MY GOD: OH-AND-SIXTEEN!

This a microcosm of the season: It's the fourth quarter and the Detroit Lions are losing to the Green Bay Packers, but they have the ball and they're efficiently moving it down the field. Dan Orlovsky (who?!) swings a pass into the right flat for Kevin Smith, the running back of the present and, ostensibly, the future. The play goes nowhere; the Packers sniff it out from the snap and the cornerback drops Smith in the backfield for a four-yard loss, spinning him out of bounds into the Packers' bench. A couple of the Packers had something to say to Smith--now, I have no "ears on the field," as it were, but I have to assume that they said something about the Lions being a blight on the league, a walking and running and missed-tackling turd of honolulu-blue-and-silver...something like that--and Kevin Smith, being a man and being a blockhead and being a Detroit Lion, shoves the ball in the opposing player's face and shoves past an official on his way back onto the playing surface. Zing! Out flies the yellow flag and Smith is penalized fifteen yards for unsportsmanlike conduct. So, instead of a third-and-fourteen, it turns out to be, with the fifteen-yard penalty, a third-and-twenty-nine, or some ridiculous--Lionesque--number like that and they get a yard on third down and then go for it on fourth-and-twenty-eight and, of course, they fail to pick up the first down and Green Bay can basically just run out the clock and saddle the Detroit franchise with the ignoble statistic of being the only team in NFL history to finish the season at 0-16.

Jim Rome is probably rubbing his hands together with glee, even as we speak.

What a fucking disaster this team was and is and probably will be, forever more.

I feel really bad for Calvin Johnson, a top-tier receiver in this league who had the misfortune to be drafted by the Detroit Lions. He's a Pro-Bowl receiver and he puts up Pro-Bowl statistics, but he's got dingbats like Dan Orlovsky and, earlier, Jon Kitna, throwing the rock to him. He finished the game with nine catches for 102 yards and two touchdowns--stellar numbers, really--and he finishes the season with 69 receptions (great number) for 1229 yards and 10 touchdowns. He is a supreme talent--big and strong, as fast as a gazelle, a great route-runner--but he's mired in Motown...if he doesn't demand a trade when his contract is up, I'll eat dog food.

Who else do we have on this shitty-assed team? Maybe Ernie Sims is worth keeping? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe Kevin Jones is worth keeping? Maybe, maybe not. What a fucking joke. I lay the blame squarely on the shoulders of Matt Millen and the Ford dynasty for keeping him in too high a position for far too many years. What else can you say that hasn't already been said of a man (Millen) who comes out of the play-by-play booth with absolutely no front office experience and proceeds to draft, in three consecutive years, three wide receivers in the top three draft picks of every year, completely ignoring necessary skilled players at positions on the offensive and defensive lines? Nothing. Nothing more can be said. He fucked this franchise up the ass and used nothing for lube but moisture from his sweaty bushy mustache. And, after he had his way with them and after the Ford family finally fired his ass, he probably motored his Harley back to Pennsylvania, possibly telling himself that he did the best that he could. Yeah. Right. Maybe he did. But, my God, after three or four years of total ineptitude, wouldn't you feel a little guilty about collecting multi-million dollar checks? Instead of hanging on in the hopes that maybe this year, things'll be different? Okay. Human nature tells us that, while one may feel guilty for collecting while doing horridly at one's job, it is up to the upper management-slash-ownership to do the right thing for the team (and the fans?) and sweep the shit out the front door. When it's broken, fucking fix it!

What an embarrassment. Sixteen games; sixteen losses. If weren't so damned pathetic, I'd probably be pissed off. But, hell, they're the fucking Lions. They're a joke, man. I stopped believing in them a long time ago. They always find a way to be the Lucy Van Pelt to our determined Charlie Brown-donism. (New word. I just made it up. But it's appallingly appropriate.)

I feel bad for Head Coach Rod Maranelli, too; and he'll assuredly be canned during the off-season. He seems like a genuine guy. He seems straightforward enough and he seems like he cares. A lot. So, too, do the players. They didn't want to go down in the annals as the first NFL team to ever go winless for the season. To their credit, they fought hard most of the time. But week after week, they were overmatched. They just suck. Week after week, there was some kind of Lionesque play that shot them in the collective foot. Week after week, they found new (!) and interesting (!) ways to lose ball games.

Is there any hope? I don't think so. I am truly starting to believe that Bobby Layne, their last great quarterback--from the fucking '50s!--put a hex, a curse, on them. Half a century of ineptitude...that's tough to do. But, seriously, is there hope for this franchise? I mean, look at the Miami Dolphins. Last year they were 1-15 and this year they finished 11-5 and made the playoffs. So, judging by the Dolphins turnaround, there's got to be at least a sliver of hope for the Lions, right? Wrong. The 'Phins have the Tuna, Bill Parcells, in their front office. Bill Parcells is a winner, he has always been a winner, wherever he's gone. The Lions have not a single person with the pedigree of Parcells. They have bumbling fools who always seem to be in over their heads.

Until they start winning, I'll never again purchase anything with the Detroit Lions logo on it, I'll never go to a game, I'll rarely even watch them on the television. Until they start winning they are, as Michael Corleone would say, they're dead to me.

Thanks for a fascinating season, Lions! You guys rock!

PLAY "PAY IT FORWARD"

"[T]he exchange focuses on doing an act of kindness without expecting anything in return other than that the recipient will, in his/her turn, pass the kindness along and pay it forward in his/her own way. I agree to send something fun, inspiring or uplifting to three random commenters. In turn, those three will post this information and pick 3 people they want to send something to and so on."

I opened my front door this morning and, there amidst the snow-and-ice mixture sat Lynn's box. Lynn's box was white with little black letters on it. Thanks, Lynn! I think I'm really going to enjoy your box! Except, now? Now it's my box. Sweet! Thanks for sending me your box, Lynn, across this great country, and thank you, too, for the contents of your box. I had to open your box to get to the goodies inside and, Lord, I am glad that I did open your box.

Guatemalan coffee. Booyah!

You can read Lynn's excellent writing over at reallivelesbian.blogspot.com/.

Here are the simple rules of the game, Pay It Forward: One, read this post. Two, comment by, um, Wednesday at 11:59PM. Three, I'll pick three winners from the commenters. Four, I'll send you a little something and then you, too, can have the blessed burden of spreading joy throughout this great country. Wanna play?! Then comment away!

Here's another fun game: Examine the picture of the lady enjoying her Guatemalan coffee and come up with a caption for it. The dirtier, the better. Here, I'll start it off. Noting her slightly-pinched smile, the caption should read: "Ha-ha, very funny, Jorge. Let's see how damned funny it is fifteen cups of COFFEE.COM coffee later, when I'll be painting the inside of your toilet with my vitriolic Deuce Juice."

THIRTY-FIVE IN DAWG YEARZ

Unconditional love. Loyalty. Laughs. A warm furry body around which I can wrap my arms. Deep soulful brown eyes. The beginning of salting of gray on the muzzle. Five years of unquestioning companionship and love.

Louie turns five years old today. It marks--and for three months down the line--the only time in our relationship that we'll be approximately the same age. 35 or thereabouts. I had a huge head-start but, unfortunately, Lou is fast and he made up the distance rather too quickly. Eventually, he'll streak right on by me and leave me in his four-pawed dust, sprinting towards the end of the line so that he can meet with God quicker. This is dogs' only downfall--they're candles that burn from both ends and they live their angelic lives too damned quickly.

I'm a maroon. I'm here writing about Louie's birthday, ostensibly a joyous day, and I'm bumming myself out. My eyes are gettin' a little misty and my throat is choking up a bit. Why the hell am I focusing on his lifespan? Why not just live in the moment and bury my face in his musty-doggy side and inhale deeply of the shared Love? I heard something in a meeting on Sunday, and, though it is somewhat cheesey and prepackaged "Meeting talk", it rings true: Yesterday is history and tomorrow is a mystery, but today is the Present and it's a gift. True dat.

After I finish this, Lou is going to get a biscuit. Seems a little threadbare of a present for such a happy day but, hell, he's a Christmas bambino and so he's gotta share his birthday with the little Baby Jesus, y'dig? Hey-Zeus won't mind and Lou should be honored to celebrate in such rarified air.

Happy birthday, Louie. I love you forever, dude...but, uh, stick around a while, m'kay?

BINARY WASTELAND

You know, I wish people would have paid more attention in English class; I really do. Surfing the 'Net reveals far too much of shit just. like. this:

I DO NOT SEE HOW A DOGS MOUTH COULD BE VERY CLEAN MY DAUGHTER HAS TWO CATS TWO OF OUR DOGS THAT ARE KEPT IN THE SAME KENNEL AS THE CATS APPARENTLY EAT THE CATS WASTE THERE IS NEVER ANY CAT FECES IN THE LITER BOXES MY DOGS HAVE FOOD DOWN 24/7 YOU SHOULD SEE HOW FAT MY DOGS ARE PLUS THE DOGS LICK THEIR GENITLES AND ARE ALWAYS LICKING THE OTHER DOGS MY DOGS DO NOT LICK THAT IS GROSS THAT THEY ARE EATING THIS STUFF AND COMING IN AND LICKING YOU IN THE MOUTH WOULD YOU LET A HUMAN EAT POOP AND COME RIGHT IN AND LICK YOU IN THE MOUTH COME ON IT IS ONLY LOGICAL THAT THERE ARE DISEASE AND GERMS INVOLVES

One, stop shouting, Dusty Rose. Please and thank you. And, two, mix in occasional punctuation mark (and a dictionary), if you could. Shit like this just makes my head hurt.

Carry on. =o)

WINTER SOLSTICE

Today is Sunday, the twenty-first day of December. Outside the world is God's icebox, all snow and ice and hi-zowling winds, and inside I am--obviously--at the bench o' computation, and Meegie is cocooned in bed, slabberdashed betwixt Louie and Oliver. From the bedroom I hear a dog sneeze, closely followed by a female voice saying, "Ohhh, Gawd, Oliver." There is not a whole hell of a lot on tap today; basically, it'll be a lazy snowy December Sunday morning. The Lions will not be televised. They didn't sell out the stadium. I'll putter around here and eat lunch when the urge strikes me and get to a 1:00 meeting down the road. (I'd intended to go to the 10:00 meeting in Berkley--my ostensible Home Group--but, hell, I looked outside and heard the wind and just decided, "Fuggit. I'll go later.")

God bless winter. God bless the refreshing, invigorating, sub-freezing winds which render a nose a radish in under four minutes. God bless the doggies cavorting in the backyard, spinning white dervishes of snow from under their playful paws. God bless the sugar coatings on the trees and the crystalline icicles that hang from the gutters. God bless the sense of unity that many Michiganders display after a particularly heavy snowfall--snowblowing neighbor's driveways, giving The Stuck a push--but God damn the havoc the unplowed streets wreak on the undercarriage of my Ford Focus. It's too low to the ground, and a mere five inches'll fucking get it stuck. I was pretty damned frustrated yesterday, what with the neighborhood plows nowhere in sight and my car repeatedly getting stuck...in the apron of my driveway, a couple of houses down, at the end of the street. When a street isn't plowed, stop signs tend to lose their relevance, to me. As long as there isn't any other car or pedestrian in the Ground Zero vincinity, I'm-a gonna keep motoring right along. And if a car does have the audacity to be in my drive-zone at that highly-crucial point in time, I'll stop and grumble curses at the blithely unaware motorist. And then I'll get out of my car, shovel in hand, and get to work. For all you warm-weather climes, you gotta come to Michigan or somewhere in the northern snowbelt and try your hand at winter driving! It's fun! >=o) (<---See?! I'm smiling!)

Anyway.

Today is the winter solstice. Assuming that my meterological knowledge is beyond the neotonical stages, it's the shortest day of the year. I wonder if, back in the day, the animal skin-clad hunters and gatherers had special ceremonies in which they begged the dieties to "bring back the Sun, damn it"? Maybe they had sacrifices. Nowadays, we have psychological conditions like S.A.D. and depression and our sacrifices are our brain chemicals as we pop pills to "bring back the Sun." Ah, progress. :-O

Let's all band together and perform some Pagan rituals--like Speedo snow angels or the like--to expediate the winter process. Whaddya say?

(By the way: four more days until Christmas. If you're one who celebrates the birth of Baby Jesus, it's time to get shopping. Ironic, isn't it?)

PARALLEL UNIVERSE

What day of the week is it? What date is it? Is this a parallel universe? One in which I retire late and wake late and mark my days only by the occurrences of Intensive Outpatient sessions?

Where is the joy in life? When the hell can I get back to work? Are they going to be sticklers on my attending the six more one-on-one counselling sessions before I can drop some piss and head back into the wild and joyous Land o' Gas Distribution? I hope not. I talked to the leader of the IOP, George, and told him that I still needed, by the substance abuse assessor's primary assessment, six more individual therapy sessions before I'd have the shackles unlocked and be allowed to go back to work. He and I both agree that six sessions really won't make a hell of a lot of difference in my mindset--I'm fed up with drinking and all the havoc it wreaks. However, I am concerned that if I don't do what I have been ordered to do, they (The Assessors [sounds like some kind of '50s comic book, doesn't it?]) may hold my balls to the flame. I'm in a tight spot, here, and I want to do exactly what I am told to do. Money comes in handy. Besides, now is not the difficult time for me, regarding drinking. The wounds are still too fresh, the memories of life's destruction still too crystalline. No, my "stinking thinking" really kicks it into a higher gear when things are going well and the money starts rolling in and I can rationalize to myself that, "Hell, Adam, things are sweet right now. You deserve a beer or eleven." That's when it gets tricky.

As for now, being off of work for thirty fucking days is causing more drinking thoughts than quelling them. I have too much time to think (and to dwell, unfortunately). Though I fill my days with meetings and IOPs (Intensive Outpatient therapy), I still have far too much time to think. Thank God for Antabuse; without it I may have drank to combat the boredom, fresh memories be damned. Or, not. I'll tell you this: being in this situation at work has caused me to re-evaluate my life and my need for the barley-and-hops killah. I don't need it. It needs me. It needs me so that it can feel like a big ballbuster and its modicum of self-esteem can become engorged. Drinking is a bully; it really is. And if it seems as though I am personifying drinking (or the drinking Adam, if that makes it easier to understand), I am. It helps me to validate the danger the drinking poses to me. It is a killer. For an alcoholic (and I shy not from that word) that is exactly what it is. It has no quarter, it shows absolutely no mercy. Like a Level-5 hurricane it'll sweep through the afflicted's life and leave chaos in its wake. Cows'll be in the upper branches of oak trees and houses will be half-intact and half-demolished. Pieces of straw'll be imbedded in bricks...or skulls. Sounds joyous, huh?!

Anyway, happy week-before-Christmas, outside it is snowing and nothing stirs, not even a rat.

"THE RUBBER BANDS ARE HEADING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION"

And what, exactly, does that mean? Meagan and Naomi and I went to the Oceania Inn tonight for dinner--I had the Szechuan Shrimp--and my fortune cookie told me that the rubber bands were heading in the right direction. That is great to know, Confucious, but what rubber bands are you even talking about? I mean, I could get my head around it if I, for instance, wore orthodontic braces that required the use of small, ultra-tight rubber bands to keep my teeth in line, but I was in that place and did that thing about 20 years ago, now.

If I were one who collected rubber bands and used them to make a giant Ball o' Bands then that fortune would have relevance, too. But I don't. What kind of a freaking fortune is that?!

The rubber bands are heading in the right direction. I don't even know where to start with those wise words o' wisdom. I never really even use rubber bands. That picture up there is just a representation of how important I find rubber bands to be. (That picture is about a year old; Meagan and I were just clowning around and, in this picture, you can definitely see that the rubber bands are not heading in the right direction.)

But now maybe they are. Maybe that's what the fortune gods were trying to tell me: that Meagan and I are on the right path, the path that we have been destined to travel--together. Maybe now the rubber bands are heading in the right direction because we have found each other (better late than never) and, though things may be rough every once in a while, together we can conquer pretty much everything. Does that sound like what the fortune means? I think, yes.

Either that, or the fortune writer was tripping balls that day, all loaded up with lysergic acid, and his obsession with rubber bands bled into his day job.

FRIDAY AT 6:30 IN THE AYE-EM

Being off work this month, due to circumstances that were well under my control, I find myself with a whole hell of a lot of time on my hands. I should be using this time to better myself. Perhaps I could work out. Perhaps I could go on a cleaning frenzy. Perhaps I could teach my doggies some new tricks. Maybe I could volunteer at a waffle kitchen; maybe I could learn to make soup, or chili, or borscht.

The picture you see is the new setup for my computing station. I did it simply because I needed/wanted a change (and also because of that aforementioned free time). I kinda like the way it turned out. That Diego Rivera print has been in this house, in that same spot, for nigh upon 25 years, now. When I moved into the house, I figured, hell, I liked it--naked female asses are always good--so there, on the wall, it stayed. For a long stretch when I was a kid, I used to change my bedroom around pretty much every Saturday. The bed and the dresser scuttled around the room, earning frequent flyer miles every weekend. It'd have been interesting to view the changes on some kind of time-lapsed photography. The only problem was that I was limited by the size of the bedroom and the number of pieces of furniture...I could only come up with so many combinations. Though I liked freshening the look of my room by rearrangement, I never broached the subject of window dressings, thank God. ;-P

On this date in history--December 12th, 1970--Jennifer Connelly was born. Happy birthday, Jennifer! There's just something about that woman that makes my insides flutter. One question, though: Why'd she have to get a breast reduction? They were fine how they were, damn it! And if she did it because her back hurt? Well, you should have sucked it up, Ms. Connelly. You had an obligation to all the dogs--er, men--out here who liked your blouse bunnies loud and proud. And, yes, I am crying over spilt milk, and, no, I did not think this statement out before I wrote it, but, yes, it shall remain.

Also, on this date in history, in 1787, Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. Which was the first state? I'm not sure, but if I had to hazard a guess, I'd go with Massachusetts. The first person to successfully answer that question--Which was the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution?--wins nothing. Get to it!

FROM THE GRASS IS GREEN FILE...

Tres amazing how much different it can be when I bowl A) with glasses and B) sober. Also, it helped that my left knee (my planting knee) didn't hurt. I went bowling with the babydoll on Friday night and rolled a 181 and a 175 for an average of 178. Sah-weet.

Seeing the pins makes so much of a difference! Amazing how that works, huh? Now, maybe, I should take the hint and wear the damned specs at night, while I'm driving. They could come in handy there, too, you know?

THE HOSPITAL ROOM

Snarls and yelps of pain from the next room over slowly filtered into Richard's cognizance. What kind of fucking hospital is this? he thought to himself, opening his eyes. Jesus, they're killing themselves over there. He lay there in the uncomfortable bed, his arms and legs bound by plaster at odd angles (the better to heal, he'd been told) and he listened to, what was now, silence. His nose itched. Shit. There was a sudden flurry of scrabbling nails and snarls and then a final piercing yelp of pain and then there was silence once again. He wondered what was better: animalistic fury or this dead pregnant silence. Noise, fury, he decided, was better. At least, that way, he knew he was still alive and not suspended in some kind of Purgatory in which he could not move his arms or his legs--or even his head, for that matter--a Purgatory in which he couldn't even scratch his nose when it itched.

God, his nose itched. From his prostrate vantage point, he couldn't see the clock (he assumed it was on the wall behind his head) but he figured it had to be around the time that the smoking hot nurse usually came in and checked his morphine drip and drained his weasel if it needed draining. At first, Richard had been horrifically embarrassed to have such an attractive woman handle his cock in such a detached clinical nonsexual way but, over the last week or so (time had pretty much lost relevance; he didn't know if he'd been in hospital for a week or four or more) he'd left the embarrassment and the somewhat-shame somewhere along the Convalescence Highway and had come to actually look forward to her arrivals. Not only was she a stunning blonde, with the body of Venus, but her visits also broke up the monotony of the day.

God, his nose itched. "Come on, lady," he muttered. "Come and scratch my itch, bitch; I got it for ya right he-ah." Don't be a dick, Rick, his father spoke suddenly in his mind. Her name is Lydia, by the way, and she is more than just an attractive cut of meat, boy. Be nice. Don't take your anger about your situation out on her. His father had been dead for about two years, but, lately, he had been speaking up more frequently in Richard's mind, and daily since he had been in the accident that had landed him in this surreal hospital--the accident that, incidentally, try as he might, Richard could not remember.

"Sure, Dad," he said. "Sorry. And that 'dick, Rick' joke? That stopped being funny about ten years ago, man." His father chuckled somewhere in the back of Richard's mind, and then faded away.

Richard was left alone, by humans and by ghosts, to lie on his back and study the cracks on the ceiling. The cracks over which putty had been smeared over the years, but were still slightly discernable and so Richard had taken to studying them, making pictures come alive in his mind's eye--there is an elephant and there is a woman crying and over there is a baboon--anything to help pass the time as his bones mended and his ostensible bruises faded.

God, his nose itched.

"Anyone there?" he called. Immediately, as if his voice had been a cue, the snarls and yelps from the next-door room began anew. They sounded like-- What the hell are dogs doing in a hospital? Why am I healing in a place that has fucking dogs in it? That doesn't sound too sterile, godammit. What the fuck?!

"Hey?!" he shouted with as much force as he could muster, which was, admittedly, not a whole hell of a lot. "Is anybody there? Is there anybody...out there? Now I'm Pink Floyd and I'm in The Wall and this is fucking crazy and I'm going crazy and now I'm talking to myself and there's a goddamn baboon on the ceiling and he's making the woman cry and the elephant just doesn't give a flying fuck and what the hell is going on?!"

From the next room, Richard heard the scrabble of the claws against the floor, two maybe three animals running around, snapping at each other, causing yelps of pain, perhaps maybe even tearing flesh from bones, leaving stinking hot pools of blood all over the once-pristine hospital floor, slamming into the walls--boom!--crashing into the mobile IV units--tinkle of breaking glass--leaving it all out on the playing field, as it were. And then, just as quickly as it had started, there was, again, silence. In his mind--his imagination had always been sharp, top-notch, sometimes scary--Richard could picture the combatants, sitting quietly, facing the wall that divided their room from his: heaving panting sides, foaming muzzles, glints of extended canine teeth, bloody ragged flesh.... He could picture them--two? three? five? who knew?--studying the wall like the RCA dog, heads cocked, determining if, in fact, there was some easy meat in the room over. They smelled him, he was sure. They'd heard him; he knew that. "Nice doggies," he muttered. "Now just stay the fuck over there, okay?" It didn't matter to him, now, that there were dogs in a hospital. The incongruity of the situation had ceased to flummox him. He just wanted them there, not here. In this case, segregation was just fine and dandy and A-okay and just what the motherfucking doctor ordered. Speaking of which....

"Hey! Where the hell is everyone?!" Richard had become aware that, though the door to his hospital room had been open the whole time he'd been conscious--his internal clock told him that it'd had to have been at least ten minutes, he'd not seen one person pass by his room. Not a one. No nurses, no doctors, not even a janitor. "This is like that damned Twilight Zone episode," he said to himself. "You know the one. The one where that dude is walking down Main Street and there's no one there, nobody, anywhere, but him. This is just too fucking freaky, man." From the next room, Richard heard a low throaty growl. The dog sounded big. Saint Bernard? Rotty? A Pitty? Irish Wolfhound? Mastiff?

His nose didn't itch anymore. "Hey!" he shouted, "my nose itches! Could someone please come and scratch it for me? It driving me friggin' nuts, here!"

No answer. In fact, though he knew this absolutely couldn't be the case, Richard didn't feel the presence of even one human being outside his door, down the hall, in the nurses station, in the cafeteria, anywhere.... He felt his Fear animal clawing at his gut, much like he heard the animals in the next room clawing at the closed (God willing) door of their prison.

"My! Nose! Itches!" he shouted. It had become a sort of mantra to him. It'd become a kind of talismanic umbilical cord that kept him secured to this, the physical world, because he knew--or least he assumed--that if he passed out from fright or quite simply gave up to his fate, he was as good as dead. The beasts from the next room would surely eventually get free and they'd scrabble over to his room, their hindquarters skidding on the polished hospital hallway, led by their noses and their sense of Easy Meat, and they would tear him to pieces and eat him alive; unable to kick or scream or beat at them, it'd be like taking doggy candy from a baby.

Howls erupted from the next room and the scrabble of claws at the door intensified. "My God, there're fucking wolves over there," he said. He moaned and tried to wiggle his fingers and wiggle his toes. They wiggled, a bit, but the rest of his appendages--both arms and both legs--were tightly secured by both the plaster casts and the seemingly-antiquated pulley systems that had been rigged to keep them in place. "This is impossible," he said. "Why am I here? And where the fuck is everybody?!" he shouted. "What kind of a hospital is this?!"

***

WOW! HOW BLESSED CAN ONE GUY BE?!

My day just keeps getting better and better! First, I heard the news that I wanted/needed to hear from work and then this!

Good Day,‏
From:
walter smith (waltersmith66@msn.com)
Sent:
Tue 12/02/08 11:41 AM
To:
.ExternalClass .EC_hmmessage P
{padding:0px;}
.ExternalClass body.EC_hmmessage
{font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana;}

Good Day,

Please accept my sincere apologies if my email does not meet your business
or personal ethics. I will first introduce myself as Mr. Walker Smith, a staff in the Private Clients Section of a well-known bank, here in London, England.

One of our accounts, with holding balance of £52,000,000 ({FIFTY TWO MILLION POUNDS Sterling) has been dormant and last operated three years ago. From my investigations and confirmation, the owner of the said account, a foreigner by name John Shumejda died on the 4th of January 2002 in a plane crash In Birmingham; you can view this CNN websitehttp://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/01/04/england.plane/ for details
On the crash.

Since then, nobody has done anything as regards the claiming of this money, as he has no family member that has any knowledge as to the existence of either the account or the funds; and also Information from the National Immigration also states that he was single on entry into the UK.

This transaction is totally free of risk and troubles as the fund is legitimate and does not originate from drug, money laundry, terrorism or any other illegal act.

On your interest, let me hear from you URGENTLY.

Warm Regards,

Mr. Walker smith

Damn. I feel really badly for John Shumejda, I really do. It blows that he had to die so tragically and horrifically, but, gosh, how often does an opportunity like this come around?! My goodness! 52 million pounds?! My worries would be gone if I accepted the money from Mr. Smith. I could buy my own fucking island! I could drive Hummers and Ferraris and I would buy Meegie a whole bunch of mink stoles and chinchilla overcoats...and I would buy a lifetime supply of Ramen Noodles, too! Hell, screw that. I could buy the whole damned Ramen Noodle company!

I know what you may be thinking: Adam, this is a scam, dude. They just want to respond so that you'll send them pertinent financial information and then they'll fleece you like Little Bo Peep's sheep, dude. Let it go.

I get that. Really, I do. But hear this, Mr. and Mrs. Smartypants: Those scams are only from Nigerian princes and princesses. This is legitimate, mang. Walter Smith doesn't know who he's messing with. For damned sure, he doesn't know. I'll fleece his little four-eyed, bowler hat-wearing ass. He won't know what hit him!

Thanks, Walter! =o) My dreams have come true!

Signed,

Non-Lolly

PS--Actually, on second glance, it doesn't seem like this is legitimate. Walter spelled his name wrong. I don't know if it's Walter or Walker. It just doesn't seem to add up. Shit. Ahhh, screw it. I'll reply, anyway. What could it hurt? Besides, I have often forgotten my own name, too.

LOLLY, GAGGING IN LIMBOLAND

My name is not Lolly, but, for titling reasons, it seemed to work. So, for this post only, I shall be known as Lolly. And I am gagging in Limboland.

At this time, I can't go into the reasons I am gagging, nor can I say why I find my ass parked squarely in Limboland. Suffice it to say, though, I am and I am.

Cryptic posts are fun! Whee! No, they're not.

I'll say this: Tomorrow is a very important day for me, and I am desirous of a certain outcome. Whether that will happen or not, I am not the one pulling the strings. I do hope, however, that if you read this, you can send good thoughts my way. And, though I have asked this of you before, my dear E-friends, if you can include me in your prayers, that would be much appreciated, as well.

Life is a journey, not a destination, and, as cliched as that sounds/reads, it is the absolute truth. I have been going back to meetings, lately, and that is the advice I have gleaned: let go and let God. It is out of my hands and in His. I have done all that I could, these last several days, and now is the time to surrender and let the chips fall where they may. That is very difficult for me to do. I always want to control the outcomes of certain things and I am one to obsess and obsess and obsess over said outcomes until my mind is frazzled and my stomach is in knots and my palms are clammy and my head fucking hurts.

Release, Adam. Step back. View the big picture. The most important thing is your sobriety.

Though that last sentence has been repeated to me innumerable times, it just doesn't sink in, sometimes. But, it is absolutely true. Without extended sobriety, I haven't a chance of achieving what I hold to be important in life.

I have a frigging disease that tells me I ain't got it, that I am just fine and dandy. And that sucks.

Regardless, I am in need of some prayer, some good thoughts, some karma.

Peace and love, y'all.

Signed,

Lolly