Blue Jays

The stray cat is quickly becoming my partner cat. Grey, with an extra heavy coat, and big light green eyes, one can look at him and see he is not tame. Except when he lets me scratch his ears. Or at feeding time. Which for him, like the dog, seems to be every time I pass by. The Cat still sleeps outside, and isn't friendly with other people or Shep, but he doesn't bother to get up from my motorcycle seat when I drive up now either. Friends.
The blue jays recognize my whistle . When they hear my special screech the trees in front of the shack become a waiting ground for hungry birds. I like to throw a couple of pieces of broken bread down for them, then go behind the long mirrored window in the Octoberfest room to watch the show. After that it's on.
The Bluejays come in cautiously at first, swooping down from the oak trees, to the shoulders of the wooden people in front of the shack, to the ground and sour dough love. Once the first, and bravest birds, successfully grab bread and fly, the rout is on and birds approach from everywhere. Free Bread Birdie!
Winter. I have other things to do then talk to the animals. Returned from down south last Thursday. When I arrived the cabin looked like a Swiss chalet. The windows were frosted, resembling store window decorations, but the ice was real. Uh-oh. The five days I was gone temperatures were well below freezing. The plastic plumbing in the house froze. All the pipe split. The Toilet froze and exploded. The faucet on the kitchen sink broke. Five days of plumbing later I'm still trouble shooting leaks and replacing pipe. I don't know if the water heater has to be replaced. I may have a shower tonight, it may not be an option.

No water damage luckily, the pipes are exposed on the inside walls and everything was frozen solid.... I just swept up the ice and turned the main off before I lit the fire. Next time I leave in winter I'll take precautionary measures. The crisis gave me something to do anyway. Good training my brother said. Life is wonderful, Every miserable moment.

Happy Holidays

The Mall

We were at 'The Mall' last week. The Mall is a good place to observe Holiday Bliss. It's full of Bliss; decorations everywhere, party dresses on hangers, stacks of sweaters on sale, and people everywhere buying things for others... things others don't need. It was business as usual. The Holidays.
As my son and I walked through Macy's I noticed the strapless party dresses; short, with frill around the bust. They reminded me of the dresses from the roaring twenties. Do women really wear those 'party' dresses? Are there really parties where people dress like that? I decide it's time to buy new teeth and try to meet the Jeffersons. The excess. The bliss. Don't people in the city watch the news? Is the story different?
The orgy is over. America is now broke. We don't have the money to finance our desires anymore. People are losing homes. Banks are failing. Automakers need a bailout. Real estate lost 2 trillion dollars in 2008. China owns us. Am I the only one worried about the future? Am I needlessly worried about nothing?

Looking around I realize I'm the oldest person in the mall . Or at least it seems so. Now I am depressed; not only do I feel like a killjoy, but an old humbug of a Grinch too.

Thirty years past my prime mall carousing days, I can only wish I was young and handsome and attractive to the numerous young women that 'eye' my son and ignore me. I'm happy and proud for my son. I tell him enjoy every minute of being young. I think that life is too short and youth (the shortest segment of life) is way too short. The hell with growing old gracefully. Nobody at the Mall is living in reality except the minimum wage store employees waiting to get off work and join the consumer orgy of Bliss themselves.

So I decide I'll join the fantasy... I give a wink to a young women looking in my son's direction, and Boom Baby, Like a Bomb reality slaps me almost as quick as that girl could twist her neck and look in the other direction.
Worse yet my son sees what happens and chastises me for not knowing how to act. So much for Holiday Cheer and Good Will. She could have humored me a little. I didn't want to marry her. I didn't even care if I knew her name. I just wanted to be thirty years younger, dumber, cooler, and irresistible. And she could have done all of that with an air kiss or a wink.

Instead it was whiplash.

Not that I would have believed she was sincere, but later when I was alone, the male ego could make anything reality. Oh Well.

I start to think about how if I'd only known how Austin men don't age gracefully, I would have tried harder to be a good husband. Shocked back to the ugly truth, I try smiling at an older women looking at the party dresses; she looks me up and down and walks away, obviously not impressed with my dress and lack of obvious wealth. Damn, I was only trying to make her feel good about being old, too. I could never be interested in anybody whom would actually buy and wear one of those silly dresses.

I tell myself, "You've known love, romance, passion. You had your day. Aren't you a little old for such shallow measures of worth?" But the Annie L song 'Stay Young and Beautiful' keeps popping into my head.

Now, too old and poor and ugly for the Mall, I feel like a spaghetti western without Clint Eastwood. I tell myself it's not too late. I'm not all washed up. I realize I can still have all the love and desire that money can buy, and the male ego can make it real.

All right, now we're getting in the Holiday Spirit. The Bliss.

Later, lamenting to my son about the emphasis put on attractiveness, and how it's making me feel old....

He says, "I know, I started going to city college and met lots of new girlfriends. When I started at Berkeley, I met 'the bomb' and dropped the others. I lost the bomb in pursuit of the BA, but got the degree. And with every degree the quality of my women goes up. I can't wait to pursue my Law degree, or Masters." ...All for the desire of an education.

And then I was happy. None of us get forever on this earth, but it is fulfilling to see the evolution and immortality of ourselves in our descendants.

I hope When you are at the mall this year you'll think of this letter and remember : The orgy is over. America is now broke. We don't have the money to finance our desires anymore. People are losing homes. Banks are failing. Automakers need a bailout. Real estate lost 2 trillion dollars in 2008. China owns us.

And then find the money and pretend. Join the Bliss. It's Christmas and life. Especially youth, is way too short. Happy Holidays.

By the way, YOU look marvelous... Wink, Wink!

The Holidays, A Body Gotta Live, and Respectable Pursuits

The holidays bring out the best in people. Watching the Sacramento Kings play the Boston Celtics on NBA Pass tonight, The Kings (as part of the half-time broadcast) were showing clips of their 'holiday' public service. The Kings and their owners, The Maloof family, along with other major corporations wanting to take advantage of tax write-offs and a chance for creating positive public relations, are very generous during the Holidays. In this 'community service segment' our heroes were going out in the poorer communities giving away Christmas trees, complete with ornaments to decorate them, as well as holiday meals prepared and ready to eat, 'donated' by Raley's\BelAir (one of the nicer supermarket chains in Northern California). Those meals aren' t cheap (my buddy Guy bought one at Thanksgiving and told me what he paid), but they are a nice meal. I feel relief for those few lucky poor people! I'm a sensitive person.
Stories of holiday goodwill and kindness make me tear up, normally. But there's more to the story... Well, see... the poor people weren't having these gifts delivered to their homes. Instead they were driving up in their cars and waiting in line. Then, with cameras rolling (wouldn't want to be generous and not have it be recorded\acknowledged, huh), the players delivered the necessities of a joyous holiday to the people waiting in their cars, who (as one happy recipient explained) "would not have been able to afford Christmas without the generosity of the Kings organization."
I guess I would have been happier for this 'poor' women except she didn't look older then thirty, nor was she unkempt, or portraying the appearance of someone downtrodden. And I noticed her nails were manicured in holiday colors (seemingly professionally) on the hand gripping the steering wheel of her newish mini-van. I wondered what the criteria was to qualify as poor and pull your car into line. Obviously a recent manicure didn't disqualify you. I could tell that owning a car didn't disqualify you either, because all these people had cars. I noticed that all the cars in line looked newer than mine too. These people gave me the impression the 'poor' had changed in the fourteen months since I left California.
The second recipient was driving what looked like a new Lincoln Navigator, which is a 10 mile per gallon SUV. I'm glad the Kings organization went out to the poor neighborhoods to play Santa, otherwise those poor people might have not been able to afford the gas to receive the necessities for Christmas. Thanks to the Kings organization they can drive in style and celebrate the birth of Jesus. Hallelujah!
Funnily, I didn't see any shopping carts in the line. I was under the impression that is the usual status symbol for the poor. Maybe those poor people got caught in traffic. Just as well, they wouldn't have had a roof to tie their tree on, or put under, for that matter. Those poor people are generally a little too poor for good PR video anyway. Though they know where the shelters are, it looked like they were completely unaware of this charitable event. In that respect, the Holidays bring out the worst in people too, unfortunately.
Every year there is the perennial story of the poor family robbed of their Christmas by thieves, and the gnawing moral question of how could anyone be so cruel? The following day, inevitably, will be the story of the public generously donating gifts, food, decorations: all the necessities of the Christmas celebration. All that love for those poor people, makes everybody feel good! This year there was another chapter to that type of story too.
It seems that a former friend of a poor family that was robbed, while sitting in his new SUV at a Kings Community function for the needy, waiting for a free meal and tree, saw the news clip on the overhead tv/dvd player in his Navigator, and notified the authorities that the same family had been "robbed" two years earlier. Ironically, the guy in the SUV thought it was atrocious his acquaintance would lie about his circumstances in order to take advantage of the public's sympathy. Morally, he felt like he had no choice but to expose him , saying, "that out-pouring of public generosity might have found it's way to the truly Poor, had it not been stolen by [his] unscrupulous buddy." So, the moral of the story?
ALWAYS HAVE A SCUMBAG HANDY TO DIVERT ATTENTION FROM YOURSELF
Merry Xmas to One and All

PS The first snow this winter fell today-