later starts nibbling at your toes cuz it's bathroom time.  Even so he's a good dog.



                           Texas hitch hiker trying to sell me Insurance?

                              He held on pretty bravely at 60 mph, doing a couple of 360's until it looked like he blew off.  Couldn't really stop because it was a highway.  Ominous feelings of bad Karma started creeping up on me.  I had one of these as a pet when I was a kid.  Got to the beach and there he was, glued to the side.  Peeled him off and watched him take to the high grass.  Bad Karma gone. Woot.

This is Heritage district in Rockport.  Next to the water. Coffee shops, art galleries and usual stuff.

                         

                                   


Another excellently made movie.  If you don't mind your blood pressure going up a bit.  This is a link to an older flick I haven't watched until recently that explains in surprisingly simple terms the meltdown of 2008 and what has and has not been done about it.  Seems in history every time deregulation of banks allows them to manipulate everybody else's money in order to ensure that only the few get rich,  while others go broke (hint middle class). Oh, also the economy melts down.  Thus requiring a federal bailout to keep those sweet, sweet bonuses coming in. Great Depression, Savings and loan meltdown in the 90's and the Great Recession.  All financial deregulation caused.    Check out why finance counselors were pushing bad investments.  Unbelievable.  Hint just listen to all the deregulation rhetoric for "mom and pop" businesses.  Yeah.

Inside Job



                                    ROCKPORT   BEACH SUNSET AND OTHER PICS

ROCKPORT MARINA PATIENTLY WAITING FOR MY BOAT

I CALL THIS ......... PALM TREE

Beach groomed each night

      I CALL THIS........FISHING PIER!

So, couple of days ago Danny, who's currently working at a gas station, says a Shrimper comes in early AM each morning for coffee.  Asks him if he'd like some fresh shrimp.  Danny, who hates shrimp thankfully said of course, thinking of us.   Danny shows up one morning with about five pounds of it.  At least a pound of it I wasted feeding the fish.  I tried putting it on the hook in every manner possible including tying it.  Each time stripped off in seconds.  Moral of the story:  everything loves shrimp.......except Danny.

HOMELESS GUY ON THE BEACH SHAMELESSLY PROMOTING UNPRODUCTIVE LIFESTYLE.

Other than that it always seems like we are on a hold pattern.  Waiting for a house to sell in order to start looking for something here.  Couple of upsides when the weather gets a little colder is the Mosquitoes thin some and Lisa gets all motivated to start cooking these kinds of things.  So for now, little bit o writing, annoying the general public and yes, eating.

Short Lazy Daze

     

The worst advice I have heard of as late to break writer's block

"Write about what your life might have been like if you had taken the path that it turned out you were too afraid to do."

Aaaaauuuuuuuugggghhhhhh

I'm better now.  Just watched my go to feel good movie.  2000's Replacements with Gene Hackman and Keneau Reeves.   That's about how exciting things get around here these days.  Lots of television and relaxing.   Still has the feeling of summer only it gets dark around 5:30.  With some regret I have slowly come to realize that our mom and pop business that sustained us the last couple of years is really fading into history. Of course the trade off is cheap gas which kinda softens the blow. I'm also down near the beach so note the "some regret".  It's the middle of November and temperatures are just now settling into the low eighties and high seventies the way I like them.  The downside are the skeeters and the damn ants. But I really can't remember the last time I wore long pants.  Once in the last two weeks I have actually put on shoes and socks in lieu of flip flops.  I'd really given up fishing the last year or so mostly due to lack of time (and interest) but now I think it is time to take it up again.

I was driving past the bay the other night after walking the beach which tends to have an incredible calming effect on my mind.  .  The lights reflecting off calm water.  Window down and salty sea breeze.  And I think why did it take so long?

Some other things banging around in my brain.

The French tragedy will likely rewrite the refugee crises.  As probably it should.   The concept that a significant portion of a country can leave and be absorbed by the rest of the world is shaky at best.  When there is not only the possibility, but the likelihood that dangerous radicals will be among them.

I'm reading books by Thomas Picketty and Joseph Stiglitz.  One a Nobel Prize winning Economist and the other a likely will be.  Gives a much more informed base when listening to the Presidential debates.  

   Seems like the inequality argument is resounding with the right as well as the left.   Though as one article put it  "The presidency ought not be an entry level political job".  Politicians work for the top tenth of one percent.  Some on the left try to hide it but the right is brazenly open about it as far as I can tell.  But one thing I'm sure of:  When all them social issue questions get a little uncomfortable to answer there's only one solution, go to war.  Drowns out those pesky things like raising the minimum wage, astronomical price hikes for health care and big govt giveaways.  Then everybody can get back to poor shaming and praising the poor guys coming back all f'd from a war.

I hear on and on and on it's a US problem.  But the thing that just won't go away in my mind is the 20000 strong Iraqi force that fled from just 800 crazy insurgents and left all that expensive US stuff. ( A decision the one's who were caught regretted I'm sure and likely in the back of the minds of the Kurdistan fighters).  A Saudi army of nearly 200000 and lord knows the size of the armies of the rest of the countries.

There has been another horrible tragedy although this time in another country.  The repercussions of which will probably set in motion another Three Trillion dollar war.  But when there is a tragedy here, of which there have been many,  initial reactions are meh! with the occasional "mental health" comment.  Then it all just dies away.

But I am in favor of everybody screaming to go to war have that opportunity.  That's right, young and old give em a gun and a plane ticket and let them go.  I just don't want my tax dollars invested or relatives to go.


       I do love being retired.  Though with each passing day I realize the difficulties of getting older. Walks that used to be around five miles get to be two to three and slower.  At sixty one I  Notice that I'm a bit more bald, maybe a tad fatter and this last thing, Arthritis in my hands.    I got this condition in my right hand about seven years ago called "Trigger Finger" in my middle finger. It's a bit of a handicap though not so much now that my road rage has softened and I am not in as  immediate need of my go to hand signal.  See I had saved a pile of money to get a couple of egress windows dug out in my basement.  I'd calculated it to the dime based on my phone calls to local contractors.  Unfortunately their phone estimates and their onsite estimates were not even close and the price during the construction boom had doubled seein's how the pickin's were so good.  I dug my feet in and decided to give er a go by myself.  So I got the holes dug and had some guys cut out some concrete windows.  Afterwards, with my careful planning I decided I needed to double the size of said windows.  To be completed with a skill saw, concrete chisel and iron bar.  Eventually all that banging with the bar damaged the joints in my hand and my middle finger locks up in the down position.  Sometimes so tight I have to soak it in hot water a period to loosen.  Well now for some reason completely different from the last time, my left hand now does this as well.  Cortisone shots help but in the US Doc's will only give two and then schedule you for surgery or as I like to call it, indentured servitude.  Now in Costa Rica they have no such limit and the Orthopedist I conversed with said I could pretty much have as much cortisone as I could pay for.  Surgery he quoted me at about fifteen hundred bucks.

So while I sit back and ruminate what the solution eventually will be, there have been a few rare occasions when the middle fingers of both hands have locked back at the same time.  Should anybody ever notice or look at me funny or ask stupid questions, well I'm just gonna say "I'm Spider Man" and walk the opposite direction with my hands pointing all different directions over my head like I'm shooting webs.  No wait, this Texas.  I'll probably get shot.  (sigh)

The house in Twin Falls has finally rented for a while easing that burden. I guess I am going to spend some time on projects.  I have started a fourth short story.  Are they crap?  I'm not sure.  But one thing I am sure of is as most of the greats say.  Finish it.  Leave it alone and then go back to it weeks or even months later.  So I would have to say at least one has been vastly improved as demonstrated by my most recent Kindle Select's rejection letter.

Yeah, I probably consider myself a writer like Ed Wood thought himself a film maker. But there is one BIG difference.......


                      I'm Spiderman


Bwahahahahahahhahahhahahhaha