Eli Zaba

Originally Posted Friday, July 4, 2014

I think I have it right.  Today is Independence Day.  Are they playing World Cup games today?  If so, I will probably lie upon the couch in the dimness of the t.v. room and sob a bit.  Later, I will grill hamburgers and corn and hot dogs with my mother.  We will have watermelon.  We will be American.  Maybe, if I can find it, I will watch "The Razor's Edge" tonight.  It begins with a 4th of July celebration just before the hometown boys head off to war.  It sounds like the right thing to do.  Watching the movie, that is. 

But for some reason, it is difficult to get anything but the silliest of the Bill Murray movies on demand.  Why is that?  What do they do with all the good ones?  You can rent "What About Bob," but not "The Life Aquatic."  I'll never understand the business machine. 

I'll never understand why things cost money at all.  I know it is so that some people can have more than others, but beyond that it all gets away from me.  Remember when you were a kid and you were in the grocery store with your mother and you saw a bag of candy or cookies that were enticing and you would take them to her and ask timidly if you could get those and she would look at you and say no, honey, put them back?  It didn't make any sense then and it doesn't make any sense now.  To me.  I helped raise a kid once, and I gave him everything he wanted.  What I found out is that he didn't really want that much and had a real sense of proportion.  He never really appreciated that I bought things for him, either, I think.  He was a kid.  There was stuff and he wanted some of it.  The economics of it didn't make any sense to him.  It was just me saying yes or no.  That's what I'm saying. I still doesn't make any sense to me, either. 

I'm a mess today.  I will get better or worse, I guess.  Sometimes it doesn't seem to matter one way or the other which way it goes.  I just don't want to suffer.