Earlier this week I had a chat with Ralphie Stardust.

Actually, I had a listen to with Ralphie, since he himself never listens. Or more exactly he never listens to anything concerning what we fondly call “the material world.”

Ralphie’s not rude or inconsiderate — quite the opposite, he’s genuinely kind and caring. Just is, he has both feet firmly planted in unreality. He’s one of those metaphysical meshugges whose motto should be, “It has to be not seen to be believed.”

Ralphie is The Amir of the Alternative. You name name anything far-out and either he believes it, or he did at one point. Crystal healing, Kirilian photography, levitation, the Lost Continent of Atlantis, Auras, Reincarnation, tarot cards, Ouija boards, telepathy, telekinesis, and on and on, ad infinitum.

Now a quick note of explanation: I believe in the measurable, the provable, the empirical. I believe in the laws of physics, not in metaphysics. This is not to say I think the believers of the esoteric and arcane are wrong — they full well be right about everything. I just choose not to believe that stuff myself, something still guaranteed by the Constitution (though subject to change, I fear).

Anyhow, Ralphie’s latest shtick is The Law of Attraction.

I’m not sure I grasped the subtleties of TLoA, but what I deduced is that what you project to the Universe, you get back in kind. So if you put out negative speech, thought or vibes, the Universe will in return clean your cosmic clock. Conversely, if you’re a regular Little Mary Sunshine, the Universe will tickle your fancy, if not your ribs.

When Ralphie took a break in his ramble, I got in my two cents.

“OK, I think I get the basics,” I said. “But where does luck come into this?”

“It doesn’t,” he said.

“It doesn’t?” I repeated, taken aback. “You mean you don’t believe in luck.”

“Nope,” he said. “Not at all.

And right there I gave up. Any thought system that denies the existence of luck is one I find nothing attractive about (no matter what it’s called).

Of course I can’t prove the existence of luck – no one can. But the last word on it comes from one of my besties, Chas. After college, Chas got drafted into the infantry and was a machine gunner in Vietnam. After that, he became a logger in Oregon, something he still is, and at 70 is probably the oldest active logger in all Oregon, if not the Northwest.

Anyhow, Chas’s motto says it all. It is: “I’d rather be lucky than smart.” And just FYI, that’s coming from one of the smartest people I know.

A cynical reflection

If, like Ralphie, you think there’s no such thing as luck but there’s a karmic you-get-what-you-asked-for in life, a la The Law of Attractions, consider the following:

St. Francis of Assisi died at 45.

Pol Pot died at 73 — of natural causes, no less.

Abraham Lincoln made it to 56, Theodore Roosevelt to 61, FDR to 63.

Charlie Manson is 82, and still going strong.

So when it comes to the Universe giving tit-for-tat, I’ve got my grave doubts. And to me nothing proves that better than The Sad Case of Ignatius Lindenhauer III.

Can’t win for losing

Iggy is a bit of a curmudgeon, but is not mean, miserable, misanthropic or anything else negative, whether it begins with “M” or not. He’s scrupulously polite, hard-working, and as socially responsible as it gets. He has a waspish sense of humor, but he never directs it at anyone. That said, he has about the lousiest luck of anyone — Job to the contrary … maybe.

About 20 years ago he moved to Houston and immediately landed on Easy Street. Within days he scored a job in a bank. He was rolling in the green, had great benefits, friendly co-workers, and enjoyed his work. He moved to a funky section of the city, found a great apartment in an older, well-kept complex that was almost within walking distance of work.

A bunch of years passed without incident and then everything started to hit the fan.

First it was his car. Within three years it got in five major smash-ups. And when I say “it” got in the smash-ups, that’s exactly what I mean: Every time he got hit, he wasn’t even moving. Twice he got nailed while at a stop light, twice in a parking lot, and for the last one he got sideswiped while waiting for a pal to come out from his apartment.

And weirdest of all, each of the accidents raised holy hell with his car, but the insurance company never totaled it. So every time he got hit, he had to spring for a rental till the repairs were done. And to add injury to insult, the car got crunched so many times, the frame was so out of whack that he went through tires like poop through a goose.

So much for the car; next on the hit list was his apartment. As I said, the complex was an older one in a downscale section of town, so to his advantage, the rent was very reasonable … at least for a while. Enter the curse of the urban lower middle class — gentrification. First, the area became a haven for Yuppies, so of course Iggy’s rent started to rise … and rise … and rise.

Then he got hit with the housing coup de grace: The complex got bought by some big-time

developer. The next phase was as inevitable as day following night — the complex was going to be torn down and replaced by high-end condos. And so Iggy was about to be tossed out on his tuchis. He had six months left on his lease, when he got blindsided by the next karmic arse-kicking — his entire division at the bank was having its work outsourced to the Philippines. He got six months notice of the downsizing, so a half-year later he had neither a job nor a place to stay.

Since all banks were downsizing, he couldn’t find work with one. And the job market wasn’t very good anywhere else. He drifted from job to job, finally working in Whole Foods. He loved the job, but the pay wasn’t enough for him to rent his own place, so he moved in with a pal, in a down-and-out section of the city. It’s one of those places where the only other nearby businesses are bars, pawn shops, junk yards, bail bondsmen and a slaughterhouse or two.

In spite of his reversals, Iggy, ever the survivor, took it all in stride.

“Hey, baby,” he said,with a philosophic shrug, “how much worse could it get?”

That was the Rhetorical Question of the Century, if not the Millennium. And, sadly, Iggy found out the answer last week.

A perfect end to a lousy day

In the morning he and some friends were driving to breakfast, when they saw a biker get nailed in a hit-and-run. They immediately called 911, then pulled over to help the guy. Luckily, he wasn’t badly injured, but they stayed with him till the ambulance arrived and carted him off.

Then they got back in the car and headed off with visions of huge omelets and mounds of homefries dancing in their heads, till at the next intersection some nitwit running a red light t-boned them. Iggy was in the front seat and he and the driver got smacked good when the airbag deployed. The guys were in the back (neither of whom was wearing a seat belt) did head-bops into the front seat. One guy got a concussion, the other got a broken nose. They all sat there in shock, till an ambulance arrived and carted them off to the hospital.

It took hours before a doctor saw them, then even more hours before their tests were completed. Luckily, no one was seriously injured and after getting released in the early evening, they all went their separate ways home.

Now for the malevolent cherry atop the vile sundae of life.

While waiting alone at the bus stop, sore, exhausted, shaky and shocky, Iggy suddenly had company. It was the neighborhood ripoff artist, who whipped out his trusty switchblade, held it to Iggy’s throat, and then slipped back into the hood with Iggy’s last dime.

So where does The Law of Attraction fit into this?

While I think it doesn’t, I’m sure Ralphie Stardust thinks it does. However, the second-to-last thing I’d do would have him explain it to me.

And the last thing I’d do would be have him explain it to Iggy.