Leftovers Again

I watched the latest Star Wars movie, to kill time while I had the birds out. It was worth the six bucks I paid, but then I’d pay six bucks to watch Steven Seagal beat up Ralph Macchio, so don’t read too much into it.

Macchio is back, by the way. He has a series called Cobra Kai on Youtube. I watched the first two episodes, because they were free. Here is all I’m willing to say about it: it’s nice that he’s working again.

Yes. Nice.

I forgot the name of the Star Wars movie. I think it’s The Last Jedi. Can that be right? I thought Obi Wan was the last Jedi. Then Luke was the last Jedi. Is it just me, or are most Jedis the last Jedi?

My take on the Jedis is that they’re in denial. It’s the least impressive cult in history, unless you count what happened after Kanye West decided to worship himself. Even the Mormons managed to take over one state. At their peak, the Jedis probably had 15 members. The Westboro Baptist Church has that beat. When their entire membership travels, they fill 6 or 7 SUV’s. You could put all the Jedis in one school bus, and I mean a short one (negative connotation possibly intended).

The Jedis need an intervention. They need to lose the robes, run down to their local community colleges, get associates’ degrees, and look for work. In each of their futures, there is a store in a mall somewhere, looking for a management trainee. With luck, they could use their mind tricks to get raises and extra sick days. “You didn’t see Mace Windu driving the company van for Uber.”

The rebels…same deal. They’ve been losing for 40 years. It’s over, people. It’s time to pee on the fire and call the ewok. How many times does your movement have to be obliterated before you get the message? More importantly, when will HOLLYWOOD get the message? I feel like I just ate a plate of hash that was cooked in 1977. It’s okay to let Star Wars go. You let Obi Wan and Yoda die. Now let the series die. Some day someone out there will probably have another original idea. It could happen.

In the latest film, the rebels start out with a few hundred members. Think of that. The galaxy has trillions of people, and maybe 300 aren’t down with the empire. Is that a rebellion or just Occupy Wall Street with spaceships? Crazy thought: maybe the empire is legitimate. Maybe everyone else is okay with the Sith. My suggestion: go to the Jakku DMV, get a government ID, find work, and live as well as you can, under the radar.

It worked for me when Obama was president.

The older I get, and the more I know about life, the harder it is to take movies seriously. It’s twice as hard with Star Wars movies, for obvious reasons. They take place in a galaxy that has incredibly advanced technololgy, yet where soldiers wearing thin vinyl body armor shoot glowing bullets you can easily outrun. A galaxy where the cell phone hasn’t been invented.

They also take place in a galaxy where it seems smarter to cast Carrie Fisher than Harrison Ford.

Harrison Ford looks great. He is totally believable as Han Solo. The late Carrie Fisher looked and sounded awful. She shuffled and spoke haltingly, as though she had dementia. She had a speech impediment because she had bad dentures. Who spends hundreds of millions on a movie and forgets spend 5 grand to have the star’s teeth fixed? And she was, indeed, the star. For lack of competition.

Watching Carrie Fisher was depressing. Why, then, was she in the movie? My guess, based on old age and knowing a few things: Harrison Ford cost too much. He could probably get $20 million for a Star Wars movie. Carrie Fisher had no career and no prospects. She was no longer able to act. She had to be way cheaper.

Lupita Nyongo is doing well and making money. That probably explains why her character was only on the screen for about 20 seconds.

Look at the other actors and actresses. Laura Dern? What? Who? Has she been in a movie since Jurassic Park? Adam Driver? He didn’t exist until Star Wars found him. The actors who play Poe, Finn, and Rey are in the same boat. The inexpensive boat.

Poe and Finn are played by actors who don’t have a lot of talent. The Finn character is not as good as some of the people I worked with in high school plays (and they weren’t good at all). The Poe actor comes across as whiny and not bright. He’s supposed to be the new Han Solo, obviously, but he can’t carry Harrison Ford’s blaster.

Mark Hamill is not a great actor, but he punched above his weight this time. Not sure why they decided to kill him. Worried about a bigger fee next time around?

Yes, Luke Skywalker, the previous last Jedi, is dead. He evaporated, like Obi Wan Kenobi, on purpose. Like Obi Wan’s, his suicide served no purpose whatsoever. The rebels were wiped out, Luke showed up to save a remnant, and once they got loaded up in the Millennium Falcon, he went “poof.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that desertion? Nice friend.

The rebels are down to like 9 people (literally), they’re on the run in a creaky old ship piloted by a chimpanzee, their enemies are doing everything possible to kill them, and Luke is off gallivanting around the Star Wars afterlife with Count Dooku and Greedo. Is there a point to it? Of course not. Obi Wan’s death had no point, either. The Star Wars people don’t have a plan. They never had a plan. When they made the first movie, there were no plans for a sequel. They make this crap up, day by day.

Here’s the plan: “Make new movie; sell more dolls.” That’s what you’ll find buried under George Lucas’s mall-sized house, on a scroll made from bantha hide.

I guess I sound like I’m knocking the movie. I am. But I paid six bucks to see it, and that low figure has to be taken into consideration. There were a lot of explosions. There was some cool CGI. I was amused. I don’t feel ripped off.

I hope they’ll eventually quit making these things. It’s starting to be insulting.

I choose not to discuss the giant multi-nippled beast that supplied Luke Skywalker with nourishment. No; it wasn’t Chewbacca.

Leftist Lie Machine Keeps Pumping

It’s amazing how the left has gaslighted the country. They keep telling us the overblown, continually mischaracterized collusion investigation is going to bring President Trump down. They have many of us convinced that “collusion” is a crime, and they keep telling us the charges that have been filed in the case have real relevance to collusion. None of these things are true!

The charges relate to things like lying to investigators (a crime that, by definition, can’t preexist an investigation and therefore could not have taken place during the 2016 campaign), failure to follow obscure administrative rules governing foreign agents, and purportedly unsavory financial transactions. None of those things could be considered collusion, which, again, is not a crime.

There is no crime called “collusion.” No one seems to understand that. Trump could have called Putin every day and told him to like his Tweets, and it would have been legal.

It’s legal for foreigners to try to influence our elections, as long as they don’t cross certain lines, such as contributing to campaigns (*cough cough* millions in unvetted online foreign contributions to Obama’s 2008 campaign *cough*). If you’re the leader of Russia, you can hold news conferences and beg Americans to vote for whoever you want, and Americans can appear with you and say, “Listen to Vladimir!”

If Trump wants, he can consult with Queen Elizabeth, Putin, Duterte, and the Ayatollah Khameini in 2020. He can do it on national TV. It’s not a great idea, but without more, it would be legal.

At its inception, the point of the investigation was to find out whether foreign governments exercised undue or illegal influence on the 2016 campaign, so we would be able to take measures in the future to protect the integrity (LOL) of our elective process. There were no allegations that Trump had committed crimes. None from responsible non-MSNBC employees who actually knew anything, I mean. The public doesn’t understand that. They seem to think they’re seeing a new Watergate. They seem to think Mueller believes Trump was the mastermind behind a sophisticated, broad attempt to defraud voters by illegal means, and that simply isn’t true or even close to true.

Mueller himself seems to have gone completely off the rails. In moves worthy of Brando’s Colonel Kurtz, he has used his powers to go after people for matters unrelated or only tenuously related to the proper subject of the probe. He has managed to create new criminals, by asking previously innocent people difficult, booby-trap questions and then charging them with lying under oath.

People say Mueller is looking for dirt on people with knowledge, in order to scare them into cooperating. Is that okay? Let’s think about it.

Say your son, who is in college in another state, is a drug dealer. Say Mueller is after him. Mueller calls you in for questioning, and like a good citizen, you go. He asks you a lot of hard questions, and your memory isn’t that great, but you answer “to the best of your recollection” (this is what they said to Scooter Libby, who got convicted anyway).

You make mistakes. Mueller records them.

In addition to that, let’s say Mueller somehow finds out you have a foreign-made firearm, and it has an illegal part in it, which you put in by mistake, meant to remove, and then forgot. The part is 100% identical to legal US-made parts in every way. You are now guilty of lying under oath, and you are a felon under a statute known to gun aficionados as 922(r). Then he finds out you have 20 unpaid parking tickets. Mueller charges you with everything he can, and then he says things would go better for you if you had some “helpful” evidence on your son.

Let’s say your defense costs you $750,000. Your IRA is gone. Your house has to be sold. Your daughter has to leave Harvard and go to the University of Mississippi. You have to look for a job at the age of 65.

Is that okay?

This is what’s happening to people right now.

Being charged with a crime and then being set free without prosecution is not a minor thing. People are losing their homes and fortunes. Inheritances are being transferred to the pockets of attorneys. There may actually be individuals who would be better off pleading to felonies fraudulently than defending themselves.

When the Bill of Rights was drafted, the Founding Fathers were looking to protect us from things like this. They said the government couldn’t take things without due process, for example. People like Mueller spend a lot of their time looking for ways to render the Bill of Rights ineffective. Mueller can say, “I never took anyone’s house or money without due process. I never committed extortion.” But he is twisting due process to do the same thing. Is there a meaningful difference?

Many people think Mueller already knows there is no pot of collusion at the end of the Trump rainbow, and that he is going after Trump’s associates unethically just to justify his budget and avoid damage to his own gargantuan ego. That is not unlikely. Prosecutors think about their images all the time. They reject important cases they think they stand a good chance of losing, because they worry about their statistics. It may be that Mueller thinks this way.

Another factor: Mueller is a deep-stater, and Trump has insulted him and the rest of the deep state pretty much continuously since the beginning of the 2016 campaign. A prosecutor is supposed to be impartial, but are they? Judges are supposed to be impartial, but look at the difference in the records of leftist and conservative judges. Is that really the result of unbiased reasoning? Of course not. Mueller is human, and he may well be motivated by animus toward a president who offended him on a personal level.

Most people don’t know that prosecutors are obligated to protect defendants (and witnesses). A defense attorney has virtually no obligation to help a prosecutor, but prosecutors and judges have to do their best to make sure people aren’t harassed or convicted wrongly. Do they do it? Not always, to put it nicely. Is Mueller doing it when he presses charges most prosecutors wouldn’t bother with?

The investigation is interesting, and it has gotten more interesting because a federal judge just poked a hole in Mueller’s balloon. Money quote from a UPI story, regarding the Manafort case:

“I don’t see what relationship this indictment has with anything the special counsel is authorized to investigate,” U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis in the Eastern District of Virginia said.

That’s from UPI, which is basically a leftist organization. It’s not a tweet from Ted Nugent. Isn’t the judge saying pretty much what Trump and his allies have been saying for a long time?

Here’s a quote from the story itself (not the judge, Manafort, or Manafort’s attorneys):

None of the charges relate, however, to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign or possible collusion with Russia.

That’s not opinion. That’s a statement of fact, like, “Melania Trump wore a red dress.” You have to sit up and take notice when an MSM organization says something like that. You can’t say, “Shut up, Russian bot.”

Another interesting quotation regarding the judge:

He also asked the special counsel’s office to share privately with him a copy of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein’s August 2017 memo elaborating on the scope of Mueller’s Russia probe. He said the current version he has been heavily redacted.

That’s BAD for Mueller. It means he can’t go forward until he proves he has the legal right. The judge gave him the burden of proof, and he clearly did it because he thinks Mueller is going to lose. He believes a regular prosecutor should be handling the case. And why is Mueller redacting materials he gives a judge? Ordinarily, we trust judges to do the redacting! How did Mueller get the power to hide things from judges, and why would he do it? Is that acceptable?

Once a regular prosecutor takes over, what will happen? Suddenly the matter will be in the hands of a busy person who has no use for Manafort’s cooperation. The new prosecutor will not have Mueller’s unique motivation to go forward, and he will have to worry about being perceived as a partisan hack. Manafort may be turned loose or given a slap on the wrist.

Another problem for Mueller: precedent. Once a judge decides he’s abusing his power with a defendant, the lawyers for every other defendant will start writing motions. “The prosecution can’t do this or that with regard to my client because…Manafort!” The precedent may not be binding, but any judge worth his salt will give it great weight.

Judges don’t like to do their own homework (which is why post-adolescent clerks do it), and they don’t like bucking a trend. When a judge sees a heavily researched opinion slapping Mueller down, he will have a lot of motivation to follow it. That will be even more true if he’s the same judge who issued that opinion. Citing a judge’s own rulings to him is more persuasive than citing God himself. My dad taught me that. “Didn’t you say, in an earlier case…”

It has worked for me.

The salivating of left-wing pundits is very tiresome. The country needs another issue to talk about. Or maybe it doesn’t. I think Trump is getting a lot of things done simply because the press won’t shut up about collusion. They only have so much bandwidth with which to obstruct him. If they were talking more about the things he is trying to accomplish, they might have a better chance of impeding him.

Is Trump worried? I doubt it. An insider was quoted thus, with regard to Trump’s anxiety over legal problems: “He does. Not. Care.” I thought that was funny. Imagine how many times a billionaire gets sued by the age of 70. It must mean nearly nothing to him. He’s not going to be charged. He won’t be impeached. He will probably win in 2020, based on the bustling economy. If he were impeached, he would probably force the Senate to try him, and that would go nowhere. He may be eccentric, but he’s not stupid or cowardly.

Giuliani is on his team now. I thought that was great news when I heard it. Now I’m not so sure. Giuliani made some startling admissions about the porn star payoff. He says Trump repaid Michael Cohen, who paid a porn star to be quiet about Trump. Had Trump not repaid Cohen, the payment could have been cast as a violation of campaign finance law. Giuliani says the repayment clears Cohen. Now people claiming to know a few things are saying it’s still a violation.

I thought Giuliani was a very, very sharp lawyer who would find the answer behind closed doors and then make his move only after he was sure of his aim. Is that true? It sort of looks like he did a few minutes of Googling on his smartphone and then blurted out a half-baked conclusion that may hang somebody.

I hate seeing lawyers talk to the press. It’s wrong. It prejudices potential jurors. It gives opposing counsel ammunition. I believe it’s unethical, and it is definitely a bush-league tactic. Giuliani shouldn’t do it. They say he’s the guy who invented the perp walk, though, so he must feel differently.

Did the payment violate the law? I can’t judge. I don’t know the law or the facts. Not my field. Maybe Giuliani knows exactly what he’s doing. If so, we will probably see more of him. If not, he will disappear, and we will see more of that new guy Trump hired. I forget his name.

A good lawyer doesn’t shoot from the hip. I do it here, where it doesn’t matter, but if I were being paid, I would be logging a whole lot of research hours, and I would never say anything without preparation and some assurance that I was making things better, not worse.

Giuliani was a government employee, and that kind of work doesn’t draw the best people. Sometimes a bright person slips through, though. I don’t know what the truth is.

I look forward to the judge’s decision on Manafort and Mueller. It could be a beautiful thing.

New Scourge to Brighten my Days

When I moved from Miami to the frigid tundra here in northern Florida, I did not see the learning curve coming. It keeps slapping me in the face. Today’s challenge: mice. Not a big issue in Miami.

I got up today and made my way to the room where I hang out. I have a couch and recliner set up in front of the TV/computer. When I watch TV with the birds, I put an old quilt on the couch to protect it. I tend to forget to take it off and fold it up. Good thing, because this morning it had little black items on it. Mouse poo.

How did this happen? Who do I complain to? This is not acceptable.

I’ve lived north of the Florida line in the past. I didn’t have mouse problems. This house is so nice, I assumed it was sealed up against pests. I didn’t expect indoor rodents. Now I have to kill them.

The last time I killed household rodents, it was a desperate situation. Rats were running amok in a house destroyed by a drug addict. When I walked in the front door during the day, I could hear them rattling around in the kitchen cabinets. I used Tomcat poison on them. They disappeared quickly. I wasn’t worried about the smell of decaying rats, and I wasn’t in a position to use traps, which require a lot of looking after. Now I’m reading up on mice, and it looks like traps are the way to go.

It’s hard for me to believe that a half-ounce mouse can create much of a smell when it dies, but I don’t want to take a chance.

I guess dropping food scraps into the waste can was not a great move. It must have drawn the mice to the sitting area. Perhaps throwing out excess cheese-flavored popcorn was a bad idea. I hope they didn’t use the remotes.

It appears that I now have two options: never use the waste can for anything a mouse can eat, or remove the bag every night and put it in the garage.

It’s surprising how many things I have to kill in order to have a peaceful life here.

I hate a mouse. I really do.

My Aunt Jean had the worst mice imaginable. She was obsessive about cleanliness. She grew peanuts, and because she had to have the cleanest peanuts on earth, she washed them after she dug them. They rotted and had to be thrown out. Next time around, she didn’t wash them, so they didn’t rot. But they started to disappear. One day she showed me a gallon jug full of peanuts. There was also a filing cabinet drawer that had been filled. The mice had moved the peanuts, presumably one at a time. Thousands of them. She had to throw them out, because how do you get mouse residue off a peanut?

It was like an episode of Monk.

I am tempted to get glue traps, because you don’t have to bait them. You just put them down and pick them up. But glue is not very nice to the mice. They struggle for a long time. I had a rat run across my house with a glue trap stuck to it. I guess snap traps are the answer. How nice.

Well, maybe I’m wrong. I am reading that mice get less gullible with time, and that you need to make a big assault on the first day you go after them. Maybe the best answer is several snap traps and several glue trays.

Miserable, stinking creeps. They will rue the day.

Plus Retro Joy

It looks like Charlie Rose is all done. A Drudge-linked story says he is accused of serial groping.

I was reading about it and Googling around, and somehow I landed on Charles Kuralt. Remember him? He was a CBS reporter who got tired of covering hard news. He got the network to give him an RV, and he drove around America’s back roads for decades, doing human interest stories.

Charles Kuralt, who died before he could be accused of fondling anyone, is a lot more interesting than Charlie Rose. I’m glad I got sidetracked.

As soon as I started reading about Kuralt, I asked the obvious question: are there DVD’s? Yes, there are. There are at least three DVD compendiums of “On the Road” segments.

I am considering buying a set, but I’m afraid to. I’m afraid it will make me too sad to live. Also, I feel like if I watch Kuralt zip through the decades, as soon as I finish, the world will come to an end. Somehow I feel that the earth will plunge instantly into violence and chaos, demons will be set free on every continent, the clouds will part, and Charles Kuralt and Charles Schulz will appear in the heavens, beckoning me upward out of this tiresome mess.

Kuralt was a class act. Makes me wish I had an RV.

If This is Consciousness, Knock me Out

I just finished Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. This is the second-to-last book in my painful slog through the Columbia College Literature Humanities Syllabus (as modified by yours truly).

I should have finished this book in ten days, but it took weeks. The reason is clear. I got so bored with Lit. Hum. books, I got to the point where I only read them in one room of the house, if you get my drift. It’s not a place where I spend a lot of time, so my pace was glacial.

I’m sure you don’t want to read Virginia Woolf, but just in case you’re insane, let me point out that this blog post contains spoilers. Not that it’s possible to spoil this book. That would be like ruining the intestinal flu.

There is a philosopher (i.e. person who has decided to waste his existence) named Ramsay. He has a wife named…I forgot her name. They have 8 kids. The wife is incredibly beautiful, even though the book starts when she is 50 and presumably fairly well stretched out and saggy in all respects (8 kids). They have a house on an island. For some reason, practically everyone they know hangs out at the house. It is not clear whether they help pay for groceries.

Ramsay is very selfish. He feels bad about his life, as he should, so from time to time he interrupts what his wife is doing so he can share his self-pity with her and get some sympathy. He says snotty things to people for no clear reason. Everyone always has to do what he wants to do.

Mrs. Ramsay is stupid. She spends her time pondering about things like the lengths of socks. She does not know what a square root is.

Mrs. Ramsay dies, and the house falls apart. Then Mr. Ramsay has it fixed. Some of the remaining members of the family (2 kids have died at this point, perhaps to avoid appearing in the second half of the book) go back to the house with their dad and some of the entourage. Mr. Ramsay and two of his kids make some peasants row them across the bay to a lighthouse.

The end.

I just saved you 8 dollars.

There is no plot. There are no characters. Everyone is pretty much the same. No one ever says anything funny or interesting. There are ZERO laughs in the book. There are no clever lines you will want to memorize or underline.

Why? Why does this book exist?

It astounds me that anyone could enjoy this book or think it worthy of publication, especially after reading good books. Think of 1984, Catch-22, or even The Catcher in the Rye. Read one of those, and then try to force your way through To the Lighthouse. The difference is day and night.

Is it affirmative action at work? “Come on, guys, we have to find a woman to publish. People are starting to talk.” Surely not. There are some decent female writers out there. Surely female talent is not so rare that the publication of Virginia Woolf’s meanderings is in any way justified.

I’m a smart guy. I’m not the problem here. If this book was good, I would have seen something in it. It’s just not. It’s horrendous.

Virginia Woolf was mentally ill, so maybe that explains the book’s badness. She put rocks in her pockets and walked out into a river to die. The book is packed with internal monologues, and it was written by a tortured individual who was borderline insane. Maybe it’s bad because people with Ms. Woolf’s type of mental illness have boring, chaotic inner narratives. Virginia Woolf may have assumed the rest of us thought the same way she did. A writer can’t connect unless he has something in common with the reader, and apart from breathing oxygen, I have nothing at all in common with Ms. Woolf. I have a sense of humor. I am smart. I like books with plots and characters. I like books that have themes. I could go on.

It’s sad that people encouraged her.

Am I wrong? Are most human beings this boring, inside? My inner monologues are highly entertaining and full of relatively intelligent notions. If I had Mrs. Ramsay’s inner voice, I’d have to smoke meth to stay awake.

James Joyce was also a stream-of-consciousness perpetrator who wrote inner monologues, and his were as boring as Woolf’s. Maybe this is how most people think. I don’t know. I’ve never been in anyone else’s head. Why would you write the boring thoughts of a boring person, especially if the person were fictitious? Wouldn’t it make more sense to write interesting thoughts? Just my take on the matter. But then I always wonder why manufacturers design ugly cars, when good-looking cars cost the same to produce.

The book isn’t all bad. It has the shining virtue of being shorter than other bad books Columbia has inflicted on its students. I took that into consideration when I chose to include it in my list. The Lit. Hum. syllabus varies from year to year, so I felt entitled to make changes.

I am finally free to move on to Lord of the Flies, which should be entertaining, if only because of the violence. Sad that it comes down to that. I doubt the book will teach me much about life. My understanding is that it’s about kids who commit atrocities on each other in the absence of adults. I know about that. I have an older sister.

I used to enjoy literature, but then I chose books that sounded good to me, not pretentious crap recommended by grey-souled academics who live in denial. The Lit. Hum. experience is almost enough to turn me off literature entirely. I do like Shakespeare, though, and there are a few other things I would like to re-read. St. Exupery. Dumas. Orwell, the secular prophet. I might even go through Ayn Rand’s comic-book novels again before I die. Virginia Woolf…no. It is a complete waste of effort.

If you’re buying presents for friends who like to read, scratch Ms. Woolf off the list. Her work is too appallingly dull even for regifting.

My Behind is Moving Up in the World

I have passed another giant milestone. My couch has arrived.

For the last two months, I’ve been sitting on a molded Adirondack chair from Home Depot. I’ve been trying to conserve cash and be responsible, so furniture has not been a top priority. I ordered a couch for the downstairs area, thinking my dad would get tired of chairs, but it was damaged when Amazon delivered it, so I refused it. He said he didn’t care whether he had a couch or not. I haven’t made much effort to try again. A couple of weeks ago, I ordered a second couch for the upstairs room, and now I have it.

This is wonderful. I have fabric. I have cushions. I have two throw pillows. In two days, I’ll have a quilted couch protector I can throw on when the birds come to visit. Can life possibly get any better?

Actually, it can get better. I broke down and ordered a recliner. I needed it. I can’t have male friends visit without a second piece of furniture. I don’t want to look like Barry Obama in the famous college couch picture, in which he and another male were seated right up against each other, with the whole far end of the couch vacant. That just isn’t done. Obama is gay, if one of his private letters is to be believed, but I am not. I do not share furniture with men unless I have no choice. It’s like starting a conversation with a stranger at a urinal.

Unacceptable

I’ve learned that furniture is complicated. The bad cheap stuff looks almost exactly like the good expensive stuff, so you have to do research. Actually, that’s not true. The really cheap stuff looks cheap. But the stuff that’s one level up from really cheap can look very much like good furniture.

The first couch I ordered was an Ashley something or other. It’s a $500 couch, more or less. As I understand it, $500 is pretty much the dividing line between good cheap and bad cheap. Tons of people on Amazon loved the couch I ordered, so I figured it was a safe choice. It had some kind of fake leather upholstery, and that was important, given that a dementia sufferer would be using it. Sometimes you need a washable couch.

Amazon promised free delivery, to the inside of my house. They sent one person, alone, to carry a couch. He could not get it through the door. Then he pointed out a big forklift hole in the fabric under the couch. I sent it back.

While the couch was here, I noticed that the bottom was particle board. That’s not acceptable. I can deal with plywood or pine. Particle board is an insult. And it looks like head cheese.

Maybe that couch was okay, but I decided to move up one level on the next order. I went with Broyhill. My understanding is that there is total crap, crap, near-crap, and then, one stratum up, adequate furniture. Broyhill is considered adequate. That was fine for me and my man refuge.

I’m sitting on the couch now. My rear end is in ecstasy. I had forgotten what cushions felt like. The couch appears to be well-made. It looks nice. It has two great-looking pillows. The wooden feet were assembled skillfully from bits of real hardwood. The fabric is tasteful but not luxurious. Seems okay to me. If I wanted a 20-year couch that would impress shallow visitors, I would have spent three grand, but you can do okay for a lot less.

Once I had the couch, the need for the recliner was painfully obvious.

Here is the lowdown on recliners: anything under $500 is dubious. You can get something pretty nice for $1000. Really good ones cost considerably more. I believe I have that right.

Recliners tend to fall apart mechanically, especially when they belong to big balls of lard who weigh over 250 pounds. The cheap ones are more likely to fail. I think.

People criticize La-Z-Boy a lot, so I was reluctant to dive in. I found some great sale prices on recliners from better companies, but they weren’t hard core recliner companies. Would you buy a BMW water heater? I wouldn’t. I wanted a recliner-company recliner. I’m sure a Hooker Furniture recliner will last forever, but do they know how to make them mooshy and decadent, as they should be? I don’t know.

I found out that Barcalounger has a premium line they call “Vintage.” They claim they use better parts. I decided to check them out. For some reason, retailer prices vary wildly. A modest La-Z-Boy which I would not trust runs about $700. Barcalounger Vintage recliners sell for over a thousand. Usually. If you look around, you will find sites that sell them for $700-$800. You won’t be able to find every color you want, but on the other hand, the available colors won’t be crazy. It’s not like buying the orange Pinto no one else would take.

I don’t understand it at all. I found a Barcalounger Vintage for $750 on one site, and it was selling for over $1000 on other sites. I found a number of different models selling cheap.

I almost bought a Barcalounger Presidential. You have to Google this thing. It’s completely over the top. It’s all leather and nails. It has a tufted, winged back about five feet across. It’s so manly, it’s hilarious. At the last minute I decided not to get it, because I didn’t think that kind of upholstery would be sufficiently decadent. I went with a model that has leather arms and fabric cushions.

I know that sounds weird, and it’s not as tasteful as all-leather. But when you look at it, it screams “COMFORT!” You can tell a man designed it. “I don’t care if it looks funny. Shut up! Why aren’t you getting me a beer?” Turn Al Bundy loose in a furniture store, and he will make a bee line for this chair every time.

Because I have parrots, I’m going to have to use furniture protectors, and I read that they slide around on leather. Fabric will keep them where they should be, and it will be mighty cozy on cool nights.

It’s a power recliner. Reclining manually is just too hard. Not sure what happens if the power goes out or the motor dies. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

There are super-expensive recliners which are probably much better, but they would be overkill in an upstairs bonus room, and anyway, a chair like that would make my couch look bad.

I think it will be great.

I chose a recliner because I don’t want to fill up the floor. It occurred to me that a recliner contains its own disappearing ottoman, so it saves space. I will still need one for the couch.

Now I need an end table, a TV stand, and a table lamp. Or maybe I’ll just get a Home Depot torchiere. I don’t know if I’ll get a coffee table. They take up a lot of room. Couple of nice collapsible tables might make more sense. Like TV trays, only less crappy.

I considered getting a leather armchair and ottoman, because a leather ottoman would outlast a fabric ottoman that matches my couch. Oh well. I’ll just have to try not to maul the ottoman with my boots.

I wonder how Turks feel when they find out people call footstools “ottomans.”

I continue scouring Craigslist for breakfast tables. If I don’t find one, I’ll have to tell my friends Thanksgiving dinner is off. I bought a new couch because I don’t trust used cushions. When it comes to non-upholstered furniture, used is the only way to go. You can wash the baby pee and whatever else off of it.

By the way, if you buy a sleeper sofa, you’re stupid. I don’t mean that in a mean way. I’m just trying to help you get in touch with reality. I thought about a sleeper, but they’re heavy, they’re expensive, they’re uncomfortable, and they’re obsolete. For $150, you can get a wonderful air mattress that inflates and deflates itself, and which feels better than a real bed. Do not buy a sleeper bed. It’s a bonehead play.

This is very nice. I feel great. I have missed upholstery.

My mother never had nice furniture. My dad would not spring for it, even though he made good money. She bought estate stuff and things that were on sale at outlets. The only new couches we ever had were pretty bad. This one is considerably better, in my opinion.

Maybe some day I’ll hang a picture on a wall. It could happen.

Sinking Out of Spite

I had some more surprises this week.

I’m trying to sell my dad’s yacht, and we have a contract on it. Day before yesterday, the dockmaster at the marina called me in the morning to say an alarm was going off on the boat, and he said it looked a little low in the front. I called my house sitter and had him take a look. Water was coming up in the compartment under the floor of the forward stateroom. It wasn’t an emergency, but it needed to be attended to that day. I knew it was probably a bad bilge pump or a bad float switch.

A bilge pump is a sort of sump pump that sits in the bottom of a boat and pumps out excess water. It prevents the boat from sinking. Including backups, my dad’s boat has six pumps. A float switch is a switch that turns a pump on when water rises and lifts it.

The people at the marina pump boats in emergencies, but their minimum charge is $500, for what may be an easy 15-minute job. I wanted to avoid that.

I called Carlos (random false name), the guy who does most of the repair work on the boat, and I told him water was rising and that he needed to go to the boat. He said he would do it.

Problem solved. Right?

Next morning, the dockmaster calls me again. He says there are a thousand gallons of water in the boat. He says there is no time to wait. I call Carlos immediately and ask why he hasn’t fixed the boat. Carlos says he didn’t think it was urgent. Out come the excuses. It’s my fault for not screaming, “THE BOAT IS SINKING!”

Carlos has been working on boats for 40 years. He was in the Navy. By now, one would think he had learned that when water starts rising in a boat, you go and fix it TODAY. I’m not a boat expert, but I would have been there in five minutes, had I not moved 300 miles. Carlos didn’t even check it. That’s inexcusable. It’s flat-out incompetence. Totally irresponsible. Carlos thought it was highly professional.

I tell Carlos my dad has a submersible pump in his garage in Miami. He needs to go over and get it, to avoid the huge pumping charge. No, Carlos says. There’s too much water.

The dockmaster pumps it out, and he sends me a photo. The water never got up over the floor. There is no damage. There was probably 200 gallons of water in the boat. Carlos could have pumped it out easily with my dad’s pump. Had he felt like getting off his butt.

Carlos then installs a new pump, at $85 per hour.

It may be a little risky for Carlos to replace the seacock, but he can replace the hose very easily. He just doesn’t want to. Maybe he wants us to pay to have the boat hauled.

This is not the first bad experience we’ve had with Carlos. He routinely failed to return calls for days. He sold my dad a Furuno radar with the buttons chewed off by rats. He said it was new, and that he had stored it for a while, and the rats had gotten to it. He said he would order us new buttons. It was a steal.

I eventually asked him why the buttons hadn’t been replaced. “Oh, that’s an old radar. They don’t have parts for that any more.”

Recently, one of the toilets had a problem. Carlos fixed it. He sent a bill for $1900, on a boat he knew we were going to have to get rid of. If we had sold it with a broken head, we would have gotten exactly the same price we are getting now. The $1900 is money, literally, down the toilet.

Carlos says there’s a leaking hose up front that caused the water problem, and he can’t fix it because he can’t close the seacock to keep the water out. He said you can’t replace a hose on a stuck seacock without hauling the boat. I reminded him that he used to replace hoses and seacocks on boats sitting at docks, by having a diver go over the side and hold a toilet plunger over the holes while he worked. I guess he thought I had forgotten that. No, no; he insisted. You have to haul the boat.

Carlos is not a bad person, but he likes to find things he can fix, he seems to like avoiding hard jobs, and he is never wrong. He never says, “Wow, I blew it.”

Now I’m waiting for a $500 bill for a problem I could have fixed in half an hour with three tools and a cheap pump. I’m guessing Carlos will hit us for around $300, plus the pump. The pump should be around $75, but I have a feeling…

So figure $800, minimum.

At least I’m rid of the boat AND Carlos. I don’t dislike Carlos, but I want him out of my life, permanently. He is a financial drain and a source of unnecessary aggravation, and you can’t tell him a damned thing. You’re always wrong, and Carlos is always right, and if you alienate him by calling him on his BS, you may end up having to hire someone substantially worse.

The crazy thing is this: as boat gypsies go, Carlos is a jewel. Most don’t show up at all. They drink. They take drugs. They charge for work they didn’t do. They do unbelievably bad work. They walk off jobs. Carlos usually shows up after a few days or a couple of weeks, and most of his work is good. I guess I would actually recommend Carlos if someone asked, because his colleagues are like confused monkeys.

If you want to get stinking rich, learn how to fix boats, move to the shore, and do minimally competent work for an honest price. You will be so busy you won’t know what to do with yourself. Everyone will want to hire you.

When the dockmaster said there were a thousand gallons of water in the boat, I pictured ruined carpeting, soaked electric motors, stained and swollen paneling…the works. I’m not sure he knows how big a gallon is. I really appreciate him looking after the boat, though, because needless panic is better than letting the boat sink.

Carlos started rattling off things that needed to be fixed. I told him not to fix anything but the pump. I just want it to float until we get rid of it. The broker agrees.

I had to tell him the boat was sold. I was trying to avoid that, because he wanted to make an offer on it. We talked about it a couple of months back, and he talked the boat down. That’s fine, but he made it seem like he was trying to do us a favor, and that was a little insulting. The fact that I don’t remind you that I’m not a sucker doesn’t mean I’m not aware that you’re treating me like one. Miami people don’t understand things like that. They only understand what you spell out for them.

I was afraid he would charge more or do inferior work if he knew he wasn’t getting the boat. Now that the bilge pump is fixed, I’m afraid there may be a “This is what you get for not selling me the boat” surcharge.

The buyers want to take it to the Caymans, where they live. That’s fine, but they really need to haul it and check all the hoses and seacocks. If it starts to go down because of a bad hose, they’ll be in real trouble out there.

I’m not sure how much to babysit them. If I start nagging them about safety, they probably won’t haul the boat. They’ll probably do exactly as they please, or they’ll want me to cut the price.

Barring more surprises, I may be rid of the boat on Friday. Then they have until Halloween to move it. Then I dance in the yard, singing hallelujah. After that, I rent the slip to someone, and then I count the days until I can sell it and do a 1031 exchange on a piece of commercial real estate.

Boats are a headache. Do not buy a boat. A bass boat is fine. A canoe is fine. Anything over 20 feet will make you sorry you bought it. Anything you keep in the water will be even worse, because it will be vulnerable to storms, dock damage, theft, vandalism, and unexpected catastrophic bilge pump failure.

I’m all done with boats. A boat is like a giant tick that’s always thirsty. We haven’t used this one in years, and it’s still sucking the life out of me. Dumping it will turn it and the slip from financial drains to income producers.

We should have gotten rid of it five years ago, but my dad loved it. He spent almost every day sitting on the boat. He refused to accept reality. He would tell me we needed to go to the Bahamas. Okay, first of all, filling it in the US would have run $2200. And diesel is cheap here compared to the Bahamas. You can’t come home unless you refill it there. After that problem is dealt with, what are two old men going to do in the Bahamas by themselves? And how are they going to handle the boat alone? A boat trip is a gigantic amount of work for three or four people. For two–one of whom will not be doing anything but drinking beer–it’s a Herculean labor.

I understand why he enjoyed the boat. He didn’t do anything. He sat on the flybridge drinking one Lite beer after another. I would enjoy that, too, if it were a better beer.

Here’s what I had to do for a half-day trip off Miami:

1. Go buy bait and ice.
2. Salt the bait.
3. Rig the baits in advance.
4. Prepare the rods. Change line, tie leaders, and so on.
5. Check the oil and water in the motors and generator.
6. Check the transmission oil.
7. Make sure everything runs.
8. Check the heads and make sure they work.
9. Fill the fresh water tank and make sure the pump works.
10. Buy sunscreen, food, and beverages and load them onto the boat.
11. Get the boat running on the morning of the trip.
12. Cast off the lines.
13. Monitor my dad so he doesn’t run the boat aground on the way out of the bay.
14. Get the bait out.
15. Monitor the baits while we troll. Untangle fouled lines. Remove seaweed from lines. Replace stolen baits.
16. Teach every guest how to tie the same knot I taught them last time.
17. Teach every guest how to hook a fish.
18. Yell instructions to my dad while we fight fish, while telling the guests what not to do.
19. Deal with the inevitable mechanical, electrical, or head problems which occur because my dad doesn’t like spending money on maintenance. This may involve going into a loud, 120-degree engine room and working there for long periods.
20. Get the rods in order while we cruise back in.
21. Clean the fish.
22. Dump the excess ice and bait.
23. Clean the cooler.
24. Clean the boat.
25. Put the rods away.

For a Bahamas trip, you can add things like get the life raft certified, get the EPIRB certified, pack the entire boat with food and drinks, get the GPS ready, prepare my dad’s house, board my birds, stop the periodicals, stop the mail, make reservations for a slip in the Bahamas…it’s endless.

You can see why I got tired of it. And again, old men do not go on Bahama trips with their dads. Even if they did, my dad was not physically or mentally able to go. He would have come home in a box.

I don’t know when his dementia started kicking in, but he had extremely unrealistic ideas about the boat at least five years ago.

He still says we should get a top price for the boat, because he kept it in peak condition. I must disagree. The seacocks are a mess. The hoses need to be replaced. The furniture and mattresses are done. The carpeting is done. The engine room wiring needs to be gone through. The heads are disgusting. The fridge is rusting apart. The life raft needs to be redone. The canvas is shot. The woodwork needs professional refinishing. The hull needs painting, and it may have blisters.

It would be nice to hear him say, “The boat is a mess and we kept it way too long.” That will never happen.

By this time next week, I hope to be boat-free, and one month from now, I hope to welcome a paying tenant. Fishing was fun. Cruising to the Bahamas on your own yacht is a rare privilege. Great. That’s over now. Time to do something new that doesn’t cost $15,000 per year. I don’t want boats. I want commercial warehouses. Commercial warehouses don’t sink.

I should go outside and clear the yard of sticks so I don’t stub my toes while I dance.

The Errors of my Youth Now Look Like Master Strokes

I finally finished Crime and Punishment, and that means I am done with the real jawbreakers of the Columbia Lit. Hum. reading list. It also means it’s time for me to unload on Dostoevsky.

Do I have to say it? This book is boring. Boredom seems to be the unifying trait of the Lit. Hum. selections. C&P isn’t nearly as boring as tedium titans like Don Quixote and The Iliad, but it holds its own.

People say Dostoevsky is a literary giant, and that this book is a masterpiece. Did we read the same book? I found C&P clumsy, poorly structured, improbable to the point of making suspension of belief impossible, long-winded, uninspired, and depressing.

Get ready for spoilers.

Raskolnikov, an empty, impoverished intellectual, decides he’s a super being. He is important, and the rest of us are insects. Accordingly, he decides to murder an old lady and rob her in order to support his studies. Then he’s too much of a wuss to deal with the fear of prosecution, so he goes insane temporarily and then, after about 3/4″ of needless tedium (as the bookworm crawls), he turns himself in and goes to Siberia.

The “P” part of C&P is around ten pages long. If you’re hoping to get insights on the Tsar’s penal system, from an author who lived in it, forget it.

One of the dumbest things about this book is the notion that a sociopath capable of murdering an old lady with a hatchet would be tormented by anxiety afterward. Real sociopaths blame their victims, society, white privilege, global warming, and God knows what else, and they don’t have a healthy person’s concerns about the consequences of their actions. The real Raskolnikovs go about their business without much distress, and many of them are never caught. That wouldn’t make a good story, though. I suppose it would be even worse than C&P.

This book is so unimportant as a life experience, I feel I would be cheating myself by spending a significant amount of time criticizing it. I’ve already been overcharged temporally. I don’t want to prolong the time-wasting.

When you read a really good work of literature, such as a Shakespeare play, you come across all sorts of memorable stuff. You find things you want to underline and memorize. Things resonate with you. Maybe you will find things that inspire you or change your outlook in a lasting way. No danger of that with Dostoevsky. C&P is a meaningless tale about a bunch of idiots who don’t have a clue about anything. Is it supposed to be a nihilist work? I can’t even tell. Surely there is a point to such pointlessness.

There isn’t one single admirable person in the book. There is no character you would consider capable of giving intelligent advice. There is no one in the book who I would want to know. Every character is a fool and a failure.

The last two books on the Lit. Hum. list are by Toni Morrison and Virginia Woolf. I consider one a whiny, victimhood-obsessed affirmative action case and the other a wretched, hopelessly conceited person who failed at existence. I’m going with William Golding for my next choice, and I can’t remember who comes after that. My blog has a search function, so I suppose I’ll find out what I chose.

Lord of the Flies is a much better book than C&P, because it’s under 200 pages long. If it were a pamphlet, it would be better still.

Has the Lit. Hum. list been a total waste of time? No. I learned a lot about the development of Western thought by reading the stuff that came before Cervantes. I got some historical perspective. Other than that, it has generally been a bad experience.

I can’t understand why people love these books. I see why we are forced to read many of them, but I think people who claim they enjoy them are full of it. I enjoyed Catch-22. I enjoyed Animal Farm, The Count of Monte Cristo, Cyrano de Bergerac, Voltaire, a bunch of the French poets, , D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, James Thurber, Antoine de St. Exupery, and a lot of other things I’ve read. Enjoying Homer is probably impossible.

People love to pretend they enjoy things they don’t. A lot of people pretend they enjoyed Ulysses, which is about as much fun as a twenty-hour dental cleaning. Me, I admit there are books I can’t stand. Think I’m stupid if it makes you happy. I am okay with that, because if you think I’m stupid, your opinion means nothing to me.

I may put Virginia Woolf back on the list. I just checked, and her book is only 200 pages. I know quality when I see it.

Yes, she’s back on the list. I checked some other options, and they’re way longer. Forget that.

I can’t believe how long it has taken me to read this garbage. These books, I mean. I thought I would breeze through it in two months, but the pain was just too much. I had to space it out. I started in the summer of 2016, and it is nearly fall, a year later. Surprising.

I thought I might go through Columbia’s Contemporary Civilization readings, too, but what if they’re just as horrible? Also, I don’t think Macchiavelli and Hobbes are going to have a major positive influence on me at this stage of my life.

Will this experience drive me to resume reading literature? No way. I don’t miss it at all. I may look at Shakespeare from time to time, and I will surely read a few other things, but I’m basically done with fiction. I got tired of it in my twenties, and Lit. Hum. reminded me why that happened. Lost, bitter people who don’t know God, making up unpleasant stories to justify their discontent. That’s most of literature, in a nutshell. You really have to pick and choose.

Now that I’ve read Crime and Punishment, I can’t wait to get out there and not read the rest of Dostoevsky’s works. My crime was refusing to do the reading when I took Lit. Hum. in college, and my punishment is nearly over. I don’t plan to become a recidivist.

Maybe I should study Columbia’s Art Hum. curriculum and learn to be glad I don’t care about art.

That’s it until I get started on Golding. No, Woolf. Whatever.

Time to go ride on the tractor while listening to Christian music and packing a 10mm.

THE END IS HERE

It’s time to repeat my eternal criticism of the hurricane press: they make things seem worse than they are.

Whenever a storm gets close to Florida, they do their best to make people think it’s headed right for their houses. When a storm moves toward Miami and then changes direction, they wait as long as possible before admitting Miami isn’t taking a hit.

Fake news at its best.

The fake hurricane news people have a lot of reasons for lying to us. For one thing, hysteria increases viewership. When you’ve spent a lot of money gearing your station up for constant hurricane coverage, you don’t want to say things like, “Oops. Never mind.” Viewers will relax, turn off the TV, and go to bed. Here’s another motivator: if they underestimate the thread, people will raise hell later on. The news people don’t want people telling them their homes got messed up because they listened to rosy forecasts and didn’t prepare. In today’s ridiculous legal environment, a station could conceivably get sued. “Dear 96-year-old Effa May here believed you when you said Hurricane Bob wasn’t going to hit her trailer…”

I am no meteorologist, but it looks like they’re lying to us now.

According to the Internet, Irma’s hurricane-force winds extend outward from the center something like 65 miles. That means if you’re over 65 miles away, you will not experience a hurricane. You will get a tropical storm, which means winds of 74 mph or less. The 74 mph figure applies to the 65-mile mark. If you’re farther away, you will get lower winds.

They now expect the center of the storm to be about 100 miles away from Miami when it passes. That means Miami would be 35 miles past the hurricane zone. Nonetheless, they’re claiming it will be like a Category 3 storm in Miami. Category 3 means a minimum of 96 mph, sustained. Not gusts. Sustained. In order for that to happen, the center of the storm will have to be what? Maybe 30 miles away? Come on.

They’re telling us Irma is the size of Texas. No, it’s not. Not the important part. Texas is 800 miles wide. Irma’s hurricane zone is around 130 miles wide. Eyeballing the map, it appears that the tropical storm zone is around 400 miles wide. That’s half of 800. Sure, there may be clouds extending out over 800 miles. Are you afraid of clouds? A cloud 400 miles from the center of a hurricane is just a cloud.

Here is what appears to be true, from a person who is capable of reading a map and doing high school geometry: unless Irma deviates 35 or more miles east of the projected path, Miami will not get hurricane winds. If it deviates exactly 35 miles east, Miami will get low Category 1 winds. If it stays on track or deviates west, Miami will get winds considerably lower than 75 mph.

I survived Andrew. I knew Andrew. Irma…you’re no Andrew.

Andrew’s winds within the Miami area reached at least 170 mph, not including tornadoes. I saw four-foot-thick concrete power poles twisted off at their bases. That can’t happen when the hurricane’s center is a hundred miles away.

A few days ago, we were looking at a 185-mph storm that appeared likely to hit Miami dead center as a Category 5. Now it’s expected to be somewhere around 150 mph, a long way off. Big, big difference.

Maybe I’m wrong, but at least I’m giving you the same facts I pick up from the NHC’s data. Are there secret facts out there that I don’t know about? Are Irma’s winds actually 250 miles wide, making them highly likely to hit Miami? If so, why does the NHC say otherwise on its website?

Of course, hurricanes change their minds. Irma could surprise us. It could go straight through Miami. It could make a hard left and go to South America. It could veer east while staying within the cone of uncertainty. But it can’t stay on course and do what they’re saying it will do, if the wind figures they’re giving us are correct. It can’t be Category 4 in Naples and Category 3 in Miami AND have a hurricane zone 130 miles wide. Not possible.

Maybe Texas is really small, and they lie about it because they’re insecure.

If Irma doesn’t move east of its predicted track, I expect Miami to be fine. A few trees will fall, and a few thousand people will lose power because of the primitive, vulnerable power grid. That will be it. Unless those secret facts come into play.

I’m very glad I have not been watching the news. The few minutes I’ve endured have done nothing but raise my blood pressure and offend me.

I will keep praying for Irma to fail. Things look a whole lot better than they did yesterday. Thank you, God. Your patience is wonderful.

Goodbye, in Stages

It is becoming obvious to me that I know very little about the process of moving from one home to another.

For several weeks, I’ve been packing boxes, giving things away, and throwing things out. I’ve interviewed movers. I’ve found out about having machines and vehicles moved. After all that, I keep learning new things.

Today the movers told me the job takes three days. They pack on one day, shove things into the truck the next, and move on the third. I thought it was a one-day move, which was actually fairly stupid on my part. The drive alone will take them five hours.

If they have a whole day to pack, it takes a load off my mind. It means I don’t have to be prepared perfectly. If there are things I can’t deal with, I can turn them over to the movers.

The Internet issue is still alive. I found an outfit which will sell me a wireless data plan which is not limited to 32 GB, but they haven’t gotten back to me with a price yet. I feel like anything under a hundred bucks is acceptable. The Internet is important. If anything were to happen to my dad, I would kill the TV service immediately, but the Internet is essential.

Throwing out my dad’s ruined 1980’s furniture has been like lancing a giant boil. He paid way too much for it (i.e. more than nothing), so he has always been convinced that it’s fine furniture. The other day I put his sawdust credenza out for the Salvation Army, and he insisted it was a quality piece. Here are some interesting facts about it.

1. The back is hardboard, which is the hard cardboard clipboards are made from.

2. The body is made from sawdust mixed with glue and pressed into flat shapes.

3. Drawers from fine pieces of furniture are held together with dovetails. The credenza’s drawers are held together (barely) by staples.

4. When you bump into the credenza, sometimes sawdust falls out.

I have the 1981 receipt for the credenza. It cost $1000, and it was a floor model. That explains the strange dents and scratches. This is what happens when a divorced man finds a new girl. He buys things no one should ever buy.

Right now, if the right person (someone whose name ends in “Z”) wanted that thing, a fair price would be $150. New. It’s one step up from the furniture they sell at Office Depot, only less durable and more offensive.

Here’s something to think about. His entertainment center is a nice set from Ethan Allen. It’s solid wood. It has three cabinets, total. It’s around nine years old, and he paid $1010. When he bought it, it was new. That was about 30 years (of inflation) after he paid about the same amount for the sawdust credenza. And the Ethan Allen set was not on sale. This gives you an idea of the magnitude of the swindle.

The credenza disaster took place during the Cocaine cowboy years. People in Miami had even less taste than they do now, which is saying a lot. A lot of fake Bauhaus houses went up during that time. They look like tiny versions of cheap concrete high schools. They were filled with glass tables and bright yellow couches. People kept live tigers on their patios, and when they thought of timeless elegance, they thought of orange double knit. It was pretty gross. That’s where the credenza was spawned.

It’s gone with a capital “G” now. I have no idea why the Salvation Army accepted it. I fully expected a rejection note and maybe a bag of dog crap on the porch.

I’m very glad he didn’t see me and my friend Travis dumping his 1987 27″ TV by the curb. I think he paid $1500 for it. In its time, it was the fanciest TV you could find at Circuit City. As far as I know, it was still working when we gave it the heave-ho. You can’t make an older person understand that a 70-pound, 27″ TV that can’t receive a digital signal is no good. As Travis said, even pawn shops won’t take them.

I thought that TV was great when it was new, but then I was also pretty excited about the 512K Macintosh that only ran when it had a floppy disk inserted. What a machine. It had an external floppy drive, and if you wanted to replace the drive, it only cost $385.

I digress.

This weekend, I plan to take my mother’s mink to the Salvation Army. I saw a website that said old minks could bring as much as $400, so I was hot to put it on consignment, but then I found out it was not the $400 kind of old mink. It’s a stole from around 1970, and they sell on Ebay, all day long, for under $30. Makes me wonder why women don’t snap them up. They still look good. I guess they don’t want filthy hippies throwing red paint on them and forcing them to draw their pistols.

If my sister ever hears that I gave away the mink, the ensuing explosion will probably show up on seismographs. Last time she mentioned it, she thought it was worth a bundle. If we were still communicating, I would offer it to her, but when you commit felonies, get yourself ejected from rehab (again), and fall into society’s cracks, you pretty much give up the right to be informed about the disposition of your mom’s worthless old furs. I won’t be giving it to her, so it won’t be going to the dump or the pawnbroker like my mom’s gold Rolex or my grandmother’s wedding ring.

I was going to keep the Mom-era knickknacks from my dad’s house, but the more I think about it, the more I think I should cut a lot of them loose. Some are not very tasteful, others won’t fit in a traditional Southern house, and the rest are reminders of a dysfunctional past. I would throw out the bed my mom and dad bought after they got married, because it was my bed during many unpleasant years, but my dad is still attached to it.

Maybe he’ll forget about it, and if that happens, it’s gone.

The way you look at an heirloom depends a lot on the way you were raised. If your childhood was happy, heirlooms are treasured souvenirs of a golden age. If your childhood was like mine, you will want to burn most things that are over ten years old. The very thought of burning them is refreshing and redolent with hope.

I’m torn about discarding my sister’s college diploma. Obviously, she doesn’t care about it, or it wouldn’t have been lodged in my dad’s house since 1981. She didn’t care about her law school diploma or oath of attorney, which I set out for her when she moved out of the house she ruined. Those went to the dump. She left them where I put them.

When you have an abusive relative or former lover or whatever, keeping objects on which they have claims is like giving them permanent tickets to your presence. That diploma is like a beacon that gives out a homing signal that attracts swarms of stinging insects.

I believe in shedding my skin. Some bits of the past should be preserved, and others should be cleared away, fast. I gave away my mother’s clothes the week she died, as soon as I could get them in the car. If anything happens to my dad, his clothes and every troublesome possession he has will be gone in a week. All the things I wish he would get rid of…out. A house is not a mausoleum. The dead should be remembered and honored to some extent, but keeping things the way they left them is sick and evil. The dead move on, and we should, too. They’re not in heaven, burying their faces in our old jackets and sweaters.

I’ve rambled enough. Time to set about twenty pounds of my own clothes apart for donation. Goodbye, 1988. That jean jacket never came in handy the way I thought it would.

Won’t Rest Until I have a Green Headboard with Recessed Blacklights

I am getting ruthless with ridding myself of unwanted furniture. There are a number of items I never want to see again, and the thought of having the new house befouled by their presence–and paying for it–is a little too much for me.

Yesterday I took to Craigslist and looked at bedroom sets and dining tables. I found some very nice stuff. There was a considerable amount of cardboard and sawdust furniture worthy of IKEA, but there were a lot of pieces I would not be embarrassed to own. It looks like you can furnish a bedroom with tasteful furniture for $600 or so. I’ll post a couple of photos.

I can’t decorate, but I have some rudimentary clue as to what looks good and what belongs in a cathouse or frathouse. I think the things I found will work okay.

Just for fun, I decided to check Craigslist in Miami. This is not a classy town, so I figured I was in for some interesting viewing. My neighbors did not disappoint. Generally, the furniture was less tasteful, and some was downright bizarre. If you want to sell a purple entertainment center with white hardware, Miami is the place to be.

Take a look.

Lovely, right?

In the Ocala area, I found a very interesting bedroom set made by Berkey and Gay. The owner thinks it was made by Berkley and Gray. It has twin beds. I’m not sure what to make of it. The furniture itself looks pretty cool, and it has to be old, because the company went out of business a very long time ago. Here’s the problem: it has little pictures of fruit painted on it.

I don’t know if it came that way from the factory or what. Being a man, I am not sure whether the fruit paintings are acceptable. If they’re not, can the fruit be removed without ruining the patina?

Maybe it’s a little too antiquey. I can’t tell.

Sometimes a normal sexual orientation is a disadvantage.

I thought it would be a good thing to have in a spare bedroom, in case friends with kids visited. In the South, you can get away with a certain amount of antiques.

I found some dining tables that aren’t scary.

Here’s a bedroom I could live with.

I’m starting to think it might be possible to have a house that looks okay. That wasn’t in the original plan, but maybe I can pull it off.

Written on August 3

Too-Perfect House for a Very Imperfect Man

This must be what the day after you go to heaven is like.

Again, I am forced to post this after the fact, but still.

This is a Thursday. My dad and I just went to the final walk-through at the farm he is buying. The sellers took us through the whole place. I am floored.

The place is spotless. It looks like a new house. The interior doesn’t even need to be painted. Some areas are carpeted, and the carpet is new. The seller gave me a three-point attachment for the tractor, free, with a pointy thing on it for lifting hay. I found out later it was called a “bale spear.”

There is a ton of storage. I won’t have to throw out my toys. Like I was even considering it. I guess I could just have the movers take everything both of us own, and then I could store it all and then reduce it at my leisure. Some of it would probably look nice in the fireplace on a cold February evening.

I’m going to take an entire floor for myself. My dad can do all the damage he wants downstairs. He can turn it into the TV-Watching Shrine for the Southeastern United States if he wants. I’ll be upstairs waiting for the Rapture with my hobbies. The house has an intercom, believe it or not, so whenever he wants, he can summon me, and like Lurch, I will appear and solve his problems.

The area where the farm is located is nicer than I remembered. It has a little altitude, and that supposedly improves the breeze. The land is hilly, although the farm itself is fairly flat. The traffic is light. The roads are in great shape. There’s a lot of green, especially after a rainy July.

I still have to get moved. I don’t care. I’ll get it done if I have to carry everything up there on my back.

My dad is concerned he won’t have anything to do, but since he has had nothing to do for two years, I don’t think his gripe will turn out to be well-grounded. If he’s not bored now, he never will be. I’m looking into opportunities for him to socialize. Marion County is jammed up with geezers, so I’m quite sure I can find amusements for him.

The seller says we can kill the property tax by selling hay or by getting goats. He raised cattle, but they poop the place up. That’s a good thing if you need manure, but it’s not like manure is hard to come by in horse country. He said mature Boer goats would be very happy on the farm, but that it was not a good idea to have breeding stock, because coyotes eat the kids. Down side: no baby goats. Up side: I may have coyotes for rifle practice.

He said he lost one calf to coyotes. What ever happened to the old days, when they stayed out west where they belonged?

Tonight my friends Leah and Scott will be swinging through again on their way back from Sarasota, so there will be a lot to talk about. I’m overwhelmed.

Apparently, God does not mind doing surprisingly nice things for you, when things line up right. I think my blessings are related to the fact that I haven’t given a dime to a preacher in several years. I feel like God is using me to make a point.

Tomorrow we close, and then–wheeeeeee–back to Miami for a while. It will end. I will remind myself of that over and over, the same way I’ve said the same thing to myself when I’ve had the flu or severe diarrhea. Like severe diarrhea, every visit to Miami eventually ends.

I don’t have any new photos worth posting, but you can expect some when we take possession. Believe that.

Now I’ll relax before dinner. Time to lie back and think about tractors.

Written on August 2

Closing is Near

I can’t post this entry tonight, but I wanted to write it anyway, while the details were fresh in my mind. What is the Christian life without testimony? A great product with no advertising. Tonight I will advertise.

I’m in Ocala, at a hotel. It’s more like a motel, but “hotel” sounds nicer. Day after tomorrow, my dad is closing on the new house. We have a walk-through tomorrow. I’m not posting this tonight, because it’s a bad idea to go on the Internet and tell people you’re not home.

I drove us up from Miami today. Not the most pleasant trip. It took quite a while to get my dad ready to leave. He has traveled hundreds of thousands or millions of miles, and he used to have it down to a science, but he complains that he has forgotten it all. We had to get all his stuff packed, and there was some resistance to my suggestions, so I worked with him to get it done his way. For some reason, he didn’t pack last night, so it took us around 45 minutes to get him into the car.

Once we were on the road, he wanted to stop for lunch about 3 1/2 hours after breakfast, and he had to make two other stops, so we didn’t make record time. I have to drive everywhere now, except for little trips he makes in Miami, so today I had to drive us the entire way, while coping with whatever problems he had.

Along the way, I texted some friends to let them know I was on the road. One family I know moved to Orlando a couple of years ago, and another couple moved to Kissimmee a few weeks back. I also emailed Leah, the new sister God gave me several years ago. She lives in Pensacola. Leah texted back and said she and her husband Scott were helping a family move from Pensacola to Sarasota. They would be going through Ocala. She said we should try to meet.

I texted her a little later, during our lunch trip to Cracker Barrel. She and her party were at a Cracker Barrel, too. Funny.

After a while, we coordinated again, and it turned out she would arrive in Ocala about 15 minutes after we did. We made it to the hotel and checked in, and 15 minutes later, I met Leah and Scott in the parking lot. How crazy is that?

We decided to go have food. I was a little concerned that my dad would dominate the conversation and keep it off of God, because he does that. To my surprise, he didn’t want to go. He wanted to go for a walk, which is something he can do safely here. We took off for Bob Evans!

Leah and Scott were helping her friends Eddie and Nora move. Eddie is a missionary. He felt God was telling him to move to Sarasota, which is apparently a fairly Godless area. Not a surprise, given the large number of arty people who live there. He and Nora decided to sell their house and go, and suddenly, over the last few weeks, things fell together quickly, and they were free to go. Their old house sold fast. Here’s something weird: their son and daughter, who look to be about ten and eight, were all for the move. Kids always hate moving, but before their parents were sold on the idea, the kids thought it was the right thing to do.

We sat down and ordered, and while the waitress was fussing over us (same waitress I had last time I went to this Bob Evans), I said I was going to do something for someone, and they thanked me, and I said if God was giving me a house, I could do this for them. Guess what the waitress said? “Amen.” Like it was normal for Christians to come in and talk about God with the wait staff. Because it probably is. I love this place.

We had a great talk, and we shared testimony. We caught up. It was wonderful. And the kids were so well-behaved, I didn’t know what to think. Miami kids scream in restaurants, and they get up and run between the tables.

Here’s part of the testimony I gave. I have a young friend named Travis. We get together for prayer. He studies at the University of Miami, which is close to my dad’s house. Travis knows Leah. Travis is not in the greatest financial shape. I told Leah and the group I had been praying the other day about the problems I would have getting my dad’s house in order for renting after the move, and that God had given me the answer: hire Travis to house-sit. He could let contractors in and make sure no one steals. He would have a little extra income, plus free rent, and I would be released to get the move done.

I said I wanted to take a picture of the group, just to mess with Travis. I was going to text it to him. I got up and took the picture. As I sat down, I said it was going to freak Travis out, and before I could sit down completely or send the text, the phone rang. It was Travis, asking how the trip was going. Of course, I had to send him Leah’s regards. Travis has been watching things come together supernaturally all through my efforts to move, so of course, he was bowled over. I let him know I could guarantee him a place through the month of September, so in addition to the shock of hearing about Leah, he got some very, very good news which took a weight off his back.

Scott and Leah and the crew said their goodbyes at my hotel, and they took off. They’ll be coming back through tomorrow, so maybe we’ll get together again!

I went to my room, and I saw I had forgotten my sleep mask. I need this thing. Hotel rooms are full of big LED’s that burn all night. I got hooked on masks because my rude Miami neighbors have bright security lights under their eaves. I went to CVS (I know the way to CVS!), but they were out of masks. Went to Walgreen’s, and the lady who worked there could not have been nicer. She knew the aisle and shelf where I would find a mask. I got to the aisle and found the masks. They usually cost $9. They were marked down to 99 cents. I bought two! You can’t beat that. Nothing else I saw there had the giant orange sale tag. It’s like they knew I was coming.

It has been a good day. Wouldn’t you agree? By the way, my friend who lives in Orlando called me back and said he was coming to help me on the day of the move, and he means it. It will be great to see the family. I’ll never get his kids out of the pool, though. That’s a given. They may move in.

I suspect more strange things will happen tomorrow. I certainly hope so.

I wonder how wrong we’ve been about God. Just how good IS he? How much should we dare believe?

I forgot to buy dental floss. I wonder if it will be on sale when I find it tomorrow.

I would wish you a great night, but you can’t see what I’m typing tonight, so I guess I’ll just say this: happy trails.

Still Here

Just blogging to confirm that I’m alive. Some wonderful things have happened over the last few days. Can’t go into detail today, but you will read about it soon.

Disturbing Visit to IKEA

What an experience I had today. I shopped at IKEA for the very first time. It was the most dehumanizing shopping experience I have ever had.

Where do I start?

First of all, there is one cramped entrance to the huge parking garage (you have to use their garage), and in order to get in from the north, you have to make a U-turn. That’s stupid.

After that, you find yourself in a poorly marked garage which probably contains 8 acres of space. I parked on the ground floor, figuring that was where the store entrance was. Because most store owners want to make it EASY to get into their stores.

I walked up to the entrance, grabbing a cart along the way, and it turned out to be the entrance to a bank of three elevators and some escalators. The store was not on the ground floor. You’re supposed to get into an elevator…with your huge shopping cart. I am not making that up.

I got into an elevator and went up a floor. I got out. No store. Okay. I waited for another elevator. They don’t have big signs telling you where to go. You have to guess.

Went up another floor. Got out. Went to something that looked like an entrance. It turned out it was the entrance to some kind of indoor playground for kids. Who takes their kids to IKEA to play? Lunatics, I guess.

I stopped a salesperson. I said, “How do you get INTO this place?” She told me to get on the elevator and go up one more floor.

On the next floor, I found a store. I pushed my cart (with one wheel that kept trying to turn) into the entrance. I found myself confronted with one department of the store, from which there was no escape that didn’t involve going forward.

You won’t believe this unless you’ve seen it, but IKEA forces you to go through the entire store in order to get your product. It’s a one-dimensional store. It’s not like Target, where you can always move in one of two directions. It’s like being trapped in the intestines of a giant beast. You go in one end, and you visit every twist and turn until you come out the other. There are a few minor deviations, but that’s the story.

I went through the entire floor, held up by endless people who clogged the narrow aisles and barely moved, and when I got to the end, I had not seen sheets. That’s what I wanted to buy. I asked another salesperson, and she said I was on the wrong floor.

Seriously. They have enough room to put the whole store on one floor, but they used it to divide the parking garage into levels. Is that stupid, or am I?

The person who told me to go up one floor was wrong. Somewhere on the playground floor, there was a store which was somehow hidden.

I had been at IKEA for quite some time by then, but I was determined to get my sheets, so I persevered.

I got to the next floor, and I was once again confronted by the constricted concrete entrails of IKEA. Surely this is the most authoritarian store in America. I walked past aisle after aisle of Chinese garbage. After maybe ten minutes, I got to the sheet area. I found my sheets and hightailed it for the exit. Which I could not see. When you’re in the bowels of IKEA, you can’t see the checkout stations. It’s like a DVD you can’t fast-forward.

I got the one of the slow registers, and I asked the guy for a bag for my sheets. He offered me a “green bag” (which was blue) for a dollar. Are you kidding me? Do I need a reusable bag cluttering up my house when I’m trying to move? I turned it down. I made the smart move. I thought.

Got out of the checkout line, and I found myself in an non-air-conditioned room (in Miami in July) with three big elevators and maybe fifty people with carts trying to jam themselves in. I could not believe it. I had four sets of sheets and two sets of pillowcases, and I knew I couldn’t carry them on the escalator. Now I knew what the bag was for. It was a fee for avoiding the elevators.

Miraculously, I made it into an elevator during the first tide, and I got off at P1, which, I figured was the first floor of the parking garage. I looked around for my car, and then I noticed there were tree tops visible over the low walls of the garage. I was not on the ground floor. I guess in Sweden, they number floors downward, starting on random levels.

Back to the elevator bank, which took forever.

Finally got out on the correct floor. Couldn’t find my car. Okay, that was my fault. But by this point, more frustration was the last thing I needed.

Back to the elevator bank. Found the car. Drove home.

I have never had a store make me feel more insulted or unimportant, not to mention claustrophobic. You can’t walk where you want. You can’t have a bag. You’re trapped like an ant in an ant farm. And what about fire codes? If that place burns, everyone in it will die, because you can’t see the exits. You could be a hundred feet from an exit and have to make three turns to find it.

What a disgusting store. I will never go back. If I like the sheets, next time, I’ll order them online.

The merchandise is horrible. I’m sure some of it is fine, but I saw display after display of aggressively inoffensive disposable sawdust and melamine furniture. Who buys this crap? You have to be out of your mind. You spend hundreds of dollars buying a sawdust living room, and then a month later, it has a street value of $75. No one wants used sawdust furniture.

Imagine how cluttered our landfills must be, with all the sawdust and melamine furniture we buy. And the funny part about that is that IKEA preys on the weak-minded by claiming to be green and friendly and gay. How can disposable furniture be green? How can furniture made in dirty backward countries that have a license to kill under the Paris Climate Accord be green?

I felt like a character in a dystopian film like Soylent Green or Logan’s Run. I feel icky inside, thinking about it. My visit made me think of Holocaust victims being herded and sorted on arriving at a death camp. I’m not trying to be funny, either. That’s exactly what I thought of.

I hope the sheets work out, but I will never set foot in that store again, even if I can find the way in.