RobZerrvations
Musings from a Meandering, Mischievous Mind
A Real “Dating” Problem.
Being a pirate isn't easy, at least if you want to have what some people call a normal relationship. I have written here and there about my many misadventures in pursuit of love, including a book that chronicled all my exploits in often embarrassing detail. But now that I am in a happy, fulfilling relationship with someone that took the better part of five decades to find, I can reflect on the effect my pirate life has had on relationships, both good and bad. I only write this because I was...
Doing one’s duty.
We're coming up on a year now since the stay-at-home orders began. In that time, I have been out of the house (i.e., beyond the street in front), a total of 14 times. Most of these were out of absolute necessity because of family health issues. Otherwise, I've been on lockdown. I see others out and about on social media all the time. That's cool. I don't expect everyone, or anyone for that matter, to be like me. I just have a sense of duty to do my part in this war against this invisible enemy...
Speech has never been free.
There's an awful lot of hoopla right now about freedom of speech, the clampdown by social media companies on certain striations of public discourse, and the role media companies have in our seemingly fundamental right to freedom of speech. First, let's start with the fact that social media companies - nay, all media companies - don't have to protect your right to say anything you want to on their platforms. This has never been the case, even if you go all the way back to the beginning of mass...
Deja, deja, deja vous.
I am hardly the first to recognize that these are interesting times. Especially for people born after 1969. For Xers, Z's and Millennials, everything seems to be falling apart, civilization crumbling all around us as we deal with the issues of racism, white supremacy, homelessness, poverty, violence and hatred. Oh, and a global pandemic. It would be easy to blame a president or a party for all of this, but it's been bubbling under the hood for as long as I have been on this earth. Like...
Where the hell have you been?
That's a question I often ask myself, now that the calendar has changed over from a virtual hell to one of promise and hope. I was going to originally add peace but we all know how the previous week has played out. My last RobZerrvation was just shy of one year ago, when I was covering our visit to Latitudes in Daytona, where we were considering retiring. When the pandemic struck last March, I thought, along with probably most of America, that we would hunker down for a few weeks or even...
Just Sign On The Bottom Line.
Kat and I have been retirement home shopping lately. The big day is several years still on the horizon, but we decided to get an early start so we could actually plan something in our lives for a change. This led us to check out the new Latitudes Margaritaville in Daytona Beach, Florida a few weeks ago. If Margaritaville rings a bell, then you know this over-55 retirement community reflects a Parrothead lifestyle, complete with streets named after Jimmy Buffett songs and a bar called Changes...
The Secrets of the Fire Swamp.
I just returned from Florida. You know, that place I lived almost a decade ago that I often referred to as Hell. Well, I've discovered a few things on this last trip. First, Florida wasn't really Hell. The relationship I was in was Hell. I got the two confused and blamed Florida for all the ills in my world. Sorry, Florida. Second, I've learned all the secrets of the Fire Swamp. If you don't know what the Fire Swamp is, you should watch the Princess Bride. In the movie, the Dread Pirate...
The Days of Wine and Noses.
I readily admit that I have a less than stellar nose. Like the AMC Gremlin of yore, its designers started off with a good idea, lost interest halfway through and tried to end it as quickly as possible. It's not nature's fault, really. She did start out with a great idea. My childhood photos show a lovely, even classic Zerr nose. My fifth grade photo, however, shows a vastly different nose. Somewhere in 4th grade I caught a softball with my face instead of my glove. Unknown to me, I had broken...
Rrrrrrrrr, Rrrrrrrrr.
It's hydro season again. Sadly, the sport ain't quite what it used to be. The races, which used to draw 250,000 people to the shores of Lake Washington, is having difficulties finding a footing in this age of 2,345 cable channels and social media. It used to be huge in Seattle. Long before there were the Seahawks, there was Wild Bill Cantrell and the Gale boats, Jack Regas in the Hawaii Kai, Jim McCormick in the Miss Madison and racing bad boy Bill Muncey in the Miss Thriftway. I grew...
Son Of A Gun.
I just became a gun owner. To be precise, a modern gun. I've shot historic weapons for more than a decade, you know, the ones with flints and gunpowder. A real gun, though? I've never felt the need. And, after shooting historic weapons all these years, a modern boom-boom stick comes across as much too high tech for my tastes. Stick a shell in it, point and bang. What's the fun in that? With a flintlock, you never know if or when the gun will go off. That's part of the fun. And while modern gun...
That Isn’t Funny.
We are losing our sense of humor. And that is an extremely dangerous thing for our civilization. Our new found P.C. attitude where everything ends in "-ist" and "#metoo" is creating closed off worlds where we no longer have to think about our own belief systems, foibles and fears. instead, we isolate ourselves in spaces where everyone is just like us: scared, judgmental and angry. Now, I'm not saying that every joke out there is appropriate. I mean, we figured out long ago that blonde and...
To Health With It!
My mortality has been challenged as of late. Being rushed off in an aid car to the hospital will do that to a guy, even though I had no idea why I was in the aid car in the first place. It ended up being just a little thing. A memory brain fart known as Transient Global Amnesia. Four or five hours of not remembering the last minute, let alone the last hour, of your life. I've had other brushes lately with being more mortal and less invincible than I like to think I am. Last Friday, I said...