last night's debate

We got a dryer at some point, I don't remember when.  It was not my problem, I just dirtied the clothes, probably didn't even bother to put them in the hamper, because I remember Mom always telling me to do that, so I probably just left them laying wherever I took them off and then in the morning there would always be clean clothes and I didn't give the whole thing much thought. 

I do remember in the winter and when it rained the clothes had to be hung in the basement, which was probably no fun at all because it was dark down there and there were no fellow housewives to call out to over the fence.  There was a furnace down there, and it used to be like some many-armed monster before we got the gas furnace which was smaller and sleeker, but not very interesting.  Once we got that the coal bin became my Dad's workshop, though like me, he was not the workshop type.  When I was beginning to smoke I'd come home from high school, and I think I would steal a cig from my older sister's purse.  Parliaments, they had a recessed filter, and I would go down to the workshop to smoke it.  It had one of those dangling light bulbs and there was a mirror and I would watch myself smoke.  I looked so cool.  Probably I never looked so cool again.

Flint seems like an awfully big city to have a water tower.  Back in the day of the fire Chicago had a water tower which somehow escaped the conflagration.  It still stands all fancy and castle tower like on North Michigan Avenue.  Once when I was in Milwaukee I took a walk north by the lake and there was a tower that looked just like the Chicago tower.  Turned out the architect was the same guy.

The city used to be full of water towers, tanks we called them, every tall building had one, but anymore I guess pumps have gotten better and they have mostly been taken down.  Too bad, they looked so cool.  Probably not as cool as me smoking in the workshop.  I would comb my hair carefully to look like a delinquent and try to look menacing into the mirror.  I was the toughest guy in that basement.  

When I first moved out of my parents' attic after coming back from Texas I lived in an old hotel turned apartment building just north of downtown.  It got awfully cold in the winter and I would turn on the burners of the stove.  I never thought about venting, but I never did wake up dead, so I guess it was okay. 

One morning as I was setting off to work, I wasn't sure if I had turned the burners off.  I was like 99 percent sure, but still, maybe I should check, but you know, if I went back to check on things everytime something like this happened I would never get anything done.  Coming home after work once I got a couple blocks away I smelled smoke.  Oh fuck.  Could that have been me?  Was my apartment and all my stuff burned up?  What about the apartments of all the other people who lived in the building?  Wouldn't they be pissed?  Would some of them be dead?  Oh fuck.

Turned out it was a gas main maybe a mile west, there had been some fires, but none of it was my fault. 

Your man Rand got into the big boys' debate.  He didn't have any gaffes, but he didn't say anything particularly memorable either.  At one point he and Rubio, the boy scout, teamed up on Ted, "The Weasel," Cruz, and they had him sweating a little bit, but he wriggled out of it with some blather.  You know now that Trump has lead the way, nobody feels any compulsion to tell the truth about anything or to make any sense.

The mini dwarves, the preacher, the harridan, the other preacher from Pennsylvania, and some guy named Gilmore, ranted about Trump at the kiddie table but after the debate two of them ran off to attend his rally. 

While I was watching the big boy's debate, I got to wondering what was going on with the Trump rally, so I peeked into CNN and there it was.  It was hard to tell what was going on.  There was a stage in the background with a lot of flags, but mostly it was just talking heads in those little inset squares.

I was thinking to hang around the networks a little at the end of the debate to hear what the scuttlebutt was, but it was late, and nobody every knows anymore who won or lost a republican debate, and it was late for me so I stumbled off to bed to await the next poll.