more cowbell from hutchmo

This time the loss is much harder than a car-key, a CD or pair of gloves. This time it's a friend. I wrote about Nick a while back. He was a good friend who lived in Texas.

Sadly, I am forced to use the past tense. Nicky died today around 1:00 PM, surrounded by family and friends. He was only 51 years of age. At age 50, an insidious tumor lodged inside his brain and began to wreak havoc. Nick fought like a champ, but the tendrils of the tumor were too much and slowly destroyed the parts of the brain required to function.

I knew him for over 30 years. We worked together in New York and New Jersey when we were 'saving the world' by being counselors to inner-city kids. I touched a few people and made some wonderful friends (including my more-than-wonderful wife), but Nicky was something else.

He was big, jolly and a hellavan athlete. The kids would literally hang from his arms and legs when he walked the streets or the paths of our summer camp. He was a man, and he was soft, and he was considerate, but never weak...Yeah, the goddamn tumor weakened his body, but he was never weak really and he never quit fighting.

After he left NY, he went home to Liberty, Texas where he coached, got married, had a kid and eventually became principal of an elementary school. He was just as beloved down there as he was in New York.

Nick was in some type of hospital or hospice for most of the last 9 months. He did make it home a couple of weeks before he passed. In the middle of his hospital ordeal, word got out that Nick was coming home for a few days...the word spread and spread.

The night that Nick came home, the ambulance carrying him was late...nonetheless, 250 people lined the highway waiting for four hours until they saw Nick and were able to wave...thats the kind of guy Nick was.

My losses are petty and insignificant compared to this.

I had to post something here to get that 'LOSER' post off the top of the journal...sheeesh. Ok, here's the deal. Round about the middle of December until the end of February, I got de blues. I am S A D. I feel odd, somewhat useless a lot of the time and I'm sure I don't understand things that I would normally understand during other parts of the year.

I seem to be LOSING more things like keys, medicine, articles of clothing (don't ask) and other stuff that I rarely lose because I learned to be A.R. about keeping up with my things. I am not naturally A.R. at all, but I watched the habits of those who are, attempted to retain a thing or two and put some of that into practice.

But, during the winter of my malcontent, I still lose things. Objects appear to be working against me. Things that worked, quit working. Messes that would otherwise be cleaned up or shrugged off seem like mountains that are unmovable and unsolvable.

I know it gets better when the days get a lot looooooooonnnnnnnnger, and somehow knowing just that helps, but it still kinda leaves me on the shore and the ship is leaving and the ones I love are on the ship and I know they love me and i know they are coming back but the ship keeps on keeps on slipping out of damn sight.

I suggest a strong cheddar with this whine...

I feel like a total god-damn fucking loser right now. Why the hell does my work computer have to die and I lose so many of my files. Why didn't I back em' up? (idiot!). Whey do we have to have a car die after the other car had to have so many damn costly repairs. Why do I feel like shit?

argggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I apologize to anyone who accidentally got here and had to read the above (actually, no one had to, but I'm sorry nonetheless).

I hate this time of year..after Christmas while the days are still short. It feels like everything is wrong and that i don't have enough intelligience to spell intelligence. I feel spider-webbed.

fuck.

UPDATE: Later that same day.."i lay my head on the railroad track, waitin' on the Double E's, but the train don't come round here no more, POOR POOR PItiful ME..."

Tonight in my counseling session, the counselor described me, in part, as 'irascible'. I'm pretty sure that irascible is counselor talk for 'asshole'.

At least she didn't call me an asshat..(yet).

but doesn't this look like a female impersonator pretending to BE Tricia Yearwood?

disclosure: I glommed this pic from Nashville is Talking.

Which we watched tonight. Cast of thousands, or actually a lot of well-known actors. Love the Rachel Griffith, the Tom Skerrit, the Sally Field...Calista Flockhart. Calista seems to have gained a little weight since the days of A. McBeal, but I still want to shake her and take her to Swetts and force to eat peach cobbler for three straight days. You're good looking, girl, but damn, you still need to add some weight!

I ache for the lives of today's soldiers who are being used by this administration. Our Secretary of Defense is either incompetent or totally uninformed, or both....

" Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld got a taste of this rage and frustration in August when he met with family members of the 172nd at Fort Wainwright, near Fairbanks, Alaska. In a video of the meeting obtained by NEWSWEEK, one woman asked him why the 172nd was spending most of its time clearing houses, instead of patrolling the streets in the relative safety of the big armored vehicles. "My husband hasn't set foot in his Stryker since he arrived in Baghdad," she said. "Over 90 percent of the house clearings are being handled by the Iraqis," Rumsfeld responded, whereupon women in the audience began shouting "No!" and "That's not true!" Flummoxed, Rumsfeld shot back, "No? What do you mean? Don't say 'No,' that's what I've been told. It's the task of the Iraqis to go through the buildings."


The 4-23's soldiers say they, not the Iraqis, do 95 percent of the searches. "I'd like to punch [Rumsfeld] in the gut," says one seasoned NCO on his second Iraq tour. "He treats us like we're not human. He acts like he's not destroying families."

Baghdad in August breeds thoughts like that. Outside it's 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Inside a Stryker armored vehicle it's 130, sometimes 140. Team members sweat more than seems humanly possible. Their mustaches leak with sweat. Their soaked pants leave damp marks where they sit. The sweat collects in the protective goggles they wear, pouring off the eyebrows and into the lenses. Each soldier has to wear 15-pound side plates, 20-pound body armor, and a three-pound helmet that feels like it's baking the brain. When the vehicle stops, the teams dismount and go to work, climbing stairs, scaling walls, breaking down doors—always watching out for snipers and booby traps."

Maybe the bastard oughta go over there and clear out a few houses himself.
From MSNBC.

my main blog is 'Salem's Lots'.

I am a masochist however, who read all 109 comments on B's blog (maybe there are more now), and I think that B was quite clever to throw that particular hand grenade into blog-Nashville.

I'm a B fan, for what it's worth.

I'm also an inveterate Vandy fan, Yankee fan, Titan fan, Predator fan and a Venus Williams fan.

I love bbq, college basketball, my wife (ok, i'm a little out of order here), my kids, and walking in my neighborhood.

I think the world of my neighbor Kate who is also a livejournaler...

The last 24 hours has been highlighted lowlighted by the absolute worst-ever-in-my-life stomach 'issues'. No one wants to read about the output, flotsam and jetsam of such an adventure, but I will say, I really really hate it when you are charging to the bathroom and having to make a crucial choice.

gotta run..

First of all I have to just say that i love the hell out of Sonic Youth. I can't listen to em' all the time, because i'm not always in the mood for noise mixed to the nth degree along with my rock and roll, but i have to just say that their newest -Rather Ripped - is the shit and i mean that in the highest form of last year's slang.



What makes this work for me so well is that they have taken their noise and built it into the song and made themselves pretty much stay in the structure of rock and roll. I think this is called discipline.

One of the reasons Barney Miller was a great TV show is that the entire show was shot on one set. The writers had to use that little slice of the universe to create their own believable universe with enough interesting variations that would keep us coming back for more. It is no coincidence that cops, when surveyed will uniformly name 'Barney Miller' as the most realistic cop show ever made.

The discipline of having to write to that one set and having to bring every character in and out of that set and having to make it funny and serious and silly and poignant all in one place made the writers work a little harder to get the right tone. Ironically, the confinement gave the writers more freedom.

What does this have to do with S. Youth. Well, Thurston, Kim and the gang decided to make a straightup rock and roll record without 12 minutes per song of extra arc and snap..they built the arc and snap into the song. The confinement of the 4 minute song sets them free.

I love this CD.

So much is changing around here.


I captured this one night last summer..since that time there have been eleven new houses built in the Salemtown area. I'm glad I'm here and hope that the neighborhood remains diverse, porched, and a little less waster-water-plant aroma-filled.

I have a good friend who lives in the Houston, Texas area. We worked in New York together in an inner city social work program (the same program where I met Lynn, my wife).

Nick has always been a BIG, and I do mean, BIG, guy, easily topping 280 pounds and 6' 3" in height in his lean years. Lately he has topped the 350 mark, and we have been worried that he would have a heart attack or at the very least contract type II diabetes.

Instead the bastards of fate chose to give Nicky a stomach tumor three years ago. It wasn't the best weight loss program you would choose, but it certainly was effective. Between the radiation treatments which made him lose his appetite and the tumor itself, Nick lost a lot of weight, and eventually was given a clean bill of health.

Nick is an elementary school principal and is probably one of the most lovable people you would ever meet. He is kind, wise and thoughtful. I can't think of qualities that more makes a man, a man.

But once again the bastards of fate chose to rain on my friend Nicky. He was felled by a stroke and spent 3 months in the hospital and was on his way to a near complete recovery when he was felled again last week by another stoke. It appears that a brain tumor is putting pressure on his brain and re-wiring Nicky.

He is scheduled to have an MRI tomorrow (Weds) at 1:00 PM. Our worst fears will either be verified or the doctors will have to search for another cause. It's feeling a bit like a Sartre play and it just sucks awfully bad. No one deserves this shit, but why does it seem to pounce on the beautiful and undeserving?

I know I am now supposed to go forth and appreciate my family and friends, and actually I do, but I'm feeling too damn numb and mad to really appreciate much of anything.

You wake up. It is 5:15. It is way before normal time to arouse, but unlike my recumbent body, I am (aroused). Normal foreplay techniques do not include shaking sleeping wife awake, and inquiring if she is in the mood, so I opt for the telepathy method hoping to invade her dream life by sending pheromone brain waves..no touching allowed. I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm thinking..

Alas, wife is deep in someone else arms...the arms of Morpheus.

All that thinking wears me out and I drift back to sleep only to be jarred by the sound of the house alarm..my son left for work without turning the alarm off. The mood has been somewhat altered.

damn.

Last Friday when I was leaving for the weekend, I posted some 'to-do' crap on my Novell Calendar for Monday (today) because within 12 minutes after leaving, I will be forgetting my name, much less 'to-do' shitola.

I got into work this morning and the first fricking item is:

Check with QS about other

WTF?