I've Seen Better Days

It's beauty day.  I'm going to get all blonded and dolled for the weekend.  You know. . . some takeout sushi, perhaps, a stroll down the Boulevard in my gym clothes early in the morning, maybe. . . .  It is important to look one's best, even at home.  

No one has seen me since my last visit to the beautician.  

But there is good news all around, I guess.  The country seems to have finally broken up the Cuomo Crime Family, and Bill Gates is sorry he appreciated the intriguing lifestyle of Jeffery Epstein.  Simone Biles still compels and the U.S. Women's Soccer Team still gets headlines, though not many people are watching the Olympics it is said.  That's what the commercial news media reported, though in their questioning why, they pointed to everything except commercials.  Who, other than Medicare Elders will sit through twenty minutes of inane commercial nonsense every hour?  Don't ask CNN or The NY Times.  Their livelihood depends on advertising.  

This site, by the way, is commercial free.  

I'm thinking of writing a series of short stories in a collection called "Regret."  It will be a compilation of internal monologues with characters remembering the good times they once had but who now realize that it was at someone else's expense.  They will be people from all walks of life.  Some of them will be developing characters, but for others, change will be problematic.  Insight is one thing, but wisdom is hard to come by.  Of course there will be White Guilt and Privileged Self-Hatred, but I will throw in some winnowing feminists and corrupt lesbians, some religious minorities, and, of course, the obvious cutters and self-medicated mentally ill.  Christ. . . what fun.  

Right after I finish writing "Motherfucker," which I have yet to start.  That was a good idea, wasn't it?  What?  You don't remember?  The whole Oedipus thing?  I laid it all out for you some posts back.  WTF?  You can't just be coming here for the pictures.  

Oh, yes. . . I have always counseled against regret.  It was the only thing I would ever advise.  People seemed always to worry about the past.  I would tell them that regret was a negative emotion, that they could change nothing that happened, and that they had made the best decision they could at the time.  Regret will eat you up from the inside out, will chain you in your place, will subject you to inertia.  

I'm sorry, kids.  I regret the advice.  

But we want more than that people merely learn from their mistakes, right?  We are eager for retribution, public preferably, the more gruesome the better.  Apologies are one thing, but a good hanging is something else entirely.  

Good ole Bourdain.  There was a man full of regrets.  

Oh. . . I do go on.  You will have to forgive me.  Ha!  I guess you don't have to, not in the Age of Rage.  Indiscretions must be met met with evangelical zeal.  Zealotry is to be applauded.  

Still. . . I'm sorry.  Je regrette.  

Selavy.  

Yesterday at the gym, the old Hispanic gentleman who sprays and wipes down the equipment asked me how I was doing.  He and I talk often.  He is one of the few people I have conversations with there.  Upon his asking, I smiled and pointed into the air at a song that was just then playing. 

"Like the song says, Pablo. . . I've seen better days." 

He liked that one.  He chuckled quite a while.