jfc Suited. You aren't 21.

I vote to rename this thread "Suitedjustice's Ongoing Teen-life Crisis At Mid-life Age".

No alcohol for a while is the current ideal.

As for the whiskey, I suffer from the same sort of compulsion with drink as I do with food. From experience I know that a 1.75L bottle will last me little more than a weekend, and my liver wouldn't last another decade of that.

I'm currently stuck on last-gen Bethesda and Obsidian titles. Mainly Fallouts 3, 4 and New Vegas, along with Outer Worlds as an honorary last-gen title. I just recently broke down and bought the Skyrim Survival mode, and I fired that up today.

I did some pushups today, and I'm off now for a long walk.

^^ I like that!

I'm still on board with the No Booze, Some Pushups and a Long Walk daily routine. Hell, I've been enjoying it. Frank Sinatra once said that he felt sorry for sober people, because when they wake up in the morning, that's the best they're going to feel all day, but I've been appreciating feeling refreshed when I wake up. My sleeping cycle is settling down nicely: I slept for 6 hours last night and I had a 90 minute nap today, which is within shouting distance of being normal.

This isn't my first dry rodeo; however, and I know that at some point within the next few days, my Shoulder Devil is going to pop in for a long chat.

Wow, look at you: doing so well. Give yourself a pat on the back, kid. You deserve it. Really, you're doing so good for yourself. Proud of you.

Nowww....sooooo....let us talk about a compromise, eh Mr. No Fun Ever For the Rest of Your Life? You can still do well, really well, just as well really, if you only--say--drink only once a week. It doesn't have to be today; could be tomorrow, for example. Finish the rest of the day and fetch yourself another hard-earned pat on the back, and then tomorrow you'll enjoy yourself for once in your goddamned life. You'll only drink on Mondays. That's it. That's it. Rest of the week, dry as a mouse in a desert mosque.

So allow me (or don't, because I'm not asking for your permission) to extol on the virtues of this once-a-week plan, extol on it in the greatest breadth and depth, over and over and over again, until you give in to me.

Compromise does not always lead to failure, but in this spot, it always does. Once a week will turn into twice a week, and twice a week will turn into every day. I know the Shoulder Devil very well by now, and I will not compromise with him.

There will be a second antagonist making an appearance as well, this one related to the exercise: and that will be the Shoulder Angel. By the way, shoulder's a weird-looking word when you stare at it for long enough. Shoulder? Shoulder. Are we sure that's spelled right? More should? Apparently it's from the German word Schulter. Meine Schultern sind verfolgt.

Anyways...the Shoulder Angel loves nothing more than to develop exercise routines.

Pushups: very good. Long walks: excellent. You know....you have dumbbells, you bought dumbbells--everything from 20lbs (9kgs) up to 50lbs (23kgs) in convenient 5lb increments. Why don't you do just a few curls? Nothing special: just grab a light one and pick it up and put it back down a few times. You have all the time in the world, why not put it to good use?

And within a relatively short time the Shoulder Angel will talk me into adding exercises and weight and reps and sets, and within 3-4 weeks I'll be abjectly ****ing dreading my near-daily hour-long full-blown weight training grind. So I'll give it up, every time.

I'm sticking with just a few pushups and a walk, no strenuous number of reps, no added sets, no weight work. I know the Shoulder Angel very well by now, and I will not compromise with...them? Sure, them. I'll go with a non-binary angel.

You have multiple shoulder angels?
Just asking because you used the plural word "them".

Eh, I just fed "my shoulders are haunted" into the Google translator, as you do.

How’s it going so far SJ.

Random Stephen King question, maybe more a Stanley Kubrick question. In the movie it seemed odd that Dick the chef goes through all that trouble to get back the to hotel just to get axed murdered as soon as he walks in the door. Thanks a lot Dick. I guess it had its purpose as they use the snowcat to get out of there in the end but odd.

Dick Hallorann survives his injuries in the book and takes on the role of a father/mentor figure for Danny in the book's brief epilogue. I would guess that Stanley Kubrick didn't like the character for whatever reason and (literally) axed him out of a morbid sense of humor.

We would go on to see something like this again when they killed off the character played by Drew Barrymore--who was near the peak of her stardom at the time--in the first few minutes of Wes Craven's Scream. Apparently that was Barrymore's idea.

Interesting would’ve preferred Dick’s character surviving in the film adaptation.

I remember Drew dying off so early in the Scream film which was of the reasons that made that movie so interesting.

Did you read the sequel Doctor Sleep?

I'm going to have to steal this

SJ you doing alright? Going to read the new Stephen King book?

Shakespeare is great, but I'd like SJ to dissect the more contemporary great writers like Hemingway and Steinbeck. If he's into those guys. America has such great literature itself.
The grass isn't always greener across the pond.

Well, if America is the new ball park, authors like Michel Tremblay and Arlette Cousture are certainly worth reading.

Tenesse Williams?
Charles Bukowski!!

Darn, I now wish I paid more attention in French class.

Sent from my LG-H820 using Tapatalk

Man do we need to call metro to do a wellness check on you?

Sj, ok ok have it your way. Continue with Shakespeare, Forget Hemingway. Jees.

I think we really are eager to hear something sj.

Hope that you're doing well, SJ.

I discovered your thread in the early days of Covid isolation last spring, and have enjoyed all aspects. Poker, literature, lifestyle, all spoken about in an excellent writing style and with open & honest personal commentary. Wishing you all the best, and hope to hear from you again soon.

Thanks for giving this thread to us all!

TG in VA

Hey folks,

I really appreciate the kind thoughts, and I'm sorry for the delay between posts. I'm doing quite well, actually, in terms of my health. I haven't had a drink since the middle of last month, and I've lost 9 lbs (4.1 kg) without changing my diet much beyond no longer pouring 1000 Calories down my throat every night.

In chemistry, a change from one state to another requires energy. From experience, it seems that my cyclical transitions from a regular drunk to a sober person and back again have required, or used up, my creative energy while the change was in progress. So I don't write much during those times.

I might have an essay by William S. Burroughs stored away somewhere claiming that cycles of decay and renewal can actually be healthy for people in the long run. Burroughs was in the generation of the Beat Poets--with Kerouac and Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti, and he was a smoker, a drinker, a user of heavy drugs, and an intermittent addict for more than half a century, so it's not surprising that he would write an essay in defense of his lifestyle. In his objective defense, he did live to be 83 years old.

You never know; it's possible that his genetics would have let him live to be 103 if he'd chosen a healthier path. I figured that he pickled himself, using the Keith Richards method. I always pictured him as an elderly man, even when he wasn't, but I was wrong about that...somewhat.

Here he is--with Allen Ginsberg in the background--at age 50, looking no more than 5 or 10 years older than his actual age.



And here he's celebrating his 70th birthday at Limelight in 1984, with a certain Club Kid, just prior to her becoming famous.



I was never a fan of Burrough's fiction--Naked Lunch is his most famous work, but the rest of his fiction is pretty similar to it. Page after page of reveling in violent and degrading sex acts, gore, body horror, cannibalism and pedophilia was never my cup of tea, but he writes a mean essay, and his nonfiction collections are worth checking out.

Dear Terrible Herbst Customer Relations,

I am a regular customer at your <redacted> convenience store location in Las Vegas. Today around 5:45 PM I was bellowed at from behind the counter by a clerk in his 20's, demanding that I leave my backpack with him before I shop at the location.

I am a middle-aged male, I dress reasonably well and I keep myself neat. I like to walk a few miles every day for exercise, then I stop in at Terrible's for a cold drink as part of my routine. I have shopped at this location almost daily for more than 2 years and during that time no one has ever once demanded my backpack.

The clerk appeared to be new, so I ignored him--though he shouted and repeated himself several times in a full store, causing me no small amount of embarrassment. When I got to the counter with my drink, he was helping 2 young girls, both of them carrying backpacks.

I waited for the girls to leave, then I asked him why he didn't ask them for their backpacks. He claimed not to have seen them. I told him that I was a regular in his store and that no one had ever asked me for my backpack before and he answered, "Well, I just did." I asked him not to ask me for it again, and he told me that he most certainly would ask again.

Now, no customer likes to be singled out, publicly embarrassed, and made to feel targeted, but trying something like enforcing the backpack rule--if there is one--with everyone, would be counterproductive.

This would be an easy order to issue from the home office, but it would only cause hard feelings all around, and invite an undue backlash on the clerks, and ultimately it would not do much of anything to address any outside theft issues; large handle bags and women's purses are much more convenient to stuff items into, but you'd be foolish to ask people for those, so why backpacks, which need to be removed from the shoulders and unzipped for any theft to occur?

I worked in retail for many years as a young man, including a long stint in a convenience store, and the solution--as you know--is to get out from behind the counter, hit the floor, and do some straightening, greeting and customer service; the solution is never to pick and choose people you're going to pick on because you don't like the look of them, for whatever reason; not all convenience store clerks are good judges of character.

So I would like the manager to take the young clerk aside and ask him to rethink his words and also to leave off harassing regular customers. I don't want an apology, or coupons, or anything really, other than to be left alone to shop and get my drink.

Thank you for your time.

SJ you’re probably the best writer on this site. Some solid posts here, glad to see you back and in good shape and sober.

I guess I’ll ask, what’s next?

I’ll certainly second this. I just reread yesterday your Nit-tastic tales. Not exaggerating when I say it’s some the most enjoyable reading I’ve ever experienced. You have a talent.

So glad to see that you're back, and see that you're doing well. Best wishes on staying committed to the journey!

Anxiously awaiting hearing how they respond to your letter.