Decadent Digressions

hellogiggles:

SEND TO YOUR MOM

CAT MOM HUGS BABY KITTEN

by Kyle Fitzpatrick

This is where I’m from.

(Source: brentmurray)

(via creenz)

iWant.

(via ilovereadingandwriting)

hannahmiet:

Better Book Title: Strunk & White Edition (via Paul DeBenedetto)

whenwetalkaboutlove:

linnylinh:

Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner.

But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.

He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife.

“He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, ‘Here you go,’” Diaz says.

As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, “Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.”

The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, “like what’s going on here?” Diaz says. “He asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?’”

Diaz replied: “If you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me … hey, you’re more than welcome.

“You know, I just felt maybe he really needs help,” Diaz says.

Diaz says he and the teen went into the diner and sat in a booth.

“The manager comes by, the dishwashers come by, the waiters come by to say hi,” Diaz says. “The kid was like, ‘You know everybody here. Do you own this place?’”

“No, I just eat here a lot,” Diaz says he told the teen. “He says, ‘But you’re even nice to the dishwasher.’”

Diaz replied, “Well, haven’t you been taught you should be nice to everybody?”

“Yea, but I didn’t think people actually behaved that way,” the teen said.

Diaz asked him what he wanted out of life. “He just had almost a sad face,” Diaz says.

The teen couldn’t answer Diaz — or he didn’t want to.

When the bill arrived, Diaz told the teen, “Look, I guess you’re going to have to pay for this bill ‘cause you have my money and I can’t pay for this. So if you give me my wallet back, I’ll gladly treat you.”

The teen “didn’t even think about it” and returned the wallet, Diaz says. “I gave him $20 … I figure maybe it’ll help him. I don’t know.”

Diaz says he asked for something in return — the teen’s knife — “and he gave it to me.”

Afterward, when Diaz told his mother what happened, she said, “You’re the type of kid that if someone asked you for the time, you gave them your watch.”

“I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It’s as simple as it gets in this complicated world.”

So inspirational.

Marry me.

(Source: girlthrualookingglass)

Oh BABY. Two of my favorite people are involved in this masterpiece.

creenz:

Jack White and Karen Elson photographed by Annie Leibovitz

OooOooooohhhh!

(via sarazucker)

Back in the early days, it was never uncommon for my dad to explain away his comings and goings with the half-hearted lie that he was “going to see a man about a dog.”  Through time we all stopped asking where he was going and what he was doing and eventually he got to stop lying.  Then one day—more accurately, one very, very late night—he made good on his alibi.

Like most other evenings, after work, Dad marched down to McGovern’s Pub, Mom tucked Joey and me into our beds before tucking herself in, and the three of us drifted off to someplace softer, with no wonder in our minds about where the man of the house was, or what he was up to.  Hours later, when we heard him bouncing back and forth across the stairway that led up to our apartment, I thought the excited yaps and barks I heard in the background were the byproduct of sleepiness.  As they got louder and as I stealthily reentered reality, I knew for certain that I had not been imagining anything.  I listened on, through the ordeal that was my dad trying blindly to get a key in the door.  Then the lock clicked and he was safely inside.  To my parents’ room he stumbled and a resounding, albeit defeated, “No,” uttered from my mother’s sleepless lips was the only confirmation I needed to catapult from bed, to wake Joey, and to go greet the pup—our pup. 

Dad’s face was already swathed in drunken regret. He had carried the black lab mix the block and a half home much the same way one would carry home an infant from the hospital.  Even then I thought it was strange to see his rugged features totally transformed, visibly softened by the pup’s delicacy.  These days when Maggie sees him, sometimes months or even years will have passed between their most recent encounter, but still she seems to remember who to credit with bringing her home.  Instead of wagging her tail, she shakes her whole body, the canine version of a happy dance.  But back to the story.  While Joey and I fawned over the four-legged bundle of excitement running laps around us, in the background the conversation between our parents droned on without spike in emotion, without true climax. 

According to Dad it seemed that the bar’s owner, John Riney, had found himself in a situation whereby he was to “get rid of” the seven pups his own dog had borne, a situation made worse for John by the lie he’d told months earlier that he’d had the family dog neutered.  Somehow the errand had slipped between his fingers and at the time a lie had seemed more appropriate than a trip to the vet.  Months later, with hungry puppies and an unenthusiastic wife, John developed a new plan for tending to his negligence. 

Years later I learned from my father that earlier that afternoon, facing an ultimatum from Mrs. Riney, John lined a cardboard box with old blankets, packed the pups inside, and popped them on the passenger seat of his old black pick-up truck.  Making the 45-minute drive from Long Island to his bar in Queens, he played over and over in his head just how the hand-off was to go down.  It would all have to appear very natural. 

A better drinker than bar owner, it wasn’t uncommon for John to be his own best customer.  He’d often buy drinks for regulars and less often, though not rarely, he would offer up rounds on the house.  “Cheers,” he’d say, and that would be the end of it.  McGovern’s was a no fuss place. 

Just after dinnertime, the bar filled up with men, young men, middle-aged men, all out for a nightcap.  From his seat at the end of the bar, John set his plan in motion, calling over the bartender who’s name I’ve long forgotten, and handing away the first round of the night.  Glasses were clinked.  Toasts were made.  Laughs were had and before long, another round was served.  For those still working on their last drink, shot glasses were turned upside down on the bar in front of them, signaling a drink was owed to them.  Some of the men drank faster than others and the whiskey drinkers in particular were never afforded the chance to store up a stockpile.  With few men leaving the bar, it seemed the door only worked one way.  But that often seemed the case at McGovern’s. 

As the night raged on, John tippled as eagerly as the man on the next stool, and he introduced the idea of adopting a puppy to his nearest neighbors.  Planting seeds, he schmoozed up and down the bar, tapping elbows and rubbing noses with his loyal patrons, suggesting they bring home to their kids one of the darling puppies he’d relegated to the downstairs.  For hours now, the pups had been running rampant in the basement, chewing up whatever appeared plausible, pissing and shitting in a manner that would make any self-respecting health inspector resign. The dogs were growing altogether restless and eager for attention, which unbeknownst to them, was an all too appropriate state of being for the bar. 

Around midnight, John made his first sell.  Brendan had taken the bait.  His kids, Gary and Tracy, my first bar friends, became the proud owners of a black lab mix.  And hours later, after my own father had drank his fill, home he came, mutt in hand for his kids.

Just like that the dog became a part of the family.  She was more an orphan than a dog, a poor soul in need of love.  My mother saw that, and on some level, I guess my dad did too.  In much the same matter-of-fact way, her name, Maggie May, was decided and her place in the family solidified.  And fifteen years later, she’s a bit slower, none the smarter, and still as convinced as she was on day one that despite her four legs, she is one of us.  Dog trainers say dogs have an intimate understanding of their place in the familial hierarchy, that they know their rank.  Given Maggie’s disdained expression dare anyone try to scoot her from the bed or the couch or the coffee table, I confidently can vouch for her belief that she ranks just under Mommy and Daddy, just above Mary and Joey.  It is with some embarrassment that I agree with her take on the family dynamics.