Memorial Day 2017

苦あれば楽あり

 ....<3 .... </3 .... <3 ....

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瓜田李下

I know that Dr. Havlir said my December numbers looked as good as ever, and that the (EXPENSIVE, GURL!) Atripla appears to be working (she has a few times suggested switching up meds, but that it was unnecessary, and that if I was partial to the Sustiva in the Atripla -- particularly the vivid dreams, which I like -- she saw no reason to change...) Nevertheless, this shit DOES look awfully weird:

Maybe I just have a hard time navigating the MySFHealth portal? I don't know, but I can't seem to find any record of my HIV numbers.... VERY ODD.

(BTW, June 5th will be HIV Long-term Survivors Day, I've heard tell... Good luck, all!)

UPDATE: If you didn't know, now you know:

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Arnold Loved Hearts

And one day, Arnold took off for where I'd been, knowing I'd have left hearts. On his way to collect those hearts, Arnold got killed, they told me. It was very sad. I was very sad. Everybody was very sad. The details as relayed to me were fuzzy -- just something that happened. Arnold was a baby. I still miss you, Arnold.

...

I might be seeing a lawyer about an affidavit regarding my years as a TNDC tenant on the 5th -- for sure I'm seeing the psychiatrist about my diagnoses, as well as about that 2014 MRI, which medical records assure us was "unremarkable." We'll need to talk definitely about Chantix, as nothing else has helped me quit cigarettes!

...

With this kind of weather in May, it'll be a wonder if we here in Colusa and Glenn counties don't see thunderstorms in July or August, maybe -- murie sing cuccu.

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So European! American Spirit Black are over $10 per pack at the Stonyford General Store -- but the two-for-a-dollar Swishers are still as marked! (I tend to favor the blueberry when it comes to the latter.)

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Cleaned that Perry Ellis linen suit of Eric's. Funny enough, with a little pressing, it fits me just fine. I'll look positively fabulous with it and an ice-cold bottle of Ruffino, whether at the lake or at the top of the 19th Street stairs! If only I can find those damn Nico Nerinis; they're probably hidden somewhere in a friend's garage.

...

The very word "Dunkirk" fills me with a vast sorrow and an aching keen; that's the title of a movie about the WWI battle coming out this summer.

...

Apparently, Mr. McMillon in Bentonville gave the go-ahead for me to be corrected by Walmart staff as though I'm a Dorothy Allison creation whenever I'm in the Willows store (#02053). My mother dutifully misplaced her receipt, so I'm not sure if "Marc" with a "C" (who uses his smartphone as a weapon against the possible legion of Nova Lee Nations out there) was on the receipt last week. (In addition, I despair of ever finding that damn football-themed gift card sent me by Ryan in Clackamas, OR.) Who knows what non-fun will take place on the AM of May 24th? Really, I just wanted to be fairly compensated or paid off for what's square.

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Casual, Red-Eye Reflection

Dear fellow souls,

When I consider topical (Trump-derived and culminating-in-Trump) kerfuffles, what should come to mind but your average, inner-city, devout-Muslim owned-and-operated bodega... No, there's no liquor, but there are plenty of cigarettes; you can buy a $2.oo charger for your janky old flip phone (a nod to the geographic and socio-economic reality); and you bet the hot dogs are halal -- BUT THEY ARE A YEAR OLD AND THE CONSISTENCY OF SHOE PLEATHER. The business struggles in a way, when half mulled-over, it seems no urban American small business should.

Non sequiter-like, I now jump to the dynamic obviously shared between what and who really animate the Trump phenomenon; and its objectively more disparate and odd-bedfellows opponents: both "sides" exemplify, agree upon, and talk past each other about the imperfections in the modern human world that truly imperil humanity's long-term viability.  We truly are in the end-times, and what's at stake is our species-wide Linus binky best described as being a comforting, penultimate-resort fear we have that for certain, whether or not we continue to survive is to an unfairly large degree our responsibility, and will be decided by a painfully lucid, collective decision-making process, global in scope (Cylon model 2's faux-philosophical mutterings on our worthiness of survival be damned...)

Calls of "Let them in" at Dulles? Check and weak-yet-advantaged countercheck... The rigged game plays out, and even if you're as sappari Japanese as Zatoichi, playing your weighted die in a personally unfamiliar yakuza gambling house, presuming too much even as you are fundamentally certain never to incur traditional physical punishment, ultimately uncertainty takes over, and nothing is as our faith would have it.

Crisis will not be forever deferred... It inshallah will be upon those of us who live to endure that moment. The many recently deceased luminaries of American acting and performing no doubt earnestly pity the remaining billions who have yet to perish... (Thank you -- presumptuously -- Miz Fisher, Miz Reynolds, Miz Tyler Moore, et alia for your sorrow and compassion I now know you surely cast back at us from the sweet hereafter. Please rest in peace... May we endeavor to carry on.)

(I loathe what Mr. Trump appears to be about, but smvrti satya needs be connected by the ligaments of karma to the world of similitudes, which is so helpful to mullahs, rabbis, and other such boddhisattvas, whose burden and joy it is to successfully instruct the more fortunate among us... I right now, more than anything, am just keenly, primally and uselessly stung with my enviable place among hoi polloi, comparing as I cannot but the President's lot with mine...)

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I guess what I'm wondering, in (you might self-servingly, blamelessly argue) a neo-liberal way, is this: is it so cruel, objectively, that refugees and immigrants be excluded? What quality of asylum does our greater-in-aspirations-than-in-concrete-accomplishments nation offer? Bootless speculation? Mayhap -- I'm hardly any more an agent than the sicaria running inexcusably toward the worst cardinal direction from obvious consequences, or a 1990s London party girl who just kind of got stranded with a murky immigration status in San Francisco lo these last twenty-odd years...

As always, yours in trying too hard to be of more use than a MSM pundit or an holidays-with-family-dinner-table-screaming match, and falling inevitability into the usual contemptibility,

American and human William R. Way
URGENT House Renovation Campaign - Venmo...

...Or donations can be mailed to:  WILLIAM R WAY PO BOX 206 STONYFORD CA 95979

Sorrow

Mashallah

Word of the day in Arabic: صَديق (sadiq) -- "friend."

Oh Bother, Dear Eeyore

Could it be that once again someone has fouled the mood with poor timing?  I'll console them as best I can if alive and capable -- definitely my bailiwick, that scene...  Be so kind as to get down to it, and I'll resolve to be a lamb and die like a fright...

Aviso

"Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result." - 三島 由紀夫 / Mishima Yukio

Bored of Games

Let's face this one right out of the gate:  MONOPOLY is a fucking evil game that brings out the worst in everybody, making all the players mean and nasty -- even yours truly.

OPERATION was a ratfuck, and immediately gave me away...

I wanted to like CANDYLAND, until it just had to teach me a lesson, and became CHUTES AND LADDERS, with more chutes than ladders, and was ultimately a contrived study in diminishing returns.

Don't get me started on BATTLESHIP, an invitation to cheating and unseaworthy shenanigans.

And lastly, I completely lost it with CLUE as soon as I realized that the only redeeming character (who also happened to be the only one not deserving of prosecution and, yes, death) was none other than -- ready for it, players? -- Chilly Willy, on the front porch, with a .3 shot of peanut butter.

Games have their place in life, but life cannot be contained by games.  Why, look at the game of LIFE: like Anya Jenkins, I had a hard time swallowing the notion that children could not be exchanged for money -- so unrealistic!

Obvious, isn't it, that too many of us have for a long time now been weary of games we once fancied...

Frank

I imagine sometime about 40 years ago, an odd little Indian boy, with a pageboy haircut, climbed a tree as high as he could.  He settled on a branch, and tried to play with the children below:  "I win!  I win!  I win!"  he would flatly cry in his little, neutral voice, but no one would pay him attention.  I can see his face now, looking hurt in its own way, backlit by the sun...

Yes, Frank used to do weird, magical, crazy shit to me that to this day I'm still recovering from.  But I can't help but suspect I'm the only one who felt any compassion for him.  Terrifying things have occurred to Frank, and the world has not been nice.  His health has suffered in recent years, and as of this writing, I'm not even sure:  it is distinctly possible he may no longer even be alive.

Many have grown to hate him, but not me.  My heart still beats for Frank, King of the World, and I hope to see him again in this life...

Shine On

It gets scary, it can seem to crush everything you are -- even threaten to kill you.  But all shall work out for the best.  Heaven never isn't a time and place on Earth.  You will always become who you knew you could be...

ALARM!!!!

Big, bad, SOS news -- I'm kind of sure.  A certain young woman on Facebook, whom I recently added as a friend when she requested I be that, just had her account suspended by the Feds.  Truth is, she's Celeste Guap's friend.  Young Celeste has been in trouble lately, and has been making herself vulnerable by coping with getting high and getting tight.  Bad scene.  Somebody please help Ms. Guap and her friend.

(FULL DISCLOSURE:  Yes, Ms. Guap worked as a prostitute, and was quite a story in the news, recently.  God keep these girls safe.  God help us all should we fail them.

American Woman, Mama Let Me Be

TRUMP SUPPORTERS BE ALL LIKE:  "What is Hillary hiding?!? [huff]"

AND CLINTON SUPPORTERS BE ALL LIKE:  "Not her dewlap, girl, okay! [sissy snap]"

...Anyway, darling, how are you doing your hair today?  Because I can't stand you at all...  [BREXIT STAGE ON GURNEY]

Overheard During Gay Group at Passages in Malibu

"Okay girl?  I mean, I had no choice but to stop partying when every fucking time I was on one, the hills had eyes, and those eyes were wearing liquid eyeliner.  And on top of that, they were gloating because I couldn't get any..."

Spark It Up!

(Well, I guess it's better than: "Your teen comes home smelling like semen, and the voices in your head tell you he's on meth. Now what? MYBRATISBOGARTINGPARTYFAVORSSMIRK.ORG...")

Well, Yeah, I Have A Good Idea of Who Hates Me and Why...

Yes, Had I Been More Circumspect...

...Not only would I have worn asbestos to the flame war with Charlie from FIRESTARTER, I also would have made sure everyone else who could have possibly been involved was protected by similar to avoid the collateral damage that has recently tried to hide itself from me.  In any event, I thank one friend for giving me the credit to know that even though I might annoyingly and wrongly blame myself for what the bad guys did to him, I would soon smarten up before any such wrongthink did further damage.

Taking some time to nurse my psychic wounds, for which not even I have pity, and I hope no one else has pity for them either...

If I Were A Rich Man...

...I would broach the subject of underwriting the construction of a new wing at San Francisco General Hospital.  It would be devoted to patients who suffer from problems that at first blush seem perfectly pedestrian but for some reason or another when those particular patients in their individual cases have those problems, they happen to piss most everyone else off, and no one can adequately explain why.

PSA

No, seriously, I'm never doing methamphetamine again.  It's just as they said, a gateway drug, leading to harder things, like erections.

(And I had no idea Nestlé owns Wonka.  No wonder I never won a golden ticket.  It's a conspiracy!)

(Thanks, Tina Fey...)

Apropos of Brexit... (Blech. Sit.)

Fee fie FOE fumble...

(My favorite part, of course, is when the party that fell flat on its face then pops up with a triumphant TA-DA!!!)