Tuesday, December 1, 2009

From not moving to barely moving from the move

I'm certain you neither want nor need to hear about this, gentle reader. But there really ought to be a statute of limitations on bodily exertions and requirements to move premises without the funds to do so. I should really have simply executed a sit-down strike, which is all I've got since I'm not a violent person no matter how outraged I become.

But it's easy enough to score some Vicodin (r) from among the oversupplied. (I'd thrown mine out years ago, after taking one course so that I could work through some broken leg pain) It's easy enough to rally. And I'm not dead yet, although I wasn't sure there for a while, with endless shelves of books remaining in the U-Haul (r) and zippo (r) energy remaining in my sore and beaten body.

So, now begins the endless process of unpacking and more winnowings. Meantime, I discover that a few words of mine have stirred up a hornets nest among the right wing of the family. Remaining silent and being thought a fool is ever the better part of valor, but I'm the genuine article - a fool - and couldn't keep my yap shut. Good thing I was absent to defend myself this time, since I'd a stuck it in deeper.

But really, I don't think the right wingers should be both fanning the flames of fear of "death panels" at the same time that they are preaching personal responsibility. It's not rationing we need. Just simple rationality, which, like the smart grid, would allow good decisions to be made on the basis of good information devolving to the point of decision. The doctor and the patient. Who should not be adversaries in this match, the way that I am with U-Haul, say, or the drug companies, or the purveyors of death however striped.

You know at U-Haul they warn you that it's easy to reverse the F and E on the fuel gauge, so that you don't get dinged for thinking you've sent it back 3/4 full when you really sent it back 3/4 empty. And then they give you the contract saying it's 3/4 full and you believe them, until you discover they've made the mistake they warned you about. And you feel like you've just been flim-flammed.

Shouldn't they really send the truck out with a full tank so you don't have to be gamed on the return anyhow? Where they reserve the right to ding you if it's under, such that you have no choice but to overfill as some kind of insurance against what they could do to you? Not to mention the insurance they sell you in some very vague distinction from the kinds of protection rackets which have been illegal for quite a while now. The implication being that you might just be bankrupted without it, so you pay the carefully calibrated fee. They've got you over the barrel.

I remember loving my windproof Zippo back when I was young and immortal and thought that smoking was a nice way to spite the world. I don't remember any drugs working for me though, except the kind that are really cheap and therefore must be controlled. Once when my appendix burst on its way out. Everybody I know wants to push drugs on me though. And they get angry when I suggest that they might be subject to the advertisers' placebo effect of oversupply. Well, I'd get angry too, but I still demand my liberty to just say no.

And I'm too tired now to think. Too tired to write, but I have this obligation going. Today I received maybe five gentle emails about how after much careful consideration, no, in the end, they won't be able to take the old sailboat I'd offered up for free. Still, I feel mildly abused, to be the object of dreaming battled out with sensible spouses back at home across some dining room table.

My friends offer now to subsidize the boat's move, since they have fond memories too, but I think that what's on offer is a kind of shared ownership, which - as in the case of love too come to think of it - can never work with an old wooden sailboat. The awareness while under way requires an intimacy, a familarity with each of the particulars, which is at the very least unlikely when the work is delegated.

You can't sail a wooden boat the way that most people drive now; almost as if the airbags were part of the calculations, in just the way that legal transgressions are part of the calculations of most successful businesses. It's the profit margin for insurance companies, and credit card companies, not to mention the porn which provides the profit margins for online dealings. Right wingers should get a clue about such things. They make their money denying claims they're obligated to pay, just because they get away with it from a significant number of us. They make their money on late fees. They're gaming us. I'm tired.

Lots of people make scant consideration for bounding deer when they crowd you on country roads; for saturated traffic, and things which weren't repaired right. But here I am repeating myself - I'm pretty certain I've made that identical observation before, now buried beneath my energy to search for it.

And I cannot even cook my dinner until I unearth the things still buried in boxes around the small apartment. So, I've gotta go, but I'll be back. Well, unless the bald tires don't make it to the credit-card shop, since we've had our first real snow this morning. Let's see, together with my still unpaid dental crown which comes due tomorrow or they won't clean my teeth, that makes a dollar three eigthty left after the house closes at the end of the week, plus there's the cost to move the boat . . . well the happiness I feel. As they say on that credit card ad, Priceless!



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