Category Archives: Uncategorized

Smerkle Grumpy Punchin’ Pumpkins!

Posted on by
Reply

Note to reader: It has been some time since Smerkle Grumpy, an occasional “guest” here, has penned something for this page. However, his dislike of Trump has gotten him arrested three times. Something to do with pumpkins. Don’t ask me. I’ll let him explain.

***

“Pumpkins. Keep me away from pumpkins. And I don’t mean those once a year Halloween jack-o’-lanterns that have some really cool faces carved into them by carving out parts so maybe you have this wild-eyed jack-o’-lantern looking at you, lit from inside by a candle. They really are a sight to behold.

Anyway, this is not about jack-o’-lanterns. This is about straight up uncooked sitting there on the aisle or farm or wherever the hell pumpkins like to sit, but mostly when I pass’m in the supermarket.

They have arrested me three times in markets because of Trump who’s as orange as it gets. I’m telling you, three times in the same fucking supermarket, I failed to quell the urge to punch out the first pumpkin in reach. Just three of’m. One punch each caves their chests in. Boom! Boom! Boom! Of course this doesn’t go over well with the supermarket manager.

There was a nice moment that really took me by surprise. When I was being arrested the third time, right before they were taking me out, I wasn’t in handcuffs. It was the same two cops as the first two times. There was no animosity in the air at all. It was just, no, you can’t destroy the store’s produce with repercussions. Anyway, that’s when this nice moment happened.

As I was leaving with the two officers the third time, the store manager came up to me and handed me a bag containing three pumpkin, smiled and said, “Three pumpkins for you to knock out. On us, Mr. Grumpy.” A gentleman truly, if ever one was born, that store manager”

~ Smerkle Grumpy ~

Boston-based Landlord Threatens This Writer

Posted on by
Reply

“I recently endured 72-hours straight of flashbacks from the gun violence I survived because of Winncompanies threats to my home.”

***

For the first time in many many years, I do not feel safe in my own home. I live in an over-55 apartment building run by the Boston-based bully, Winncompanies. If they treat all their tenants like they do here, it is probable some of their other tenants’ lives are at being placed at risk.

They now threaten my ability to keep my home (after I’d filed a civil rights complaint against them with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office) and, full disclosure, for the first time in my life I want to sue and if I can locate a Massachusetts-based attorney who knows this legal territory and will work pro bono, I will. I recently endured 72-hours straight of flashbacks from the gun violence I survived because of Winncompanies threats to my home.

A snapshot of an example. In order to get a disability parking placard or license plate one of more of the following has been determined to be true about you, but doctors, medical professionals. Moreover, given everyone who lives in this building is a senior, the risk of falls for seniors is well documented, as detailed by the NIH’s National Institute for Aging. To get a disability plate or placard, one or more of the following apply to you.

You:

•   Cannot walk 200 feet without stopping to rest.

•   Cannot walk without the assistance of another person, prosthetic aid, or other assistive device.

•   Are restricted by lung disease.

•   Use portable oxygen.

•   Have a Class III cardiac condition.

•   Have a Class IV cardiac condition. according to the standards set by the

•   Have Class III or Class IV functional arthritis. according to the standards set by the American College of Rheumatology

•   Have Stage III or Stage IV anatomic arthritis. according to the standards set by the American College of Rheumatology

•   Have been declared legally blind.

•   Have lost one or more limbs.

Winncompanies doesn’t care, as evidenced by the fact they demand all tenants, with or without disabilities, (many in their 70s, 80s and 90s) remove their cars from the parking lot and park out in the street illegally (there is no safe area) or else they will be towed!

I recently filed a civil rights complaint against Boston-based  Winncompanies with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office, citing two current Winn polices that endanger the lives of their tenants and, under one of the policies, the lives of those living in or traveling through the community. Winncompanies does not deny their policies endanger lives).

Now, Winncompanies is threatening to terminate (their word) my tenancy. On what grounds? (I am never late with my rent.) They recently asked me for a great deal of information, some of which strikes me as intrusive, and so I asked them to please identify for me specifically what law or regulation allows them to get this information, and, no surprise, they won’t tell me. Now, because they haven’t received the information, the have threatened my ability to keep my home.

My Sister Rebecca’s Birthday

Posted on by
2

Today is my sister Rebecca’s 65th birthday. She died at home in 2021. That she is not alive to celebrate and experience her birthday is a merciless, unjust, soul-splitting reality. It’s an agony.

The condition and conditions my sister was found in when she died were heartbreaking. She is not the first I’ve seen murdered by addiction; it tried to kill me with alcohol. It took me time to learn (fully digest) that the sentence, “You’re not responsible for your addiction, you’re responsible for your recovery,” is a sentence built out of fact.

I still can’t write about Rebecca at length. I start to sob. Mine is a heartbreak that’s accompanied by anger. Not at Rebecca. Not even a little. The anger (fury) results from those adult family members who were living with my sister, saw the condition she was in, and did nothing.

I will write more about my sister, Rebecca Jill Kahrmann. I love her still, my whole wide world.

Mature Don’t Mean Wisdom

Posted on by
Reply

If there was anything left in me that believes when we grow older, our maturity and ability to manage life in healthy ways grows as well, I’m damned if can find it.

There are some well-entrenched behavior patterns in this human family of ours and those resulting from some history’s wounds make healthy intimacy impossible. Dishonesty is rampant. Without honesty, there is no trust. The absence of trust eliminates any chance of healthy intimacy.

No doubt people have had to develop methods of managing life on the fly that, while perhaps needed to survive at one time in your life – your childhood, for example – they now endanger and damage you, rather than protect you. Protecting the life you are living, not just the life that means, you’re alive.

Tragically, and I do not use this word lightly, many lives are still controlled by wounded self-images, robbing them of a healthy understanding of self, and others for that matter.

A brilliant human being and a former therapist of mine once said, “Therapy is basically a matter of getting free of your history.” Free if those “voices” is in your history that, often unknowingly, have you the message you were one messed-up being.

I am not dancing on the rest of high hopes that I will have a healthy intimate relationship with a woman. As I said, honesty is in short supply, and some women I’ve met have had experiences that the distance-making patterns they have, while making a relationship impossible, made all the sense in the world given the reality of their life experience.

I also had an encounter with one so saturated in narcissism, she made Narcissus himself look like the poster boy for humility.