FireVaney

[NAME REDACTED A] : …you must know when to make that choice.  When to consider it.  In this line of work, one is easily led astray.  One is easily overcome.  Sucked in.  Pissed out.  What I am trying to make clear, [NAME REDACTED B] , is that you do not want to be pissed out of somebody else’s dick. [NAME REDACTED B] :  …No, sir.      [NAME REDACTED A] :  Do not be your country’s kidney stone.  Do not be mine.  [NAME REDACTED B] :  God as my witness, sir-- [NAME REDACTED A] :  You love your country very much. [NAME REDACTED B] :  I-- [NAME REDACTED A] :  Shh-Shh.  You would not be here otherwise.  And you will be doing your country, and me, a great service by pissing…  on your own terms.  Understand:  by that:  I do not propose that you ever piss on your country, or on me, or even on yourself--particularly on yourself.  Understand that if you piss on yoursel...

How can I give you "advanced notice" if, for example, the efforts of a physical therapist weaken your sister to the point where I do not feel comfortable leaving her alone to, for example, shop for groceries?   Things, if you haven’t noticed, change rapidly.   One minute, all of her vitals (blood pressure, oxygen saturation, etc.) will be normal; sixty minutes later, she'll vomit and demand last rites, but thirty minutes after that, she'll be all set to climb Mount Everest.  This doesn't happen every day, no, but it happens.  If there is an emergency, believe me, I will inform you--that is, when I call from an Emergency Room.  Remember, your sister is a fragile woman, and I count on YOU when our neighbor is unavailable, because your older brother, who typically visits only once a year, is INSANE, and your niece, as a rule, is MIA.  But more importantly, does it not trouble you in the least that I rely on a neighbor MORE than I do a blood relative?  Y...

Much to your chagrin, the weekly planner fails to grant sufficient space to Saturday and Sunday.   You’ve thus resorted to severe abbreviations.   Three examples follow… “AL” reminds you to set the radio to wake you at six thirty tomorrow morning to beat the trash collector to the curb (with the trash) before seven.  Like most of your neighbors, yes, you could leave it out there overnight, but there’s always the risk of raccoons.  If only raccoons were tidier scavengers, why, then you’d be happy to lend them free access to your rubbish.  Alas, raccoons have no appreciation for Humanity’s efforts (however futile) at waste management.      “R” reminds you to staple together the week’s receipts and file all the statements received in their designated manila folders.  “The manila component of the name comes from manila hemp or abacá, from which manila folders were originally made.  ‘Manila’ refers to the capital of the Philippines, ...

Bet lives contently in an empty single serving carton of milk the size of six “modern, portable, self-contained outhouses manufactured of molded plastic” * arranged as one would find a half dozen eggs at the local grocer.  And she believes every single lie she tells you.  When Bet is not looking out the window, waving at the passersby, she’s watching CNN; but she tells you that her schnozzola is forever stuck in some Victorian novel, some Neolithic autobiography that she doesn’t, in fact, own, or hasn’t, in fact, borrowed--if, in fact, it at all exists.  Regardless, whatever she claims to be reading, she couldn’t tell you its title or its author.  “There are so many,” she’ll say.  True enough, true enough.    You wheel her out of her milk carton--beyond which lies a homey nursing home corridor--over to the elevator, into the elevator, and up to the third floor, out into another homey nursing home corridor of a different color scheme, for a visit with...