Uncle GoGo

I have spent a lot of effort over the last decade or so deflecting the notion that I am an alcoholic. I can’t count the times I’ve had to explain that modern calculations on alcohol intake MUST be flawed as given my own consumption, I was not an alcoholic, more likely I was dead. In the end I have come to a conclusion that trying to explain your drinking to someone while mostly drunk to someone who is mostly sober is simply a folly.

So, now, I’m not drunk, AND no longer drinking all that much, OR, perhaps, applying current thinking; I AM CURED! - Praise Jesus?

The diseasification of stupid drunkenness by way of the lexicon of alcoholism is really irksome. Really, if I were to classify myself as an alcoholic, a judgment many have laid upon me; then I am by definition diseased and then, am I really responsible? - Doesn’t “disease” inheritently imply that I am not 100% culpable in this condition of mine; that I have some how contracted this condition through some genetic flaw. Even if we were to classify alcoholism as a preventable disease, doesn’t it being a disease render it somewhat, inevitable.

This may have the appearance of yet another preamble to yet another rant on the end of personal responsibility in our culture… and it most certainly could be, but there is another problem in this thinking of alcoholism as a disease. The diseasification of stupid behavior such as drinking too much further skews, not only the idea of personal responsibility; but, also, by allowing us to see drunken idiots as diseased, allows us to classify drunken idiots as victims.

AND here we go again! Our whole notion of victim has been shifted. We’ve already turned over half of our criminals into victims; now we’re adding all of our idiots. Our pool of victims, now already swelled past the breaking point with thieves and vandals from bad neighborhoods; sixteen year old single mothers; fat people and now, alcoholics, no longer has room for the poor unfortunate sod who takes the bullet at the bank robbery gone bad… Absurdly, many of the folks who USED to be victims have been shuttled off to that mind-space reserved for heroes; SADLY those victims that can’t be bent like a pretzel into the hero model have simply been left out in the cold…

I am certainly NO victim, and… I have found it rather easy to stop drinking so much. As a matter of fact, its been quite easy to drink nothing at all. It has been SO easy that I think some people close to me may even be questioning whether I really am an alcoholic at all? - I mean, if little ol’ ME can beat this disease, this affliction that has so tragically taken so many in our society… If this scourge IS this easy to beat; by someone as simple as him; rather than conflict with conclusions, he must not have had the disease at all. [Get your calculators out folks, its time to re-work those figures you measured me against].

Of course, on the other hand… perhaps my swift recovery from this horrible disease places me in the realm of heroes?

…now; truth be told people.

Indeed, by common calculations; I am most certainly, an alcoholic. BUT, as easily as I make that admittance I addimantly REFUSE to classify myself as diseased. My drinking too much to the point were I became habitually drunk was NOT only preventable; it was really just plain old idiotic. Pricking my ass on the spire of the temple of my own stupid mistakes, indeed…

Sorry folks, I hate to disappoint… I have NOT concurred an impossible affliction. I have NOT battled insurmountable odds and defeated my desperate demons. As with all the other bad habits I’ve had over the years and that includes ALL the known bad habits one can easily think of, well, except maybe for, those few known bad habits that require apparatus… like with all my bad habits; I simply found something better to do.

Excuse me if I’ve jumped on your notion that some other friend of yours, suffering a similar affliction has the possibility of an excuse here based on the fact that he is simply suffering a disease. Sorry, in my opinion, its his owned damned fault. AND… quite obviously, at this point…

I need a smoke!

I burned just a little less than about one fifth of a gallon of gasoline over the weekend… on six separate occasions I fired up the four horsepower motor on the boat that I borrow three times to get out of and and three times to get into of the harbor I sail from around a tight packing of sailboats in this tiny little harbor. Oh, I could have sailed into and out of the harbor; I’ve sailed into and out of tighter spots than this before; but its a rule I respect in respect for the feelings of the anxiety that sailing this close to the other boats may cause in the minds of the others who sail on the weekend in these small little boats from this tightly packed harbor.

I fired up the four horsepower motor to get through a lull in order to get my small little boat back into the small tight packed harbor on time… I’ve sailed through lulls before AND the wind was filling in from the south as per usual… but its not my boat I share it with others and I felt the need to respect the clock and make the boat ready for the next bunch of sailors.

I burned a little bit less than one fifth of a gallon of gas while sailing this weekend I thought to myself as I rode the packed subway to work again this morning… Last Friday I walked home from work and I boiled a few eggs under the light cast by the one florescent light bulb that lights the counter under the cabinets in my small but adequate galley style kitchen. I felt a bit guilty that the eggs weren’t from free range chickens but then again after all I was just going to mash them up and mix them with Kraft mayo and spread them on whatever bread was left over from last nights lovely dinner that we made with ingredients bought from our small local grocer. I can do better.

Don’t get me going!

I have to remind myself to find an alternative to the processed and prepackaged Kraft mayonnaise AND, I really should speak with my baker with regards to the source of their flower and the process in which they bake my bread in the late evening/early morning down the street from my tiny apartment. I should start walking to work more often; at least as often as I walk home. For after all, this slight decrease in the crowdedness may trigger the positive response which could get that one extra person riding the train rather than say, taking that cab that causes traffic congestion and leads to one more car caught idling in the intersection blocking the truck needed to cart that big bag of fair-trade coffee to the front door of my local coffee house. Cafe Collage not only serves up a fine cup of fair-trade coffee but posts signs to assures me that a small percentage of the change I drop into the tip jar does not go to top up the slavery like wages the proprietor pays his dread-braided student barristas; BUT that one penny from my fifty cent tip will be put into a fund that will go towards some cause they all can agree on at the staff meeting they hold every Friday. If only his monthly expenses don’t all of a sudden catch up to him like they did a few months ago when he cut all the hours and had one less employee to serve me my fine cup of fair-trade coffee.

Maybe tomorrow I wont buy the paper hoping that this sacrificial personal act of making a butter-fly-wing-flapping like gesture will resonate as a sound business decision in some boardroom the need to reduce circulation and save the bark off one of the trees in the acres of trees cut down up in Quebec that are required to print the 400lb Sunday edition of the Times that is chock full of stories about how we’re all trying just so desperately hard to save this planet for our kids whose diapers we have no clue what to do with since we protested sending barge loads of garbage sailing down the east coast to one of a dozen or more closed open-mine coal pits that we don’t know what to do with except definitely not using them as landfill sites where we can chuck all our garbage out of the site of the cameras that shoot all that footage for the six 24 hour news outlets we all have been watching…

Excuse me, I have to check on something.

I just looked out of the window of my office to find traffic moving well along the tangled ribbons of expressways that carry the single occupant SUVs that pour into the city looking for the ever more illusive parking spot at the foot of these bridges where they’re constructing yet another tall building full of 1,000 square foot condos that’ll be packed full of flat screens on which the owners can watch seemingly angry people bickering over whats the right answer to solve all our problem while wishing they had the time and energy to take out the bikes and ride past my building this weekend while trying to convince themselves they are making a difference.

Am I doing my part?

Apparently, I should be living completely differently being more vocal as I haven’t attended any rallies which definitely brings into question my devotion to the service of all the causes to make everything so much more better… I routinely question the dogma, that I read in the papers which makes me a suspect of not truly believing that everything I do is impacting the future. I walk without thinking, thinking that what I’m doing is actually taking step after step, the steps required to turn our society around before we coast at full throttle past this brink of disaster while the kids in the backseat watch “Happy Feet” over and over on the DVD player mounted to the roof of the Tahoe that they use to take them all kayaking. I’m a failure for not saying anything… while they continue to keep telling me over and over that they’re doing everything they can to live there life better than I live without thinking of the consequence that impact their kids futures.

But while you’re not looking maybe while you’re reading your paper; I’ll quietly keep doing the things that I’m doing. Not because I’m worried, nor because I’m trying. I could care less about your efforts, I laugh at your suggestion that I use less energy to do the things I am doing. Which of course is mostly walking around not thinking I could make any difference. I chuckle at the nylon get-up you wear on your bicycle as you ride up my street yapping and screaming about how wonderful it is you’re doing all the things that are required to make it all better. After saying what I’ve been saying I’m sure I hardly deserve it, but I’ll gladly accept my very own pat on my back for all the things I have and have not been doing. After all is this not what you are after when you put on that t-shirt and pack all those slogans into the back of the pick-up and drive over five hours to catch up with all of your friends as they try to get coverage to make sure we are all worthy of all this self congratulations?

I guess as they say, as per usual I could always do better but I think what I’ll do is continue to remain quietly doing the things that I’m doing.

Too many short and somewhat nasty posts… Trust me, the Craptastic SapMaster is in here somewhere and looking for his moment to break free, come back and smother you all with warm sticky, gooey happy hugs!. In the meantime…

My tolerance for people with no tolerance is diminishing daily. What happened to the law of ‘tight spaces’ that used to apply to us folk living in extremely dense places? - Even after all the scowling, bitching, fighting and complaining, after letting off the steam of the day, most civilized people usually retreated to their respective corners, got on with their own lives and returned to the detant of live and let live… all little bending here, a little bending there.

I’ve been having a bit of a problem with my neighbor here at the studio… over my smoking. As I’ve said in other posts; I’ve capitulated on the public space folks… I’ve bent! I do not smoke on Subway platforms, inside or out, in foyers of office and apartment building, in movie theaters, coffee shops, bars or restaurants… Think about it, you’ve left me outdoors, or in my apartment. NO think about IT. I DO NOT SMOKE ANYWHERE I COULD POSSIBLY BE SHARING THE SAME PHYSICAL INDOOR SPACE WITH YOU! - And, I’m fine with that. Honestly, yes I am.

Now I am being asked NOT to smoke in my studio. A place YOU will never be without my explicit invite… my personal space… Be, just a little empathetic here. Can you NOT see where I might see this leading? Can you not see that this next and near final step is one more step towards YOU coming into my apartment, wrenching open the bathroom door and yanking that deeply comforting smoke I smoke while sitting on MY bowl while taking a slow luxurious dump, one of life greatest little pleasures; a pleasure I so deeply enjoy mixing with the pleasure of having a smoke. THIS IS WHERE IT IS HEADING! Isn’t it?
I’ve pretty much been given every signal that when you finally DO enter my bathroom; I’ll have been put in the exact same position I am in now. I have absolutely NO right to tell my studio neighbor to get the hell outta my studio. He has every right under the law to dictate to me what I can and cannot do in this space. No arguments, bitching… NO BENDING. In the world of thousands of small annoyances, the slightest wiff of trouble coming from MY space allows him to come over AND tell me to stop. I tried smoking with my head out the window… NO compromise, NONE, nadda… He is entirely within his right…

Exhale… Just for a little context here folks, this studio sits at the vortex of a major transportation junction between at least five major intercity thoroughfares, one of the nations busiest urban highway and two of its busiest bridges. In any given hour at least 10,000 cars and trucks slowly idle by our window… Yet my few errant puffs…

I have never been closer to being a prick, ever in my life. Since he likes to keep his door open, I will whistle as loudly and as out of tune, every time Iim in the hallway… I now slam my door; and I now play music constantly at a volume that will not alarm my landlord, but at a level which I know he can hear. Instead of moving away from the door outside, I now smoke right in the doorway but JUST off the property; waiting for those moments he comes in or out; not only so I can smile and say, look; “I’m smoking outside”, but also, so that I can exhale directly into his smarmy little “I’m carrying all the cards” face.

Next week, even though I love dogs; I am going to start passing around a petition to ask the landlord to enforce regulations that keep dogs out of the workplace… I might even complain about the children playing in the hallways. I am going to go on a ZERO TOLERANCE rampage! Every last little thing that bugs me; IS going to get mention; and action. STOP standing in the SUBWAY DOOR! - Excuse me your iPod headphone are leaking sound; Eh hem, I’ve called the police as you’ve been idling here at the curb for more that 45 seconds. Hey waiter can you please tell that lady to either shut her crying kid up; or get out… stop smacking your gum and slurping your luke-warm coffee. Please make up your mind before you get to the front of the line at the counter at MacDonalds!

OK

…ah, just blowing of steam… back to my corner of the world. Live and let live. Oh, I’ll bend, AGAIN. Just one favor, when you do come to break down my bathroom door; knock politely, tell me you’d like to speak with me when I’m done… We’ll work something out.