I don’t smoke dope any more, but I might just have to come out of retirement for Bong Hits 4 Jesus.

So today I got a date with a lawyer from the prosecutor’s office.

When I have a hard time getting motivated in the morning, I find myself reciting the Charge of the Light Brigade in my head:

Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred

It’s kind of like when I don’t want to lift or otherwise exercise after a long day, when I catch myself muttering “beautiful corpse” over and over again.

I think I’m finally going over the really deep end.

So, we have a trial that starts tomorrow.  I’ve worked 84 hours in the last five days. 

Yes, I am alive.  Yes, I’m still bitter.  No, I didn’t relapse.  Yes, I came really fuck’n close. 

I don’t know how much I’ll be around before the weekend, so take care of yourselves.

There is something horribly wrong when you get to work at 7 a.m. and, with but a couple of 1 hour breaks for exercise and a two hour dinner and Rescue Me break, you finally finish working at 1:45 a.m.

Okay, so here are five reasons why I’d be cool with going to Scotland. 

1.  I really dig castles.
2.  To fuck Sean Connery.  What?  I mean, I’m not gay or anything, but I’d seriously fuck that old dude.
3.  I’ve always wanted to go a Viking from the Orkney Islands.
4.  I look great in a kilt, as I have very shapely calves.
5.  I love the bagpipes.  I can close my eyes and think about running down a hill, claymore in hand, screaming, with the bloodlust all up on me, all the while the bagpiper playing from atop a tor.  The sound of bagpipes is truly music to die by.  You either know what I mean by that last statement or you don’t.  I’ve already made the arrangements for there to be bagpipes at my funeral, whenever that may be.

Oh, and I’d like to fuck me some Scottish chicks, too.

If she even comes close to this, I’ll give up drinking coffee and swearing at people.

Dear Florida,

Fuck you.  I hate you all and want you to die, you simple minded cocksuckers.  Why, you ask?  Because I am sick of hearing your tired little whining every time there is a storm in the Atlantic that may come somewhere near your piece of shit house.  Let it be noted that I don’t give a fuck about when a storm does destroy your shittly little house, either.  I don’t care about your Andrews, your Charlies or even your fucking Katrinas.  You made the choice on where to live, so fucking deal with it.

Why is it that every goddamn summer I have to listen to the endless litany of hurricane season and then get updates for the next several months?  I don’t want to hear about another fucking hurricane until I hear about the one that drowns that entire limp dick of a state.  If there aren’t at least as many bodies as that last big tsunami, then take your bitch asses off the fuck’n TV.  Pussies.

I don’t even know why you cocksuckers want to live there.  It’s hot, humid, and covered in mosquitos.  I say you just get on with it, sell that fucker to the Cubans and move the fuck back home.   Cause you know you weren’t born there.  I’ve yet, in all my travels, ever met anyone who was actually born in Florida.  It’s like you have to be fleeing child support from some northern trailer park or float in on a boat made of popsicle sticks and beer cans to be allowed entry.

Better yet, don’t move.  Secede.  We don’t want your fucking cultural backwash back in the rest of the real states.  Keep your Disney and your Miami Vice and your swamp ass and stay until the big one comes and kills you all.

That, I’d watch on television.

Much love and squalor,
Grampa

Is it a bad thing when three people in four days tell you the following?

“Smoking?  I give you a free pass for the next six months.”

“Cigarettes are the least of your worries, so smoke all you want.”

“You have far to much to be concerned about now to even think about quitting smoking.  Save that one for next year.”

Does it make it worse that those three people are your treating physicians?

Something was supposed to happen today.  I was supposed to pick someone up at the airport. 

It isn’t going to happen.  I’ve known this for some time. 

Plane tickets can be changed to new destinations.  Plans can be altered.  Lives will move on.  They have.  The circle in red Sharpie on my calendar is harder to erase.  I saw it there yesterday and, for a second, a possibility that is no longer possible swam back into view.

The reality is that she is no longer coming.  The reality is that we are in different places, both geographically and at points in our lives.  The reality is that I now have a good friend far away to the east.  The reality is that this is how things are and they are not going to change. 

Reality is sometimes a bitter pill to swallow.

Still, the part of me that likes to believe in parallel universes, with wizards, elves and dragons, believes that somewhere, somewhen, somehow a parallel me and a parallel her were able to make it work. 

Somewhere there is a me picking up a her with Merlin, our talking organ grinder monkey, in tow.

This me knows that what is, is.  This me knows that we gave our all and that sometimes your all is not good enough.  Today, this me feels a pang of loss.  The loss is caused by distance.  The distance is that which lies between what is and what can never be.