Not Curling Too

It's a disappointing thing to talk about.

Charges of cheating were all over the curling world during the recent Winter Olympics. And, I will say, it began to sound a lot like a political discussion. He cheated! I didn't! Followed by a litany of yes he did and here's why along with no he didn't and here's why. At the end of the day I don't know whether he did or not. And I could not find a definite answer, quite honestly, because every he did-he didn't seemed to have at least some justification. 

Now there's talk about hiring and training curling umpires. All over a sport which has always taken pride in self policing.

I don't like it. It mars a game I've always loved. Yet it's not the game it was thirty years ago, at least at the highest levels. It's more than the honor system of calling your own violations. At one point anyone could put a team into world and Olympic playdowns to potentially represent your country on those large stages. Now you have to be pretty much a professional curler to qualify. They've even changed the rules to support that. What's the difference between now and then?

Money. Curling is a money game now. Money changes things.

That isn't necessarily bad. Nor is it necessarily good. Yet it's happened, and curling will never be the same. The Milan Olympics have pretty much set that in concrete. 

Lingering Aroma

Just to be straight with you, dear readers, I don't care one whit whether you smoke dope or not. Your choice. The truth is I've come to the point that I think even drugs beyond marijuana should be legalized, the whole kit and kaboodle. We spend too much money fighting them and our prisons are too crowded with drug offenders. Legalize the whole lot of them and then treat them like alcohol abusers, busting those who drive high and so forth. Yet none of that means I don't cast a scornful eye on outrageous drug use.

Last Monday morning at 10 o'clock I had two young plumbers (or guys who pass themselves off as plumbers) pull up to the Shop, needing a chuck on their drain cleaning machine. Fine. I put on the part and took their money. But they were not only higher than kites, their van emitted enough smoke that you may have thought it on fire. When they opened the sliding door to bring their machine in, literal clouds of smoke poured out of the vehicle. If you've seen, I believe it's the comedy Scary Movie, you would have an idea what I mean. In that film, at one point a group of teens were smoking so much weed that their car looked like a cloud had been contained inside.

The van these fellows drove was very nearly like that. It was as though they'd picked up a cloud and were showing it the sights.

I can't believe that anyone would let them into their house to snake a drain. Further, I can't imagine the kind of house which would allow them in, although apparently they exist. 

And all this at 10 AM on a Monday. I couldn't wait for them to go away. The next three customers, spread out over about an hour, remarked on the smell of weed in my Shop afterwards. It was that bad. Bad enough that my conscience wonders if maybe I should have gotten their license plate and called the cops.

Yeesh. Could you at least try to be professional?

A Grand Night Out

Yesterday I was at the UPS Store to ship a bunch of drain snake cutters to a customer in Glennie, MI. The young man at the counter goes, "Oh wow! My family has a vacation home in Glennie! Ever been there?" he asks.

I tell him I've driven through it (it's about 3 hours north of Detroit) but that's all.

"You better like fishing because that's all you can do there," he comments.

I mention that I think it's close to a little city on Lake Huron called Tawas. "It is, about twenty minutes," the guy confirms. Then he adds with a wry smile, "Tawas is where the people in Glennie go for a night on the town!"

New York City and Chicago must not hold a candle to Tawas, then.

Self Analysis

I've long held to the standard that you aren't the best judge of your self, your motives, or your actions.  You're either too harsh - especially if you're Catholic, ha, ha - or too lenient. Indeed I will editorialize for a moment and say that unfettered leniency is the hallmark of the secular world, and look where that's gotten us. Still, know thyself, the unexamined life is not worth living, and all that. You should examine the things you've said and done, and probably more the things you've said as they might be the best window into your soul. And when you're trying to establish yourself as a writer, you discover very quickly that you've put a lot on the public record.

On the whole I like what I've written. Yet that doesn't mean I don't appreciate reasonable criticism. With five books available on various platforms and with each having garnered anywhere from 40 to 180 reviews, some brief, some extensive, I almost - almost - find the critical ones the most fair.

A more routine negative comment is that my writing is at times a slog. I could get angry, except that it's true. Sometimes I'm just bridging a gap because I couldn't figure out how else to jump from A to B and it shows. 

I've been advised that it can be hard to stay interested in my stories, and I know that to be true. My personal favorite book of mine is A Subtle Armageddon. Yet even I must concede that it drags at points. I think that story has to drag a bit, given the parameters inherent within the tale, but so it goes. 

Ah well. Before I go on too long (quiet, Ron) here's what I'm about today: links to my books. Buy them. If you are into examining your motives, you'll find that you've occasionally spent your time less wisely than in helping an aspiring author rise among the greats. Yes, that's cheeky. We writers can do that.

A Subtle Armageddon

Michael's Story (Kindle)

Michael's Story (paperback)

The Interim Generation (Kindle only)

David Gideon (all formats)

The Sublime to the Ridiculous - Family Lore (Kindle only)

Joe Wasn't Worried

I spoke yesterday about picking up drain snakes from Electric Eel (Electric Eel: for all your drain cleaning needs) this past Tuesday. As it were, me Grandpa Joe picked up parts for Dad a time or two. Once in particular led to a bit of honest concern.

You think I drive rattletraps? Those who know Joe know I don't hold a candle to him on that count. That old man drove a few vehicles which should never have been on the streets. He took one one day, towing a trailer behind it, to Electric Eel to get some stuff. I don't remember which one it was. But it made an impression, a decidedly negative one, on Dick Hale, the owner of Eel at the time.

Mr. Hale was no stranger to risk and no coward, being a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. But when he saw what Joe was piloting, Mr. Hale was sincerely worried about Grandpa's safety. So much so that he called me Pops later in the day to be sure Joe made it home all right.

Dad thought it was funny. Joe just said, "Aw hell."

Loading Zone

We, me brother Phil and I, had a huge amount of drain snakes and accessories to pick up at Electric Eel (Electric Eel: for all your drain cleaning needs) yesterday. It was so big that about halfway through the loading process I began to think about what I could afford to leave behind for a later, return trip. I wasn't sure we could pack it all in the cargo van we had rented for the purpose. Then I thought, "Dad could do it. Dad would be able to figure out had to load everything."

From that point forward, that van was getting every single part of my order on board. It was going to happen. No doubt about it.

We began studying the problems involved in what had become the jigsaw puzzle within the cargo space of the van. A rearrangement here, a couple of small boxes slotted into tiny spots, a reminder that what had to come out first had to be left by the back doors, slide a few things behind seats, and plain old stubbornness led to - ta da! - getting that entire order on board for the remainder of the trip, to Indianapolis and Detroit respectively.

Dad could do it. In fact, Dad did.

Never The Twain

I don't whether I'm going for incredulity or curmudgeonly with this one. We'll all see as I hammer onto my keyboard.

Yesterday I sold some cables to a perfectly nice young man. I'd say he was 25 or so. He's been to the Shop before, and always calls me sir or Mr. Cosgriff. He never argues price, simply buying what he needs. The guy never gives me grief about cost or service.

Yet he plays his music loud from his work van and leaves it on all the time he's in the old barn. The lyrics are always vile and disgusting and blasting right in front of my place of business. Interestingly too his dog is aways with him, a tiny lap dog of some kind, smaller than a chihuahua. He lets it run all around the Shop barking and yapping. It's never really in the way; indeed it's nice enough to me. Yet it's highly incongruent to the music. That, and the fact that the customer is himself huge, hulking over the toy dog.

That's admittedly unimportant.  To the other stuff, I doubt I ever will but part of me wants to say to this young man, "You're so nice and considerate. Why do you listen to that terrible music and blast it out for the whole neighborhood to hear? You're better than that." 

I genuinely like him. He was buying cables because he'd lost all of his in a broken sewer. I honestly felt bad for him when he told me that. I mean, yes, I make money selling drain snake cables. Yet that doesn't mean I revel in someone's ill fortune. 

Still, the loud, terrible music. I simply have trouble understanding how the two things fit together: nice and considerate all around except for that. It's just beyond me.