The Dyspeptic Tank
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
The only good thing that I can say about 2004 is that it is over. It was a rotten year, even compared to 1979. This isn't about politics, either--not entirely, at any rate. I'm distressed that my fellow Americans haven't got the sense that Zeus gave plankton, but that falls under the heading of business as usual. I opened my last case of Saranac Pilsener on election night, and got much more drunk than perhaps I should have.
No, it was a lousy year because of the piling up of calamities, like so many police cars at the end of the Blues Brothers movie. Less than three weeks after the renewal of Bush's anointment, my mother got tired of arm-wrestling her cancer and died. My uncle came out from Washington State to stay with her (and glare at me) but he arrived almost too late to see her. She went to the hospital the day after his arrival, so all he could do was to tidy her house and snipe at me for having "let the place go." Six days later, at her bedside as she lay dead, he consoled me with undisguised scorn. "I hope you realize that you just lost your best friend. She was your biggest advocate." He then graciously refused to attend the post-funeral brunch. The latest thing I hear is that he is thinking of moving back to the area, perhaps because three thousand miles is too great a distance from which to effectively hurl brickbats.
Scarcely two weeks after Mom's funeral, my aunt, the other person with whom we would spend Christmas suffered a catastrophic stroke which caused a head-on collision and required emergency brain surgery. She survived and miraculously retained all her faculties except her grasp on reality. She is currently in a rehabilitation center, and is making some progress, but the place is too much like a nursing home and depresses the hell out of me.
Then there are all those who suffered and died in Iraq and in the tsunami, which I can't even begin to wrap my mind around. What a lousy, awful, shitty year. Phooey!
But yesterday I finally got my Smith-Premier Number One, purchased on eBay for a bargain price, and with a nice, low serial number. If you've never seen one of these machines up close, let me tell you--they're gorgeous. They really made nice stuff in 1890. With the fluted side columns and the polished nickel relief panels with daisies and cattails, it was much prettier than a typewriter had to be. (Which is why the Smith-Premier Number Two is so spartan in contrast. Still a fine machine--but plain.)
¶ 7:30 PM 0 comments
No, it was a lousy year because of the piling up of calamities, like so many police cars at the end of the Blues Brothers movie. Less than three weeks after the renewal of Bush's anointment, my mother got tired of arm-wrestling her cancer and died. My uncle came out from Washington State to stay with her (and glare at me) but he arrived almost too late to see her. She went to the hospital the day after his arrival, so all he could do was to tidy her house and snipe at me for having "let the place go." Six days later, at her bedside as she lay dead, he consoled me with undisguised scorn. "I hope you realize that you just lost your best friend. She was your biggest advocate." He then graciously refused to attend the post-funeral brunch. The latest thing I hear is that he is thinking of moving back to the area, perhaps because three thousand miles is too great a distance from which to effectively hurl brickbats.
Scarcely two weeks after Mom's funeral, my aunt, the other person with whom we would spend Christmas suffered a catastrophic stroke which caused a head-on collision and required emergency brain surgery. She survived and miraculously retained all her faculties except her grasp on reality. She is currently in a rehabilitation center, and is making some progress, but the place is too much like a nursing home and depresses the hell out of me.
Then there are all those who suffered and died in Iraq and in the tsunami, which I can't even begin to wrap my mind around. What a lousy, awful, shitty year. Phooey!
But yesterday I finally got my Smith-Premier Number One, purchased on eBay for a bargain price, and with a nice, low serial number. If you've never seen one of these machines up close, let me tell you--they're gorgeous. They really made nice stuff in 1890. With the fluted side columns and the polished nickel relief panels with daisies and cattails, it was much prettier than a typewriter had to be. (Which is why the Smith-Premier Number Two is so spartan in contrast. Still a fine machine--but plain.)
¶ 7:30 PM 0 comments
