I was required to wear a wristband, “Fall Risk,” last November and December. After an amputation in early November I fell getting into my hospital bed. I didn’t get hurt, I simply plopped on the bed — problem was a nurse saw it happen. It embarrassed me wheelchairing around the hospital with the bright yellow band. I don’t know why — any amputee in a wheelchair is going to be a fall risk. I just wanted to be the one deciding whether I was at risk — not some sour-faced nurse (she was!).

I didn’t fall again until a Saturday night in February. It was a very dark spot. My friend Deb was parked on Lombard near Webster. As I was waiting for her to unlock the door, my friend Erin said, “Hey, Fred. Don’t step ba…” My crutch went into a standpipe whose opening was flush with the sidewalk. Instantly I was on the ground in pain. Apparently I fell right because other than minor scrapes on my arms, I was okay in a day or two. A number of people guessed, probably correctly, that the missing brass standpipe cover has been traded in at a scrap-metal yard.

I began walking on an AK (above-the-knee) prosthesis in March. I never liked the way the knee failed to reliably click in place. After many near-falls, I fell in the VA parking lot. This was mid April. A shuttle cart was waiting at the north end of the hospital. It was loading up to leave and I was still 25 yards away. I sped up, ignored the too-smooth flexing of my knee, and fell across the hood of a parked car (dark blue is all I recall) just as my brain said “where’s that click?”

Two weeks ago, at home with that same leg, I walked into the bathroom, my leg collapsed, and I caught myself on the windowsill with both forearms. Leg pain, arm pain, hand pain, hair pain, and fingernail pain followed.

Yesterday, on the way to the VA to get fitted for my new computerized leg, I was careless at the side of the cab. My crutches were at two different levels — curb and street — and I turned to put my butt in the seat but instead fell onto the concrete. Again scrapes and scratches. Nothing substantial, but it hurts to use the keyboard right now (seriously, right shoulder pain). I must be pretty good at falling or very damn lucky. I’ll say a bit of both. But yeah, Fall Risk is a legitimate tag for me. When I’m on my new leg, I’ll feel a lot more secure.

My son thinks Fall Risk would be a good name for a punk band.

My last week in the hospital, my favorite nurse, Sergei, motioned me over to his computer. On it was a hamburger piled with bacon, avocado, tomatoes, cheeses, frankincense, and other items I could never name, but appealed to my senses. “You’ve got to go there,” he said. “You are going with friend to lunch, right? This” he said, knocking the burger on the screen with his knuckle, “is where you must take your friend.” He backed up the screen a page and the restaurant was revealed to be Frjtz Fries — a place on Hayes. The spelling threw me, but it’s a Belgian restaurant, so I forgave them. I called Jack and he agreed to  pick me up at noon the following day.

It turned out to be a dive, but we were there so we took one of the many available tables. And I mean by “tables” sharp squares of plastic veneered wood held up by cheap metal pylons. You’d expect to find furniture like this piled up in a corner of a room at a going out of business sale. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We sat. We waited, but were not waited upon. After awhile, like any animal looking for a meal, I surveyed the premises. There were two cooks at work behind the counter, and three diners besides us. Finally a movement in the poorly lit back room. I got his attention somehow and he or she sauntered up. “Could we have menus?” I asked. He/she said nothing, but returned with highly reflective laminated sheets that were indecipherable thanks to the small print. “I just want coffee,” Jack said to the waitperson. After a while, the guy said, “We don’t have coffee.” Silence. Jack gave me a lets-get-out-of-here look. I gave a little shake of my head and said, “Do you have any coffee-type drinks? Like espresso, lattes, and so forth? “Yes we have those.” Eventually I ordered a latte and Jack an Americano, after I explained to him what it was — and that it was the closest thing to plain black coffee he was going to find here.

The coffees came. “Do you haave sugar?” Jack asked. The waitperson wandered in back and returned within two minutes with a large square glass carafe, like something you’d put out at the counter for business cards. There was a half inch of sugar on the bottom. No way to get to it, though, and nothing to stir it in with. “Could I have a spoon?” Jack asked. The kid returned with two spoons. I didn’t even have to ask for mine.

It was like that for the rest of the meal. Next came the cream negotiation. Then napkins. A fellow sitting next to us was eating a decent looking sandwich. What it was, I don’t remember. We both ordered one then ate and left.

“Man, that was a bad experience,” Jack said. I agreed. Back at the VA hospital I asked Sergei what he loved about the place. “I have never been there,” he said, “I was hoping for you to let me know whether I would like it.”

The next morning I got a call from Jack. He could barely talk. He croaked out that he had a temperature of 104. He was on his way to the doctor that afternoon. Oh god, I thought, don’t let it be something he caught from the restaurant, or from me (I’d been hacking pretty badly for a few weeks). After a day or two he called to let me know it was just the flu. I quit feeling guilty.

Out of curiousity I googled Frjtz Fries this morning. The one on Hayes is going out of business. But they have a few other locations. Wanna go?

Wearing long silk underwear was, I believe, the reason I tormented effeminate boys. I’m not defending it — the reasoning, not the wearing of the underwear — but I am saying, heh heh, you know, ha ha ha. Just saying, hee hee hee. In all seriousness, though, I was not the one making the decision to wear the underwear. If I hadn’t agreed, my father was going to insist that I drive an AMC Gremlin to Cranbrook.

Ann and I thought long and hard about having sex. Now this was after we’d become man and wife. That has to be clear. One thing I was very careful about was making certain the peritoneal seam was intact. That seam, of course, could be broken either by riding a horse or riding in an AMC Gremlin, huh huh, heh heh, huh, hee hee.

The first time we showered together as man and wife, we wore our undergarments. Then as the stall steamed up we got a little bit brave and dropped them. Now, I have to say this — you never let your undergarments lose contact with your skin. It’s a sin. That means you must stand on them while you shower. Somehow, in the poor visibility, we must have cross-stepped because she pulled my underwear up onto herself and I pulled hers on me and tore her peritoneal seam. After that we decided to simply go ahead and have intercourse. At least we didn’t do it in the back seat of a Gremlin — ha ha, hee hee hee, ha hee ahoooooewee. That’s just a joke. We had Cadillacs by then.

When yur wife does not avail herself of prenatal screening, it’s impossible to know for sure whether you’re going to have boys or girls. This was unfortunate because Ann was certain she was going to have a girl. Fredericks of Salt Lake was having an amazing sale on girls undergarments so we bought fifty pairs, in all sizes, so our daughter could grow up into adulthood and not have to buy undergarments. Anybody who’s been paying attention knows that the Romneys had five boys, but not daughters. I don’t mind saying that the boys wore the peritoneal seams down pretty quickly, heh heh heh. We only got about twelve years service out of that load. Wait, now that was not an undergarment joke!

I’m sure there are fewer homoerotic hardons in North Carolina now that same sex marriage has been illegalized. No man need fear that his child will come home and announce, “Dad, I think I’m gay.” No mother will need to charge into her daughter’s room and tear the girl’s face out of a split cantaloupe. A Carolina titan of business can feel comfortable crashing into an elderly foreman’s locker and ripping down the Playgirl centerfolds. And any dog owner can shoot a same sex dog for sniffing his pet’s crotch. And to all Carolinastan police detectives, gather ye pubic hairs off men’s room toilet seats while ye may.

Kids drinking hand-sanitizer liquid. Yeah, today’s kids! Kid’s drinking JoNe hand-warmer liquid. Damned kids circa 1950! A bunch of kids leaning up the front seat, their hands, along with the driver’s, ostentatiously held aloft, playing chicken. That was the 50s too. Kids on the phone, hours on end. The 50s.

Five years ago I was on the bus. Sitting next to me was a man my age. Across the aisle was a 20 year old kid, clicking the buttons on his phone as fast as any secretary could type. Using only his thumbs, though. The man next to me took note. Caught my eye. A few stops along the way the kid got off. The man said, non-admiringly, “Kids today.” And this is the big gripe of the these-damn-kids-today club. They can do things with their toys that we can’t.

My son and his sister, now 23 and 17, learned to type on their own simply by playing on a computer. Not the qwerty system — or whatever we called it. Just hunt-and-peck until they got good enough to do whatever they wanted to do. You and me (you’re older than 50, right?) sat in a classroom and drilled, putting our fingers in the proper place, punching with irritation because wasting two hours a week this way was so d-u-l-l (middle finger middle row left hand, index finger top row right hand, ring finger middle row right hand, ring finger middle row right hand).

I’ve heard lots from the these-damn-kids-today club about how they don’t know how to socialize because they’re consumed by iPhones, iPads, iPods. Households got TV in 1950 or thereabouts. Kids loved it. Kids spent more time watching it than their parents did. Parents said these kids today! which would have bored us silly if we’d been listening.

“Get your nose out of that book, son, and feed the damn chickens,” said old man Lonstrom. Then he turned to his wife, “Make sure Gretl draws water for our baths.” His wife gave him an exhausted look. “Please don’t be so damn grumpy.” “Ah, crap,” he said. “You’d think by the 16th century we’d have this figured out. Kids Today!”

At 8:13 the strip of land across the bay is a blue-gray against a dusty pink sky. The silhouettes of the buildings between me and the bay are clarified — I can see through the apertures of the bell tower at the San Francisco Art Institute. Black firs and elms take up five degrees of the foreground. The lights have come on in the windows of the 1930′s-built apartments. To the right is Fisherman’s Wharf and its neons, the outline of a docked ship or two, and headlights slowly approaching far down on Taylor street. In the midst of all this is a building. Its architecture is 1950s Soviet style. A ten story concrete warren on Taylor, between Greenwich and Lombard. In the 90s, the city tore down public housing just north of it, but kept the wrecking balls away from the tall structure with its huge windowless tower.

Six months ago movies were shown almost nightly on the face of the tower. From my window I could hear no sound, so I didn’t pay much attention — I don’t know what the movies were or even if they were in color. I don’t think color would even appear as color on the grim building. Still, it was a nice touch.

Since I returned from the hospital, I’ve paid no attention to the structure until a half-hour ago. The flat top of the building — on which I used to see people shuffling around, sharing joints — is now entirely covered with solar panels. The whole apparatus is tilted my way and, only moments ago, reflected the darkening sky. Now the night’s about as dark as it’ll get. I can’t see the panels anymore. But the moon is full and big tonight, NOW 14% BIGGER! The lunar panels are coming out on the caps of the city’s crazy people, many of whom make their beds in the doorways and shrubs of nearby Columbus Avenue.

But the big building is transformed for me. Having filled itself with sunlight on this beautiful day, it stands, powering its orderly columns of 100-watt bulbs, a welcome presence in the neighborhood.

I was sitting near the front door at Peets talking with my friend Joan. A woman approached — she was clearly on her way out the door. She leaned over me, and said something in a very low voice. I said “what?” Still speaking very quietly. but in the singsong of a moonie, she said, “Sir, you have a beautiful low voice. It’s a baritone, I’d say. I just wonder if you’ve ever thought you’d like to reduce your volume.” Thirty years old, but Her patronizing scold was that of a little old schoolmarm. “The man I was sitting next to,” she continued, “complained about you as well. He simply picked up and left.”

“I’ve never had anybody else complain about my being loud,” I said. She came right back at me: “I would imagine nobody else had the balls.” In my deepest baritone I said, “Yes, I was looking at your balls.”

Except I didn’t say that. I thought it. Ten minutes after she left.

This is an example of l’esprit d’escalier — A French term meaning the spirit of the staircase. The allusion is to the circumstance of finding yourself on the staircase after the grand ball and suddenly realizing what you should have said to the rude count or petty official who cut you down earlier in the evening.

I have to say a good way to piss somebody off enough that they’ll go to the trouble to write about it is to speak very quietly. I watched through the window as she made her way down the street. A victory strut.

Thirty years ago I drove down the coast with a girlfriend. I wanted everything to go well and did all I could to impress her and her friends in LA. One night she and I went to a movie. I wish I could remember it, because I liked it. But I could not lean back and allow myself to enjoy it because all my peripheral senses were flashing She Really Hates This Movie. I was such a pussy.

A couple nights ago I went with my friend Ann to see The Five Year Engagement. It was three years too long. I really like Ann, and I respect her intelligence and her talents, but Damn, she was all like I love this fillum. Ann’s a terrific improviser and the fact she was slapping her thighs and getting all crinkly-eyed made me doubt my taste. I so want to think of myself as an independent spirit, but I was caving badly. Hemming-hawing yeah, it’s pretty good, etc etc.

Emily Blunt has a lovely set of upper teeth, the credits were easy to read — but sorry, I can’t remember anything else about the movie. All I know is, in spite of my Walter Mitty self image, I’m an agreeable son-of-a-bitch at the movies, and that’s not to my liking. But there you have it.

You treat.

If all the world was downhill,
And the wind was at my back,
I might just hop from France to Greece
In a big ole gunny sack.

I think I’ll look up an early wife
From pre-arthritic times,
Then piggy-back her to Iraq
And commit religious crimes.

Give me some rope and pulleys,
And tie a good knot to my wrist –
I’ll haul myself up the Half-Dome face
Without the slightest assist.

(refrain) Just keep me away,
Keep me away,
Keep me away
From my gerontologist.

If your thing’s the three-legged race,
I’ll toss one of mine aside,
Then whittle my other to fit your thigh,
And hitch ‘em up with rawhide.

Let’s tilt the world off its axis
To make the rivers run crazy,
Then fjord one at its muddiest crook,
Just to prove that we aren’t lazy.

But keep my away,
Please keep me away,
Keep me away
From my gerontologist.

What am I…? Talking out of my ass?
Like I’d ever get off my behind.
My exercise gear is locked up tight
In the rumbleseat of my mind.

But here at my bedside, right in a drawer,
Exploration waits in a bottle.
Plans under my pillow spell it out –
Tailfeathers, wings, and throttle.

And you, gerontologist, student of age,
You know how I nod, bob, and drift off.
Stand at the foot of my bed this midnight –
10..9..8..7..6..5..4..3..2..1..0…Lift off.

This song was written at the urging of Jen Hastings, my music teacher at the VA (yes, old people have music instruction, unlike our young — you could say we were grandfathered in). It’s a walking song in the tradition of “Valderee, Valderei, etc etc.” The idea is to keep me walking on my prosthetic leg. Rhythm is all. Thanks, Jen.

Made notes on my cell phone during hospitalization. Here are some.

Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, is considered his secret weapon. Iran is studying ways to manufacture Anns.

Jesus’ 2000th elementary school reunion is this coming month.

Very fucked up guy smoking joint: “Ain’t it funny, the antidote to marijuana has to be smoked?”

Re Farallones: “How big’s your boat?” “Capsize.”

I wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating hospital food.

Hockey fans: How can a sport with so few blacks have so many whites in the penalty box?

What is the square root of: red? Your sleep number? googol?

Hitler on the Roof.

Cactus pole dancer.

Turjoken: a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a joke (thanks Dean MacDonald)

Reach Steve Jobs on iSeance.

(T-shirt) Humanitarian in Training.

(T-shirt) (front) Not now I have a headache. (back) Not now I have a backache.

When it’s time for meds, patients wait at the nurses’ stations like cats waiting to be fed.

Movie disclaimers:Based on a true story. Inspired by real events. Triggered by actual occurrences. Sparked by authentic conversations. Inspired by hellish dreams. Based on a plagiarized television review. Based on an ancient Hasidic rumor. Based on a column published in NewsMax. Inspired by a song performed by Pat Boone. Based on a goddamned lie told by my sister. Based on a channel 5 infomercial.

Man-upmanship.

Spanish fly, Spanish walk.

Can a Republican president order a mission to be aborted?

* (PC warning) The VA Community Living Center. Formerly the VA Nursing Home.

Two months ago I took an evening break from the hospital to do some improv at a workshop in the Mission district. It was about 6 pm. I was ambulating satisfactorily up Capp St on my crutches, levis tucked up and pinned just beneath my above-the-knee amputation. My friend Brooke led the way to the building entrance when, from behind, I heard, “Senor.” I didn’t turn back, not sure he was addressing me.” Then, “Senor, would you like to buy a prosthetic leg?” Yep, he was talking to me.

“Sorry, my friend, I’m having a prosthetic leg built for me. I’ll have it in a few weeks.”

He smiled at my foolishness. “The one I have to offer is a beautiful silver and blue in the strong steel shaft. Excellent. Beyond all others.” I didn’t want to get in too deep, but maybe I could explain a couple points that he hadn’t considered. I held up a finger: “One. A leg is custom built. It’s value is not in its materials or its excellent appearance, but in it’s custom craftsmanship.” I stopped there and let my fingers drop, not really having another point.

“It was my brother’s,” the man said. “He was a brave man. In the Navy. He died in the year 2000.” Reason wasn’t going to work for me. Not to somebody who’d been trying for twelve years to sell a hero’s wooden leg.

I thought I’d try another tack. “You know, you could call Goodwill Industries. I’m not sure they’d pay you anything, but they might.” This suggestion really soured him. “I tried that,” he told me, as if was just trying to get rid of him, which I was. “They don’t want to handle anything that’s worth a damn.” He stared at me — angry, disappointed. I felt the same way towards him. Why couldn’t he understand I might have had a couple old prosthetic legs in the closet myself — ones that I didn’t need? Was I out on the street corner trying to sell them?

He turned away and walked off, heading south towards 16th street where there would be more street people trying to sell things. I wanted to tell him he’d have a much better chance of selling it if he had a picture of it — maybe even of his brother wearing it, with its glimmering blue and silver shaft. On second thought, I believe I shut up at the right moment.

Be back to blogging when I get out of the hospital. MRSA came back. Probably because I trashed the U.S. Conference of Bishops. I’ll let you know more as soon as I’m back.

Finally, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will reconcile God and Man through the suffering and death of womankind. As a penance for priestly misdeeds over the past fifty years — coerced sex, pederasty, and theft of sacramental wine — the bishops will travel to Hellman’s Family Bowling Alley in Powderbluff Colorado. There, over a period of six days, they will bowl at the heads of women who have worked for Planned Parenthood.

Asked to justify the sacrifice of American women through such a brutal act, Bishop Carney Leventritt cited Leviticus 21:9, “And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire.” He went on to explain, “God allowed priests to have children in the days before He had fully worked out His moral code. ‘Playing the whore’ is shorthand for facilitating sex without responsibility. As for burning with fire, we can’t do that because of the EPA. So we bowl at their heads. Most die instantly.”

Dieter Hellman worked with local Catholic hierarchy to design a lane that can accommodate the sacrifice of up to 160 women — that’s 16 lines of bowling. The measurements are the same, but placing the women in the familiar ten-pin format, heads-only above the flooring, required the building of a special basement from which to lift the women’s heads into position. “I’ve put a lot of money into this,” said Dieter, “but the priests have told me they will return year after year until God is satisfied with the results.”

Allied with the Catholic Bishops is the National RIght to Life organization. “Anything we can do to prevent the taking of innocent lives is on the table for us.” says Susan Campbell, policy director of the NRLC, “And working with these guys is just plain fun. Bishop Leventritt did 15 minutes of Carrot Top’s jokes in the lounge last night.”

Where in the Golden Tablets does it say that Mormons aren’t supposed to be funny? Don’t let Romney’s nonsense of humor fool you. There is a much less starched bunch that might make for a truly entertaining First Family. The Huntsman Daughters. Veer from your Democratic leanings for just 60 seconds and enjoy this campaign ad.

I found it on the very thoughtful and entertaining blog, Political Irony. You must investigate.

2.5 — My neighbor, Molly, was my sister’s friend. But I really felt I liked her more than my sister did. So what. Molly was Ruthie’s friend and I was left out. I made Molly mad one July afternoon around my fourth birthday. I was barefoot, riding my tricycle, when Molly looped her jump rope around the handlebars. She yanked real hard and the last joint of my right index toe was chopped off in the guillotine created by the spokes and the fork of the front wheel. My mother rightly ignored Christian Science teachings and took me to a real doctor, who sewed up the stump. My grandmother was angry with her for that, but tough shit. Mother knows best. At that time, the Christian Science church had well over 100,000 members.

3 — Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. June. Swenson and I got on the bus from Fayetteville back to the barracks at a little after 11 pm. At any time after 10 pm this bus was known as the “Vomit Comet,” ferrying, as it did, forty or fifty drunken members of the 82nd Airborne Division. My outfit. But Swenson and I were not finished celebrating our graduation from jump school. We stopped at the last of many tattoo parlors on the way out of town and got U.S. Paratrooper wings tattooed on our arms. Mine cost $3.

4 — God, Atlanta’s hot in the summer. Just two years before, I’d bought a brand new ’72 Honda Civic. No air-conditioning, of course. I don’t even remember if cars offered it then. The shame of that is I had left the Campbell-Ewald advertising agency only a few months before. And I wrote ads for Chevrolet. The high end cars like Impala and Caprice. I don’t remember any of the worthwhile offerings of those mammoth battleships of the road. Just the silly stuff like Burled Carpathian Walnut steering wheels and color coordinated floormats. And now, July, the Atlanta agency I joined eight months ago, is going out of business. I have an interview at Newman, Saylor & Gregory, in South Carolina tomorrow morning. Along the two hundred mile expanse of Interstate Whatever I reach behind and drop the first three empty beer cans on the back seat floor. The remaining three I toss out the window as I go, thankful — as the billboard informs me — that Klavern such and such of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan was keeping the kounty roads klean.

5 — Jonquille pressed her phone number on me after the Waterfront AA meeting. She’s really quite attractive in a big, tall, broad-shouldered way. I don’t think I’m interested. I was hurt by a big woman once — literally. Sprained my wrist trying to jimmy the two of us out of our clothes in the back of my 63 Valiant. Besides, there are two very attractive women who go to meetings at the Dry Dock. One, a small brunette, always has a shy black-haired guy in tow. Can he be her boyfriend? I hope not. (Actually, I hope so. He should be easy to knock off). Back to the Waterfront gang: we all went to Chevy’s, the newish Mexican restaurant in town. The first chain restaurant I’ve ever liked. I felt out of it, though, because everybody was talking about Black Monday like they understood this shit. Cray, a snuffly brat of a lawyer, said the Dow went down over 500 points in less than 24 hours, He bad-mouthed the Asians as if they were deliberately sticking it to him. Then he warned, “It’s not going up to 2,000 until the year 2,000.” He said this a number of times. Jonquille left, presumably out of boredom. But I saw through the big window that she was rushing to catch up with David, a much taller man than me. A better match.

6 — Fired from Young & Rubicam. At $108,000 a year, I was actually one of the least overpaid people in that office. But the fact of the matter was that to do the quality of work that was demanded of me, or anybody else in that lackluster creative environment, it would take approximately 20 minutes a day. Still, Mike (my art director) and I would often spend many long days in an effort to make something entertaining, inspiring, and truthful. But if your goal was to simply get by at Y&R, the least amount of effort was best rewarded. Best to burn your calories sucking up to Stephen, the vain, mysterious being who made $900 thousand as creative director. One morning I was called into a meeting with Kathy, a senior executive. I went inside and was surprised to see Stephen sitting next to her. Was he even looking at me? Kathy did the talking. There were no handshakes. Stephen said not a word. Over the course of the few minutes the firing took, he slid down in the large black leather chair like a glacier. He said nothing until I asked him, “Stephen, why is Kathy doing your work?” No answer. He lasted two months longer until he was axed.

7 — Oh yes! Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day the 7 billionth person will be born somewhere on this planet.

Let’s return to the numbers:

2.5 billion — 1945. Just 66 years ago. Our population has nearly tripled since. The church I was brought up in had more members than it does now. Their numbers are down to below 80,000. Sad statistics for a church that, as dimwitted as its theology may be (c’mon, Christian Science?), is more tolerant of other religions than most. Tricycles? Jump ropes? Don’t see a lot of them anymore. I haven’t seen a little girl jumping rope in years.

3 billion — 1960. That was the year I went to Okinawa. The bar girls, none of whom were tattooed, used to make fun of the elderly women who wore tattoos all over their arms. It’s a young/old flip flop that’s hard for Americans to understand today. I don’t know how many Americans were tattooed at that time, but today, 24% of the population between the ages of 18 and 50 are tattooed. So all you 50 year-olds decrying the future of your tattooed youngsters, get over it. They will be like their peers. I will say that since my $3 tattoo, the cost of all that ink has gone up probably thirty times, measured by the square inch.

4 billion — 1974. Two years before, I had bought my ’72 Honda for $2,200, brand new. It was possible at that time to buy a new car — cash on the barrelhead. I was making $18,000 at the time.  For most of the people I know, yearly income is not much higher today. But cars have gone up ten-fold, at least.

5 billion — 1999. In twelve years the population has increased 40%. And the Dow has gone up above 12,000 points since Black Monday. Who has been made rich by that increase? The mother of the Somali boy who will come into this world tomorrow? No, his only solace will come with the religion that promises him a Paradise full of virgins, but no music to dance with them. Or is it the child of the Nebraska 17 year-old, who will give birth in her family bedroom, then leave high school and take a job at Wendy’s. Or McDonald’s. Or Denny’s. Or nowhere.

6 billion — 1999. I was 58. I actually made a better salary the next couple years at yet another ad agency. But the overpaid life ceased early in 2001 when they went out of business. I had a child in 1989, the mother of whom was one of the AA girls I had my eye on. We were together three years. It’s now 22 years since his birth. Very little time until you think how many people entered the world in his young lifetime. No no, I don’t mean the number born into it, I mean the amount the world population increased. If 2 billion entered the world and 2 billion died, you would not have population growth. No matter how savage the world, more people are arriving than leaving in any given year. The sooner that stabilizes the better. That’s a matter to take up with the religions that tell women to do exactly as their husbands tell them. And tells the men not to spill their seed.

7 billion. Tomorrow. I will hit the road running. Well, as fast as my crutches will take me. I’ve got a big dental appointment at the University of the Pacific Dental School. I’ve got to get to Walgreen’s to put $21 on my Clipper card. If I can find time, I must get to the VA to pick up three meds. Then back here to phone-wrestle with a Comcast rep and get my TV, internet, and  land-line package reduced from $160 to $120. After all of that, I’ll watch TV, then take my ambien and wake into a world where 7 billion people is yesterday’s news.

It’s 11:05 pm. Got to have something up on the blog by 11:30.

Grab my old notebook, the blue one Ann gave me that fell apart two weeks ago. Find something in there to write about. Oh, David Skinner. 80 year old friend and horse-trainer, leaving the Bay Area, moves to LA to be with his daughter. Gives me his email. It ‘s earthlink. Thought they were long out of business.

Next page. It’s 12 lines of directions from my briend Brooke’s global positioning thing. It was a hilarious, inept, beautiful crosstown, throughtown, upanddowntown ride, ending in my fall in a pile of slippery leaves at the side of her car when my crutches pushed against wet leaves. Good for five minutes of pity at the party we were attending.

Dime under the pillow: tooth fairy. Dime under the doormat: Janitor fairy. (Porch fairy?)

ChristianMingle.com. Sometimes you have to let Ted Haggard make the first move.

A bakers’ doesn’t.

Order Amadeus. The Red Violin. Bang the Drum Slowly. 76 Trombones. Harpo. (Is there a movie called Harpo? Should there be?)

Spent an hour and a half writing the last entry on my blog. (Snapshot. Black and white.) Have been working 12 minutes on this. Got to hurry up. Don’t worry abbout typos.

An immigrant from California to South California. (?) Oh yes, that was a couple months ago when the Orange County rabid right was thinking about seceding from California. Please, let them go.

Cindy, my friend Paula’s mom. Send her a link to Wansee Conference. She and I are in the Hitler Youth Book Club. Three people over sixty who study the Holocaust. My friend Pete insisted we call it that. I kept resisting, but he wore me out. Hitler Youth Book Club it is. Heil Pete!

At the Republicans closet case forum, where they emphasized proper decorum, Marcus Bachmann, the rube, forgot to bring lube, and they had to reuse the Santorum. (Okay, I published that a month or two ago, but it was in this little book, the page stained with orange juice).

I didn’t asl tp be bprm. yrs yo did. yu just to dont remember. (i don’t know who saei that, but not me. Ilie it tho)

The house subcommittee on supercommittees. Ubermensch, Supermensch.

Yes, you’re getting tired of readin g, I’m getting tied of typing It’s 11:30.

I remember a Playboy Magazine short story dating from the 50s or early 60s. It had to do with racism, and the only image I recall was of people walking through a zoo (presumably in the year 2000) in which the last remaining bigots were in cages. They shook the bars and hooted at passersby, calling out “Spic!. Nigger!, Kike!” and all manner of nastiness. The people strolled among the exhibits in amused bewilderment as they dodged clods of thrown feces. Racists, so long purged from society, were no longer anything but an anthropological freak show.

As I’ve reflected on this scene over the years, one racist on display has slowly come into focus. Whether the magazine story had an illustration I don’t recall, but I have filled in the frame with a black and white shot of an angry, supercilious, dark-haired, middle-aged man sneering through the bars. Somewhere in the past two decades the image has become clear. He is Pat Buchanan. It was as if the story had been written with him in mind, long before any of us knew who he was.

In 1992 Buchanan was the keynote speaker at the Republican Presidential Convention. His dire warning was of an America falling into the grasp of communist evildoers. Liberals called it the “Hatefest in Houston.” Molly Ivins said, “it probably sounded better in its original German.”

Pat’s been on all manner of talk shows and forums over the years since his service in the Nixon/Agnew White House. The criminal Spiro Agnew’s angry words were written by Buchanan. “Effete intellectuals” caught fire, but the line for the ages was, “Nattering nabobs of negativism.” Nabobs sent me to the dictionary, thus proving eloquence can be delivered by any source. In this case, cheap insults spat up by a known bribe-taker. Never has “vice” in the title “vice president” meant more.

I wish I had kept it, but five years ago I scratched a mustache with a black marker on Pat Buchanan’s picture in Newsweek. It was not a cheap-shot Hitler mustache, either. It was a Stalin mustache. It made Buchanan look as much like Stalin as the tea-brains made Obama look like Hitler.

On his book tour for “Suicide of a SuperPower,” Buchanan appeared on a radio show called “The Political Cesspool.” It calls itself Pro-White and says in its literature that “America would not be as prosperous, ruggedly individualistic, and a land of opportunity if the founding stock were not Europeans.” Take that you crybabies who’ve been brought up on the 14th amendment.

It would be unfair to castigate a man because he appeared on a wretched radio show, but Buchanan inspires that kind of unfairness in me. I have to accept that some individuals short-circuit the fair-play neurons in my reptilian hindbrain. Yes, I can go pretty low. But can I go this low? “Forty-nine of every fifty muggings and murders in New York are the work of minorities. That might explain why black folks have trouble getting a cab. Every New York cabby must know the odds, should he pick up a man of color at night.” Mmm-hmmm. This statistic presupposes the accuracy of the findings by Heather MacDonald, a conservative “scholar” who thinks that food stamps are a sign of wicked dependence in society.

MSNBC is being encouraged to fire Pat Buchanan. Frankly, I think it would be more useful to retain him. To allow him to appear on Hardball, Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell. Because a person appears frequently on a show does not (FoxNews excepted) mean that you endorse him or her. NPR’s firing of Juan Williams, whose breach of political correctness was infinitesimal, annoyed me a great deal. Buchanan’s Mein Kampf is undoubtedly a load of unmitigated dogshit, but keeping him off the air will not quell the stench. Only challenges from commentators willing to do battle will serve the public.

I’m looking at a black and white snapshot of Pat Buchanan taken in the early 1960s, when he was a student in Columbia’s School of Journalism. He looks friendly and faintly embarrassed to be wearing a coat and tie. He could be me, or you, or your dad or brother or uncle. But he’s not. Unless the men in your family are a racist pricks.