The Din

I was late getting to the doublewide that I call my office this morning. The (prescription) drugs that I am taking help me sleep later in the morning, even though the local landscape crews routinely violate the local noise ordinances - often starting their infernal noisemaking machines before 7am. Sometimes, you just want to go down there and grab the thirty-odd-six out of the hall closet and shoot the tires out of their truck, but I can tell you from experience, the so-called authorities frown on such nonverbal attempts at communication. You tell them, these mecacahs don't fucking speak English; they say, sir, you can't discharge a firearm within the city limits, especially to damage property. And on and on it goes. So, you might as well just stay in bed and pretend that the lawn machine noise is like the constant hum that the drugs make in your head anyhow.

There is no peace and quiet in the suburbs. On the 2 mile route that I walk every day, there are several tear-down sites. One about 200 yards up the hill from my house is just a big hole in the ground where they have completely removed all traces of the former small ranch house that dwelt on that lot. Pipes, concrete foundation, hydrangia plants - everything. There is a sign that offers to build to suit owner. Every time I walk by and look at the sign my head starts to ache thinking that I will be hearing them pounding and sawing for 4 months while they build a new mansion on the site.
The noise ordinance actually permits them to start banging and sawing at 7am on construction sites. There really ought to be a law against them playing rap music on their big boomboxes. The only positive aspect of this is that all construction sites are silent at 4pm when all the workers quit making noise, jump into their pickup trucks, and go to bars to get drunk.

So, there I was standing outside the doublewide at 9am this morning looking up at a clear blue sky - marked only by the vapor trails of jets careening through the stratosphere on their noisy arcs to their destinations. There is a certain echo of jet plane engines in a cool cloudless autumn sky that I never noticed before 9/11/2001.

I began to think of my upcoming vacation flight to London, the ephemeral nature of nature, the treasure of the present moment. The humming in my head seemed to go away, like someone somewhere had closed a window. The Ativan was kicking in. Finally. Good stuff that.

I opened the door to the new FEMA trailer and went inside. The crew, as usual, was on break. Nobody paid any attention to me. George was explaining how the junk scientists had just proven the existence of dark matter in the universe. Lardass thought it was suspicious that in the same month they also discovered three new planets and Jon benet Ramsey's murderer.

Out of Order

The creative genius that runs the dump has lately been playing a game of king of the hill with the Grim Reaper. So far the score is Grim Reaper nil and DFM 1.

My courageous fight for life might serve as a credible excuse for not updating the blog more often, if I had been more regular in my posting during the less perilous times, but I shall shamelesly play the card anyhow. If you don't like it, I suppose you know what you can do. Ironically, irregularity was one of the symptoms that I should have paid more attention to.

My main reason for this post is to go on record that I am Not watching the TV coverage of the biggest non-news event of the decade. For the hopelessly clueless, I am of course referring to the dramatic and successful global manhunt for the vicious killer of Jon Benet Ramsey ten years ago.

It took most of us 45 seconds to figure out that this guy is a poor sick fuck who needs shock therapy. None of the news people who are covering the story think he is guilty, but they cannot help but run after him like pack wolves after the scent of blood. It is embarrassing just to watch. I have to turn away.

If I was a news director, I would bring all of my reporters into the office and assign them to real news stories - shootings, tunnel cave-ins, airplane crashes, dogs eating their owners' faces - that sort of thing. Then I would have my prettiest and most buxom news reader make a statement: "We really have no facts in this case. Once we really know something for sure, we will be one of the first to report it to you."