I’ve always said about myself, if you want to win an argument with me just yell louder. That’s all it takes, It doesn’t matter if you are right or wrong, or vice-versa. Just yell and you take the prize. When you win your argument you might lose me, but if I was making you so fucking angry then you probably did not need me anyway.
I thought of this on further reflection about the recent encounters with the owner of the building in which I live. I remember after one particularly ridiculous screaming fit I took some comfort in thinking that, for as much anxiety as the owner of the building thrust into my life, I would prevail (for lack of a better word) by simply surviving his time. Who would have thought that this would actually transpire?
Of course the new owner could be an even angrier fuck than the current one. If my instincts are on target I bet he will sell it to a fellow Greek. This scenario makes me realize that it is probably in my own interests to get out of the way and have the bathroom renovated now, since the new owner might not be so inspired to do this. No way to know…
Really hope the new owner is not so angry all the time. It was not just upsetting to get screamed at by Tom. It was depressing. I see anger like that and it makes me sad. I never called to see about getting a doorknob replacement for fear I’d get a tidal wave of shit from this angry old man. But then his way of opening up to me the other day was cathartic. I’ve never thought that he thinks I am a dumbass or a loser. Just a white American.
Hm, cute girl I noticed last week just checked in here at the Windmill. Two of her friends just appeared. Maybe we’ll all GET IT ON. Hah.
For some reason the “white American” thing reminds me of something I heard on the BBC. Vietnamese (I didn’t catch if they were military or civilian) were able to spy on American troops as they did their combat maneuvers. I guess they just hid among the trees. The Vietnamese could never understand the Americans. Every time one of theirs was killed the survivors would all start crying. The Vietnamese saw this and were simply mystified. I can’t say I’ve given the Vietnam landscape a lot of thought but I don’t think I’d ever heard or even considered that. The commentators seemed not simply more hardened than the Americans. They had the language of war more embedded into their hearts. In a way that seems to feed the stereotype of the “gooks” (Ugh I hate that word).
Stream of consciousness (via the fact that “VIETNAM” is on his tombstone) has me remembering a malapropism my dad used. Instead of “concrete” he’d say “con-creek.” I wonder if that’s a hillbilly thing. Other invented words included kellups instead of ketchup, shpital (pronounced shpeetal) instead of hospital, and I’ll think of others.
A friend from high school was studying to be a linguist (and a cunning one at that) and he found my dad’s words to be baffling. They had no etymological basis. The linguist-in-training found that not just annoying but even reprehensible. I wonder if he has mellowed since then. It’s been 30 years. Could he still be angry about little old kellups?
I just realized what also made me think of the “con-creek” thing. I’m sitting next to 5 50-pound buckets of something called “QUIKRETE”, which I take to be a form of instant concrete that appears to have been used to form the paved walkway here. The K made me think of CON-CREEK.
Holy what, it is raining. A perfectly perfect seeming day (albeit cloudy) and here comes some drops of rain. And then the rain stopped. Ah, nature. Really roughing it here at the Windmill. I’m just going to call it The Windmill, and not the Windmill Community Garden, or the Windmill Garden. On its own the word Windmill sounds more interesting.
Further streams of consciousness, this time tumbling through my mind as I rummaged through my bag looking for an orange I put there earlier, has me questioning one fundamental piece of conventional wisdom I have maintained about my past. That would be the belief that I have no criminal record, or at least none that is accessible to prying eyes. The court records are sealed, meaning no one can see them, save possibly for myself. But what of the 5 year period of probation, during which time I was expected to report to a probation officer in lower Manhattan? I guess that’s all part of the same sealed record. It’s just a footnote, and nothing to worry about. As the lawyer back then said, with a comment that made a strong impression on me that has lasted to this day: “There aren’t very many things you’d have to spend the rest of your life worrying about.” He was referring to the statute of limitations and how very few crimes are not subject to that principle. In some cases I think it can depend on the location. Murder is universally exempt from the SoL but rape is not always so. I don’t know why I know this off the top of my head but I think the other exempt crimes are kidnapping, fraud, war crimes, and treason. I could look it up but what fun is that? OK, looked it up, seems I was right except the source I landed on included failure to pay back student loans as something that will follow you to the grave. I guess that is true though I can’t think of that as a crime in the same spirit as the others. I guess you could call it a form of fraud, which is one of the SoL-exempt crimes. I seem to remember hearing of certain instances where student loans were “forgiven”, making the seriousness of the “crime” that much less palpable. I don’t think murder is often forgiven, unless you consider killers who are released from prison as having been forgiven.
I knew a guy who got sent away for fraud. I heard he embezzled something like $80,000 from a client (he was an accountant). I’ve written about that person elsewhere here, about the comedy that unfolded involving his expensive suits being stored in the basement of Veronica’s, a dive bar near here. I never knew him all that well but it seemed a little eerie, in hindsight, to learn that a night we spent talking and bullshitting at the bar might have been the last such night he had before the FBI stopped by to arrest him. He knew they were coming for him though he might not have known when, exactly. He said nothing of it to me. We just drank beers and laughed about things.
The only other person I know of, or that I can think of, who did real jail time was a programmer who used to work for me at Time Inc. He tried to fake his death on 9/11, thinking it would result in not being deported. He had passport problems, as I recall. They threw the book at him but I think I read somewhere that he got early release on account of being a model prisoner. I wonder if he was then deported… Could look that up but I don’t really care.
My Usenet years are ending. I think my account expires next month. It used to be free, and I do not remember when I started paying for it, but for $99 a year I’ve downloaded countless gigabytes of movies and music. The complete works of Franz Liszt performed by Leslie Howard was maybe the top prize from those days, though the Samson Francois set was also a winner. I posted a set of CDs by the Russian pianist Grigory Ginzburg. That posting was among the most appreciated of any to the classical FLAC group at the time I posted it. I think that’s all I ever posted.
I have so many discographies of bands I would otherwise not really care about if I was not able to simply snarf their complete oeuvre in a few minutes. My iPod is stuffed with those discographies.
There had been a set of complete Beatles that looked epic. This was not the commercially released LPs, it was every demo, every unfinished song, every utterance and belch from the mouth of John Lennon. I think it was 70-something CDs, with an encyclopedia-length set of annotations and comments detailing every last bit of sound. People who are that much into the Beatles make Trekkies look cool.
I never downloaded any of that Beatles monstrosity but I thought about i
t, just because I could. At present I am gobbling up whatever I can think of, while also just grabbing whatever the hell is there. 9 seasons of the Drew Carey Show? Got it, even though I don’t think I ever watched it when it was current. So much stuff just is not worth the download, though. Whose Line Is It Anyway? was always a guilty pleasure of mine but the whole series is on Roku now. The best TV I started in to lately was Penny Dreadful. The script was so good it was stupid. And the costumes… There is just too much TV to watch, too much music to even hear much less actually listen to and understand or appreciate.
I was just appreciating the silence that comes from these noise-cancelling headphones. I am not even playing any music or ambient sounds, as I usually do. Just the headphones, with NC turned on and optimized. I can presently hear the grating sound of a little girl riding her tricycle around the school yard next door. But everything else is silent save for the screaming inside my head.
Going home. I love this space, The Windmill, but it has no bathroom. That’s a dealbreaker. Aaaaand it looks like rain is coming.
…
So I looked up records on the fellow who faked his death after 9/11. Looks like he did 2 years of a 4 year sentence. And then what?
