My get rich slowly plan

My first novel “Heavenly Hash” is now available on Amazon’s Kindle.

Only $2.99.

If everyone who reads this blog buys it, I’ll make twenty bucks.

I believe one can install a free app of Kindle on one’s computer.

Hello? Is anybody out there?

The cat wears a fur coat

As obvious as that may seem, my wife doesn’t quite get it.

The cat sleeps up on a shelf in my studio quite a bit of the time.

I was working in there yesterday, when my darling wife walked in, glanced at the cat, and said, ”It’s a little cool in here, you should turn the heat up.

I pointed out that I was wearing only a T-shirt and I was fine.

Her response was immediate.

She said, “I don’t care about you. I don’t want Jessie to go sleep in our bedroom. She’ll get hair all over the bedspread.”

When I pointed out that Jessie was plenty warm, because she wore a fur coat — all the time. My darling wife left, walked to the bedroom and closed the bedroom door.

I’m sure she was joking.

Zapata’s. Really funny word

I was conversing with a good friend in Spanish yesterday. Which is fairly amazing because I don’t speak, read, or write Spanish. Anyway, the word Zapata’s came up.

Reading it on paper brings a smile, doesn’t it?

Yes, it does.

And saying it aloud is joyful.

As in viva Zapata’s!

Go ahead, say Zapata’s out loud and try not to smile. You can’t.

Yes, I know it means shoes.

Uncle. Funny word

Uncle Frank? Great guy, right? Uncle Joe is as good as they come, probably.

Uncle Tom? Ehh, not so much. Too much historical baggage.

But the word uncle by itself? Man, that’s an ugly word.

Uncle.

Sounds like something one might get on one’s large intestine. They would have to operate and remove a foot and a half your digestive tract. And you’d never be able to eat cheeseburgers again.

“I’m sorry, sir. You have a dangerous uncle on your large intestine, and we have to operate. If we don’t, you’ll never be able to ride a bicycle again. And your breath will smell really bad.

We need a better word for everybody’s uncle.

Football’s back, now let me tell you about my novel

How’s that for a segue?

The title of the book is ”Heavenly Hash” and it’s about a guy who runs a candy factory. He has to dispose of a hundred pounds of marijuana-laced chocolate before anyone eats it.

His solution is simple, elegant, and completely wrong.

It’s on Amazon Kindle. It only took a month, and the help of two experts, to get it there. Twenty minutes after it was published, I found a typo. (there are probably others) I’m trying to fix the one I found. Hope it doesn’t take another month.

The typo is on page 96. If you’re reasonably quick, you can buy it before I get it fixed.   

If you don’t have a Kindle, they offer a free app for your computer. Install it and buy my book.

NFL season ticket holders are screwed

Season ticket holders can’t get their money back. What a pity.

But the rest of us don’t have to suffer through the dreadful product The NFL is peddling. Just don’t go. And just don’t watch it on TV.

If you pay for a ticket to a Broadway show and see a summer-stock performance you’d want your money back, right? And you’d tell your friends about the dreadful experience. And they wouldn’t go.

If the ratings were to drop and the advertisers were to drop the games, we’d see those very rich owners put a better product on the field in a New York minute.

I know, you’re gonna go and you’re gonna watch anyway. Another pity.

Hey, NFL, trying real hard doesn’t cut it

The experts on TV always preface their remarks about the poor job the replacement refs are doing by saying: It’s a really difficult job and they’re doing the best they can.

Give us a break.

If you watched tonight’s game you know what I’m complaining about. Professional football players are being refereed by amateurs. I lost count of the missed calls. And they (the missed calls) changed the outcome of the game.

Worse: The league financially penalizes anyone who points that obvious fact out. So basically, the truth is being bought off.

Worser: The league doesn’t have the guts to go back and fix it the next day. What’s so sacrosanct about game-day? Fixing mistakes the next day would be more professional and more honest.

Worserest of all: They’ve lost me as a fan.

Yeah, I know those aren’t real words.

Hello? Is anybody there?

I’ve finally gotten around to putting my novels on the Internet.

Actually trying to put them there.

There are sites that help you, but if you’re not a real computer jockey, as I am not, even that is confounding.

I sent these people my phone number, but don’t expect to get a call.

I’ve communicated with two or three of these experts via my computer screen, but so far it ain’t workin.

The folks are all very nice. They want to be helpful. They just don’t seem to want to talk to anyone. I say anyone rather than me to avoid sounding paranoid. And I say folks to sound friendly, in case they should read this.

Will there come a day when our mouths will be used only for eating, our vocal cords shrivel and grow useless, like our appendix, and we grow a few extra fingers to type even faster?

Will there come a day when a child is born and the doctor says, “Oh, no. He only has five fingers on each hand? He’s a throwback.” Then the mother bursts into tears and the father faints? 

What’s with list makers?

My wife loves lists of things to be done.

The only thing she loves more than lists, is checking things off the list after she’s done them.

This is especially exciting two days before a long vacation. The list is long, sometimes as long as the vacation. The pace is rapid, verging on frantic, and the joy of that little check mark on each item is close to indescribable.

I am occasionally sucked into the vortex. And I try to do my part. Not as joyfully as my wife, mind you, but I’m in there, hackin’.

Fortunately, my part of the list is miniscule compared to hers. And in the end things generally work out for us.

But, man, do I hate lists.

Haunted Houses

A famous 200-year-old landmark burned down in Corrales, a village near Albuquerque. It was tragic. Weddings were performed there, and many other events.

And, it was said to be haunted.

At least five people were gunned down in it at one time or another. The paper listed two of the dead as two parts of a love triangle. I didn’t have the patience to read all of the article, but I’m guessing the two lovers are probably now ghosts. Maybe not.

It got me to wondering; what happens to the ghosts when their house burns down? Do they move next door? Is there a ghost directory where Ghosts can find new lodgings? Is there a waiting list for the really good haunts?

A real beer pro

We went to the ballpark the other night.  Two rows in front of us, I watched a man and his son take their seats.  The man carried a hot dog for his kid and one for himself, plus napkins and a beer.

The little boy carried his own soft drink.

The man helped his kid get the seat down, get settled, gave him a hotdog, gave him a napkin, got his own seat down and sat down.  I watched, intently as he focused on getting his charge settled.  In the process he never once looked at his beer.  It was less that a quarter of an inch from the top, but he never spilled a drop.

I was impressed. 

Not today

I was laying bricks in our yard today.  Actually re-laying a brick path.  I had to move it over a couple of feet, per my wife’s request, and put new ground cloth under it.

I was rebuilding an entire dry riverbed as well.  So much dirt had accumulated in the bottom, the weed barrier was ineffective.

Separating the dirt and weeds from the little pebbles was the hardest part.  So I built a screen.

The boulders along the edges were easier, but heavier.

Late in the day my wife came out and wondered if I wanted to go to the gym with her to get some exercise.

Well, I thought it was funny.

Russian repeat-o

Last night we went to see the Red Star, Red Army Choral and Dance Ensemble.

The music was stirring, and fun.

The musicians and singers all wore Russian military uniforms, which made it feel very different from American stuff.

The dancers wore colorful costumes to suit the different folk dances and leapt and spun all over the stage.

Sailor outfits, peasant outfits, Cossack outfits, etc.

After a toe-tapping first half we had a cup of coffee in the lobby and I was looking forward to whatever they had in store for us in the second half.

After the intermission we heard the same music.

Exactly the same.

The words may have been different but I don’t understand Russian.

We saw the same dances.

Same jumps, same twirls, same knee kicks.  Maybe in a different order, I couldn’t remember.

And maybe slightly different costumes, I couldn’t remember that either.

At intermission I said “Wow.”

Halfway through the second half I said “Oh.”

If they come to your city be sure to catch the first half, and then go get a nice dinner somewhere.

I’ve never smoked but my lungs have

We flew to Casablanca on a Moroccan airline a while ago.  The no smoking section lit up like a World War One smoke barrage two minutes after takeoff.  I was going to complain to the stewardess but she was smoking too.

When we landed at the airport in Casablanca I thought the terminal was on fire.

And it was overrun with feral cats.

The flight from Casablanca to Tunis was almost as bad.  Or maybe we’d gotten used to the smoke.  Hard to say.

Didn’t see any cats in Tunis, though.

But both ends land at the same time

I used to fly a lot in my business.  First class, business and coach.  And it always struck me funny that in a lot of planes the coach passengers were paraded through the first class cabin to get to their seats.

Most of the first class passengers were already seated and never looked up or acknowledged the steerage folk in any way.

It reminded me of dining in an outdoor restaurant in LA or New York or Puerto Vallarta with the homeless walking by, watching us eat cracked crab and the like.

I never liked the table right next to the sidewalk.

Or the isle seat in first class.

Football as a soap?

I looked through the paper today and there was only one tiny article about the NFL.  One column wide, an inch deep and not very interesting.  Sad.

I keep expecting more stories about players driving drunk or beating somebody up in a bar parking lot at three in the morning.  Or dealing drugs.  Or demanding more money, or a better contract.  Doesn’t that stuff keep us amused?

I guess it’s the man version of the daytime soaps.  And I miss it.

On the other hand, I’m getting more done on Sundays.

How do you discover a rocket?

The National Geographic put out a book: 100 Scientific Discoveries That Changed The World.  They included the rocket but left out the steam engine.  They included a tomato crossed with a kiwi fruit but left out the hypodermic needle.  They included the internal combustion engine but left out the printing press.  Curious, don’t you think?  Their 100 discoveries were printed in a book.  They sell magazines.  They sell printed magazines.  The written word has changed the world, right?  Okay fine, the written, then printed word.

Maybe they plan on coming out with another book: 100 Not So Interesting, Kinda Mundane, Mechanical Discoveries That Changed The World.

They can put the internal combustion engine in that one too.  Maybe they could consider including the steam engine as well.  And jelly beans.

Buzzing around

I wrote about dead downtowns on Friday.  And I claimed we don’t see a lot of people buzzing around in their suburbs.

But that’s not really true, is it?  Inside the megastores planted in those suburbs there’s plenty of buzzing around going on.

I read somewhere that a judge wouldn’t let a Mall keep teenagers out just because they were hanging out and not shopping.  The judge basically said that Malls had replaced town squares as a place for young people to meet.  Old people too, I guess.

I guess Malls and megastores are our new downtowns.

I was going to write ‘sad but true’ but that isn’t the case, is it?  It isn’t sad it’s just different.

Well, it’s a little sad.

Big stores and little downtowns

Some cities will probably always be viable.  New York, Chicago, San Francisco and cities like New Orleans are all looking pretty good, and probably always will.  Places like Boulder will probably always be pretty cool too.  But smaller, older, industrial cities are in the dumpster, aren’t they?

We drove through the Midwest a while ago and I was saddened by the state of older industrial cities.  And I realized they all have a few things in common; an empty factory or two, sprawl, and giant mega-stores just outside the city.

I don’t have a solution for the empty factories, that’s for someone smarter.

But people are still there and they still shop, don’t they?  Just not downtown.

Very sad.

Sprawl and giant stores didn’t just kill the little stores; they killed the little downtowns.

Those wonderful downtowns with their individual little shops, actual people buzzing up and down the sidewalks, and a sense of energy all seem to be gone.

Now we seem to be mostly a nation of sprawling suburbs, don’t we?

We don’t see a lot of people buzzing around those suburbs, do we?  Except in their cars, because it’s too far to walk to anything.

It’s sad, but I guess it isn’t terrible.

It’s visually boring, but not terrible.

For the struggling industrial cities the solution is as simple as it is impossible: A Wal-Mart, a Kmart and a Target in their once thriving little downtowns.

But that’s never gonna happen.

And that seems pretty close to terrible.

What’s with muscle-bound strawberries?

Have you ever grown strawberries in your back yard?  You should.

Then you’ll know what a real strawberry is.  It’ll be small, and red inside as well as outside.  And it’ll taste rich and deep and strawberryish.

It won’t look anything like the behemoths you find in the supermarkets.  A gigantic, hard, almost red, chunk of fiber, that looks like an apple when you cut it open.  All white and tough, with just a tinge of pink near the edge.  And if you’re lucky maybe you’ll find some actual red just at the very edge.

It’s not a strawberry.  It’s a deformed apple-looking-kind-of-almost-fruit-thing with bigger-than-they-should-be-pale-green-seeds all over the outside.

And it won’t taste like one either.  Bite into one and you’ll think your taste buds died.

And the seeds will get stuck in your teeth.

Makes your mouth water, doesn’t it?  Yeah, right.

Where has all the corned beef gone?

When I lived in New York, years ago, you could get great corned beef in pretty much every deli there.  And there was a deli every other block.  It was great knowing you were never more than fifty yards away from a really good sandwich.

You can’t find good corned beef in very many places in Albuquerque.  Actually, I haven’t found any.

We cook corned beef at home to make up for it.

But it isn’t the same.

I think it’s the bread.

You can’t get that here either.

Two slices of really good Jewish Rye with a crusty crust and a just right soft inner with a big ol’ pile of corned beef thin sliced off of a chunk of corned beef hot out of a pot of water that hasn’t been changed in so many months its practically a broth is so full of flavor its even good cold.  It should be finished with some mustard and a good pickle on the side.  Not the over-brined sour tasting things that pass for pickles in most parts of the country, but a real subtle, crunchy fresh just right New York Pickle.

Wake up America.

Our taste buds are getting screwed.

Jockey shorts are right handed

I’m left handed, but I never realized my shorts were right handed until I hurt my right thumb.  We Lefties do so many things right handed we hardly notice.  Scissors, pliers, our pants, shirts, the gearshift on our cars and even books are all most convenient to our right hand.

So, until your right hand is incapacitated you never experience how hard it is to unzip your Levis and dig around in your shorts with your left hand.

Sorry ladies, it had to be said.

Embers

He had a book and a small, dying fire.

The embers weren’t bright enough to read by, so he tore off the cover of the book and threw it on the embers.

It smoldered for a moment then burst into flame.  The flame lasted just long enough for him to read the first page.  And give him a little extra warmth.

When the flame died down he tore off the page he’d read and threw it on the fire.

Burning it gave him just enough light to read the second page.

The second page gave light to the third, the third to the forth, and so on through the whole book.

Each bright burning page lit the way for the next, until the last page had been read, and the dawn had come.

Winter, spring, summer, fall, seems only half right

I get the spring and fall seasons.  In the spring everything springs up fresh and green, right?  And in the fall everything turns brown and falls down.  Leaves fall, tall grasses flop over and the bushes all look dull and lifeless, kind of like Detroit or Cleveland.

But winter?  What do we win?  It’s cold, it gets dark way too early, and we have to wear coats.  And driving in the snow or slush is no fun.

We can’t call it colder, that doesn’t sound like a noun.  I mean how stupid would you feel saying: Gee, it seems colder this colder?

And summer?  What are we summing?  Simmer maybe.  In Albuquerque, where I live, we do a lot of that.

Or suntime?  Right now we can say: We have fun in the summertime.  But to say fun in the suntimetime would sound stupid so that’s out.

Simmertime would work except that most of us stay indoors with the air conditioning on.

On the other hand, it would be fun to say: what are you doing this simmer?

We gotta find two new words.

My wife seems to forget where we live. Every time

I usually drive whenever we go anywhere.  As we drive home and I pull into our driveway my wife acts startled, then starts collecting her stuff.

Every time.

It’s as though we’ve never been in our own driveway before.

I smile or chuckle and she says Oops! Or Oh!  Or something in that vein, and starts collecting her stuff.

She could start collecting her stuff on the way down our street but for some strange reason she doesn’t.

It’s completely my fault, because I forget to say something on the way down our street.

Every time.

Anyway, I have to let her out on our driveway because our garage is so full, when the car is parked inside the passenger door won’t open.

So I pull up and wait while she collects her purse, the newspapers or magazines at her feet, her day-planner, the thing she put in the back street, a scarf, a sweater, any assorted packages, also at her feet, and climbs out.

Then I pull into the garage, having lost those thirty two seconds forever.

We’re home!

A couple Band Aids and I’ll be fine

Every year I make a piece of furniture for a charity auction here in Albuquerque.

And I’m basically terrified of my own power tools.

Twice, I’ve seen woodworkers with only three fingers on one hand.  Once would have been plenty, but if you visit woodworking supply stores often enough you run that risk, right?

Anyway, I finished my project without a mishap and used all ten of my fingers to put my tools away.  Then I discovered I needed to make one little extra cut.

Being too lazy to re-set everything, I did it with a handsaw.

And chewed up the skin on one of my fingers in the process.

Happy all the time could make one angry

The thing about being happy is that it’s different from being normal, or sad, or angry, or any other emotion, right?

It’s good to be happy, really good, but not all the time.  If one were happy all the time wouldn’t one eventually forget what other emotions felt like?

Eventually happy would become the norm and there would be no place to go when something good happened so that one could be, you know … happy.

That would be sad.

And that would make one angry, wouldn’t it?

Doctor time

Many of the nice doctor folks have changed the time they’re asking you to come for an appointment.  Instead of asking you to come in fifteen minutes early they’re now asking you to come in twenty minutes early.

There’s some paperwork and a co-pay, or a credit check, or the bartering of your car, or the surrender of one of your children, so it seems a certain amount of early time is required, but twenty minutes?

Okay, okay, it might take twenty minutes to sign away one of your kids, but that rarely happens, right?

Nothing’s changed of course.  You still check in and wait in the waiting room.  The nurse can’t take you into an exam room because there isn’t one available or the doctor isn’t able to see you yet.

That’s okay.  You’re early, right?

So, you sit waiting, along with ten or twenty other people, sharing germs via coughs and sneezes, touching stuff and generally breathing each other’s air.

Ten or twenty minutes later someone calls your name and you’re ushered back to an exam room where you’ll wait another ten or twenty minutes for the doctor.

That’s okay, too.  I guess.  There’s interesting stuff to look at and read on the walls of course: What your urinary tract looks like, your arteries and veins, what part of your brain explodes when you go nuts waiting, your testicles, all kinds of interesting stuff.

Eventually the doctor comes in.

He or she is usually smiling, but clearly overworked.  There’s a pleasant greeting and he or she buries his or her face in the computer.

Once he or she has you “up” on screen the business of doctoring can commence.

If you glance at your watch you’ll notice that your one o’clock appointment started at roughly one thirty-five.

That’s okay.  It’s doctor time.

I worry about my attention span

I don’t know about eternity.  It seems like a long time.

I mean a really loooooooooooonnnng tiiiiiiiiiimmmmme.

And I can barely stay interested in anything for more than twenty minutes.

The cat thinks she’s invisible

When there’s too much commotion in the house, the cat slips up under the bedspread on our bed.  It’s kinda funny to walk into the bedroom and see a big lump in the middle of our bedspread.

I’m pretty sure she feels safe, and thinks she’s hidden under there.

I’ve been tempted to go over and pet her through the spread, but I think it might really freak her out, so I don’t.

What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, right?

We’re not all Frank Sinatra

The problem with being stubborn, no, strong willed, and doing it your way is; if you’re an average person, you’re probably only going to be right about half the time.

Doing it your way probably means you’ll have a fifty-fifty chance of being wrong and screwing up.

Or maybe not being completely wrong, and only screwing up a little.

On the other hand, you have the exact same odds of being right, and being successful.

Or maybe of being almost right and being somewhat successful.

That’s good.  Or at least not bad.

If you’re in the half that make it, you’re probably pretty happy, or should be.

If you’re in the other half?  Well, you’ll take the blows, as Frank would say.

Nobody wants to be vanilla

I’ve heard it said that vanilla ice cream is the most popular flavor.  Well, it’s certainly used more.  In more recipes I guess.  But does that make it the most popular?

I’ve never actually heard anybody say “Mmm, vanilla!”  Have you?

Vanilla is used to describe the ordinary, isn’t it?  As in: “He’s nice and all, but he has such a vanilla personality.”

We all know what that means, and nobody wants to be that guy.

I believe strawberry comes in second, but I’d put chocolate ahead of both.  After that, I’d put chocolate marshmallow.  And mint chocolate chip would be in a tie with fudge ripple for third.  Black cherry with little bits of chocolate gets an honorable mention, then every other flavor, and in any order you choose.

Did I mention I like chocolate? 

Aren’t corn flakes great?

I normally have Cheerio’s when I have cereal for breakfast.  I bought into the heart-healthy business they portray in their commercials.

But, yesterday morning, a bowl of corn flakes snapped me back to my childhood.  You should try it.  Put sugar on the flakes instead of fruit, the way you did when you were young, and use whole milk.

Oh, come on, one bowl of real milk and a little sugar won’t kill you.  Do that and you’ll be blasted back to when you were twelve.

It won’t cure your arthritis or make your back feel better, but for a few minutes your taste buds will make you feel like a kid again, where anything’s possible.

Unless of course, you had a crappy childhood, like Oliver.  Gruel won’t do it.

In that case forget about your childhood and have eggs Florentine.

I’ve got to pay better attention

I saw our neighbor in the grocery store yesterday, the one who gave us a bag of luscious tomatoes last fall.

We said hello and I asked her how her hip replacement was doing.  And she said her new knees were doing fine.

Damn.

We probably won’t be getting any luscious tomatoes this fall.

Never give an eight-year-old boy Styrofoam

He’ll destroy you.  He’ll take a three foot by four foot, half-inch thick piece of Styrofoam, cut the whole thing up to make an eighteen inch sword and in the process bury your studio in teeny tiny bits of styro-crumbs that float around and stubbornly resist any device you use to try to pick them up.

For weeks they’ll be in your paints, on your keyboard, and in every nook and cranny within thirty feet of his project.

You’ll smile, and like a good uncle (or aunt), tell him what a neat sword he made.

The sword will last for about five minutes, as Captain Blood slashes around the house, then it’ll break and he’ll be on to the next project.

I know I should have made him clean it up.  But he’s eight, and at eight the studio is for making stuff, and having fun, right?

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking right now, that’s what my wife said too.

It’s in the ear of the beholder

The phrase: Sooner or later really only means sooner doesn’t it?

When someone says; sooner or later you’re going to have to – bite the bullet, do the deed, make the move, have the talk, play your hand, set things straight, face the music, tell the truth, or get a job, they really mean now, don’t they?

But, if you’re the recipient it means later, doesn’t it?  Yes, it does.

Phrases are funny that way.

How could you pass it up?

While waiting at the Albuquerque Airport to pick up a friend, I wandered into in one of the gift shops and saw a sign that read:  T-shirts $10 each, or two for $20.

I blinked – then couldn’t help but laugh.  What a deal.

I’ll bet if you were really forceful you could talk them into selling you three for $30. 

Two loose, Lautrec

If you’re ever in downtown Detroit, try the Lafayette Coney Island, or the National Coney Island next door.  I worked in Detroit many years ago, and went there often.

It makes no difference, which one you go into, I think the owners are brothers, or cousins and I think they share everything.  But I could be wrong.

Anyway, order two hamburgers, loose, with everything.  The surly waiter will yell: “Two loose!” And the surly guy standing at the windows in front will make them up in nothing flat. (The grills are at the front windows so passers by can see all the food.)  Then he’ll yell: “Two loose!” He’ll toss them on the counter and they’ll land with a clatter.

They’ll come to you on too small a plate; a shovel-full of loose hamburger meat in a steamed hotdog bun with chili, mustard and onions dripping off, and will be one of most delicious eating experiences you’ve ever had.

It’ll be messy, you’ll need a few extra napkins, but it will be worth it.

And I always wished the man at the window had been named Lautrec.

Think what the waiter could have yelled.

I’ll be visiting Detroit someday soon.  God, I hope they’re still in business.

I hope it hasn’t turned into a sushi joint.