the list begins

the ex is not a woman, in case you were wondering. not really. she had sent me on my way with what she thought was minimum requirements, including a saucepan or two, and microwave popcorn. but each and every set-foot into my new kitchen yields yet another deficiency, and i'm beginning to understand that this will likely go on for quite some time. yesterday morning it was oven mitts. (you gotta cover the eggs at the end to melt the cheese just right, and, yeah, that $50 skillet kicks f***in ass). today its scouring powder and qtips.

the hardest part is realizing that the money will likely run out long before the list does. i don't like the way the refrigerator door bumps the wall when it opens, so that'll take a run to the hardware store to put right. there's no way i want to be searching the condo for wallet, keys and cell phone every time out the door either, so there also needs to be something utilitarian nearby the front door.

some things are discretionary: do i really need a tablecloth, or can i put up with the appearance of the charity dining table? (of course, if anybody runs across something worth eating $50-skillet eggs on, don't hesitate to speak right up so we can make this question moot). others aren't: i'm gonna need hooks on which to hang st.'s bobby, adam and papi. the vacuum question bothers me--it's a lot of money for something with so little to do, though i'm feeling unwilling to be living with the lint on the carpet, either. the credenza for under the tv and holding the array of electronica is also something i'd prefer not to analyze too closely on cost/benefit before concluding that i don't want to live without it, too.

all i can do is keep that running list on the notebook on the table, and try to cross things off the top faster than they become added to the bottom. so far, i'm daily losing ground. (two more items and it rolls to the second page). at some point, logic would have it that either the list abates, or the condo ceases to be able to hold it all.

and we haven't even gotten to the kegerator yet.

the eve, single guy style

the fridge is full of home brew. (ok, add some prosciutto, provolone and orange juice). the boxes of clothes and books and etc. are still piled high and unopened in the closets, but the phone, 'net, cable and tivo are up and running. the bikes are in the living room, and the soccer gear is close within reach, while the only piece of permanent furniture in its permanent place is an overstuffed armchair with matching ottoman. (right in front of the tv, of course). i have no idea how it's all going to come together, but i really don't care either. the entire world can kiss my mnf-watching ass tonight. this is the eve, single guy style.

i think it has to be one of the nicest christmas presents i've ever gotten for myself--freedom.

naked

for all our primordial history of having been as a species, can anyone explain to me why being that (or the potential to be that) can create so much interpersonal uncertainty?

it's nice to be, together, ya know? it just ought to be simpler than it seems sometimes. that's what i think.

trees falling in forests

though i'm still obstinate that they do, indeed, always make a sound, i'm a bit more fluid this morning about what, exactly, it is that they sound like. i'm beginning to believe, if you put any two or more pairs of ears at the edge of the wood, that there's a fair probability that there won't be much consensus on what, exactly, is going on in there when the lumber starts to tumble.

case in point: i took chainsaw to the tree of women-who-are-not-you on friday, and misunderstood completely what might be heard beyond the kad barma grotto. see, whatever little survives between my basically-deaf pair simply can't conceive of a beautiful, intelligent, engaging and desirable woman with two good ones becoming confused about it--mostly because i'd expect she'd see the caricature and immediately know it doesn't really resemble her. but, see, now i get it--that's MY projection. so:

for whatever reason you might be compelled to self-deprecate in relation to anything i've ever said here, or anywhere for that matter, please at least bear in mind that i'm completely blind to your foibles and failings (i am!) and i don't mean anything by it, except that i'm sweet on any woman who has the charity to try to read these ramblings, and she's already perfect in my affirmation-starved eyes. and ears.

and that shouldn't induce any perfection anxiety at all, because, remember, the judge of perfection is the same guy who announced you perfect in the first place, and there's nothing you or your insecurity can do to get it through his deaf skull any differently. ;-)

selig, mitchell and the rest of them have it all wrong. wrong.

i don't doubt the rigor of george mitchell's investigation, even if i might question his prickly response to any potential conflict of interest questions. (c'mon, george, it's like beyond cut-and-dried--there's a conflict). where i think he and bud selig and everybody else obsessing and hyperventilating about these salacious steroid findings have gone completely wrong is in mistaking what this ought to be about. see, performance enhancing drugs can endlessly be debated for their morality and their fairness relative to the field of play, but that's so completely beside the point that i'm amazed that the discussions have even been allowed to get off the ground on their current basis. it's simply immaterial whether or not performance enhancing drugs are competitive or anti-competitive. immaterial.

what is incontrovertible, based on scientific study and the broken lives of many who have abused them, (e.g. lyle alzado), is that performance enhancing drugs are a health risk to the athletes who are motivated and/or induced to take them. what we have here is a simple public health issue, and a public morality issue regarding how far a crowd might be willing to exploit the health and well being of the gladiators in the ring before they need to be held morally responsible as accomplices in the crime.

for their safety, players are required to wear protective equipment. (ted green agrees). in the same way, for their safety, players should be required to participate in protective drug screenings, enforced just as rigorously by the league as they do the rest of their regulations. (in the nfl, you can get fined for even taking your helmet off between plays). when an investigation is conducted, it should simply occupy itself on the central question of how in the world can we do our best to protect the athletes of today and tomorrow. 10 and 20 year old hearsay about who got to stick a needle into roger clemens' buttocks is simply immaterial. that anyone is being injected with anything is the simple issue.

why george m. became so obsessed with barry and roger and the big names, i have no idea. it strikes me more than a little of the zealousness with which kenneth starr pursued the big name of william jefferson clinton. if the goal is public humiliation, well, then, we can pat george on the back and call him a success. but the simple fact that all this has been spilled out on the congressional investigation table (george and bud and co. have already received their summonses) and not one single person seems to know what to do with the results is the elephant in the middle of the room that nobody seems to want to talk about.

george, what do we need to do to ensure that these chuckleheads aren't poisoning themselves for fame and filthy lucre? did your report ever get into that???

folks in boston have known roger was a bad seed for decades. now the world knows more about why. but that doesn't help my sixteen year old or my thirteen year old or eleven year old in the ultimate goal, which is safeguarding human life on and off the playing field.

if it weren't a health issue, and more like wider goalie sticks or springier basketball shoes or lighter-weight football pads or letting 'em all wear high-tech batting gloves and leveraged elbow pads to maximize their swinging power, it'd be a no brainer. we'd let 'em do it.

but it's not.

it makes people ill. it breaks down their bodies, and damages their minds. it ought to be effectively eliminated from the locker rooms.

so how, george, do we go about ensuring that?

the rest of the report is rubbish.

what women want

it seems that i might be in a unique position to contemplate the age-old question about what, exactly, do women want. think about it: i know intimately an awful lot about what they don't (or at least one doesn't). and, with the seemingly endless list of "volunteers" to help heap sympathy and kitchen accoutrements into my shopping cart, it would seem that there must be *something* about me right now that at least appears on its surface to indicate promising ground for female spelunkers to go searching for their gold. so all i need to do is figure it out, right?

not professing to be able to figure all that well, (divorce comes complete with heaping helpings of humility), nevertheless i can quite easily talk out loud, and leave the breadcrumbs there for others to follow. so here goes:

point number one: it can't be "single". oh, of course you could cite all sorts of evidence and beliefs, and make all sorts of impassioned pleas to the jury, but, hey, remember? i was the married guy getting it all over the place. it ain't single.

point number two: but it could very well be the illusion of single. recall my little fun at the expense of the "pang" lady. her territorial insecurities immediately warped her emotions around the "single" attribute, and it produced all sorts of squirrelly results when word passed lips about other vaginas in the vicinity. but remove those clues and cues from the conversation, and watch how quickly it all settles back into "won't you come to hawaii with me". (honest, i swear, she's got a place there and she'd volunteer me frequent flyer miles to get there, too). all i did was try to be nice on the phone the other day when she called. illusion. which you know it has to be, because any idjit, even the proverbial "blonde" kind, can see from my circumstances that i'm a prime rebound candidate with a profligate track record, and every indication is that future returns *will* be indicated by past results. but project me a little illusion, she says, and watch the table lamps from knocking over while the legs fly open. (i'm a misogynist, yeah, i know).

point number three: kids, puppies, and bachelorhood. you know the cliche about guys in the park with the cute puppies that all the cute bimbos want to pet. works great with cute little kids, too. something about that feminine nurturing gene, i think, that makes irresistible anything that needs taking care of. so, i think, the impulse goes double when it's the guy himself. i'm 47 for keereist's sake, i didn't get this far by not being able to sew on my own buttons. but i also then realize that some guys (mostly irish, i think, cuz i'm a nationalist/racist too ;-), really can arrive at this advanced age without ever having been cut past a pair of apron strings, whether maternal or otherwise. (ok, we know they're all maternal). so even just the whiff of not knowing what stuff to buy to stock a kitchen (by whiff, i mean, all it takes is the theoretical possibility that mom still irons my underwear) is sufficient to get the juices flowing. throw impaired by trying-really-hard laundry skills, and nowhere to go on major holidays for a home cooked meal, and you're going to need to fasten your seat belts. this ride is like a rocket sled.

point number four: sex. oh, yeah, you know it's there. that urge to have it. for twenty years guys have all been put through the wringer for our hormonal compulsion to procreate. shy, demure deferrals... "no means no" rejections... "not tonight i have a headache" indignities... guys have been beaten down, cowed and conditioned to live without it, and for the girls it's now all coming back to bite 'em. cuz they know now that they want it. they never thought they did, but as soon as the well dried up, they realized that they've become thirsty. so where is it going to come from? wait! there's a guy over there still with teeth AND hair!!! let's GET HIM!!!

now, i also realize there will be women reading this previous paragraph who have *always* wanted sex, and had it quite religiously for all these years, who think quite rightly that i'm talking out of my hind end, and that none of this really applies to them. (likely not the prior paragraphs either, as i've found a good correlation between sex and sanity among women, but you know this convolution isn't about sanity today, so we'll leave the exceptions out of it for now, and stick with the apparent majority). you're right, of course, but you know you've met these other women i'm talking about, and that it's not all ridiculous. (misogynist AND arrogant, yep).

point number five: availability. adam smith. the invisible hand. supply and demand. some guys are gay, some guys are dead, and some guys are too lazy to go get that viagra prescription. (see "cowed and conditioned" above). right from the start there was only a finite number of penises to be had, and every year sees just that many more taken out of circulation. (or, i suppose, you could move to india and china where they're birthing an extra one for every ten, but that's inconvenient). women live longer than men. and as the older ones predate down the chronological food chain, (yeah, demi moore may still be hot, but she's taking some twenty-nine-year-old's saturday night satisfaction out of circulation and not putting it back), there are only so many left to go around for the younger ones. and nature has seen to it that there's a fair amount of price elasticity to coital compulsions.

point number six: chaahhm. guys, who have said it all before, remember. there's a great and positive behavioral reward for sweet talking onesself into sex, and you gotta know that those brain pathways are reinforced to the point of permanence, at least with some guys. girls seem to like to hear it, too. (is that a learned behavior from the same sorts of sexual gratification circuits, i wonder?) "oh you sweet talkin' guy you". fwwwippppp. (that's the sound of panties hitting the floor, bedcovers being pulled back, and bodies diving into the sheets all at once).

point number seven: because it's there. what, do you mean i can't have that??? (climb that, buy that, you name that). then i have to have it!!!

point number eight: they don't know, can't tell you, (or won't), and will streak to the door if felt taken for granted, patronized or trivialized. (well, the self-respecting ones will... a lot of 'em will just lie there and take it, too). but if you nod your head at the right points in the conversation, and make them feel appreciated, treasured and loved, they will put out like champions.

so why is all this???

heck if i know. but you can bet for sure i'm gonna be gettin' some, even if just by accident.

the inventory

i was reminded again today that i need good kitchen knives. (one at the very minimum). i feel fortunate that i have an expert to shepherd me to some of the better places from which to procure them. but that's just the knife-point tip of the iceberg of what i'll need, and with just seven days left before this particular version of christmas, i'm going to need to get cracking.

i need lightbulbs. (11 for the new chandelier, but wicked low wattage ones because there's nothing more frightful than an over-lit foyer). i need plates and glasses and flatware. (microwave and dishwasher and oops didn't mean to drop that suitable, of course). i need chairs to sit on in a big way. (right now the anticipated quantity without additional procurement is exactly zero). i'll need a vaccuum cleaner and maybe even a mop. (it's all tile and hardwood downstairs). i need end tables, coffee tables, (one actually) night stands and lamps to put on them. heck, i'll even need wastebaskets.

of the larger items, i'm still short one afternoon nappable oversized sofa, a recliner (or two), beds for the kids and perhaps even an armoire to serve as a closet in the 3rd bedroom space. (not to mention some kind of curtain or partition to make it a bedroom space, though i'm enough of an engineer to want to fully scope out the requirements and think about things carefully before diving blindly into that particular challenge). for these i know i can save a lot of $'s by piecemealing it via craigslist and ebay, but i'm also conscious of the compromise factor (do i really need someone else's castoffs?) and the transportation challenge that would both be solved by buying new and arranging for delivery. jordan's generally offers no interest and no payments for a year, and hopefully that'll camel me until the bonus next year and allow me to rationalize spending all that extra money. you can't put a price on decent stuff, you know? yeah, yeah, i know there's better to be had, but i'm not expecting to be in the kind of financial shape to pull that off for awhile, so gotta start somewhere.

oh.. yeah... dining area...

i want a wooden table that takes six guys to move. where does one go get something like that? if after all the other spending is done and i've got anything left, i know right where to go buy handmade chairs in gardner for a couple of hundred bucks apiece, and get them upholstered to order. maybe they sell slabs of paper-reading real estate there too.

gotta call and order the paper...

it just doesn't end!

today's get rich idea

personal improvement is a huge industry, and considering the quacks profiting within it, (have you seen dr. phil's new "breaking news" premise?) perhaps it's about time for me to propose my own personal brand of "trust me, it ought to work".

see, i've observed an interesting quirk among a huge portion of the population, and i think i have an insight on where it comes from and what ought to be done about it.

why do so many of us seem incapable of feeling loved? sure, it's a downer for those of us who experience it directly, but it's also one of the most pernicious and insidious causes for relationship implosion that there is. i know you've heard it, and i'm willing to bet that most of you have even said it: "my spouse doesn't appreciate the things i do for him/her".

well, investors of $24.95 in five easy monthly installments, i can tell you allllllll about it.

here are some of the other symptoms i've noticed: discomfort being physically touched. feelings of resentment and implied obligation whenever anybody says or does anything remotely "nice". incapability to *enjoy* anything at all being done for them, even by close family members. (notice i said "enjoy", and not "feel like that's part of those family member's jobs anyway").

so what's the solution, you ask?

i propose some extremely aggressive and invasive behavioral therapy. first, we round up all the service fetish types that are out there, who get a thrill out of ironing other people's shirts. (they're out there, i swear, and i've even talked to some of them). second, we lock couples who are having this particular difficulty into a small room with their assigned "service surrogate", and we FORCE them to receive neck rubs, have delicious meals prepared for them after which they're under NO obligation to clean up, and generally make them sit still while simple human kindnesses are rammed down their repressed and squirming throats.

and then we ask them how they feel. we ask them, why does it make you uncomfortable to be made physically comfortable? why are you pathologically incapable of feeling LOVED by such gestures, and why aren't you able to understand that it makes people feel good to be allowed to be able to do them for you???

i can recall how it felt to be told, when everything i had tried to do for 18 months to show my wife how much i loved her was spurned as being insincere and "obviously" a shallow attempt to manipulate her affections, that none of it made any difference. it felt empty. it felt cold. it felt lonely. it felt like i know she must have felt for all the years that she stayed at home with the kids while i went out working, that i couldn't respond with love to any of the things she had tried in her imperfect ways to do for me with love.

we were both broken.

so here's my promise to myself:

every potential girlfriend/lover/fwb that applies for the position will be first invited to have dinner over at my favorite shirt-ironer's. she'll be feted and feasted and fed all the milk of human kindness that there is. and i'll be watching for how it makes her feel. can she smile and say thank you, and even touch the hand as it places, lovingly, the next course before her? can she sit without questioning and spurning every gesture? because, if she can't, i know already where it's headed.

i'm a thoughtful guy. but i'm a weak guy. i need to know it's appreciated.

bonus points if the fact that i'm just as inclined to fancy the hostess as i am her guest doesn't turn the whole thing into a territorial and insecure questioning of my affections.

i wouldn't have invited you if i weren't sincerely interested.

ironically, i think i already tried this once, though a catastrophe of epic proportions that had nothing to do with dinner got in the way... i'm inclined to want to try it again.

let your geek flag fly

the local chess championship (if you can call a handful of geeks gathering in the town library for a few hours on a saturday morning a championship) is this weekend, and i'm given to planning on giving it a go. it'd be my last hurrah as a local, (it's not open to out-of-towners), and a chance to indulge my selfish preferences without any concern for how anybody else is going to see it. (you know my soon-to-be-ex will be frowning through her not-quite-poker face on the subject, because saturdays are a day for WORK, dontcha know?) the whole thing got me thinking about my enjoyment of fantasy sports (my hockey teams are kicking ass in two out of three leagues, and staging a below-the-radar run at the playoffs in the other, and my football squad led by tom brady and randy moss is a veritable virtual juggernaut, just like the one in real life), and how, just like old folks being expected to pass gas, it's about time that i let my geek flag fly.

yeah, yeah, i know, i'm arranging for another indoor soccer game in january because one a week just isn't enough for us jock types, but underneath that buff and beer lifestyle, there's always been a closet stratego junkie waiting to be let out. (that just went on the condo upgrade list, btw--the replacement stratego, risk and monopoly games). i fear that a lot of my new neighbors might be inclined to prefer poker night to invading alaska via kamchatka, but somewhere out there there are people who get it, and me, and i'm going to find them.

p-k4 (e2-e4 lacks the fischer-esque nostalgia factor) and watch yourself--i play wicked pissah good when i'm in the zone.

"don't bother with the local girls"

i gave a friend my standard catherine deneuve fantasy answer recently. (is there any other woman in the world as beautiful?) when prodded to come up with an american alternative, i had to pause and think for a second because my list of alternates was, indeed, top heavy with foreign accents. (well, salma hayek came to mind first, and then at that point i became distracted). i recovered as best i could to suggest a combination of janeane garofalo and annabella sciorria, but it's worth admitting to myself and to others that i'm somewhat internationally inclined. (should come in handy on the streets and in the nightspots of lowell, right?) graham parker had a suggestion about it, (don't bother with the local girls--don't bother with them, they don't bother me), and i think he might have been on to something.

i always figured he was pointing out the sour grapes nature of our attractions, and how, when she looks alright in that cheap print dress, still when she swishes it round and makes him disappear, and he says he's aware of exactly what he's doing, making everything a mystery, the punch line is what we all say to ourselves in our heads. "don't bother with it, it don't bother me".

but it does.

only the ones who know us well can swish it round and make us feel to disappear. to the others, exotic and beautiful and graced with the touch of a foreign accent, we feel reanimated and brand new. after all, how would they know? (not, of course, germane to the question of whether or not catherine d. would accept a drink from me at a bar, but, in my fantasy, she always does).

you can't cheat an honest man

or, to the converse, as my soon-to-be ex-father-in-law once told a story, there is no smart end of a tape measure.

the sellers are a fascinating cultural study in kindly wife vs. smarter-than-that husband. he's generally been out of town and setting things up in the new destination, so hers is often the first, though qualified that her husband will have to agree before she decides, response that is received at each step along the real estate transaction process. e.g. the original $500 deposit to bind the offer had to be increased to $1000 because he was adamant that it safeguarded them from potential bail jumpers. (the source of their first offer had skipped town). e.g. the original offer price had to be adjusted with a sly dodge for a separate payment for "add-ins", saving $100 of real estate commission without regard to the out-of-pocket impact on anybody else. (cash is something that i don't have a lot of extra right now). e.g. in response to concerns raised as a result of a home inspection, aging hvac equipment and bathroom fixtures marred by shampooing the family 150 pound dog in the fiberglass tub were told to be just too damn bad.

oh really?

when my soon-to-be ex-father-in-law was a fledgling builder, he'd often come across oh-so-much-smarter-than-him inspectors who always insisted on sending him down into the hole with the "dumb" end of the tape measure. seems shrewd, right? at least until you realize that balling up the first few feet of the tape in ones fist is just as effective an approach to getting the "right" number read off the measure as fudging the number on the "smart" end. the only difference being who thought they were the smartest, and who knew it.

so today the haggling, niggling mensa wannabe sits in front of a piece of paper from my bank saying that i don't need to follow through on the purchase because the appraisal figures don't match his glorified estimations of the "worth" of his property. of course, i could be happy to make up the difference out of generosity and means, or, to recall his smug insistence on the smart end of the negotiating strategy, i could ball up the last few thousand in my fist and say, gee, sorry, but i guess you can see the tale of this particular tape.

how much you bet he whines for a few days before he folds his hammer? seven deuce. off suit. game over.

if only, like dickens, i were paid by the installment...

it would seem i have my own built-in stress gauge, just by looking at the list of recent [sic] mindtivo posts--the crucible is heating up, and the first thing to melt away is the time and inclination to tell about it. sorry, but i'm sure it's covered somewhere in the various laws of thermodynamics. i'll write more another time, i promise.

so...

discovered (delayed) enlightenment is on my mind today, first from a correspondence tangent about how taste can be altered by sight. perhaps obvious to anyone who's done the green beer thing on st patties, there's something extremely suggestible in us when it comes to things we put into our mouths. as interesting as it can be to marvel at how something we know should taste a certain way might not, it also struck me how curious it is that, while blindfolded, we often can't put our olfactory 2 and 2 together to come up with what, exactly, the stuff is that we're "tasting". being a cheap yankee leads one to places like the veryfine outlet off 495 in littleton, massachusetts, and the nature of packaged drink overstock is that, quite often, what it says on the outside of the can isn't. have you ever taken a mouthful of something sweet, and then realized, though familiar, you just couldn't put your finger on it? tastes really good when you get it, doesn't it.

which reminded me a lot of what it's like to click on the car radio on a noisy traffic day while distracted by other things and then get halfway through a song before the cadence of the rhythm and the tonality of the melody finally "click" in your head. it's often a song you know, of course, and there's always along with that realization a vague understanding that you should have been able to put it together all along. makes you want to go back to the beginning and listen to that opening bit again, to hear both what you know, and what you hear anew while you didn't recognize it. (let's hear it for ipods and the repeat button). and you like it when you get it the second time, too.

dickens always baffled me at first. i mean, whotf is magwitch, and are we really supposed to believe a guy could get rich after being shipped off to the australian penal colony, while always remembering the snot-nosed kid who helped him through some marshes between incarcerations? (and we though "lost" was inscrutable). and then someone explained to me how he wrote the things, one chapter at a time, often paid by the word, and without any concern at all halfway through to nudging the development in one direction or another to suit whim and public expectation, great and otherwise. and then i got him. i mean, i really got him. even, believe it or not, to the point of actually cracking great expectations a second time, just for fun, and enjoying every word i'd dreaded like the plague while incarcerated in ms ross's english class. (i never got rich during that particular sentence...)

so we watched the "heroes" season finale last night, and debated the thematic permanence of nathan petrelli's (attempted?) assassination. i mean, they resurrected hrg... maya... re-un-disfigured nathan's face... it's all just a stroke of a writer's key from anything kring wants it to be, right? there's a storytelling that exists in its unfolding that stands apart from the criticisms tossed by those, like henry james or virginia woolf on dickens, who can't stand that it's not to their particular readiness to taste.

it's always better when you take a flavor for what it is, and not what it isn't.