Lies

Sitting at a Starbucks, thinking I will stay here at this table for the remainder of the year.

I found myself surprisingly wrapped up in the Roger Clemens nonsense yesterday. I was neither fan nor foe of the pitcher, but it interests me when people of great accomplishment in life crash and burn in spectacular fashion. Among a certain sphere of influence Clemens is regarded as an icon, but the icon himself has put nothing less than his legacy at stake by campaigning to the highest thresholds of power.

Everybody involved lied. The congresspeople and senators lied just by being there, their august presence infusing this trivial situation with preposterous significance.

I found the situation with Clemens' wife to be telling. She got an HGH injection from Roger's trainer and soon started complaining about side effects. In testimony Roger claimed to have been angry about his wife being injected without him knowing about it. He was never angry enough, apparently, to confront his trainer about it, nor was he concerned enough about his wife's side-effects to call a doctor or do a damn thing.

To me the scenario suggests that Roger had to have told his wife that these side-effects are normal and will pass -- and who but Roger would know better?

He couldn't take her to an emergency room because that would draw headlines.

Life is filled with High-profile liars. Clarence Thomas. Oliver North. Bill Clinton. I listened to the hearings yesterday and imagined myself in Clemens' (or Pettitte's) position, imagining how I would try to direct the questions toward my prepared answers. Clemens had no skill at that, while Clinton was the master.

Clemens bluntly ignored questions outright and launched into platitudes and retrospective summaries of his life and times, while Clinton turned questions to his advantage with magnificently nuanced haiku.

Lies are cultural. The drug dealer culture (alluded to in yesterday's hearings) is filled with lies and nuanced euphemisms. Burton, the representative from Indiana, has made headlines and soundbytes aplenty with his non-sequitor pomposinations about McNamee's past lies, safely avoiding the truth he seems to have told yesterday. That type of obfuscation is, I think, a lie.

Cling on

Sitting at a Starbucks, reflecting on the abundance of human contact I have had so far this day. A direct conversation with the landlord, friendly banter with someone at the next table here at the coffee shop, and substantive phone conversations with my accountant in Florida regarding my father's final taxes.

Completing that set of taxes has dragged on largely because of the accountant's very limited availability, though my own apathy about the matter has some play. It's just paperwork at this point, and there has been no urgency driving me to nag the accountant since 6 months ago when I sent him a large batch of papers.

I did go through the motions of nagging the guy, but it was genuinely pointless.

Going to my 181 today to see what other tax-related paperwork awaits. I have not visited the 181 in a while, but any time I do I remember how it used to be located 4 or 5 feet to the right of where it is today. They renovated the post office space to make room for a passport counter, moving my 181 and surround boxes several feet to the left.

Having received mail there for about 15 years when this shift happened I found it disconcerting, and I still do.

A similar thing happened in Tampa. I don't remember how old I was when the postal service changed our zip code from 33612 to 33613. That must have been 25 years ago but to this day I still have to correct myself when addressing letters to Tampa. I specifically mumble to myself "It's not 33612 any more. Add one. 33612 + 1 = 33613."

Maybe it's OCD, or maybe it's a way of clinging to the past.