Friday was the big day, launch day in fact. How delightful to be in the water again! For the first time ever, I had decided to step the mast myself this year, with the little hand-crank crane they have. Obviously, for an operation like that, you need to gather a crowd of the right sort, so that other people do the the actual work whilst you supervise. By "supervise", of course, I mean "sit on your ass and drink beer". Fortunately, mast-raising is the kind of boat-related labour which your fellow sailors actually want to assist with- unlike, say, waxing the topsides or scraping crud off the hull- and I had no shortage of people who promised assistance. Indeed I could have rigged Noah's Ark itself had everybody showed up who said they would. Tim, Rich, Bob, Dave and RoseAnn, David, Steve all volunteered - unasked- for the privilege of providing unpaid labor.


In the event, the key volunteer was Don, a fellow I didn't even know beforehand, although I'm sure I'd seen him around. He was working on his mast in the yard, while I was working on mine side-by-side not fifteen feet away. We got to talking and the conversation (perhaps unsurprisingly) drifted over to the subject of masts. It turned that we were both of us stepping later that day! Naturally, I offered to be of whatever feeble assistance I could be, and Don very decently returned the offer. And it turned out that Don's end of the tacit bargain was far far more generous than my puny offer of assistance. For unlike myself, and unlike all my other hopeful rigger's apprentices, Don actually had practical experience in the stepping of masts, and further he had a variety of unforeseen-but-clearly-necessary devices to streamline the process. Everything from an ingenious mast-trolley to cart the mast from yard to crane to the machine-oil required for lubricating the ancient cranking machinery on the crane. A very valuable ally, is Don.

So I helped Don, his wife Rose, and his friend Bob step his mast- he has a Columbia 28, a beautiful little vessel. Steve- honest fellow!- showed up right about then to help, so Rose and Bob's wife Joan could go sit down and drink Mimosas while Don, Bob, Steve and I tackled my mast.

(Later, Steve, Rich, Rich's brother and myself stepped Rich's mast. I'm getting to be pretty accomplished in the esoteric arts of mast-steppery. And then I went sailing).

Everybody knows that my crazy ex landlord is completely batshit insane. But what I'm beginning to think is that her attorney, Clement W. Pyles, may not be paddling with both oars in the water either.

For those of your who may not have been following along at home, my crazy ex-landlord (hereafter referred to as C.X.L.) isn't exactly thrilled about being on the losing end of our ongoing legal battle, and so has retained the services of the illustrious Mr Pyles, apparently in order to funnel even more of her money right down the drain. I received a letter from said Clement W. Pyles today, a letter filled with some especially choice gems of incompetence. Particularly risible was his contention that, in my tenancy with Isabelle, my security deposit was $500 per month. No doubt there are some renters whose leases require them to plunk down a deposit each and every month, but I imagine that such cases are tolerably rare; I suspect most tenants in Ohio pay just one deposit, at the beginning of the lease, and thereafter merely pay rent on the monthly basis. This was certainly the case with me, although the deposit in question amounted to somewhat more than $500. Curiously, the amount which Isabelle (belatedly) returned to me wasn't $500 either, but I'll chalk up the difference to general moronicism on the part of her and Mr Pyles.

Then Mr Pyles went on (in his letter) saying that in any event it was a mistake that she returned anything; actually, what she had meant to do (but I guess had forgotten to do) was charge me $900 and some change because of damage my bicycle caused, and that if I didn't just drop my claims and walk away, she will countersue me.

Granted, if left unattended, a bicycle can go shockingly awry, wreaking immense destruction left and right (that's after all why we cyclists generally lock them up when we aren't riding them) it seems to me rather odd that only now- after I've been out of Isabelle's place for well over a year, and have in addition won a judgment against her, that she recalls that my bike ALLEGEDLY may have behaved badly.

So once again I called up Rapid- a good and true man, an attorney who could out-lawyer this two-bit blackguard pettifogger Pyles with one hand and a couple of fingers tied behind his back- and while Rapid had some impenetrable legalistic terms, even including such rigamarole as a "statue of limitations" (must be quite a beautiful sculpture, seeing as how it HAS BEEN MADE INTO LAW), his professional opinion was much the same as my unprofessional one: viz, that Mr Pyles' threat was a ridiculous and transparent bluff.

So! Time to call Mr Pyles! Mr Pyles was somewhat surprised to learn of my opinion that $500 was not in fact the amount of the original deposit, and further seemed rather fascinated that I had something called "a copy of the lease", which apparently would settle the question of the deposit once and for all. He was all a-quiver! Could he see this, he asked? Could he see this "lease", of which I spoke so highly? "Oh, I'm sure my crazy ex lan--, I mean, I'm sure Isabelle has a copy- hasn't she provided you with one?" Mr Pyles informed me that no, she hadn't, and in fact she didn't seem to possess a copy, which was unfortunate, it was very sad indeed, but he should very much like to see a copy regardless, and would be very grateful should I be so good to fax him one.

As much as I dislike disappointing my fellow man, I told him that I didn't have a copy with me (I was on the phone at the time, after all), and further that I had no intention whatsoever of walking away from the judgment- I would perhaps settle for $100 less, just to get it all over and done with- but if Isabelle insists on appealing the judgment, and if we go back to court, state law allows me to ask for "reasonable attorney's fees". I hadn't claimed that before, as I had been self-represented, but now that Isabelle has engaged such an EMINENT LEGAL SCHOLAR as yourself, well, I would be a fool to go before the court without counsel, wouldn't I?. Naturally I would therefore ask for reasonable attorney fees in addition to the judgment.

Rapid deserves no less, he is reasonablest attorney I know.

Well today I had lunch with my co-worker Brandon. He swore me to secrecy of course but I hardly expect that that should apply to posting shit on the Internet. See, Brandon- who does a lot of the technical stuff for the computers at work- was telling me about one of our fellow employees-a colleague, if you will- guy named Matt, a nice enough guy, you know, pleasant enough, a polite well-mannered young man. Now, I'm a bit vague on what exactly it is that Matt is supposed to be doing for the company, but I'm prepared to accept that whatever it is he that he is supposed to be doing is probably pretty dull stuff. At any rate, Matt has apparently decided (and I daresay he's probably correct on this) that whatever his legitimate work is it is nowhere near as interesting as watching hot girl-on-girl naked action on his computer all day long. Turns out that porno is just as close as the nearest Internet! Just imagine! And Matt has an Internet right there on his very computer! (And for the record, no, I don't think that watching sexy porno stuff is what they hired him to do.)

Now, I'm blessed with an open mind, so if a man wants to spend his workaday hours frequenting websites with names like tightteens dot com, more power to him, I say! It was personal initiative, and the refusal to toe the company line, that was the sort of thing that made America great, back in the days when America was great! But really, I think that if you're going to be doing this sort of thing at work, you might want to clear out the history page of your browser every now and again. Jeeze Louise! What a moron!! They totally busted him redhanded! Okay, well maybe not REDhanded, if you know what I mean (and I think you do) but he is totally busted and is going to stay busted!

We were absolutely howling away about it at lunch... I should say, Matt does live with his girlfriend... Possibly she's one of those rare females who finds it irritating when her boyfriend spends every waking hour ogling photos of women degraded to mere sexualized objects? Maybe his girlfriend's just not hot and/or lesbian enough for his liking? Whatever the case may be, obviously, she's so shrewish and tyrannical that she's browbeat Matt to such an extent that he only dares to indulge his perv fantasies at work. Instead of wasting his work time by screwing around looking at internet cartoons like everyone else.

Next Friday almost everyone is taking the day off because of the long weekend- myself included, by the way, I'm launching that day, be gone all weekend- and Friday afternoon it seems that Matt is the only person will be working in the office. So Dennis (whose pure mind, of course, is completely innocent of any notion of Matt's ... um .... preferred leisure activities) is asking "So nobody's working but Matt next Friday? what exactly do they think he's going to do here, all by himself??"

And Brandon looks at me and we lock eyes and it's about all either of us can do to not just completely bust up laughing...

Okay, so well I went and saw X last night. I'd tell you all about it but the truth of it is I'm kind of wore out today. So instead, I'll just cut and paste my impressions of the last time I went and saw X- from my Top Secret Personal Files. I'm sure X will forgive me the repetition; after all, it's not like they bothered to come up with anything new for their act this time, either. Oh and by the way, the opening act was different this time so feel free to disregard most of the following.

13 Aug. 2006

Back in the day, I had a little lizard, Larry- Larry the Lizard, actually he was an anole (genus anolis), who lived in one of them big ol' jugs that cheap wine comes in. At least I think he was a he, it's kind of hard to tell with lizards. Anyways, he'd perch there on his stick, all lizardy and leathery, and glare balefully at the world outside his bottle through his malevolent, unblinking eyes- graceless posture, abrupt and jerkily spastic movement, a fondness for eating flies. I'm telling you this because for all the world Larry was exactly what Henry Rollins reminded me of Friday night, when I saw Henry and his band, the accurately (if somewhat unimaginitively) named Henry Rollins Band at the House of Blues in Cleveland. The shaven-headed and inexcusably shirtless Mr. Rollins scowled and snarled his way through what, just possibly, was the lamest and least rockingest hard-core show in the history of ever. The singer, who must be pushing fifty or so, bellowed out his songs of teen-age angst and alienation while striking of variety of lizardesque poses and grimaces which I imagine were intended to be "intense" or whatever, but really just came across as comical and somewhat pathetic. Doofus! The band apparently never got the memo that in hard-core shows, you really ought to shoot for a tempo a little faster than that of, say, a Lynrd Skynerd cover band on cough syrup. They even had a drum solo (I know!) which kind of threw me for a loop. I mean, it not being 1978 anymore, I didn't even dream that people still did drum solos. I was thinking it was just yet another bad song. All in all I just bout crapped myself laughing at them, especially seeing as how every time I saw the (air-quote) singer (air-unquote)I pictured my lizard up there on stage. So if you're a big fan of the Henry Rollins Band, well, I'm sorry to have be the one to break the news to you but really they pretty much just suck.

Needless to say, I didn't swing by Cleveberg merely in order to catch H. Rollins and crew. Granted, I hadn't known that they would be so freakin' HILARIOUS, but even so I probably wouldn't have crossed the street to see them. The plan was to see the headlining act, X, who I haven't seen in forever for the perfectly good reason that they broke up a forever ago. So I took me a detour on the way to Lorain and swung through Cleve-o-pork-chop-o-lis. Billy Zoom just sort of stood there, and beamed benevolently- if somewhat simplemindedly- at the crowd, like the retarded uncle who shows up at family reunions and doesn't really have anything much to say. DJ Bonebreak is getting far too bald and far too grey to still go by a name like "DJ Bonebreak". Exene looks like she's led a hard life of dissipation and intemperance (which, to be fair, she probably has). John Doe looked sharp. Anyways, they tore through all the old hits just like you'd expect but they really sounded pretty good.

THE CHAIN OF CIRCUMSTANCE:
A STORY WITH A MORAL


As I was already running late Friday morning, it was with no great pleasure that I noted my trusty bicycle had developed a flat tire over the night, for reasons which still remain mysterious. I had no time to deal with it right then and there; I had to run to catch the bus so that I would only be my usual twenty minutes or so late to work. After work, I'd have to find a way to get my bike to the shop. I mean, if it was just the flat I'd fix it myself of course, but I needed to get the front wheel trued anyway- I managed to bend it up pretty good by smacking into a massive great pothole a week or so ago. It was a pothole bigger than a fatman's bathtub, but you can't blame me for not noticing the pothole. Not when there was a pretty girl RIGHT THERE ON THE SIDEWALK next to it, just a-moseying along, clearly with no other reason for being there than to divert the eyeballs of hapless bicyclists, thereby luring us straight into the pothole. What else could she possibly have been doing there? Siren!

(Now, no doubt some of you are reading this and thinking "Saaa-ay! This riding smack into a huge gaping pothole thing: is this an effective way of impressing pretty girls? Tell me this is something I need to know" Sadly I must report: No It Is Not. Basically, pretty girls just kind of smirk and keep on walking.)

Anyways, there is a only short window of opportunity between the time I get out of work and the time the bike shop closes up for the day, and during that brief span of time the clouds opened up and it simply POURED DOWN LIKE CRAZY! Well, no way was I going to walk fifteen blocks in the pissing rain pushing a disabled bicycle! I have my dignity! Alas- this weekend shall be bikeless...

The rain relented shortly after the bike shop closed- too late for me of course, but it was forecast to rail steadily up at the lake until late Saturday. So I figured there wasn't a whole lot of point driving up there first thing- instead, I decided to go to the gym in the morning and then drive up later. With the bike out of commission, I had to drive to the gym- only to find out that I'd forgotten to bring change for the meter.

"Oh, bother!" I cried. "I've forgotten to bring change for the meter!"

So I had to drive off twelve blocks or so to find streets without meters. By coincidence, it just so happened I found a nice spot right by my old apartment, on Third Street. As I walked past my old place - good times! - who do I run into but my old landlord Pat! It's always great to run into old Pat - especially when he says "Hey! Don't I still owe you that $300? Wait here- let me grab my checkbook!"

Three hundred smackers! I'd pretty much given up on ever seeing those particular simoleons again, and here they are practically falling out of a clear blue dreary gray sky! And you know what, without that parade of inconveniences and setbacks- my oversleeping, the flat tire, the pretty girl, the bent rim, the shitty weather, the lack of change- if it weren't for every single event, happening in exactly the sequence ordained by Fate, I'd never have been in exact place at the exact time to run into Pat and I'd never have seen my three hundred rutabagas again! Everything happens for a purpose!

The moral to this story? Well, I should have thought it would have been obvious: For that series of petty irritations, clearly, to put up with all that I DESERVE A HELL OF A LOT MORE THAN A MEASLY 300 BUCKS.

Clearly.