BILL AND JOHN GET THEIR BLOKENS (See Harold and Kumar Guantanamo film)

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
-- Leo Tolstoy, “Anna Karenina” 1876

TUESDAY MORNING

Today I received news that last Friday’s CT Scan showed no cancer, yahoo! This means that after my next 3-month checkup, which will come at the 1 year mark out from chemotherapy, the scans will come at six, rather than three, month intervals.

TUESDAY AFTERNOON (The Moody Blues Suck!)

Narcissism run amok

Reasons I couldn’t vote for Bill Clinton the second time around. Yes, I found it unconscionable he refused to sign the land mine ban, bombed a pharmaceutical company in Sudan that dispensed life saving drugs to hundreds of thousands of Africans, and indiscriminately sent cruise missiles into Afghanistan, but there are more mundane reasons I couldn’t vote for this clown. Any twit who says he smoked a joint, but didn’t inhale, and is on record as saying his guilt stricken conscience couldn’t allow him to come when he had his dick in Monica Lewinski’s mouth, just ain’t up there in my pantheon of admirable characters. Bill is sulking about the fact he’s being pressured to talk about Obama’s and the democrats’ foreign policy agenda for the country’s future. What does he want to talk about? Clinton’s upset that Obama hasn’t made enough of his legacy. This dingleberry wants to give a convention speech bragging himself up, you know, the greatness that was Bill. Duh! Err…Bill, wouldn’t it probably be better to pay, or rope, someone else into blowing your horn for you.

Speaking of having your horn blown. I’ll bet you could get, say, John Edwards, another nitwit who’s taken high self esteem to a new level, to wax poetic on how great you are, Bill. Edwards is such a noble, caring man and husband, I mean, it must have really taken some courage not to cheat on your wife when she had cancer. I suppose he would’ve thought it remiss to be fucking his sycophantic vidieographer unless his wife was in remission. As Maureen Dowd put it, “His infidelity was oncologically correct.” When Edwards said, “You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself. I have been stripped bare,” my world fell down.

That’s so touching. Actually, after hearing that, I felt so sorry for Johnny I wanted to contribute to his haircut fund. Edwards said he wanted to be judged on who he really is, and not on the basis of being some “plastic Ken Doll that you put up in front of an audience.” I suppose $800 haircuts are not a sign of hyper-superficiality. Plastic people, oh baby, now you’re such a drag. Edwards “oncological correctness” should serve as a lesson to us all on spousal altruism. Cheating on one’s wife or husband is certainly something many have done, and I include myself in that group, but I don’t think most of us, in making that admission, would see our justification as an opportunity to trumpet our sincerity and nobility. How conceited can one get?

LAST SUNDAY NIGHT

“How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of the world!”
-- William Shakespeare, “Hamlet,” 1605

Ode to Bitterness

Bitterness steals your spirit and sullies the soul. Of late, I feel like an Emily Dickinson poem in a Raymond Carver year, a Flannery O’Connor character in a Tennessee Williams play. Anger? Sadness? Bitterness? How is bitterness related to, and different from, anger? Bitterness permeates the space around you, your personal ambience. Bitterness gets projected as a low-grade callousness, a meanness towards yourself and those around you. Being violated causes bitterness. Bitterness smothers the capacity to love, to care about others. Bitterness makes care of the self, careless and sloppy. To be embittered is like and emotional cancer. If you're going to write about emotions, I guess you have to start with yourself. Where's that photo of happy father and daughter? Why is she, am I, so bitter? What's wrong with me? Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Does self-pity come from self-blame? If there's no future in dwelling on the past, does this mean I should exorcize all memories, even the good? Were they even that good?
Bitterness takes away your passion, inspiration, and soul. It saps your humor, your good nature, and your grace. It steals your zeal. Hamlet was bitter, and so am I. It’ll pass.

Love - r

PS: My new motto: "Count your blessings, not your guitars."