What's Happened In The Interim

It's been a while since my last post, so I thought I'd bring all my readers up to date with some things.

First, Happy Thanksgiving for all my U.S. readers. I'll be eating here at my place today by myself. I plan to have some peas, potatoes, pumpkin pie and some chicken that's already been cooked. 

Tomorrow evening, I'll be going to my brother's for dinner. He and his wife will have it then because my nephew is going to his in-law's house today for his first Thanksgiving dinner with them, and my niece has to work this evening at a department store where she is temporary holiday help.

And as for relatives, both of my nephews got married this year: One in late March, the other in early August. They're both buying houses and one already has a child, while their uncle is single, childless and living in an apartment.

I turned 60 a couple of months ago. I think my reaction hasn't been all that great and that I've had some low-level depression over me since then. I feel tired a lot. It could be from age or a sympton of some undiagnosed (as of now) affliction/condition.

That's about all I can think of for now. Just wanted to make a mark and to make sure this blog is still active, if not as much as in the past.

One other thing: I believe we're going to have a heavy winter in central Indiana. The summer was cooler than usual, and we've already had enough snow fall -- once -- to leave traces on the ground.

Small Favors And Slight Blahs

Thank God, or the Fates, or Whoever, for small favors, for they can offset slight cases of the blahs.

I'm having a case of the midwinter blahs that started last week and probably will continue through the rest of this week, if the weather goes as forecast. The highs have been in the low 40s and the lows have been in the high 20s. Rain or snow has fallen nearly every day; freezing rain dropped for a couple of days.

As of tonight, the forecast for tomorrow is snow showers with 1-2 inches of snow to accumulate. 

In short, the weather's been lousy and it's affected my outlook.

But the small favor offsets part of it.

Last week I received my January electric bill from my city's utilities department. The bill is usually between $25-$30 a month, and last month the amount was $26. But a $100 credit paid for it.

I wondered where the $100 had come from,so I called the uitilities department. A clerk there said the money was from the deposit I had made when I opened my account when I moved  here. If I had paid my electric bills on time for a year, the deposit would be applied to my bills.

So my electric bills should be covered for the first four months of 2013. I can use the money to pay down my credit card debt.

Holiday Greetings & A Progress Report

First, Happy New Year to all who will read this blog, wherever you may be. And I hope you all will have a healthy and prosperous 2013.

Second, I hope all of you had a merry Christmas/Hannukah/Kwaanza/Yule/Saturnalia/Festivus/whatever you celebrated earlier this month. I had a decent one. I spent Christmas Eve at my older brother's house with his family, his wife's family, my younger brother, his wife, and their son. 

Food was served, but I filled myself with appetizers and ate only one ham sandwich and no turkey sandwiches.

I also got a $5 gift card from Sears at part of an exchange.

Since Dec. 25, I've stayed around here and mostly gone out for errands and runs to the local library. I plan to stay in tonight because there is a weather advisory until 7 a.m. Tuesday; from 1.5-4 inches of snow could fall.  

It also will be amateur night for those who drink when intoxicated.   

But starting Wednesday, I plan to become more active and get out of my apartment and my city of residence.

One notable thing has happened between the last time I posted and now. I was awake around 1 a.m. Dec. 16 and had just peed when the phone rang. I thought Oh fuck what is THIS about? The only thing I could think of was that one of my brothers or a member of their families were in critical condition -- or worse.

Calling was a woman looking for a man with my true name. She asked me, "Are you X------?" I said yes.

She asked me if I had a sister named Michelle. I said I didn't. (By the way, I don't have a sister.) 

She also asked me about my cousin Philip Falls. I told her I don't have a cousin with that name.

She apologized about calling me at that time of night, but added she had bad news that he had to be told then.

I wonder if she ever contacted the man she was looking for.

I've also been trying off and on to delete some of my posts, but Blogger has changed the ways the posts are made and deleted to a more complicated process than the one that I was using when I was actively writing here. So I'll leave a lot more posts that I thought I would.

I've established on the net a site where I can let it all hang out as loosely as I want. I've posted a few things and have yet to post what I truly want.

So, goodbye until the next post, whenever that will be.

My Health, Lately

Well, I give thanks that I'm relatively healthy when more medical problems hit.

On the afternoon of Saturday, Nov. 24, I felt tired and fatigued as I had when the battery of pacemaker had run down. I thought: Oh damn another malfunction -- and so damn soon!
and went to the local hospital's emergency room.

Seems that I had some internal bleeding that was being discharged in my stools. Out of a hemoglobin level of between 13.5 and 15, I had 5. I had noticed my stools were a different color -- dark black with a reddish tint -- but thought they were that way because of a food I had eaten.

I started to received the first of three units of blood (a unit = a pint plus) and was admitted Saturday night. I stayed until Wednesday morning, and I'm sure it was one day more than necessary because it was during the long Thanksgiving weekend.

Doctors inserted a camera through my windpipe to the end of my stomach/beginning of my small intestine. They found no bleeding there. The next day I received a colonoscopy after I received a liquid enema. I drank some foul liquid and spend about half the night on a portable commode. Even then I wasn't clean enough so I recived two quarts of soapy water to complete the cleansing.

During the colonocopy, the doctors found no bleeding.

I was released Nov. 28 and was told to eat a lot of iron-rich foods as well as take 650 milligrams of iron a day and get a lot of rest. I have had no relapse of any symptoms and my hemoglobin levels were at 10.9 on Thursday -- up from 8.9 on Dec. 1.

A follow-up appointment is scheduled for Dec. 17, a week from this coming Monday.

ADDENUM, JAN. 23, 2013: At my follow up appointment, my doctor told me to eat iron-rich foods, such as spinach and apricots. I'm lucky that I like both foods.

He also told me to keep taking the iron twice a day until April 1. Damn. I take them after I eat breakfast and inner because they leave a mildly nasty taste in my mouth. 

Giving Thanks

As the sun drops below the western horizon, and the darkness of night in late November comes for approximately 14 hours, I pause to give thanks that I:

Am alive and in relatively decent health for a man of my age and lack of exercise;

Will be having Thanksgiving dinner with my older brother and his family tomorrow, therefore having some companionship after spending today by myself;

Have no reason to go to any stores of shopping malls tomorrow or tonight. Yes, tonight; the stories just can't wait to start the sales.

Some call tomorrow Black Friday because black = profits. I call it Black Friday because black = tragedy. 

How Things Have Gone Lately

Posting has been very light this year because of two big reasons.

I hit one of those sloughs of despond, to quote John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, or depressive moments of life into which I often slip. During the past, I didn't post when them came onto me. But after they left, I started again.

I've also had some health problems. In late August, the battery of my pacemaker prematurely ran low on power and I only went to the hospital when I felt I was practically on death's door. 

(I don't know if I've written before on why I need a pacemaker. I'll have to check my past posts. If I haven't, I might do so later.)

Then a month later, I had an emergency appendectomy. And a week after that, about half the incision split into an open wound, which is finally healing.

So my health hasn't been the best for the last three months and I've wanted to rest instead of posting here. Please forgive me for that.

Other posts may come; they may not. As I've said before: Watch this space.

But I say this with some pride: I no longer smoke cigarettes, although I've fought off some strong desires to go out and buy a pack and light up. To feel that hit would be great, but I know I can't just put it aside, like I can with alcohol. 

Nocember And The Cold Season

We are now in the middle of the time I call Nocember -- where November and December tend to combine because of the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, which can seem to run together if you let them.

Also, the days get colder and the daylight grows shorter. You'll see the first snow of the late fall/early winter season. 

(No snow has fallen as of today, but the first frost of the season fell during the night of Sunday, Oct. 7. )

It's also the start of what I call The Cold Season. It lasts from late October to sometimes between St. Patrick's Day or April 1 at the latest. Not only does the weather get colder, but chances of catching a cold or coming down with a light case of  the flu or the 24-hour bug increase.

To fight that, I take a 500-milligram pill of Vitamin C every day, starting from Halloween to Tax Day. From April 16 to late October, I take the same dose every other day.

I've been doing this for the last few years. Sometimes I think it's been five years. sometimes I think it's seven. But I know this. I haven't come down with a cold or the flu since I've started, and I recommend that everybody I know do the same thing.

After Thoughts About The Fourth

Since yesterday was the Fourth of July, I was halfway tempted to post, at my true name's Facebook page, the following thought:

If the War of Independence had failed, then Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and other Founding Fathers would've been hung as traitors to the Crown, while Franklin would've lived out the rest of his life in France, chasing les dames.

I also would've posted this: 

If you support the current establishment, then please don't celebrate Independence Day, because if you had been alive in 1776, you would've supported the Brits.

But I didn't do either. I didn't want to read any shit from anyone like what do you mean by that? what's wrong with you? and any other comments that would've been of fear, anger, incomprehension, and resistance.

I have about 230 "friends" on my Facebook page. Many of them are people I knew in high school, and I graduated in 1972. Many of them are good people, but they just don't have a lot of imagination or the ability to see things differently.

Saying the Founding Fathers would've been hung if the British had won the War of Independence would throw many of them for a loop, because history didn't happen that way -- the way the Lord intended. 

And top dogs don't realized that whatever the system, they would've tried to be top dogs: A constitutional monarchy, a tyranny, or a representative democracy.

I've thought that, and I'm goddamm tired of people treating me like some heinous criminal like Jerry Sandusky because of my thoughts. What I think it not illegal. Although to some people, you can break the law for some things if you follow and conform to the social norms. That's the main point I got from Camus' The Stranger.

Those two groups are two large reasons why I despise American society, and try to have as little to do with it as I can. 
Well, enough of this rant for now. However, I have two unrelated things to add:

Besides my Facebook "friends" from high school, from which I graduated in 1972, others are stand-up comedians I got to know between 2005 and 2008, when I starting going to open mikes in the Indianapolis area. Between those 33 years, I went to college and worked at several jobs. I am not a Facebook "friend" to anyone I've met during that time. (They haven't approached me, and, to be honest, I haven't approached them because I don't spend all that much time on it and some of those people are NOT worth a Facebook "friendship.")

And Jerry Sandusky was the former defensive co-ordinator for the Penn State football team who was convicted last month of 40-plus counts of sexually abusing underage boys.

It seems as if the powers that be at Penn State knew of this but didn't act on it.

If Sandusky had been caught sexing a Penn State football player, of legal age and in a consensual act, I wonder how soon he would've been fired and kicked out town if not Pennsylvania.

What Every Home Could Use

I was going to post something... anything... in this blog, because it's been seven weeks and one day since I last wrote here.

(FYI, what had kept me from posting was a serious depressive episode. There were days I didn't shower or shave: Sometimes longer than a week. I decided yesterday that I would kick it today.)

I was up around 4 a.m. this morning. A heavy thunderstorm with strong lightening was happening. That, a thunderstorm late Friday afternoon, was the first rain that had fallen in my area for a while. If I find how long, I'll put it here later.

The storms had stopped a dry spell that made this June one of the driest months in the state's history. As of Friday only 5/100th of an inch of rain had fallen this month.

I was on the internet around 5:20 a.m. when the electricity went out.I went fumbling for candles and flashlights so I could see in the dark. Thankfully, the sun would rise soon.

Then I thought of this things that I recommend for every home, be it house, apartment, or whatever building you can think of:

• A big box of wooden matches, preferably Ohio Blue Tip, with the match stick around an inch long. Having smaller boxes of smaller matches would also help.
• At least one candle nine inches or taller.
• Several tea or votive candles.
• At least one flashlight with batteries that work.

While those are good for emergencies, I also thought of these things that every home should have:

• A ball of string.
• A pack of playing cards.
• A pair of dice.

Take if from me: You won't regret having those items.

And at 8:05 a.m., the power returned. I got back on the net and wrote this after I did some chores around the apartment.

Two Things, Noted

I was out running errands Monday morning. These two things, I thought, were worth noting in this blog:

One
At the northeast corner of a busy intersection, I saw a young man dancing in place. He was advertising a sale at a national hairstyling chain: $6.99 for a hair cut instead of the regular $12. His costume was a blue bottle, probably of shampoo, with a white cap.

He was less than 100 yards from a spot where a tax-preparation business usually has a young man dancing in place during tax season. He usually wears a costume that is of the Statue of Liberty, down to the sea green robes and crown.

About two weeks ago, I saw a young man dancing place there as he was wearing a Spider-Man mask and shirt under his Statue of Liberty costume. It was cold and snowy and the winds were blowing hard, so I believe he wore it to keep warm.

Two
I went to the local post office to get some stamps and mail some bills. As I was leaving, I dropped my stocking cap. I had removed my cap when I entered the post office because I was taught it was mannerly to remove your hat (or, in this case, cap) when you were indoors.

Some bastard asshole going into the post office said, "Hey, you dropped your hat, buddy."

I picked up my stocking cap and said, halfway between a whisper to myself and my regular speaking tone: "Why didn't you help me pick it up, asshole?"

I did a few more errands. As I was driving home, I saw the asshole walking on the main north-south street of my city. but I wasn't mad enough at him to yell out my car window at him or give him any other shit.

I was surprised at my semi-outburst. In in the past, I usually would've kept quiet during such an incident.

Notes On The Super Bowl

I've written some notes on the Super Bowl, which was played Sunday in Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis. They're some personal observations of things that interested me. Those of you who want more information, including a story with more details about the game, can check the Internet.

ONE
The New York Giants won the Super Bowl 21-17 over the New England Patriots. Giants quarterback Eli Manning, seen in the picture above, lead a fourth-quarter comeback and running back Ahmad Bradshaw scored the go-ahead touchdown with 57 seconds left in the game.

The Giants had beaten the Patriots 17-14 in the 1998 Super Bowl, thereby denying New England a perfect season.

Manning was the game's most valuable player. He had 20 completions of 40 passes for 296 yards and a touchdown. He also was the most valuable player in the 1998 Super Bowl.

TWO
From what I heard, people who visited Indy for the Super Bowl were very pleased with the layout of the venues. All close together and stuff. Because of that, I bet that Indy will host another Super Bowl within the next 10 years, if not before 2020.

For your information, the next three Super Bowls and their sites are: New Orleans, 2013; New York, 2014; and Phoenix 2015. Nothing else has been set after that.

THREE
Weather helped a lot. The week before the game, it seemed a lot more like early spring than midwinter. Last week, temperatures were often in the high 50s and not much rain fell.

(UPDATE, FEB. 11: About half an inch of snow fell the night before. Strong, cold winds were blowing. The high temperatures were in the lower 20s. I must admit: As for the weather, the Indianapolis area was lucky.)

Also, during the last two to three months, several manhole covers in several downtown Indy streets blew off. Luckily, none did the week before the Super Bowl and the day it was played.

FOUR
The people in the Indianapolis area were predominately cheering for the Giants, because Eli Manning is the younger brother of Colts quarterback Peyton Manning. It also cheered against the Patriots who had a strong rivalry with the Colts for the last decade.

FIVE
There was a slight controversy after the game. Gisele Bundchen is a Brazilian supermodel and the wife of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.

After the game, a Giants fan yelled at her, "Eli owns your husband!" She was caught on video saying to a friend, "My husband cannot fucking throw the ball and catch the ball (at) the same time. I can't believe they (Patriot receivers) dropped the ball so many times."

I must give her credit for standing up for her man. But, on the other hand, she doesn't seem to be very bright or deep. I once read at my local library a cover story about her in Vanity Fair magazine. The author had to pad it to make her interesting.

SIX
I watched the game through the end of the third quarter, when the Patriots were ahead 17-15. I was getting tired and didn't want another cup of coffee. Plus I wasn't strongly emotionally invested in either team; I could wait until Monday morning to see the results.

I also was watching the game through a stream at NBCSports.com. However, it was sluggish and got stuck too many times.

I've had problems with viewing videos since I've been hooked up to the internet at my new apartment. I plan to check on how to speed it up.

SEVEN
I also bought a six-pace of beer Saturday,because Indiana doesn't have any retails sales of alcohol on Sundays. However, I didn't even drink one of them.

Lucy ...

in the sky with diamonds, of course.

This is a collage I made about eight years ago, when I got my old Dell computer. I took pictures of Lucille Ball, a city skyline, a paisley background and the red diamonds used on playing cards.

I used MS Paint, a primitive photo-editing program which I rarely use these days.

I also wrote this vignette to go with it:

I can imagine Ricky walking through the door and saying, "Lucy, I'm home."

There's no answer.

Then he sees the Mertzes. Ethel is lying on the floor and is out cold. Fred is gazing out the window with a look of shock on his face.

Ricky says, "Fred, what's going on?"

Fred says, "We came up here to borrow some flour. Lucy wasn't here. Then Ethel looked out the window and fainted, and I...I just can't believe it! Look for yourself, Ricky!"

Ricky looks outside the window and sees...

Lucy...

In the sky...

With diamonds...

I had posted this at another site. I got 13 votes up and 18 votes down, along with this one and only comment:

Lucy would be flattered...I think.

Stop And Correct

Just as parents and their children often will look alike, I'm beginning to believe that some act alike subconsciously.

One example is my mother and me.

My mother had a stroke in 1994 that left her with a moderate case of aphasia and had a hard time speaking. On a scale of 100 to 0, with 100 equaling full conversational ability and 0 equaling muteness, I would say she was between 40-50.

Often when she spoke, she would mispronounce a word or couldn't think of it. Instead of stumbling along with her speech and saying a nonsense word as a place word, she'd either stop speaking and give up or go back and try to get the correct word.

And I, as I write these posts, will often go back and correct the spelling of words and the meaning of sentences as I write, instead of going ahead and writing post, and then going back to correct it.

That's most of the time. As I write this post, I've become self conscious and not correcting the spelling and wording; I will wait until I through.

A Suprise Christmas Gift

Sometimes, the best Christmas gifts are things that you didn't want, but are very glad to get anyway.

Such a gift came to me a little more than two weeks ago.

Between 2:30-3 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 23, in a parking lot on West 86th Street in Indianapolis, I was unloading some paper grocery sacks full of books from my car.

I was planning to sell them at Half Price Books to see what money I could get for them instead of just donating them to charity. I did it as part of my move from my old apartment to my new apartment.

As I was putting the bags on a cart the store lent me, an overweight woman came up and said, "Are you planning to sell those books?"

I was tired because I woke early that day to do several chores related to my move. And when I get tired, I often get angry.

I thought No bitch, I'm fucking putting these book on a fucking cart for my own fucking health. Why the fuck do you want to know?

But I held my tongue. I wasn't that angry. Besides, it was still the Christmas season; peace on Earth and good will toward men would still apply at least for me.

"Would you take $80 for your books?" she asked.

"Hell yes!" I said, taking the assured money, because the price I had received before for books I've taken to Half Price Books has varied greatly. One time I had taken six grocery sacks full of books and only got $40 for them.

(Note: Recently I took four grocery sacks full of books and a half-full sack to Half Price for sale. I received a bid of $37 for them.)

I helped the woman put the books into the trunk of her car. She said her company, a radiology business on the northwest side of Indianapolis, donated books for U.S. military personnel overseas.

So that was my Christmas present for the season. My brothers, their families, and I don't exchange gifts. And my parents, in the last few years before they died, gave us money instead of gifts.

New Year, New Entry, New Efforts

First, I hope you all had a happy holiday season and so far are having a good, if not great, 2012.

Second, this is my first entry in this blog in about three months. I've decided to restart it after a big change in my life.

I moved out of the apartments where I had lived for nearly two decades to a apartment complex in my home town. It's on the western outskirts, halfway in the country; you can tell when the winds roar from the west, as they have during a few nights last week, with no buildings to stop them.

It's about 11.5 miles southeast of my old residence, but seems like a county or two away from my old haunts because I'm not as close to Indianapolis as I was before.

I finally got tired of living there because management -- and this is the second or third management group -- has promised but hasn't acted on improving the complex. Plus, the complex was filling up with white trash.

Someday, I'll write more about the situation, but not now. I need to get more details.

I'm writing this at a computer terminal in my new local library; before, I had posted from my home. But I'm in the middle of unpacking and trying to determine if I currently have phone service or internet access.

I also have too much furniture and need to sell or give the extra pieces away. I must determine how and when and where to do that.

I also plan to write more about my life -- my past and especially my present. As of today, I'm 58 years, 3 months and 19 days old, and the 40th anniversary of my high school graduating class will be later this year.

(UPDATE AS OF FEBRUARY 3: A 40th-year reunion is being planned for some time in October.)

Because of my age, I've decided to take more of a review of the whole process, but after I get hooked up at my new apartment.

Therefore -- watch this space.

Stop, Children ... Decades Later

One morning I heard the Buffalo Springfield song For What It's Worth on the radio.

It's the one with the chorus Stop, children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down.

When I heard that I thought: Damn, I'm old. I remember when that song was first played on the radio.

After checking on the net, I found it was released in January 1967. That was 44 years and 6 months ago.

Damn, I'm old.

Not Fully Human

Here are two examples of people who are not fully human. One never had full humanity. The other had lost it.

One
A boss I had about 35 years ago had the personality of a wall. But it was a wall made of concrete blocks or drywall and not from, say, bricks. They have some character with the mortar sticking out irregularly between them.

Two
There was the mub: Half man and half grub. I once knew a man like that. He was pale with a very light yellowish tinge to his skin. He was bald and short: No taller than 5ft6in, if that. He also wore those eyeglasses where the lenses turn dark in sunlight; his glasses were like that when he was inside.

What was most creepy was that he spoke in low tones, as if he was selling drugs and pornography. And not, say, marijuana and Sports Illustrated/Playboy pinups; it was more like heroin and pictures of teenagers fucking.
*
These are from notes I found in my put-this-in-the-blog-folder. I decided to combine them because they are somewhat related.

interview/innerview

and for what reason do we owe this interview ... or innerview, if you will?

i had published a list of gas prices at several locations in the area. it was the first post in this blog for about six and a half weeks. and it was made for two reasons: i wanted to get something in the blog during may; and it might as well some sort of news report.

as i finished it, i realized that i had started put put aside this interview ... or innerview, as i will.

what was the question you were asked to start that?

in the middle of may, i turned 57 years and 8 months old. my birthday will be in the middle of september; i'll be 58 years old then. and in 2012, i'll be marking the 40th anniversary of my graduation from high school. and i'm not looking forward to it.

why?

time. it passes. and regrets. and it's true. you have more regrets for the things you didn't do. and i haven't done a lot of things.

what are they?

too many to list here. probably later. if ever.

why not do them?

again, age. they are things i wish i had done when i was a younger man. a man my age doing them seems foolish. and i didn't do them because i was psychologically crippled. unfortunately for me.

at times, i feel like i'm stuck at a certain age mentally: like i'm back in high school and i haven't gotten any older. substance abuse counselors and experts say a person gets frozen at a certain age when he or she starts abusing substances, especially alcohol. i might go into the reasons why i feel this, but later, as i said.

and location. this is indiana, where offbeat things and people aren't truly appreciated. i'm tired of anticipating a beforehand explanation of myself and what i do. i'm not doing anything illegal. so shut the fuck up and leave me the fuck alone. and definitely do NOT try to stop me.

you haven't posted that much this year as you have other years. why is that?

i've found other things to take up my time. but i've lost a lot of interest in this blog. plus, i'm going through a nothing-matters-much-so-why-do-anything mental outlook. it might just be a hangover from dealing with the death of my parents.

i've been halfway tempted to delete a lot of these posts and leave just a few remains. i don't get a lot of traffic here, i'll admit that. few people will miss them. many of them don't add that much to the internet conversation. but i they are a lot better then some of the blather i've read in some blogs -- especially the political ones.

but there are four things i'm proud to have written, and i'd leave them here:

• my story about Batman and his discovery of bagels;
• an observation i made of what i call the egoless i;
• my short story 'a few things as the gas and go.'
• and a conversation between a man and his friend named saunders.

jesus, i'm even too fucking lazy to post links to them. prowl through the labels at the right side of this blog; you'll find links to them there and possibly other posts you might enjoy.

so ... what now?

i don't know. i'll just leave this blog here. possibly delete some posts. maybe come back to it later ... definitely by july the fourth, if not before then. because i don't want to delete all of it.

plus, i need to get a new computer. i bought this one in 2004 and it's starting to get slower because it's old.

i noticed you don't have any capital letters in this post, as you did when you first started. any reason why?

i like the look of all small letters.

any last words for today?

gentlemen, whatever you feel for a lady, don't call it love if you just want to get laid.

also, frank wrote me lately. he had this line i want to quote:

be grateful you're alive. and don't be grateful if you're dead. do you think jerry garcia is happy?

ADDENUM: for the record, this is the 570th post in this blog.

Suze

I was off the internet during most of today; in fact, I wasn't even near a computer most of the day.

So I turn on my computer around 4 p.m., get on the internet, and see this sad story:

Suze Rotolo, Bob Dylan's longtime girlfriend during his fledgling days as a Greenwich Village folk singer and the woman who appears alongside him on the famous cover of "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan," passed away this weekend at her home in Manhattan following a long illness, Rolling Stone reports. Rotolo was 67.

In addition to forever being captured on the Don Hunstein-photographed "Freewheelin' " cover, Rotolo's three-year relationship with Dylan, from 1961 to 1964, also inspired him to write three of his early love songs, "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," "Tomorrow is a Long Time," and "Boots of Spanish Leather." (Dylan's breakup with Rotolo also influenced one of his most vitriolic tunes, "Ballad in Plain D," a song Dylan later regretted recording.) Rotolo is also acknowledged for pushing Dylan toward the political awareness that flavored his Greenwich Village work.

"All is gone, all is gone, admit it, take flight. I gagged twice, doubled, tears blinding my sight. My mind it was mangled, I ran into the night. Leaving all of love's ashes behind me," Dylan wrote in "Ballad in Plain D" after his breakup with Rotolo. "The wind knocks my window, the room it is wet. The words to say I'm sorry, I haven't found yet. I think of her often and hope whoever she's met, will be fully aware of how precious she is."

In the many writings about the pair, their relationship is invariably described as "tumultuous" or "rocky." In its obituary for Rotolo, The New York Times points to her autobiography, "A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the 60s" where she describes her difficulty with being a "boyfriend's 'chick,' a string on his guitar."

Following her August 1963 breakup with Dylan, Rotolo reunited with film editor Enzo Bartoccioli, who she met in Italy a year earlier. She later married Bartoccioli, and the couple remained together until her death this weekend. Over the past decades, Rotolo rarely spoke about her time with Dylan, but that changed within the past few years. She was interviewed for Martin Scorsese's Dylan documentary "No Direction Home," and later authored the highly regarded biography "A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties." Rotolo was also a noted illustrator and artist.

She was the woman in the famous iconic album cover of The Freewheeling Bob Dylan: One of my favorite records. Here it is:

I read her book either last year or during 2009; I've forgotten exactly when. I remember little of it now as I think about it. But it had an explanation, which I finally understood, of the idea of the grapevine: How the vines on a grape arbor get tangled and go off in all different directions, like talk often can.

(News story from Amplifier, a music blog at Yahoo.com.)

One Big Mistake

One big mistake I've made in my life is having a lack of courage, or acting like a coward, especially at work.

I have put up with idiots and the idiotic situations that theymade. I can only think of a handful of bosses who i respected as superiors. The rest were idiots who weren't better than me; they were just higher up on an organizational ladder. After I left, those bosses and their organizations were worth only my scorn.

As I look back, many people take silence as approval and acceptance. Unfortunately.

I blame myself. I never had the courage to get away from one thing I wanted: Approval of my father, who ran from confrontational situations and never...never...taught me...or even urged me...to stand up for myself.

The reason is that he never stood up for himself. His mother psychologically castrated him: Cut out his backbone, guts and balls. That's why I despise the bitch.

Meanwhile, his father was distant and didn't get emotionally involved with my father's raising.

I know the word cunt is the deepest insult for a woman...much like nigger is for black...but my paternal grandmother is the one woman who I would call cunt.

That's about it for this post. More self revelations to come.