The day off

Went to three shopping places for groceries. Trader Joe's, Acme, Whole Foods. Got dried things at Trader Joe's (banana chips, apricots) and almond butter. Got chicken at Acme (two for one packages of thighs; they taste good and "thigh"

The Loser's driveway.

is a great word), instant coffee, cut up pineapple. Got tabbouleh salad at Whole Foods (theirs is the best) and soy half-and-half, which Trader Joe's has but theirs goes bad sooner than the Loser can use it. Saw sister-in-law with her son in Whole Foods parking lot. The son, 15, is huge. The sister-in-law is a cultural cliche; tall, blond, SUV. Went home and ate tuna salad roll up from

A skinny girl.

 Trader Joe's, washed down with a seven-ounce Rolling Rock. Sent tax documents to guy brother recommended. Swept part of driveway. Doing so calms the Loser in a Zen way. Always surprising how just a few feet of sweeping fills a trash can with debris. You don't see how much there is when it's all spread out. Found claw gardening tool with long handle in garage, started tearing up part of garden in back yard, where the Loser wants to start a vegetable garden. After about nine square feet, the claw came off the handle. Old, perhaps. Mid thirties outside, which it shouldn't be, but the weather hasn't been what it should be for years, if you think about it. The outdoor work failed to warm the Loser up, as if his body's thermostat is set to spring. The Loser saw a skinny girl going sleeveless on the train platform just two days ago. 

The Zen Calendar

Page-a-Day calendars, made by the company of that name, make great gifts, but shop carefully. If you buy one you can register for another online and get it free. This year, the Complete and Total Loser registered for one with Mensa puzzles in it and it's awful: Nothing but word grids. 
The one the Loser likes is the Zen calendar, and he's been getting it for himself and as Christmas gifts for others for over a decade now.
The quotes are not always from those who practice Zen. They can be from artists, musicians, writers, scientists, politicians, business leaders, teachers, actors, religious leaders -- what matters is that in some part of their lives they've stumbled on something that fits with Zen philosophy and put it into words. The best quotes are the short ones, though the long ones are often instructive and worth reading. (A good example of a short quote is the one last Sunday from W.C. Fields: "My wife drove me to drink -- I'm eternally indebted to her.")
One of the Loser's gift recipients was his father, who died in December of 2011. He loved his Zen calendar, the Loser's father. Born in 1920, he was a depression-era kid and he had the mindset of most of his generation. He read the usual books (though he was far more well-versed in Shakespeare than most), the usual newspapers and magazines, did the usual things (married, worked, lived in the suburbs, raised three sons, just one of them a loser), died a normal death, luckily at 91 rather than younger. 
That traditional upbringing and life made the Loser's father regard the Zen calender as a source of messages from an alien civilization. He was often baffled by its missives of non-competition and acceptance.
The Loser's not sure how many years he bought it for his father, but it was enough that when he gave him a gift-wrapped package for Christmas each year his father would say, "Ah! There's my Zen calendar!" in a sincerely excited way. One year the stores were sold out so the Loser gave him a calendar of quotes from the Dali Lama. They weren't as good: accept no substitutes. It was a lost year and from then on the Loser made sure to buy the calendar online by late November.
In October of 2011 the Loser's mother died. In November his father had a stroke. It wasn't, thank goodness, the kind that left a side paralyzed and drooling, but it was a body blow.
When the Loser went online to purchase the calendar, he couldn't help but think: Will Dad see all of it? The best thing to do when you think that kind of thing when you have an ailing loved one is ignore the thought and act as if it never occurred to you. You certainly don't mention it to anyone you know, not when sober, anyway.
The Loser's father didn't live to see page one of the 2012 edition of the Zen calendar and, in fact, didn't know he was getting it, dying December 15th. It could've been assumed, but he had other things on his mind, of course. 
On January first, the Loser opened his calendar (he's good about not cheating with that kind of thing and as a child didn't open the little doors on advent calendars in advance). He stripped off the cover pages to January one and saw what you can see in the photo below. It seemed to say to the Loser: There's no reason to read the rest of this calendar. Take the year off. Cope.
So he did. Now he's back and reading the current edition, though weeks can go by and he'll forget, so he has to catch up sometimes.

The Loser put his Zen calendar photographs of his late parents. It's still there.

The Loser and Craigslist

Losers often underline their loser qualities. They honking at women while driving. They sabotage the work of others. They start rumors. They take advantage of the inebriated.
While the Complete and Total Loser may revel in his loserdom, he has always refrained from these things. They are the actions of losers who think they're winners. It's bad enough to be a loser. Why magnify it?
Then there is craigslist.org, the cyberdock for fleets of losers lost at sea, in search of a harbor full of listeners to their loser rants and raves. In the Loser's home town, a large northern city, craigslist's rants and raves board teems with racists. To them, life would be a series of enjoyable events, with free money and lasting love around every corner, good health and fulfilling careers for all behind every door, if only ... black people went away. They sound trumpets to warn of the dangers of the dark skinned, publish links and paste essays on the inferiority of the African peoples, smear illustrations and poorly structured sentences not seen post 1950 outside the bathroom walls of a Mississippi boys room on their blank computer screens. Blacks are dirty. They spit on sidewalks. They litter. They kill. They—gasp!—undertip.
While they decry the problems of the race, not one has mentioned solutions actually possible in a democracy. As in most cities, this one has an active Big Brothers association, where men with free time can take a boy to a sporting event, an art museum, the zoo. He can tell the boy what he does and how he did it, encourage a love of learning, and be on the lookout for signs the boy is headed down an dangerous path and intervene if necessary. But that, to the craigslist racist, would be work.
The Complete and Total Loser, i.e., me, refuses to post negative things on craigslist save for his posts opposing exhortations of violence and meanness.
He gets each year the Zen Calendar, a collection of 365 quotes fitting the Zen view. He posted them on craigslist daily. A year or so after starting that, the Loser had a minor operation (hernia) which required general anesthesia. The morning following the operation, small poems on minor and major topics (pets, current events, death) flew through his head. He jotted them down and, perhaps still addled by the drugs, decided to share them them with the craigslist crowd. It became a challenge to him, like doing crossword puzzles to others, to publish one a day. He did so for about two years. Always after lasting fame and glory, he decided to publish them not only in his town but on the boards in New York and Los Angeles.
The reactions puzzled the Loser. He received over the years several complimentary emails. Yet on the board reactions were vituperative and vulgar, often encouraging him to commit suicide. They reacted as though they'd been mocked and duped, yet the Loser never failed to label his posts. Improved screening to prohibit posting in multiple cities put the kibosh on his efforts and he now only posts the Final Jeopardy! answer/question each weeknight in his home town and New York City.
A sample poem (you were wondering how bad they were), from May of 2008:

Squirrels

Squirrels are the rodents smartest,
They’re clever little creatures.
If they could talk they might be artists,
Painting, directing features.
Many say they’re big-tailed rats,
Both the girls and the fellas.
’Tis a notion spread by cats,
All of them insanely jealous.