Slouching into Oblivion

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900 ) The term pack animal is used to describe a beast of burden used to carry heavy loads over long distances such as donkeys and mules. The term also refers to animals that live and hunt in packs such as wolves and hyenas, The best example of both types of pack animals is the human. Like mules, most of us put on blinders each morning and carry the load, doomed to spend a large majority of our lives compulsively working at jobs we despise and where success only breeds more work. Ironically, most work so that one day they don’t have to work anymore. When not laboring, the pack gathers at designated times and places, e.g., parties, meetings, to recite long worn out aphorisms, nod, agree, and seek approval and validation in t...

During my first decade living in Mexico while still practicing law in the U.S., I wrote a column entitled “Me and Big Joe” that recounted my adventures with a 350-pound Mexican bodyguard, Big Joe, a lunatic psychopath with a serious grudge to settle. He was big and stupid, but loyal. I have republished a few of those stories here and I do so again today if only because I have spent the last three months writing only about grief, about pain. I am tired and I am sure you are, too. It is time to get back to The Front . . . March 3, 2008. 33,000 feet somewhere between LAX and Houston Intercontinental It ended like it began. Suddenly, no warning. The evil bastards who had told us from Day 1 they had a lock on the case just gave up. After six weeks of hand to hand combat, it ended with a whimper instead of a bang. When I was younger, and a lot stupider, I would demand they stand up and take it like a man, but years have taught me that hits, runs and errors are no different than a ...

Mexico moves slow. S-L-O-W As in suspended animation. No one is in a hurry. Get an invitation to a party at 7? Show up at 10. No problem. You're early. Need something fixed? “I’ll be there Tuesday.” But you don’t know which Tuesday. At the gas station where my chiquitas work , they are renovating an old convenience store. “How long until it’s open?” I asked the gas man a month ago. “Two weeks.” “How long until it’s open?” I asked the gas man yesterday. “Two weeks.” “If I ask you next week, ‘how long until it’s open,’ what are you going to say, gas man?” “Two weeks.” He smiled. He knew. That he didn’t know. Mostly he didn’t care. Everything is slower here. I like it that way. Time spreads out. Life becomes a stream of consciousness novel. You can focus on what you’re doing or going to do, rather than the time someone you don't give a shit about expects you to do it. Everything is slower. Everything except driving. Last week, I was on a two lane road...

The gas gauge was flirting with empty between Celaya and San Miguel, a deep-night high-speed run on a particularly dangerous highway, when I noticed the lighted PEMEX sign on my right side near a drug dealer holding a cardboard sign, “METH.” PEMEX is Mexico’s government-owned oil company, their gas stations littering the countryside, places where there are no fewer than a dozen ways to be ripped off, most of them involving diversion by the attendant. I noticed three tall, young girls with long legs and short skirts. As I pulled into one of the lanes, the prettiest of them knocked on my window. As I rolled it down, she reached in, touched my face, and said, “Hi, young man. We are the chiquitas,” motioning to her scantily-clad girlfriends. “Aren’t you cute?” Maybe I was tired, or maybe it was my perpetual emotional vulnerability, but I thought to myself, “Fuck it. If this is this week’s diversion, they can rip my ass a new one now.” “What’s your name?” she asked. She had wond...

Hernando Cortes was an asshole. In 1519, Hernando landed with 11 ships and 600 men somewhere near Cancun before inclusive resorts littered the beach. He had one goal: steal. Hernando was the first CEO, but that is another story we will save for later. His first order to his men was to “burn the ships.” Naturally, his men thought he’d done too much PCP, which he was known to do along with yard-long lines of pure cocaine, to stay up all night and hallucinate about such nonsense as burning his own ships and opening hotels that offered free liquor. But his boys did it because they were, in two words, retarded and hungry, and after they off loaded the last of the rum and swilled it like the drunks they were, they burned their own transportation.Now some would say, “That’s fucked up.” And they would be right. In Cortes’ drug-addled, syphlliltic mind, he would conquer the Aztecs and use their ships to return to Spain after raping and pillaging an entire population. One probl...

Failure Is Always An Option, Pablito October 21, 2021 “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for others.” - Charles Dickens Dickens knew. He earned 6 shillings a week gluing labels on pots of boot black in a warehouse full of rats before he became the greatest novelist and noted philanthropist of the Victorian era. I reflected on Dickens’ admonition when my girlfriend’s nephew, Pablito, a precocious 9-year old, came to me with a business idea. He was cautious, but excited.  His caution was understandable. He had heard my cruel sarcasm before and seen my disturbing abuse of inanimate objects when confronted with stupidity, ignorance, and lack of curiosity. “Jim, do you want to hear my idea?” His face an alternating combination of hope and dread. “Not really,” I replied, “but who knows, maybe you are the next Elon Musk, a visionary, liar, and hustler, an essential combination to be successful in today’s business world.” He paused. “Go ahead,” I...