On the Bandwagon, up, up, and away!

 Dear friend,

It has been a long time since I have spoken to you. Please remind me who you are and what you have ever done for me. In any event, I moved on. I said goodbye to all childish things and left my hometown for good. I did not beat around the bush. I announced to the world that I was moving on. Not lingering and changing pleasantries. Not keeping any last-minute rendezvous. Not being ambiguous about it. Sorry, I am a different person now.

I would really appreciate if you were to give me a hint as to your identity. There has been so many new faces and experiences, that I am at a loss.

Until later, whoever you are.

Up Yours, 

Itinerant

P.S. Here’s my number 206 555 xxxx. Do make it short. It’s not that I have a lot of work, but I get easily tired pretending to be interested in commoner things. 

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You, my fellow itinerants, have license to use this letter for finishing all your landlubber business. I drafted it for all those I am leaving behind. After all, we had a long journey together, and if my friends could not become the friends I couldn't leave behind, there is nothing more they can say to stop me.
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This post is the first. Let's raise a glass and pop a squib. W00t. What's special about today? Absolutely nothing. Life is meaningless. We'll all burn in hell. But enough about my philosophy. We have done a fair bit of getting to know each other now. On to current events...

Today the universe's gift to me is insomnia. God damn. Every day it's something new. Six years ago, a cheerful Indian attending at the Coney Island Hospital Surgery Department told me my acute appendicitis burst into the lumen of my intestine while I was waiting in the emergency room, and I should be fine. That was after the emergency physician examined my CT CAT scan and asked me, "Do you see anything wrong here? I don't," to which I gently responded, "Let's assume, for the sake of the argument, that today I am the patient." Five years ago an orthopedic surgeon at Cornell Medical, holding an X-ray of my knee, told me I was fine, as I hobbled out of his office trying to make his faith work for me too!  Two years ago it was hemorrhoids. Last week the chest X-ray reconfirmed I have spondylosis of the spine and one of my vertebrae is deformed. Two days ago, the dental hygenist said I have an onset of gingivitis and mild cariez in my #28 and #29 that she recommends dipping in concrete, or whatever the hell they do. I sure hope my health insurance agent reads this. Health care is at a point where you probably can blackmail someone with this information for a good chunk of change. Don't get any ideas. You don't know me very well at this point, and you might get the impression I'm a pissy Jewish pessimist. You are half-correct. I am a recovering self-aware pissy Jewish pessimist. And I like dashes -- apparently. Many times I have been instructed to look on the bright side as per fascinating American custom and have been working towards it. Speaking of working toward it, what is it with people saying going forward as a verb phrase to replace "in the future" recently? It's been catching on on all the news channels. The entire Wall Street is going forward. Okay, Wall Street has a good reason to go forward. It's running away from something clawed and toothed, but the rest of us peasants should probably stick with, you know, the human language. As I am attempting to look on the bright side of staying up through the night well into 9 AM, I am reminded of the book I picked up by Barbara Erenreich, Jebus bless her name as it is unspellable, titled Bright-Sided. I was not looking forward to it, as I was disappointed with her last book, Bait and Switch, but, having picked this one up at the bookstore will, going forward, be looking forward to thumbing forward through it eventually. Forward! The first chapter was so appalingly depressing, I was ready to move out of the US and to that happiest nation  of all: Denmark, where lemon drops hang off chimney tops and beatings are only administered with candy canes. Pick the book up at the bookstore and go through the first chapter. It is seriously upsetting. I felt right at home reading it.

The CNN is playing in the background. Today it's record snow and the tea party wingnuts have been making noise again. It's appropriate this particular group has chosen teapots to serve as its emblem. What better symbol to show you are a crackpot than a teapot? Ok, maybe a crackpot, but where do you get earthenware in this day and age? Specialty store? I bet you've got to drive around a bit. In any event, if I was hitting the streets, risking forstbite, to protest something like a lunatic, I'd do it for the trillion dollar stimulus.

And to set a trend to solve one global problem in every other of my logs, let's turn our attention to the mortgage crisis. Why did it happen? Who's to blame (cough: Gramm, Leach, and Bliley: cough)? Where to get the dough? Let's have the banks stop securitizing mortgages and selling them off to unwitting investors. If the bank has to hold onto the mortgage to see the repayment through, the bank will do a bangup job evaluating who can and who cannot afford it. There. Problem solved. Till next time, kiddies.