Frogs For Lunch

Raising A Stink

2012-02-14T19:11:00.000-06:00

I've been back at work for about two months now. And I really like it this time through. The commute is short, the office is nice, my cube is nice ... and the people are nice.

But people are people. I ought to know. I'm one of them. And people do stupid things.

Like all work habitats in the 21st century, people eat lunch. There's a cafeteria on the first floor of my building. And some people eat lunch there ... especially on quesidilla day. Other people bring their lunches to work and eat at their desks. If you're me, which I am, you bring a sandwich, some chippie things and a Rum & Coke. If you're not like me ... and you're a woman ... you bring in things that say "Lean" and "Low Calorie" and "Popcorn". And at lunchtime, you find one of the four thousand microwaves that sit in my building and you heat these things up.

And sometimes ... welllllll ... you leave them in there a little too long.

In the two months I've been in this building ... on this floor, I've been lucky. Nobody (woman) has cracked open a can of tuna, or homemade casserole, or some other stinky thing and polluted the atmosphere.

Until today. Today was the perfect storm. Right after noon, I noticed the air getting a little smokey. Then the smell started. I was sure someone had set their soiled underwear on fire. It got worse, and people started to notice. It sounded kind of like this:

"HububhububhububsmellslikeshithububhububhububGAAAAAAAAGGGGGGwhatthefuck?"

Somebody suggested opening the windows, but surprise! There are windows, but you'd have to throw a chair through them to get them "open". Gradually the smoke and smell dissipated somewhat, and the search for the culprit started. Turned out ... it was Denise, who had accidentally put her Lean Cuisine in the microwave and mistakenly set it to INCINERATE. Denise, it was told, was very embarrassed.

By 2:00, my stomach had settled, a vigilante flash mob had stripped Denise naked, thrown her outside into a snow bank and shoved the tainted microwave up her ass. All was right with the world.

And then Tammy put a sack of Orville Redenbacher in a microwave and set it on high for 15 minutes.

State Pride

2012-02-12T12:41:00.000-06:00

It's a lazy Sunday afternoon here in the upper midwest. There's not much to do because it's approximately 1 degree above zero outside (fucking Winter), so I've been trolling around the intertubes. And look what I found on the Library of Congress site ...

NICKNAMES OF THE STATES (circa 1840's or so)

You'll have to click the picture to enlarge it, otherwise, it just looks like a blob. Most kids know that their state has a nickname. I grew up in the hillbilly mountains of Missouri, so I knew early on that it was called "The Show-Me State". I wasn't really sure why, but it appears that Missourians are a stubborn bunch and want to be shown something before they believe it. No theoretical shit for them. The state I've lived in for the last 30 years or so, Illinois, has become my adopted state. And of course, Illinois is "The Land of Lincoln" because he used to own some land here I guess.

But the map I found was created by some iron company who made rings to be inserted into the noses of cattle and swine. I suppose that was popular back then. It was some promotional device and you'll notice that a pig is the star in each state. You'll also notice that the nicknames are a little different than they are here in the 21st century. People weren't so politically correct back then. And although some of the nicknames are the same now as they were back then (Massachusetts is the Bay State, Indiana is the Hoosier State), some of them aren't.

Take the state of my birth, Missouri. "Pukes". That's kind of harsh, but I lived in Iowa for a few years and I knew a few people who would agree with that assessment whole heartedly. Especially that one douchebag at the Purina plant where I worked who called me a "Goddamned Missouri Asshole" out of the blue one day. Compared to that, I guess "pukes" is rather mild.

Illinois isn't much better. "Suckers". I guess that fits. The politicians make suckers of us every day. We continue to elect Governors who regularly make prison their next stop after leaving office and most people wish that Indiana would annex Chicago by military force so we could be rid of it.

There are some other good ones. Nebraskans are "Bug Eaters", New Mexico residents are "Greasers" and people who hail from Maryland are "Crab Thumpers". The reason that last sentence was partially awkward is because I actually don't know what to call people who are from New Mexico and Maryland (New Mexicoians?, Marylandites?) Shit ... you've got me.

So, if you're a resident of one of the states with questionable nicknames, you still have to feel better than the residents of Utah. According to the map, they're so overwhelmingly boring that they don't even RATE a nickname. I know they have one now, but I don't recall what it is off-hand. "The Beehive State"? Or is that Idaho? If it turns out they don't have one, I've got an idea. "Depraved Weirdos".

Haha! Just kidding ... seriously.

Anyway, what do I know? I'm a pukesucker.

The Big Ball

2012-02-03T20:39:00.001-06:00

I don't usually post on Friday night, because it's no doubt been a long week and I'm tired and ... if tradition stands, I have a couple of glasses of wine in my belly and I'm feeling mellow.

But today, I ran across a really beautiful picture of OUR HOME. No, I don't mean that split ranch that you've had for 20 or so years now, but mankind's home.

Mother Earth.

And it looked very nice ... very inviting. Here's a picture of the Western Hemisphere taken by some satellite or the other ... maybe Sputnik:

And of course, instead of just admiring the beauty of our earth, I started thinking. What if ET was really out there and had just spent a thousand or so years bouncing around in space after having escaped his exploding planet ... let's call it Krypton ... by the skin of his balls, and was looking for a new place to live.

And he runs across this.

From this distance, he thinks to himself "Holy Shit! I've hit the motherlode! Hit the retro thingies!

But ... he can't see it close enough yet. And it's too fucking late. He's augering in. And as he gets closer, he notices things. Centers of population. "Hmmm", he thinks to himself.

It's too late. He's about to touch down in the land of the craziest motherfuckers this side of Alpha Centari.

He should have slowed down at Mars.

Our home looks great from a distance ... sort of like Los Angeles on a summer night five miles away.

Looks can be deceiving.

Friday Night Special

2012-01-27T19:43:00.003-06:00

Let me take this out of the bag right away.

I really like Mark Walhberg. I probably like him a lot more than I would have if I knew he used to be that hard core white rapper "Marky Mark". But I wasn't aware of who he was then, so I'm free to like him as much as I want to. I like him in the "talkies", I like him on the TeeVee and I like him when he shows up on "Live Funny Or Die" on the internets.

As some of you may know, Mark recently found himself in a bit of hot water when he made the statement that if he had been on one of the jets that crashed into the World Trade Center way back in the day, that IT WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED. He said that instead of crashing, the first class cabin would be full of blood and he would have found a way to land the jet safely.

Well, you know what? I believe him. To me, there's not a tougher, meaner, more intimidating badass on the face of the earth than Mark Walhberg. And that includes Chuck fucking Norris.

The other night, I was sitting around, thinking about how fucking awesome Mark Walhberg really is, and I wondered what history would have been like if only Mark Walhberg had possessed a time machine. Just think ... a lot of things would have been different if Mark Wahlberg had been there to ladle out his righteous brand of justice. These are just a few of the images that came to mind ...

EAT HOT LEAD TOJO!

PREPARE TO BE "BOOTH"ERIZED!

OUT OF THE FUCKIN' WAY JESSE - I'M ON A MISSION!

NOT ON MY WATCH CHAPMAN!

(but I'll give you a free shot at Yoko)

Yes ... God Bless ... MARK WALHBERG!

Well, Did You Ever?

2012-01-26T19:03:00.000-06:00

As all of us seasoned bloggers like me out there know, there are sometimes ... ethical issues that you must face before you decide to write, and even publish a post.

And yes, I do consider myself a seasoned blogger because in 3 years of doing this, I've been approached via blanket e-mail several times by individuals asking if I would be interested in posting ads for magazines that no one in their right minds would read ... unless you were ex-POW John McCain years ago when he was sitting in the Hanoi Hilton without so much as an Archie Digest to fill the lonely hours.

Seasoned bloggers face ethical challenges every time they lay themselves out there for you, the blog reading public, for scrutiny. For example, when getting really amped up about a subject do you say "F**k", "Fudge", "Phooey", or just "Fuck"? Being bold, blue and proud of it ... I just say Fuck, because that's the bold way I roll.

Anyway, what if you were presented with an idea ... no, make it a revelation that was so interesting yet disturbing that it would no doubt send your comments section on fire and make you a shoo-in for Bloggers "Blogs Of Note" for the day?

Many of you experienced scribblers would say: "Why yes you fucking idiot, of course I would!"

But ... what if it concerned your FAMILY? Your immediate family? Not Cousin Bobby Ray or Great Grampopsie Enos ... your immediate family. And what if the little tidbit concerned someone from your spouse's side of the family?

Yeah. What would you do then SMARTASS?

That's the choice I have to make some time in the near to distant future. To tell the whole truth, it's not like my immediate family actually reads my blog. I think they did at first, but I don't think anyone, especially Jan, has in the last year or so. I'm fairly certain that they've just forgotten that it's there.

If I could be absolutely, positively sure of that, then I'd have no problem divulging this TERRIBLE FAMILY SECRET/TRAGEDY.

So, in the coming days ... or months, I'll have to pull the trigger one way or the other. You'll have to keep reading to find out.

I think this is what they call, in the business ...

A hook.

A Few Sunday Thoughts

2012-01-22T12:29:00.000-06:00

Another winter Sunday and I'm waiting for some football to come on. The season really ends today and I wonder what I'll watch on future Sundays until the leaves come back on the trees. Too bad I don't like basketball or hockey.

Joe Paterno died this morning. I wonder if the scandal pushed things along for him. Funny thing. I'm sure life was pretty good for him right up until last Fall. You have to wonder how he viewed himself at the end. Did he think he did the right thing? The wrong thing? Or did he just think he was a victim of circumstances. Well ... I guess he doesn't really care now.

We finally got some cold weather and snow here. For weeks ... months actually, the TV news and weather people had been bemoaning the fact that it was winter and the weather was nice. Now they're bitching because it's cold and snowy. What a bunch of assholes.

People act so weird when there's a measurable snow fall. Friday afternoon, I was working away and not paying much attention to what was going on around me. At about 3:45, I noticed that almost everyone on my floor had left because it was snowing. Any old excuse in a storm to bug out early.

Just a tip for you guys out there with beards. When you buy a new trimmer, start with the highest setting first. Beard holes aren't very attractive.

Speaking of hair, the woman who does mine went on vacation last week, just when I needed a haircut, so I had to find a substitute. When someone has cut your hair for 20 years and all of a sudden, some stranger is doing it, it's kind of unsettling. This is what a one-night stand must feel like.

My Mom died in October, and I still catch myself starting to call her on the phone. I guess I should take her number off of speed dial, but I can't bring myself to do it. There's a finality in doing it that I'm not ready for yet. I guess I'll get used to the idea that she's gone one of these days ... and I suppose that's kind of a shame.

Jan and I will both turn 60 years old in 2012. Hard to believe that much time has gone by ... but at least we've had 37 of those years together. That takes the sting out of the age thing a little bit.

Winter ... a time when you think too much.

Ventriloquism For Dummies

2012-01-19T20:19:00.000-06:00

Editors Note: I can't remember when I wrote this ... but I must have put SOME effort into it since it has pictures.

It seems to be popular now for people to freely admit that they are afraid of clowns. But that's so passe'. What people are really afraid of are dummies. Simply because these little wooden/plastic/paper mache monsters come from the nightmares of their creators ... who have issues. Some of the dummies are a little frightening, but rather benign. If you're old enough, you'll probably remember some of the friendlier ones from your childhood. Others are the stuff of sheer horror. Let me take you through some examples:

Who Didn't Love Buffalo Bob & Howdy?

Buffalo Bob was kind of a dick, but Howdy Doody wasn't too scary. Unless he was trying to push Malt-O-Meal on you.

Edgar Bergen, Charlie McCarthy and Whatsizface

I keep wanting to call Whatizface "Charley Horse", but that was Sheri Lewis' puppet. Now that I think about it. It's name is Mortimer Snerd. Bergen was a pretty good ventriloquist until he stopped the vaudeville circuit and went on radio. Then he got lazy and moved his lips all the time, ruining him. Still ... not a scary group.

Paul Winchell w/Jerry Mahoney & Knucklehead Smiff

Winchell and his somewhat creepy dolls were a mainstay of late 1950's and early 1960's variety shows. I always left the room because they weren't even remotely funny. Paul's spots were good for piss breaks.

Getting Creepy

I didn't know Erich Von Stroheim made a dummy movie, but I have to look this one up. "Gabbo" is a great name.

Who's Scarier ... The Wife Or The Dummy?

Man, this is starting to get creepy. I guess this would put the fear of God in you. Where did "Timmy" go at night?

The Origin Of Michael Meyers (or Jason)

This Guy HAD To Have His Hands Super Busy!

Okay, that's enough to keep some of you awake for a while past your bed time tonight. So the next time someone tries to tell you how scary clowns are ... just remind them that:

What's In A Name?

2012-01-15T11:50:00.001-06:00

Dad's been gone from this earth for over thirty years now. Thirty-two this Spring if you want to be exact. From what I know, he was a crazy young man. Getting blown off a bridge about a hundred miles south of Paris in 1944 by a German artillery shell and spending almost a year in the hospital recovering didn't help things along.

But he had his moments, and now that I'm getting a bit older, I tend to think more about the nice things I remember about him rather than the bad.

Like any guy, he'd get a bug in his bonnet about certain things and do them with a passion until he lost interest in them. Fishing was a bug for a while. For a couple of years before I turned 10, he was big into fishing. He bought a bass boat, spent way too much on rods, reels and tackle, entered fishing tournaments ... and rarely if ever caught one fish.

He took me on one weekend tournament to Bull Shoals Lake in southern Missouri. The only thing I remember was that we had to sleep in the bed of the pick-up truck ... and the two guys we encountered who swore they were drunk on Pommac, which even at that age I found hard to believe.

Southwest Missouri is a fishing place. The White River rolls out of Arkansas where it was dammed up in the early 1950's to create Table Rock, Taneycomo, Bull Shoals and Pomme de Terre Lakes. A little town just southwest of Springfield, Missouri ... named Nixa, became the gateway to the lake area. And in 1957, Nixa Sucker Days was dreamt up by the local bigwigs to bring the business to their town in May, the kick-off of the fishing season. The fact that the Sucker, a bottom feeding river fish not found in any of the lakes didn't seem to phase the locals.

A Sucker is kin to the Catfish, only with more bones than there are planets in the Milky Way Galaxy. Basically, they're inedible, but since it's a well known fact that people will eat an old truck tire if you slather it in batter and deep fry it, a bony bottom feeding river fish is no big deal.

For a few years, Dad and I would go to Nixa Sucker Days on a Saturday afternoon. No Mom, no sisters ... just the old man and I. There would be fishing demonstrations, plenty of beer ... and of course, NO deep fried Suckers, because no one could catch them. Instead, there were plenty of deep fried perch, which were just as bony and inedible. But the memories I have of the outings are nice ones.

Anyway, the other night I was staring off into space, which I am apt to do from time to time. And I remembered Nixa Sucker Days. So, I got on the intertubes to see if it was still around.

And it was. But ...

You know how a lot of places and venues are being named now for corporate sponsors? Like the Boston Garden is now the TD Banknorth Garden. And the Rose Bowl is now the Fritos Chili Cheese Bowl?

Well, Nixa Sucker Days went and got them a corporate sponsor.

Springfield, Missouri is a town always in transition. It used to be the welding capitol of the midwest. Then it was the banking capitol of southern Missouri. Now ... it's the hospital capitol of the whole area. Oldsters come from thousands of miles to put down roots in Springfield so they can be serviced in their twilight years by the town's big two health conglomerates ... St. Johns and Cox Health. One for the Catholics, and one for the Protestants.

And there's a rivalry for the old people's business. So, what better way to build goodwill, than to sponsor some events?

And to that end, Cox Health decided they would put their money ... and their name on Nixa Sucker Days. So, starting in 2012, Nixa Sucker Days is now ...

Cox Sucker Days.

I'm not kidding. Here's the logo:

Needs A Little Refinement

And if you still don't believe me, here's the article.

They had to know what they were doing ... Right?

Die X-Mas Tree, Die ...

2012-01-08T12:45:00.000-06:00

Ahhhh ... the holidays are finally over.

Funny, no matter how many times you experience the Christmas/New Years season, you always forget what a relief it is to have the whole thing over. Let's face it. It lasts too damn long.

It was especially long this year, and having the zombie Christmas tree next door didn't help it go any faster.

Back in 1980, when Jan and I had purchased our first residence, a town house, we celebrated the first Christmas season there by just saying no to dead, needle dropping, sap dripping, insect hiding "live" pine trees. We went to the long ago defunct Franks Nursery & Garden Center and bought an artificial tree. It served us well, through our 7 years in the town house, and the move to our new home. My son was born, grew up and moved away knowing nothing but "Art", our artificial pine.

Two years ago, we decided that "Art" needed to be put out to pasture, and we went to the local big box home improvement center and purchased a new artificial tree. Nestled in his well worn cardboard box, I carried "Art" to the curbside, in hope that someone would pick him up, take him home, and enjoy many future Christmases to come before the trash guy showed up on Monday morning and unceremoniously dumped him into the collection bin of his truck.

But it wasn't to be ... because in less than an hour, "Art" was scooped up by that mindless hoarder, that "I never saw a piece of junk I didn't like", that king of trash ... Hillbilly Ron.

And "Art" was deposited at the side of his garage, where I could continue to view him. And I did. Through the winter snow, the spring rains, the baking rays of summer and the blustery days of fall ... times two. "Art" sat there in his box.

And then, late this fall, Hillbilly Ron went on a cleaning spree. "Art" disappeared. I was glad he was gone. I'd always felt a twinge of guilt looking at him. He spoke to me sometimes. "Rob, why didst thou abandon me", he called out. He talked like that at first. And then he stopped with the "thees" and "thous" and got a little more real. "Hey you prick! I'm freezing my ass off out here!" "Do you know how hot it is out here you son-of-a-bitch?" "Great, now I'm all wet you asshole!"

But, in late November of 2011, that was all over. "Art" was gone.

Or so I thought. Early in December, there came a blow, as they say in New England. A mighty blow with winds topping 60 miles an hour. I happened to look at a window into Hillbilly Ron's side yard and saw ...

"Art"... Stand included

"WTF!!" How the hell had this happened? Did Hillbilly Ron have him stashed away in the garage and attempted to assemble him for some type of redneck lawn display?

Or ... had "Art" wherever he had went, left his box, put on his feet and walked back to let me know he was still around? Still pissed at me? Wanting to extract revenge for junking him?

I didn't know, and I didn't care. "Art" had to be taken care of. Once and for all. But, he was in Hillbilly Ron's yard, and the code says "if you're in my yard, hands off".

So I waited for the wind to do it's job and for the westerlies to push "Art" into my territory, where he could be dealt with, once and for all. But the winds, like life, are fickle. And instead of blowing "Art" into my yard in one piece, he came at me, one horrifying part at a time. First it was the head ...

"Look What You've Done To Me, You Bastard"

And then other bits and pieces came into my jurisdiction. As soon as they arrived, I tossed them in my trash can. But no matter how many pieces came under my control, the terrifying torso of the tree, attached to the stand/feet never left the other yard.

But I had a good chunk of it. Surely, Hillbilly Ron would realize that "Art" was useless for any purpose and throw what remained of him to the curb.

And that's what I thought happened, because "Art" disappeared again.

The holidays came, and the holidays went. And all was well. "Art" faded from memory. On New Years Day, Jan and I took down his replacement and boxed it up in the basement, where it will remain for another year.

And then today, I decided that I ought to write a new post to start off 2012, so I came up to my den/office/whatever and gazed out the window towards Hillbilly Ron's house.

And saw something that froze my shit solid.

"I'm Still Heeeerrrrre ... You Bastard!"

"Where's My Head??"

It's going to be a long winter.

The Failure Of The Trial Run

2011-12-20T12:35:00.000-06:00

Sometimes ... most times actually ... things don't turn out quite as you had planned them.

When my contract at Giant Pharmaceutical Company ended last June, I decided I was going to take the opportunity to see what it would be like if I were to retire. A sort of trial run.

In the beginning, things were great. Summer was just taking hold and I started to take morning walks. Projects that had been put on hold were taken up again ... and completed. There was an opportunity to take a trip to visit my Mother one last time.

And then Summer ended. Jan went back to work and I was left to hold the fort down during the day. I continued with the early morning walks until it became too cold ... and too damned dark to see where I was going. Monday's were "housecleaning day". I made dinner every night. Clothes had to be washed. To get out of the house, I'd make up errands that needed to be run. Have you ever been to Walmart in the middle of the morning on a weekday ... when everyone else is at work? The clientele leaves something to be desired. But then you think, "why I'm right here among them ... I'm the same as they are."

Chilling.

I became desperate to keep busy. I emptied the basement of 24 years of accumulated furniture and garbage. The Cancer Federation, Salvation Army and Goodwill became frequent visitors to cart away the boxes of donations. I watched all 27 episodes of "Trailer Park Boys". I started to put together a 1/64th scale model of a B-24 Liberator bomber. I pretended to be interested in Revolutionary War history.

I roamed the house, stared out the windows and became suddenly fascinated by the neighbors comings and goings.

I started to lose my mind.

And then ... just before Thanksgiving ... Giant Pharmaceutical House called and wanted me back. And I started working again several weeks ago.

When someone tells you, or you read an article advising you that you had better be prepared and have a plan for something to keep you occupied when you retire.

It's no joke.

Tuesday Musings

2011-12-06T08:48:00.000-06:00

Thoughts and other mental trash on a Tuesday morning ...

Door To Door: We discontinued our land line telephone service over a year ago. And with that done, the telemarketing calls ended. No one knows our cell phone numbers and we're on the "no-call" list, so it's been nice. That is until recently. Telemarketers are striking back by showing up at the front door at dinner time. The door bell activity has really started to get annoying in the last month. In just one evening last week, someone came to the door five times ... after dark. I didn't answer it until the last one, when I'd had enough. Turned out, it was someone from AT&T and when I asked them if it had been them that had come to the door the other four, separate times, they sheepishly admitted that it had been. I shut the door in their face.

Pick Me: As some of you are aware, I'm an outside contractor and have periods of time in-between employment. I'm also getting up there in age. And I hate interviews. So, I had a really fun time last Friday interviewing with a potential employer. Two hours of defending my experience ... and my age. And now the waiting to see if I was good enough. I can't wait to just retire.

Don't Know Much About History: On the subject of American History, schools have always loaded it up heavy on the front end and have run out of time by the end of the school year to even get to the Civil War. This always frustrated me. Who cared about the fucking Pilgrims and the morass of shit that happened in the 18th and early 19th centuries. I don't recommend books very often, but I just finished two of them by a guy named Ted Morgan, who actually makes these time periods interesting. His books are titled "Wilderness At Dawn" and "A Shovel Of Stars".

Proud To Live In Illinois: Tomorrow, the fourth Illinois Governor will be sentenced to prison for betraying the public trust. Rod Blagojevich (Blah-goy-ah-vitch) will join his predecessor, George Ryan, behind bars. Rod is eligible for a life sentence, but the current Vegas line is 12 to 15 years. If this isn't the most corrupt state in the Union ... well, I'd be hard pressed to name another one.

Jingle Bells: It's way more fun to shop online than it is to go to the stores. Period.

Politically Incorrect: Andrea Bocelli needs to open his eyes when he's singing. I don't care if he is blind, he reminds me of Michael McDonald, except he doesn't appear to be eating his microphone, as McDonald did.

Bocelli

McDonald

Or maybe he does.

Just Say No: Don't leave me any nasty comments about the above. I'll just ignore them.

Winter Savings Tips

2011-11-29T10:00:00.001-06:00

You know, there's nothing worse than going to the mailbox in the afternoon and finding it crammed full of bills. Boy! That frosts my ass.

But sometimes ... the envelope has something included in it, along with the bill. Take my village water, sewer and trash bill for example. It always has a chatty newsletter in it chock full of information about how the present mayor is making life so good for us. Why, just last February, right after the most horrendous blizzard this area had encountered in over thirty years, the newsletter contained a personal note from the mayor reminding us to not be "crabby-pants whiners" about how cold it was and how much snow there was on the ground. Well, I got to thinking about that and figured Mayor Whatsername had a point. So I remained cheerful about how miserable I was until the ice floes on Mill Creek broke up in June.

Pep talks are nice in your bills, but I really wished the Mayor had talked about how to save money on our water/sewer/trash bill. Just like the good people at The Upper Great Plains Gas & Electric Cooperative do.

When I received my TUGPG&E bill in early November, I was delighted to see that they had included a pamphlet on how to save on energy bills in your home during the cold winter months to come. So, instead of throwing it in the trash, I held on to it so I could share these same handy tips with you. Since I just write nonsense most of the time, I'm happy to do something useful for a change ... so here we go:

11 Tips To Help You Save On Gas and Electric Heating Bills

* Air your house out frequently during cold snaps. Don't let old, stale, over-warmed air accumulate in your furnace.

* Turn heat up at night to avoid "peak heating" hours.

* Save money by reusing old furnace filters. Leave them in an extra year this winter.

* Thermostats function most efficiently at 78 degrees Fahrenheit.

* Use your electric stove to heat the kitchen.

* Keep windows open. It helps the house "breathe".

* Pay your gas and electric bills months in advance to improve household budgeting.

* Encourage kids to play outdoors. Running back and forth, in and out of the house all the time will help them keep warm.

* Put felt or rubber stripping, about an inch wide, around all your indoor plants.

* Use your air conditioner during winter months when there's less demand for home cooling.

* Put six inches of TUGPG&E "CollectaHeat" insulation on your basement floor. Much of your home's heat escapes through basement floors.

A Little Help

2011-11-21T09:50:00.001-06:00

As so often happens, life serves up a steaming can of whup-ass when you least expect it. And what suffers?

For one thing ... my blog. So, over the weekend, I enlisted the help of one of my best, best internet friends to write a post for me. If you're not familiar with Roscoe "Bic" Lighter, then you should be. "Bic" has written the very successful weblog "The Lighter Side of Junk" for more years than I care to remember, and I enjoy his wry observations of this crazy old world most times. So please, give it up for "Bic" ...

You know, I often find as I grow older that the mind is a tricky thing. Like an old engine, say, or a 1934 Packard, it has it's own quirks and you have to allow for them when you're making use of it. It works at its own speed and it doesn't do to try and hurry it along as I found out to my chagrin the other day when dashing out to a Kiwanis meeting. I returned home to find the pot roast I had been planning to eat halfway through the spin cycle in the washing machine and a crock pot full of boot socks simmering nicely on the stove. Well, of course the roast was ruined and I had to get professionals in to clean the sock steam off of the kitchen windows.

People often ask me what I think of today's young humorists. How do they compare to the humorists of my day? Well, I told you the mind is a tricky thing and I seem to remember talking about that very matter with Will Rogers in the jump seat of a 1936 Lockheed Electra flying machine several weeks ago. "Will, what do you think of all the so-called humor that's going around now on the TV and the internets?" I said. Old Will looked over at me and I could see he was of a mind to speak on the matter.

"Bic," he said. "there's two kinds of humorists; humorists who say there are two kinds of humorists and others who do not. It's these latter kind that seem so prevalent in your modern times, the most glorious and prosperous times in the world."

"They seem to believe that contempt of government is funny and that flouting laws against marijuana in public is smart. They forget the fact that their rights are privileges that may be taken away. You see, Bic, society is like a parent. It has its little peculiarities. But it also has a parental type authority; it can 'ground' us in a jail, or it an cut our 'allowance' by putting us on a blacklist so we don't get any work. This is done for the benefit of the whole social family, though it is sometimes as hard for us as it is for children to realize society is only looking out for our future."

"That's why we shouldn't be smart assed or sarcastic about governments any more than we should about our parents, nor should we go around making cruel fun of our brothers and sisters, or fellow citizens, just because they spend good money on fuzzy toilet seat covers, or something."

"Bic, one of the wonderful things about America is that there is room for all different types of people. People who want to riggedy-rig A-rab elections or go to war against push-over third world nations. Other people, who prefer to be older, stay home and support those overseas. Some people want to run large multi-national corporations, others prefer to work for these. Some to make laws, some to obey them. There is room in our great country for all these types of people."

"In our country now we have some dissidents. Some are humorists, bitter and lashing out at the world like a drunk in a mirror factory. Others are like the bumblebee, which science tells us can't fly. They believe the world has got itself into a shit-fizzer of mighty magnitude because they believe it can no longer fly. We don't need them, Bic, we never did. In my day, we wouldn't have stood still for it. 'If you think like that,' I recall one small town mayor saying to a rowdy running against him on the local soft-in-the-head ticket, 'why don't you go be a Mexican?'"

"In a lot of ways, it's the fault of your modern magazine publishers, and moving picture producers, who don't go out and look through the newspapers of heartland America to see what the people really want."

Well, Will had his say on the matter and I woke up in my back yard. There was a bumblebee flying by and I remembered that some people said that was impossible. Then I woke up again and I was in my bed and it was November. Something to think about, isn't it, how the mind plays tricks on us?

Short Story

2011-11-16T10:44:00.000-06:00

Okay, this morning I was down in the basement putting up insulation. And the door bell rang.

Normally, I don't answer the door bell because it's usually someone trying to sell me shit. And I figure that if it's a neighbor, they'll ring the door bell twice. But Jan had told me last night that she had a package coming in via UPS, and if it was them, I wanted to grab the package from the porch before some asshole stole it, which a certain percentage of the population are apt to do nowadays.

Our front door has a side window, so you can't sneak up on it to take a peek at who's outside. So, when I rounded the corner from the back room, it was too late. They had seen me.

I opened the door to two middle aged ladies and immediately knew I had probably made a mistake. The mistake was confirmed when one of the ladies reached into her bag and pulled out a copy of ...

Watchtower Magazine ... Shit. Jehovah's Witnesses.

Remembering Jan chiding me the other day for being rude to people, I was determined to be nice and try to get rid of them as quickly and expediently as possible.

But, Jehovah's Witnesses are IM-possible to get rid of without being brusque. I tried. I really did try to be nice, but when the one woman started talking about sex and the Bible ... well, that was just too much.

I shut the door in their faces.

And then I was angry at myself for the next hour. Not because I was rude, but because got suckered into listening to some stranger try to discuss religion and sex with me.

So ... no more answering the door bell Even if it rings twice.

Shaker Shock

2011-11-11T13:19:00.000-06:00

This morning I woke up with about a thousand ideas whizzing around in my head, but with no motivation to act on any of them. So, after about an hour of my brain doing the slot machine whirl, I focused on one activity that appeared to be attainable. What to make for dinner tonight. For some reason, people (including me) focus on Friday and Saturday night dinner. I suppose we want something out of the ordinary because it's the weekend.

So, I went to Google and typed in "What to eat on Friday night" ... and was disappointed to find that most people are locked into the usual shit. Tacos, lasagna, spaghetti, shrimp scampi, etc.

Bleah.

I wanted something WAY out of the ordinary, and for some reason, my mind went back to a post I wrote a while back on Mennonite food. Well, just as I thought then, none of that stuff looked any good, so I did some free association and started wondering about Shakers (United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing) and if they had any good food.

And it turned out that Shakers were pretty interesting. When I was a kid, my parents had friends who lived in Halltown, Missouri. Their house was sort of overshadowed by a church across the street. We went to Halltown fairly often and the friend's kid and I would roam the town, but we were always hesitant to get near the church, because it was supposedly a Shaker church and Shaker's had dark powers.

Well, you know how full of shit little kids are. It turned out that it wasn't a Shaker church, but the parishioners of whatever religious sect it was did worship Satan and eat babies.

Haha ... just kidding. But they were pretty stern looking.

Anyway, I got into enough trouble when I tried to explain all about the Mennonites in one paragraph, so if you want to know all about Shakers, you'll have to go here. But I did want to mention one thing. At the apex of Shaker society, there were about six thousand members. Today, there are only three practicing Shakers in the United States, located in Sabbathday Lake, Maine. Two gals and one guy.

Here's what the three of them do every day:

The day begins at 7:30 a.m.; the Great Bell on Dwelling House rings, calling everyone to breakfast.
At 8:00 a.m. morning prayers start. Two Psalms are read, then passages are read from elsewhere in the Bible. Following this is communal prayer and silent prayer, concluded with the singing of a Shaker hymn.
Work for the Shakers begins at 8:30.
Work stops at 11:30 for midday prayers.
Lunch begins at 12:00. This is the main meal for the Shakers.
Work continues at 1:00 p.m.
At 6:00 it is dinner time, the last meal of the day.
On Wednesdays at 5:00 p.m. they hold a prayer meeting which is followed by a Shaker Studies class.

Wow, and I thought my day was monotonous.

After I spent an hour reading about Shakers, I remembered that I had looked them up in the first place in order to find some cool recipes. And as it turns out, they do have recipes ... and they even look edible. But it looks like even the Shakers are slaves to typical Friday night fair, given that one of the recipes is named "Brother Arnold's Lasagna with Meat Sauce". But the other stuff looked good enough to try on some other night besides Friday.

I didn't feel like looking up anymore religious sect's recipes, so I just went to the store this morning and winged it. I just returned a little while ago, and what did I decide on?

Bratwurst, onion rings and ranchero beans.

Maybe I'll run up to the convenience store before dinner and get a 40 of Malt Liquor to wash it down with. Bon Apetit!

Whoring Out

2011-11-10T12:08:00.001-06:00

On the Blogger Dashboard there's a tab labeled "Monetize". I guess you push this thing and Blogger starts crapping up your weblog with a bunch of condom ads or something. Well, like most people, I'd like to make money with my blog. Unfortunately, I don't have the traffic volume to really make the old "Monetize" thing worth while.

So, I spent countless minutes looking for companies that would like to run an ad on Frogs For Lunch. And my overtures were met with a great indifference ... some would say a mocking great indifference.

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The Wager

2011-11-09T10:59:00.000-06:00

Although I'm not a really smart person, there is something about me that I'm rather proud of. I notice everything. I can pick up a physical defect on a person at a hundred yards. I can tell if something has been moved, even minutely, in the house. I see changes in my surroundings that no one else does. I would have made an excellent private detective, except for the fact that I don't like unpleasantness, confrontation, violence and stakeouts.

My wife, on the other hand, notices nothing. That may be a tad bit harsh, but I'm a cruel evaluator and that's my opinion. For instance, I once painted the walls going down the stairs to the basement. Up until the point that I had painted them, they had been bare sheetrock and tape. Although she goes down to the basement almost every day, it was over a week before she noticed it, and then I had to prompt her with "Hey, notice anything different?"

Yes, Jan doesn't notice changes ... except when I fuck something up.

This past Monday I was cleaning the house, and when I got to the kitchen table, I saw that the place mats were getting extremely funky. We spill a lot of things when we eat. I've considered buying us his 'n hers table cloths to wrap around our necks (a la Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever) when we sit down to dinner because we're so sloppy.

Anyway, as long as I was cleaning, I decided to throw the place mats in the washing machine. When they were done, I was concentrating on something else and absent-mindedly threw them in the dryer, paying no attention to the tag on the back of the mats that read:

100% Cotton

After an hour of drying, I went back down to the basement and pulled them out. Yeah, they'd kind of shrunk. They resembled over-sized table napkins rather than place mats. But I kind of blew it off, justifying it in my own mind that I thought they had been too goddamn big to begin with.

Later that afternoon, Jan got home from school ... walked into the dining area ... and immediately noticed that the table mats had shrunk.

Shit.

For the next two hours, I heard crack after crack about me shrinking the table cloths. Until I blew a fuse and we got into a bit of a fight.

Because that's what marriage is all about. Fighting over shrunken table cloths.

After a few harsh words, we made peace. But I knew she was still pissed. The next morning, I got up and prepared to do some errands. I kept looking at the shrunken table cloths and felt guilty. So, I ran over to Kohl's and spent an hour finding the exact type of table dressing ... Sonoma/Mocha Chocolate ... at twice the price we had paid for the first set. Fortunately, being Kohl's, everything was on sale. And by "sale" I mean the regular price everyone else would charge since Kohl's "regular" price is approximately180 percent over a manufacturers recommended price. Don't tell me no one in the United States of America doesn't know that.

When I returned home, I put the new place mats out and relegated the old ones to some dusty corner of the house, out of sight. But, I thought to myself "I'll bet Jan doesn't even notice." So, I made myself a bet. If she didn't say anything in the first 24 hours, I owed myself five dollars. If 48 hours passed, I owed myself ten dollars ... and if a whole week passed without her saying anything, I'd pay myself thirty dollars.

As of this morning, I'm five dollars ahead. However, when you think about it, betting yourself money really doesn't make any sense because I already had the money anyway and I don't gain or lose as a result of my left hand giving my right hand money.

Oh well ... a bet's a bet.

People Mystify Me

2011-11-08T10:49:00.001-06:00

Okay ... as a rule, I don't write about political things. But I'm going to make an exception today.

Perhaps you've read/watched/heard about all the troubles Republican Herman "Pizza Man" Cain has been having recently with his penchant for the ladies (allegedly). I've always thought that if you're going into politics at any level, then you'd better take a long, hard look at yourself and make sure you're one clean Marine before you throw your hat in the ring. Because someone is going to find out ALL about you eventually. Not withstanding the fact that if his staffers knew about all of this shit ahead of time, and they should have been able to handle it better, this guy is in a lot of trouble, and we'll probably see him heading for the cellar to join Michele Bachmann very soon.

That's just politics.

But my problem today isn't with Cain. He reaps what he sows. My problem is with the "4th Woman" who came out yesterday. She lives just down the road from me in Mundelein, Illinois.

Read this article ... and then this one. And I'll be back with my short opinion.

All done? Okay.

If she ISN'T in it for the money, then I'm Godzilla on my 39th birthday.

Oh, and I'd just love to be the blindsided fiancee when he returns to his high level position today, tomorrow ... or ever.

The Week In Review

2011-11-04T10:39:00.000-05:00

After an unusually horrendous last week of October in my Missouri hometown, I spent this week getting back to my normal routine ... and it was good.

About a year ago, I had what I thought at the time was a great idea to develop my very own website. So, after researching all of the pay-for-play web hosting companies, I chose one and bought my own domain name and site. And that's about as far as it went. Of course, I kept this site ... and once in a while I'd half-heartedly work on the other one, more out of guilt that I had actually PAID for it than anything else. Today, I received a renewal notice from the hosting site, and rather than dump another 90 dollars down a rat hole, I decided to cancel it. I think I've finally faced the fact that I barely have enough ideas pop into my head to contribute to this blog, let alone a second one. I guess I'm just not a multi-tasker.

The kid next door has rung the doorbell every afternoon this week soon after he comes home from school. I don't answer the door because I know what the kid is hawking. Christmas wreaths. Every year for the past three, I've plunked down 25 dollars to this kid for a wreath, and every year I've been disappointed by the shitty quality of the product I get in return. Not this year. I suppose rather than avoid the doorbell for the next week, I should just man up and tell him no thanks. After all, what's a few more steely stares from his parents than I already get.

The New Jersey Blogger guy that I made fun of in this post outdid himself the other day. Seems that the cheese shop in his town where his girlfriend/fiance/whatever assistant manages is going out of business. So, he took the opportunity to blast his friends, relatives and readers for not patronizing the shop. Way to alienate your audience asshole. I should take this guy off my reading list, but sometimes he's so out there that I just can't give him up.

For about the last month, I've been clearing almost a quarter century's worth of clutter out of our basement. In the mess, there are furniture items that we've replaced that are in good condition, and I hated to set them out by the garbage to be thrown away. Worse, I learned that most of the the things that I had been putting out were being snarfed up by my next door neighbor, Hillbilly Ron, and either stuffed into his already trashy garage or along side of it, where I could enjoy looking at them in a new setting. So, I've been donating a lot of items to charitable organizations. And I've learned a few things. Goodwill doesn't pick up. The Salvation Army doesn't take console sewing machines. The Cancer Federation picks over your donations and leaves what they don't like. And Habitat For Humanity Centers look like auto junkyards for homebuilding materials. And in all cases ... NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT. Don't want anyone sniping at me like that asshole who was offended about my comments on Harry Shearer.

I mowed the lawn for the last time in 2011 on November 1st. Yay! Today, I need to get the snowblower ready for it's first use, which should be in about 3 weeks. Boo!

I'm getting really annoyed at taking a walk in the morning in pitch-fucking-blackness. The other morning I tripped over an uneven part of the sidewalk because I couldn't see where I was going and fell flat on my face. And besides, even though I'm adult ... I'm still afraid of the dark. Thank God it changes back to standard time this weekend and I'll be able to go out into some kind of light.

So, don't forget to set your clocks back one hour this weekend, and remember ... you absolutely have to stay up until 2:00 a.m. to do it. Otherwise it doesn't take.

All Hallows Day

2011-11-01T13:43:00.000-05:00

Wow ... when I wrote that last post, I didn't realize that I would really be going out of town. But two days later, I was heading to Missouri for one of those events that nobody likes to be a part of. But that's a story for another time.

Today is my second favorite faux holiday of the year ... All Hallows Day. My first favorite is All Hallows Eve, and just in case your wondering, my third favorite is Godzilla's birthday, which falls on February 9. Yeah, Halloween has always been my holiday, but for the last few years, I've found myself becoming less and less excited about it. This year, I didn't even put up the lighted pumpkin decoration in the front window, and settled for three or four pumpkins on the porch. I didn't carve them into jack-o-lanterns, because that way, they are still relevant for Thanksgiving ... if the fucking chipmunk under the porch doesn't start gnawing on them.

Halloween in this neighborhood just isn't exciting anymore. Twenty-four years ago, when we first moved in the streets were full of teenagers filled with piss and vinegar (odd phrase). There was abundant egg throwing and flaming rolls of toilet paper being thrown over trees. An occasional dynamite explosion was heard. They roamed the street like a menacing mob of pimply ninjas.

But then they grew up. And subsequent batches of teenagers were less and less unruly. In fact, they became downright polite ... which sucks. Everyone is calm and mannered and the adults haul their rusty portable patio fireplaces out to the ends of their driveways, light their fires and drink milk.

Bah. The only fun I had last night was when my neighbor "Pickle Boy" (his last name is Vlasic ... get it?) purposely hauled his little tow headed monster by my driveway without stopping and I fingered him from the front window. I don't think he saw it though.

So, it used to be on All Hallows Day, I'd make it a point to take a walk early in the morning to survey what damage had been done the night before. I hadn't the chance to do that in a couple of years, so I was anxious to get out this morning at sunrise and see the carnage.

But there was nothing. No toilet paper streaming in the tree limbs. No eggs splattered against garage doors. No jack-o-lanterns smashed in the streets. Not even a single house burned to the ground.

What a wussy fucking neighborhood. Okay, so there was no destruction, so I went to plan B. Kids are kids and they drop shit. Especially when they're all coked up on Halloween night. There must be some treats laying around on the sidewalks. So for the first two miles, I scanned the ground in front of me.

Nothing. Not even a spent candy wrapper. WTF? I used to eat half of my candy before I got home. Like I said, every one's too polite and mannerly nowadays. Just when I was about to give up, I turned the corner on the street immediately above us, and ... BONANZA! Candy, all over the fucking place. It was dry last night, with no dew or frost on the ground, so according to the 24 hour wrapped candy rule, this stuff was still A-Okay to eat. I walked along and stuffed my pockets. And here's my haul.

JACKPOT!!

Going with tradition, I chewed all the bubble gum before I got home. M&M's, Reeses Peanut Butter Cup, Three Musketeers, Laffy Taffy, Milky Way, Bottle Caps ... PAYDAY!

And an extra added bonus ... a Pabst Blue Ribbon tall boy and a pack of Winstons with five, count 'em, five cigarettes left in it. Plus a dime.

Hell, a guy could have a pretty good Saturday night with all that. Don't you think?

While I'm Away ...

2011-10-19T11:35:00.000-05:00

I'm taking a well deserved few days off at my favorite getaway, "The Shrublands" for some rest and relaxation, as well as a major de-tox. So I've asked a special lady to fill in for me with her own special brand of insight and humor.

Actually, I originally asked famed star of stage and screen Richard Dreyfus to write today's post, as he had done such an admirable job for me several years ago, but repeated calls to his office were not returned. Funny how your friends turn on you in your hour of need.

Asshole ...

Anyway, Ms Nelda DuMont, although not a star of stage and screen, is pretty notable in her own right. Nelda is a regular contributor to Ladies Home Journal, Woman's Day and Juggs magazines. In addition, her weekly column "Housewife Humor" runs monthly in the Perth Amboy Sun-Patriot. And if that weren't enough ... Nelda's book "The Rug Is Always Yellower Under The Dog" was on the NYT best seller list for an amazing 47 weeks in 1971.

Please give Nelda your undivided attention, won't you?

REMEMBER THAT TV commercial where Josephine the lady plumber helps her friend who's visiting from St. Louis clean that old New York apartment house sink with kitchen cleanser, and the friend says she'd better take some of that cleanser back home with her because "We've got some pretty old sinks in St. Louis, too"? Well, I always get a kick out of that because I live in St. Louis and we do have some pretty old sinks, although ours is practically new.

YOU KNOW WHAT tickles me? The kids will spend all day Saturday picking up newspapers for the school paper drive, but just try to get them to pick up the clothes in their room! My husband's the same way. He gets hotter than heck if I borrow any of his tools and leave them in the kitchen junk drawer or under the sink instead of putting them back on the pegboard over his workbench in the basement, but then he'll turn around and leave his clothes all over the bedroom. Aren't husbands something? And kitchen junk drawers - now that I've mentioned it, I have to laugh when I think what a mess ours is. Isn't yours?

MY LITTLE NEPHEW Bobby, my sister Mildred's youngest boy (he's 1 1/2 ), said the funniest thing the other day. He always says "wa-wa" when he wants water. And the other day he said, "Can I have a glass of wa-wa?" So my sister said "Don't say 'wa-wa,' say 'water.'" And Bobby said to her "But I can't say 'water,' I can only say 'wa-wa!'" Isn't that the funniest thing you ever heard?

No Sense Of Humor

2011-10-18T11:52:00.000-05:00

One evening about a month ago, Jan came home and asked me if I'd like to see Second City at the local community college on a Saturday night. Several thoughts went through my mind in less than a second. With my on-again, off-again ADD would I be able to sit still for several hours? Hey, I'd miss my Saturday night meal followed by watching a movie from Netflix? And last, would Jan think I was a cranky old fart who never wanted to do anything and go out and find a real man who liked to do fun things, was not afraid to take chances and might be better looking than me.

The last thought took control and I said "Sure, I'd love to".

And so, on a breezy Saturday night several weeks ago, we drove over to the College of Lake County's James Lumber Center (I thought that some company named "James Lumber" underwrote the building, but apparently, there was a guy named James Lumber. In my mind, this would be equivalent to my being named "U.S. Steel") to watch the Second City Troupe do their thing.

I guess when most people go to a comedy venue, they set their brains to "Laugh" no matter what. I'm not wired that way and I always figure people who bill themselves as comedians have to earn it. But 90 percent of the people at this performance were primed to laugh, which I guess is a good thing, otherwise it might have been kind of awkward.

When the show started the five Second City people did a series of sketch comedies, which were all right, except for the one about the father and son talking on the son's wedding day about how shitty being married is. This one is right out of 1900's vaudeville and I thought that at the turn of the millennium, it would have become obsolete, but apparently not.

But then, the performance changed ... changed to my very, very least favorite type of comedy. Improvisation and audience participation.

Improvisation. The bane of comedy in my mind. It shows lack of imagination and preparation to put on a full show and makes me embarrassed for the performers. They did three sets of these, interspersed through the show. Each one was cringe worthy and the audience only managed a few forced laughs.

And then ... Audience participation. You know, where some poor schlub is pulled from the unsuspecting audience and is made a fool of. I won't go into details, but I did notice that the guy who was picked left at intermission and never came back. I figure he headed straight for a psychiatrist for the first of two hundred sessions to try to get his head screwed back on straight.

This is the way I see it. If I'm going to pay 30 dollars for a ticket to see a live show, I don't want to be keel-hauled up on the stage and humiliated, unless I'm getting 60 percent of the house gross.

There were two "audience participation" sets and all it did was make me edgy and pissed off.

And then it ended. Yay. The best part of the evening actually happened in the parking lot. A grey haired lady (about my age) and her husband/boyfriend roared out of the lot in her Porsche Boxter convertible in a haze of blue tire smoke ... which I thought was awesome.

Yeah, I liked the evening. But the really best part was yet to come. Trying to find a place to eat in this backwash county I live in after 11 p.m. on a Saturday night.

Next Post: Why I Have Hated And Always Will Hate Bill's Pub ... And How White Castle Turned Into A Hillbilly Gangster Hangout.

Friday Hodgepodge Of Vitriol

2011-10-14T12:18:00.000-05:00

It's a beautiful Fall day here in Northern Illinois. The sun is out, there's not a cloud in the sky and the gentle breeze sends the fallen leaves skittering along the streets and sidewalks of my modest village.

What better time to vent about some things ... minor things ... that annoy the shit out of me.

Morning Radio: For more years than I care to remember, I've awakened to the sound of an all news station on the clock radio. I don't know why I picked this particular station at the time, but it's just become a habit. And it was fine until about a year ago, which is when I realized that this station was really grating on my nerves and getting me off to a bad start. I won't name the station, but it starts with a "W" and ends with a "BBM", which I believe is an acronym for "Worlds Biggest Butt Munchers". I don't have a problem with the news stuff, but I do have a huge problem with the two early morning hosts. For the sake of anonymity, I'll call them "~~Pat~~" and "~~Felicia~~".

As with most stations, they both introduce themselves to their audience about every 15 minutes. The first one used to start out with "Hello Breakfast Lovers! I'm P-t C-----y". I thought this was slightly annoying, as I hate breakfast and felt that he was ignoring my presence. The other one did and still does the standard introduction with no embellishments, which is fine. In fact, I don't have a problem with her at all, except she sounds like she attended Madam Haversham's School of Elocution. So, the more I think about it, I'll just leave her out of this discussion.

Anyway, "Hello Breakfast Lovers" was bad enough, but lately "~~Pat~~" has started his spiel as follows: "Hello, I'm P-t C-----y, By the dawn's early light!" The first time I heard this, the first thought that jumped into my head was "What the fuck? What does that mean?" And as bad as that is, he continues by addressing his co-host "Good morning "FLEESH".

"FLEESH"? Holy shit. I'm waiting for her to bark at him to stop calling her that, but it hasn't happened yet. To his credit, "~~Pat~~" is blessed with a good set of pipes, and I imagined him as resembling Mr. Rogers ... you know ... kind of having that good uncle appearance. But when I looked up his promo picture, I got this instead:

"Yeesh!"

I'm sorry, but can't cut anybody any slack when they look like a rubber Halloween mask. I think I'll just change to an easy listening station, as opposed to a hard listening station.

American Family Insurance: Their television commercial drives me 100% apeshit. The theme is "Protecting Your Dream" and features cutaways of a bride appearing to be trying to escape from a serial killer, some dude yanking on a lawnmower that won't start, a sweaty woman pulling off a field hockey helmet; and worst of all ... some guy slamming down a cup of coffee next to a laptop while the announcer intones "So fire up the laptop, pour a cup of coffee, 'cause there are going to be a lot of late nights". To this I usually respond ... hey announcer, why don't you go fire up your ass.

And then, the commercial ends with some smug looking asshole who looks like Dave Hester from A&E's "Storage Wars" standing there with his arms crossed across his chest.

Dave ... Or AFI Asshole?

The only thing that I get out of this commercial is that I wish I had American Family Insurance so I could cancel it.

The Morning Walk: No, I didn't get into a fistfight with the Paper Man this morning. I didn't even see him. But I did see this:

"Don't Look At Me!"

During my walk, I rounded a corner and came upon a woman standing by a dog who looked a lot like the one above. When she saw me, the following transpired:

Woman: "Would you walk out in the street? He can't go if you're watching him!"

Me: "You're watching him."

Woman: "That's different."

Me: "I'll bet it's not. Let me just stand here and see."

Five seconds and a dirty look later, the woman yanked the dog out it's hunched stance and huffed off. I wonder if he ever took a shit?

The Grocery Store: After my walk, I drove over to Butera Supermarket to purchase mushrooms, Shake 'N Bake and Halloween Oreos (Don't Ask). As I was waiting in the ONLY checkout line open, one of the employees told me that another lane was open. I looked over and saw "Adelajda" manning the post.

Sidenote: Several months ago, Adelajda and I had a bit of a dust-up when she left her station (with the checkout light ON) and went over to chat with someone while I stood there like a dumb ass, waiting 5 minutes for her to saunter back over and do her fucking job. We had "words" and I vowed never again to get in a line where she was behind the cash register.

Anyway, I told the employee "no thanks". Not taking no for an answer, the employee asked me why I wanted to wait behind two people instead of going to the open counter. So I just told her "because I don't like that bitch." That seemed to do the trick.

By the way, after my altercation with Adelajda, I contacted the good people at Butera Supermarket on their website about her assholery, but never received an answer. Perhaps the powers that be at Piggly Wiggly Inc. (owners of Butera Supermarkets) may see this and look into their poor correspondence practices. On an up note, congratulations to "The Pig" on their 100th anniversary!

Happy Birthday ... Er ... Anniversary ... Er ... Whatever

Paper Man

2011-10-13T12:48:00.001-05:00

I don't go looking for trouble. I really don't ...

When my contract with Giant Pharmaceutical House ended during the summer, I took the opportunity of the free time to start walking in the morning. Short ones at first, which evolved into about an hour. When Jan started school early in the fall, I developed the habit of waving goodbye to her and then immediately going out, which is about 6 a.m., give or take a few minutes. It's quiet. Few people are out and almost no one has left for work. It's also too early for the school bus routes to start up. I use the time to wake up, tackle things that are bothering me and plan the day.

Almost as soon as my new walking schedule had began, I noticed there was one person who was always out there with me. The paper man. For the first few days, I noted a few things about him. He drives an old beat up Toyota Camry, finished with that pukey greenish-blue color that could only have been thought up by color-blind GM and Toyota engineers, and it was missing one hubcap.

As time went on, I noted that during his rounds, he constantly stared at his delivery sheet, which he propped across the steering wheel with both hands. As the weeks went on, I thought this odd as one would guess that he would have his delivery spots memorized after a while. Eventually, I figured out that this guy had four motor functions he was attempting all at once. Driving, being aware of his surroundings, reading his sheet, and pitching papers out the driver's and passenger's side windows. That's a lot of shit to do all at once.

Several weeks ago, I was walking on the sidewalk, when a folded up newspaper whizzed right under my nose as I strode across a driveway. And then the Camry passed me, papers ejecting out the windows as it made it's way up the street.

"Bastard must not have seen me", I thought.

A few days later, still on the sidewalk, I watched a pair of headlights approaching me. The lights suddenly bobbled and I realized the car had jumped the curb and was coming straight at me. As I veered into a yard, the car went back onto the street and as it went by, it was the Camry. I yelled after it, but of course, it just kept on motoring up the street, leaving newspapers in its wake.

Since that morning I've pointed straight at this guy with an accusatory finger every time we've crossed paths. He never noticed me, or pretended not to. Until yesterday. When he smirked at me.

Which brings me to this morning.

I was again on the sidewalk, preoccupied with some matter or the other, when a newspaper hit me square in the back. The Camry drove by on my right. Without thinking, I picked up the paper and heaved it at the car as hard as I could ... but I missed. The car drove on.

As he turned the corner, I followed his path. For a half-hour, every DH newspaper I saw in a driveway went someplace else. In the street, on the other side of the street, under a car, on top of a car, in the bushes, on a roof ...

(Publisher's Note: I know what you're thinking. They'll get over it.)

And here's hoping that more than one phone call went into the newspaper office this morning ... and that a certain prick had to go out and re-deliver a few papers.

I need to go practice my smirk to prepare for tomorrow morning.

UPDATE 10/14/11: Just after lunch, I looked out my front window and saw this on the lawn:

Yessss ... I do believe that someone got his shit smacked yesterday. And I've received a very "special" delivery/message in return. As George Bush once said ... "BRING IT ON!"

Another Failed Venture

2011-10-11T10:51:00.000-05:00

Recently, I've been on a cleaning tear. And by "cleaning", I mean throwing shit out. I'm not completely certain, but this may be a result of my watching a "Hoarders" marathon on A&E several weeks ago.

Be that as it may, I was going through some papers the other day, and ran across a submission that I had sent to one of the Chicago papers. About 10 years ago, after Ann Landers died, the Chicago Sun Times ran a contest to find a new advice columnist, although they must have overlooked the fact that there are as many "advice columnists" out there as there are rat turds in the New York City sewer system.

Whatever. I've read more than my share of advice columns in my time here on earth, and it seemed like a pretty easy gig. The Sun Times asked that all interested parties send in an example and that the powers that be would crown a new "Ann Landers" with much fanfare. I sent mine in, but predictably, I wasn't chosen. I didn't even get a fucking thank you note for my submission. Assholes.

Anyway, they ended up picking some dick named Jeffrey Zazlo, whose spiffy column was named "All That Zazz!" It lasted about six months, after which the Sun Times picked up a column by one of Ann Landers kids, whose name was Muriel, or something ... I forget.

So, before I throw this particular folder in the dumpster, I thought I'd share ...

Dear Roberta

FRIENDS INDEED?

DEAR ROBERTA: At a luncheon at a friend's house I discovered that there was no toilet tissue in the bathroom and as I needed some I had no choice but to use a hand towel. I put the hand towel into my purse fully intending to take it home, wash it, and return it the next day. However, a while later my friend asked to see my new handbag. Needless to say, she found the towel and accused me of stealing. What should I do now?

EMBARRASSED

XENIA, OHIO

DEAR EMBARRASSED: Anyone who entertains and doesn't have the sense to check her toilet tissue supply isn't considerate enough to have friends. If she's really your friend, I'd hate to meet your enemies!

DEAR ROBERTA: I had a few friends over for lunch the other day and as we were visiting I noticed one of the gals was acting very peculiar. I suspected something right away and asked to see her purse. She was very reluctant to give me her purse and with good reason - she stole one of my towels! I'm shocked at her and don't quite know what to do.

ANGRY

XENIA, OHIO

DEAR ANGRY: Anyone who steals from her friends is no friend at all. Drop her like a hot rock!

DEAR ROBERTA: I am very generous about loaning things but I'm really miffed. I loaned a neighbor my expensive good guest hand towels for a luncheon party. When she returned them the next day, one of them was stained and smelled of urine. What could be wrong with her?

REVOLTED

XENIA, OHIO

DEAR REVOLTED: I think your friend needs a hygiene lesson. And you need friends like her the way a cat needs swim fins.

Saturday Boredom Buster

2011-10-08T15:53:00.000-05:00

I'm just marking time until Jan and I go out this evening to see Second City. And just like any Saturday night date when I was in high school, I washed and vacuumed out my car today. It's a guy thing, and the only difference is that I didn't have any high school dates with women I had been married to for 36 years.

If you're bored, or just taking a break, here are a couple of things for you.

I normally loathe cats, but this was kind of cool.

And a few of these made me snort.

Talk to you next week.

The Mad Housewife

2011-10-07T20:11:00.000-05:00

The Mad Housewife

By ... Mama Needs Whiskey

It was one of those days. First the washing machine had gone on strike, the 15-year-old had come home with an injured football helmet, and then I had returned from my dip in the car pool to find Ginger, the beloved family tabby, dead on the kitchen floor. It looked like the poor thing had been hit by a car and come inside to die. Holding back the tears, I hid the kitty behind some bushes for later burial and decided to say nothing to the kids until dinner time.

Naturally, this night my husband was held up, and arrived just as the meat loaf was breathing its last. "Dear, " I said, as he dug in, "there's something we have to discuss. The c-a-t has been k-i-l-l-e-d". "What does that mean" said nine-year-old Billy, not fooled for a second. "It means rest," said noble husband coming to the rescue, "that Ginger has gone to sleep for a long time."

"See Nancy," replied Billy, " I told you they had nine lives. We clubbed the little fucker with a brick and he's just sleeping it off!"

I knew it would happen sooner or later. But after all, I was the one who had insisted on our getting a five-speed, two-toned, chrome-bumpered leaf blower in the first place. It was either that or you-know-who out there with a rake and a very sore back. So we got one, and it was the very same contraption that my husband was putting to use as I conducted an investigation to find out which one of the twins had come up with the delightful idea of making tiny pinholes in Mommy's diaphragm last June.

That out of the way, we climbed into the SUV, hubby replacing one steering wheel for another, and set off backward down the driveway right into a pile of leaves and the unmistakable and sickening crunch of a small child being run over. "Uh-Oh!" I said, "we've just run over one of our children." "No, we haven't dear," said unflappable hubby. "It's the four-year-old from down the block, I saw playing the the leaves a few minutes ago. You always expect the worst," and having put Mom in her place, proceeded to set sail for the supermarket.

And then there was he time my husband woke up with an extraordinary plan ... he was going to find out just who he was supporting. It was high time, he announced, that the captain of this ship knew the size and condition of his complement, from romper room to attic ... even down to the details like wives and pets.

After he pried the twins away for the television, with the help of a crowbar and a lot of muscle, and flushed the various inhabitants of our shaky craft from their hiding places, he assembled the entire sleepy crew on the front lawn. "All right, troop," he barked, " is there anyone here who knows of any inhabitants, animal or human, that are not clearly visible on this deck?" "Please, Dad ... I mean, Captain," ventured our youngest, "what about Mom's pussy?"

"That's not very funny," snapped loyal hubby. "I suspect someone else was feeding it because I haven't seen hide nor hair of it for months".

Some days ... it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.

Next Post: Will Rob Stop Mommyblogging??!!

October? ... WTF?!

2011-10-06T20:56:00.000-05:00

There are times when normal people can forget what day it is. I guess I'm not that normal, because I forgot what month it was ... until this morning ... when I realized that it wasn't September any more ... and that all the bills I was supposed to pay last Friday are now overdue ... so the credit card companies will get their overdue fees as an early Christmas present.

A lot of people I know say that they are "multi-taskers". That they can do and remember many things at once. Just for the record, these people are fucking liars. Me ... I'm a monomaniac. I do one thing at a time. And sometimes it takes me weeks to get it done.

Three weeks ago, I decided that the side door to my garage needed to be replaced. Then I decided that the garage walls needed to be insulated. Then I decided that the exposed insulation looked weird, so I covered it over will wallboard. Then, the wallboard looked strange without paint. Then, what's a garage without a workbench? Then, the whole area needed that man-sy "personal" touch. At one o'clock this afternoon, I finished. And, of course, I can't wait to show you:

Before ... How Utterly Disgusting!

After ... One Thousand Hours of DIY Network Viewing Pays Off!

Anyway, the garage is just like my new MANCAVE! Except, there isn't a flat screen, or a couch, or a refrigerator, or a bathroom. And when both cars are inside, there's no room to turn sideways.

What the fuck ... it was the last project of the year. Now I can kick back with my Tolstoy collection and enjoy the roaring fire in the fireplace. Except that it's October 6th and it's 80 degrees outside.

Sonofabitch.

Well this can't last, and everyone loves Indian Summer, whatever that is. Speaking of Indian Summer, I always enjoyed this Chicago Tribune editorial cartoon, which was first printed in the "Trib" in the autumn of 1368 ... I think:

"You thinks them thars haystacks, eh boy?"

"Gee Gramps, can I smoke some weed too?"

I couldn't find the original subtitles, but I'm almost certain that's what the captions were. Whatever. So, due to prior commitments, I probably won't be back before every one's favorite holiday ... Columbus Day! But, just for all of you Italian fans, I've picked out a special recipe for you to enjoy on Monday. It's a very unusual combination of seafood and cheese, named "Cheesio Christobal Colon" Here's a picture for you. If you'll send me a self-addressed, stamped envelope and $5.99, I'll send you the recipe ...

Let's All Go To the Vomitoriam After Dinner!

Next Post: You're Guess Is As Good As Mine!

Sump Hell

2011-09-27T16:10:00.000-05:00

Let me introduce you to the banes of my existence:

Twin Sonsabitches

These are our two basement sump holes, each containing their very own ejector pumps. The one on the left is Laundry Sump Pump (LSP) and his brother on the right is Foundation Water Sump Pump (FWSP). Since our house was apparently built at the outlet of a major river, FWSP runs almost all the time, even if it hasn't rained for 30 days. LSP runs only when we do laundry or if I decide to piss in the dump sink. The hole on the right is on it's third pump in 24 years. In fact, my very first post in April, 2009 was about my experience changing it out during a rain storm.

The hole on the right has only had the pump changed out once ... until today. Yesterday, I was doing about 43 loads of laundry (I kind of let the dirty clothes go for a while) and on about load 42, I noticed a river of suds bubbling out of the floor drain and heading downhill towards FWSP. I gaped at the suds stream for a few seconds until it finally occurred to me the LSP had given up the ghost.

Since I had changed out FWSP two years ago, I debated whether or not I trusted myself to try to change out LSP, but the bolted down cover and the extra pipe baffled me. Finally, I admitted to myself that I would probably fuck it up, which would result in a geyser of gross laundry water shooting up my ass the next time I sat on the toilet upstairs.

So I called our plumber, Mark. And he was nice enough to come out this morning and fix the problem. Some home repair people like to be left alone while they work, but Mark likes company and takes pleasure in explaining what he's doing, mainly so he can make you feel stupid.

While he was setting up, he took a glance at FWSP and asked what goof I had hired to install it and the fact that wasn't a "Zoeller" pump (Zoeller is apparently the Mercedes Benz of the sump pump world). When I told him that I had installed it, he just said "Oh, good thing you called me on this one".

In about 30 seconds, he had the cover off the hole and the pipes disconnected. We had been chatting while he was doing this and he was wondering what had caused this pump to fail, due to the fact it was a "Zoeller" and that they never fail.

He hauled the pump out of the murky water, took one look at it, and stared at me accusingly. The pump looked like one of those old drawings of sailing ships stranded in the lifeless Sargasso Sea. You know, the wrecks adrift, with gobs of seaweed hanging from their masts.

Except that the pump was matted with about 12 pounds of laundry lint.

Mark: No wonder it burned up. Don't you have a lint trap in the dump sink?

Me: Uhhhh ... no.

Mark: You need a lint trap. This is disgusting.

Me: Hey, if there's that much lint on that piece of shit, how much is still in the hole?

Mark: It's not a piece of shit, it's a Zoeller. And I don't know. I'm not sticking my arm down there to find out.

Me: But you're the plumber.

Mark: If you're so hot to trot to find out what kind of crap is in the bottom of that hole, you stick your hand down there. Don't be surprised if you pull back a bloody stump.

Me: No thanks.

Mark: Good, then we understand each other. Let me get this new pump in here and finish this up.

And he did. What took him a half hour would have taken me half the day and 10 trips to the hardware store. And even though it'll probably cost me twice what it would have if I had done it myself, sometimes it's better to leave it to the professionals.

Besides, if this pump ends up lasting another ten years or so, I won't have to worry when it breaks, because there's always the possibility that I'll be dead.

Then Jan can deal with it.

Coming Soon

2011-09-21T12:26:00.000-05:00

I don't know why I'm so fascinated by this. You'll have to forgive me. Since I wrote about this last week, I've made sure to check on the progress at least once a day.

NASA announced this morning that there were no more guessing games. Their dead Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) is definitely crashing to earth on Friday, September 23. They may be certain of the re-entry date ... but they still don't know where. Although the predicted debris zone is 500 miles, the margin of error is 6,000 miles, or about a quarter of the circumference of the earth. It all depends on several factors. Solar flares, which heat the atmosphere causing expansion, and the fact that the fucking thing ran out of fuel, so no one can control it and as a result, it's started to tumble.

Man-made shit in space has always interested me. The only time I purposely skipped school was when I was senior in high school and Apollo 13 was making the critical re-entry to Earth on a Friday. I also got a big kick out of the panic when Skylab fell back to earth decades ago.

So, like I said, forgive me. I probably should write about other things, like my encounter with Big Foot in Engle Park before dawn this morning, but that will wait for another time.

Just so you know what this thing looks like (UARS, not Big Foot) here are pictures of both so you can tell the difference.

I Have A Burning Desire To Hit You In The Head

Get Outta My Park Asshole!

Next Post: Fucking With Sasquatch!

As If I Didn't Have Enough To Worry About

2011-09-16T11:32:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, you can go for days and never see anything truly interesting in the news. But then, you glance at the news wires for 10 minutes and come up with some great shit. Here are three kick-ass news items to send you into the weekend ...

They're Falling From The Skies Man
NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) is now expected to fall to Earth sometime between September 23 and 25 orbital experts reported today. NASA dudes originally thought that UARS would come down in early October, but the Sun has really gotten its burn on over the past week and the increased heat has expanded the upper atmosphere and is really yanking hard on the sat now.

I'm not really sure what this thing did, but it's the size of a Greyhound Bus and is now expected to auger in anywhere between Northern Canada and southern South America. NASA says that the largest piece expected to survive re-entry will weigh about 300 pounds and should be about the size of a refrigerator. However, NASA brainiacs say not to worry ... the chance that a piece of UARS will hit anybody at all is 1-in-3,200 (I'd take those odds), and the chance that it would hit YOU specifically would be 1-in-20 trillion.

Those of you in the southeast might be able to watch some flaming debris blasting across the sky starting on September 20.

For the rest of us, you can watch UARS doomsday march here.

Weekend At Bernie's - Part V
Denver-ites Robert Young, 43, and Mark Rubinson, 25 are charged with abusing a corpse, identity theft and criminal impersonation. Apparently Young found his friend, Jeffrey Jarrett, unresponsive at his home on August 27. Instead of calling 911, Young and Rubinson loaded Jarrett's dead body in the back seat of their SUV and went for a night on the town. The dynamic trio started the night at Teddy T's Bar and Grill, where they used Jarrett's folding cash; then it was off to eat at Sam's No. 3. After dropping Jarrett's body back at his house (apparently he was a real party poop), Young and Rubinson hit the town again, having another meal at Viva Burrito and rounded out the evening, closing down Shotgun Willie's strip bar at 4 a.m., using Jarrett's ATM card to settle the tabs. Having nowhere else to spend Jarrett's money, the two then flagged down a Denver cop and told him that their deceased friend was back at his house and "he might be dead".

Although the two were not charged with Jarrett's death, they certainly have one "go-to" story for the rest of their lives.

There Goes My Ride
The last Ford Crown Victoria rolled off a Canadian assembly line yesterday, marking the end of the big, heavy Ford cars that have been popular with taxi fleets, police departments and 90 year olds who like to only go 25 miles-per-hour in a 45 mile-per-hour speed limit zone right in front of you when you're late for an appointment, causing you to roll down your window and shake your fist at them while shouting "get moving you miserable old fuck!"

That's just fucking great. I was going to buy Jan a brand new Crown Vic (preferably cream colored) for her retirement party in May. Now what the hell am I going to do?

Okay ... everyone enjoy their weekend. Jan and I are going to replace the entire side door to our garage and maybe go to Taco Bell afterwards. Don't be too jealous.

The First Ever Mailbag!

2011-09-15T12:07:00.000-05:00

Frogs For Lunch is coming up on it's third anniversary. I'm at well over 300 posts now, and I never imagined I'd have the subject matter bouncing around in my head to do that many.

Most of the time, my posts don't lend themselves well to inviting comments, and as result, I don't get very many. But surprisingly, I get a lot of letters to my e-mail address. Some of the letters are encouraging, and some are not so much. But I make sure that I answer them in the spirit that they are given.

However, some of the letters are pretty baffling ... so much so that they defy my ability to come up with a response. Over the years, I've saved them in a file and in the last several weeks, I've sorted through them and have printed a few below to share. Because that's what I do ...

Dear Rob:
Jesus, that little bastard smells. No wonder they call him Pooh Bear.

Christopher Robin

Pooh Corner

Dear Sir:

Sorry, I never thought of Howie Mandel. I take the whole thing back.

Charles Darwin

H.M.S. Beagle

Rob:

Do you want to know why you're not getting rid of us? Get with the times, people. Roach Motels are out. The hot thing these days is Roach Bed and Breakfasts.

The Cockroaches

In your kitchen

Sirs:

They snored.

Lizzie Borden

Fall River, Massachusetts

Dear Robert:

I ripped the tag off a mattress once. Now I'm in prison. Sure, I may have done other stuff too, but don't try to tell me there's no connection.

Charles Manson

Locked up forever

Dearest Sir:

The door is not a door. The door is ajar. The door is not a door. The door is ajar. Get it? Get it?

Annoying Electronic Voice

In your new car

Dear Rob at FFL:

If Kitty were raped and killed, I'd ... I'd tear the guy apart limb from limb! That's what I should have said. No. I'd kick some ass! That's it. That's what I'd do. Wait. I'd string him up by the balls! Yeah! No, wait. I'd ...

Michael Dukakis

Still reassessing his

1988 campaign strategy

Sir:

You probably think I'm a pain in the ass, but hear me out: Boxes of cereal, jars of peanut butter, etc., should change their little message from "Use before September 2011" to the more informative "Will be pretty fucking disgusting by September 2011". So what do you think? Are you with me?

Ralph Nader

Meaning well

Dear Mr. Frogs For Lunch:

Have you ever seen the film Alien? Did you ever wonder how the creature got inside the humans to begin with? I mean, if it got to burst out of somebody's chest, it must have found a pretty sneaky way to get in there ... right?

A Long, Red Tube of Surimi

Lying in your seafood salad

Sirs:

Ms. Pac-Man? She's not much to look at, but any girl that pulls herself around by her lips can't be all bad.

Donkey Kong

Nintendo, Japan

Robbie, Baby, Sweetheart:

How come nobody returns my calls anymore?

Joe Piscopo

Palookaville, New Jersey

Dear Sir and/or Madam:

After all these years, the truth must be known. I am Dorothy's surrogate mother.

Auntie Em

Somewhere in Kansas

Mr. R:

I'm here. You can't see me, but I'm here.

A Booger

The egg salad bowl in

the Sizzler salad bar

Sir:

Go ahead. Try to escape me. You can't! I'm everywhere! You puny creatures and your pathetic attempts to pull away make me laugh ... laugh I tell you! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-haah!

The Force of Gravity

Underneath your floors

Dear Sire:

Bubble, bubble,

Toilet trouble.

Loo Shakespeare

Stratford-upon-Avon Plumbing

Dear Mr. Rob:

Haven't you always had the sneaking suspicion that I'm an obnoxious shithole bitch who never misses a chance to humiliate those who work for me?

Oprah Winfrey

Harpoland

Next Post: Death Takes A Holiday!

In A Perfect World ...

2011-09-14T11:33:00.000-05:00

... Yoko would have jumped in front of John.

... a kernel of Orville Redenbacher popcorn would somehow actually look like Orville Redenbacher.

... The fluorocarbons trapped in the atmosphere would escape by going out through the hole in the ozone layer.

... somebody would wipe that smirk off Bradley Cooper's face.

... you would too be able to dry your cat off in the microwave.

... the fearless secret army of Islam would not rest until it had written the name of Allah the Almighty on the ground with the blood of Kate Gosselin.

... the pope would end all encyclicals with "I don't know, at least that's the way it seems to me."

... something would be very wrong with the brakes on Dick Cheney's car.

... Stephen Hawking would figure out a way to get his mojo back.

... a woman would laugh appreciatively when a guy farted to make a point.

... the magnitude of Donald Trump's fortune would be in the inverse proportion to the size of his dick.

Tuesday Scatterings

2011-09-13T14:31:00.000-05:00

So, things have been going well recently. No one's fucked with me in weeks now, which makes it kind of difficult to come up with any good stories, but at least my blood pressure is normal. The neighborhood kids are all back in school, and the days are quiet, except at daybreak, when the thumping sound of about a thousand shotguns shatters the calm (goose season must have started), but I haven't been hit with any slugs yet on my morning woods walks, so that's a plus.

The leaves are just starting to hint at turning, and all the weather dudes in this area are very excited that it looks like today is our final day of summer weather. Everything is supposed to go to shit starting this evening. Fall seems to always take the weather people by surprise.

But, since it's the last nice day for a while, I decided that I'd better wrap up some yard crap that I'd been putting off. I had sealed the front porch last week, and it turned out like shit, so I thought I might do better on the back patio ... but I didn't. It turned out all fucking streaky and blotchy too. One of these days, I might figure out how to do it right. It seems like it would be a pretty simple thing to do.

I had that done by 9 a.m., so I was looking for something else to do, and I happened to look at the ugly bare spot we have right in the middle of the back yard. We had a willow tree there for years, but it became infested with insects, or mold, or some other vile shit and I had Jose Maldanado and his crew remove it in April. They ground the stump out for me too, and I thought it would be a simple matter just to plant some grass seed there and everything would be cool. But the first seeding didn't take, nor did the second ... or the third. So, for three or four months, there's just been the ugly scar in the ground where the tree used to be. It's too late to try to plant any more seed, and no one has sod anymore. So, utilizing my mad landscaping skilz, and using whatever I could find lurking in the corners of the yard, I came up with this:

It's A ... Thing!

While I was putting this thing together, the word "obelisk" kept coming to mind, but I just looked up obelisk on Wikipedia, and this isn't any thing even close to that. Here's a close up so you can appreciate all of the fine detail and craftsmanship:

I Amaze Myself

As I was standing back and admiring it, I wanted to think of something to give it meaning. I toyed with the idea of a 9/11 memorial, but that's been done to death. It could have been a marker for Sam The Cat's ashes, but I didn't think of it in time, so they're still sitting in the upstairs hallway closet. If I bought some of that outlawed tiki torch fuel, I could pour it over the rock and make an almost eternal flame out of it.

I don't think it really matters, because once Jan gets home this afternoon, she'll probably shit a brick and make me take it apart ... reasoning, no doubt, that she'd rather look at a bare patch all winter. At least I have a picture for my portfolio.

While I had the camera out, I decided to walk around the neighborhood for landscaping ideas for next year. I really didn't have to go any farther than next door to Hillbilly Ron's house though. I should have known that he'd have some ideas. He's had this in his front yard for years now, but I think it gets better with age. And since no one was home, I sneaked over for a close up:

Inflatable Goose, Two Deer Skulls, Birdhouse (?) And A Shredded Scrap Of Canvas Stuck In Fork Of Dead Tree

HR is the Jackson Pollock of yard design. Anyway, as long as I'm talking yards, here's a super cool tip for all of you lawn jockeys. Did you ever plant a bush, or a tree and wonder how you keep a bare space around it so all of those pesky weeds don't grow in and fuck everything up? Do a dry moat! Simply dig a slit in a circle around your bush, tree, whatever. Make a cut with your shovel around the plant, then come back and make a back cut. Remove the thin strip of sod and fling it into your neighbor's yard. Here's an example of the finished product:

Don't Forget The Mulch ... And A Better Looking Plant!

Eh, what the fuck. It was 75 percent off at Home Depot a couple of weeks ago. I think it'll live and maybe cover that ugly-ass transformer in the background.

Shifting gears ... Jan and I were out last Saturday trying to find a bottle of Sake to go with our Kung Pao Shrimp that we were going to make that evening (I know, incongruous pairing). I've never tasted Sake and I was pretty bummed when our totally inadequate local liquor store didn't have any. But we did run across something that was pretty cool. I'm not a real big expert on wines (I think Mogen David is good, if you add 7-UP), but apparently, blended wines are now the "in" thing. So we found a bottle of white that was a blend of Chardonnay, Riesling, Muscat, Gewurztraminer (?) and Pinot Gris. It was pretty damned good, actually. What is it? Here:

We Drank All Of It

The company that makes it (The Magnificent Wine Company of Walla Walla, Washington) had a red too, named "Steak Wine", but we thought that it actually might be made out of steak, so we didn't try that one. Maybe it was kind of like bacon vodka, which I actually saw on The Travel Channel the other day. It's a bottle of vodka with a bunch of raw bacon stuffed into it. The bartender on the show was making "bacon Martinis" and charging ten dollars a glass for them.

Anyway, that's been Tuesday here in the heartland. Tomorrow, maybe I'll go play in traffic or rob a bank or something, so I can come up with a story. Until then ...

Next Post: Maybe A Real Story!

Maintenance Day

2011-09-08T13:20:00.000-05:00

I was planning to do a "letters" post today, but I became sidetracked about 5 minutes after I woke up this morning. It would require too much thought anyway, so I'll just save that for another time and go with this ... whatever it turns out to be.

I'm attempting to get the outside of the house ready for winter, but really can't decide what's important and what's not. Jan was bitching at me the other day to reseal the front porch, so I spent most of yesterday doing that. It came out all splotchy, which pissed me off royally, but she said it looked "rustic", so I guess I'll go with that and just wait for Mother Nature to strip it off during the winter. I need to paint some of the house trim, but the urge hasn't hit me yet. Since I have a month or so before the weather gets too bad to do it, I'll let that slide for a while, along with the side door to the garage that I promised myself I would do in July.

So, rather than do that hard shit, I'm spending the afternoon trying to get my mini laptop to work right again. You remember those things, right? They were all the rage two years ago, but just like the dinosaurs, they disappeared. The one I have is a Dell Mini something-or-other. So far, I've spent about 3 hours trying to clear enough memory on it to run. I don't know if I'll be successful or not.

While I'm waiting for that thing to try and clear itself, I've been reading up on the correct way to sell my unwanted shit on Craigslist. Our basement looks like an episode of "Hoarders", only with decent, hardly ever used stuff stacked all over the place. From the advice articles that I've read so far, it appears that I don't want to give anyone my phone number, use an e-mail address that gives any of my real information or let anyone in the house. I should also be ready to defend myself when someone comes to look at the merchandise, or better still, just drive to a well lit location with said merchandise and act like you would if you were making a drug deal. I'd have a garage sale, but I can't stand the thought of bartering with a bunch of cheap shits trying to get something for nothing. This is the same reason I don't go to garage sales. Maybe I'm better off to just get a dumpster in and throw it all away. Or better yet, drive around until I find someone else's dumpster and throw it in there.

I'm also editing out some of the blogs I'm following. Well, not some of them, just one. I was reading a blog by one young woman for some time, but whatever originality and freshness she once possessed seems to have turned into a "dig me" kind of thing in the last couple of months. "Oooooh, I won the award for best young blogger in (fill in name of shithole city here), Ooooh, I'm making a movie with my boyfriend". Fuck ... give me a break. She's just as annoying on Twitter.

Of course, as is well known, I'm the epitome of originality and freshness.

In other news not relating to me, was anybody aware that Lindsay Lohan has a sister? For that matter, does anybody remember Lindsay Lohan? I guess someone does. I tend to get Lindsay and Jessica Simpson mixed up. I think she has a sister too (Ashley?). Anyway, Lindsay has a sister named Ali, and the gossip rags this morning are all gaga over her apparently having had some type of face rearrangement procedure done. Observe:

Before ... And After. Or Maybe It's The Other Way Around?

So, did she change her eyes? Forehead? Lips? Nose? Teeth? Vagina? Who can say? Personally, I think a mistake was made and the thing on the right is actually Ashley Simpson. And by the way, Jessica Simpson was quoted in Us Magazine today as saying "I love my boobies!" Why this woman has eluded marriage for a second time is beyond me.

Okay, enough rambling. My Dell Mini has informed me that it doesn't have enough memory left to delete enough memory to keep it running.

You have to love planned obsolescence technology.

Thoughts On The First Day Of Autumn

2011-09-05T14:52:00.002-05:00

Yeah, I know. There's nothing on the calendar that says this is the first day of Fall. But, I guess it all depends on where you live. Here in Northern Illinois, Fall came in overnight. It was 95 degrees on Saturday. And yesterday it was still in the 80's. But then a big wind came through just as I was about to turn in about midnight and I knew that was it. Summer may be still going on other places, but it's over here. I guess that's okay.

And it's Labor Day Weekend. I hate this holiday. No matter how old I get, it will always mean the gut wrenching day before school started. Some things you just don't forget. I was flipping around the channels yesterday and remembered that the MDA Telethon was supposed to be on television. Apparently, the MDA powers that be decided that they'd had enough of Jerry Lewis and dumped him this year. Or, as I read, maybe he dumped them. In any case, the telethon was only on for 7 hours this year instead of the usual 21 hours. I watched a few minutes and it sucked just as bad as when Jerry was on.

I spent a couple of hours trying to find this supposedly "excellent" article that Harry Shearer had written as he covered the 1976 Telethon for some movie magazine. I finally found it ... all 17 pages of it and was attempting to read it while I was watching "Legion" on Netflix streaming. Gotta love that weird granny and ice cream man. Not being an incredible multi-tasker, it took me as long to read the article as it did to get though the movie. Don't know which one was more disappointing, the article or the movie. But Harry Shearer kind of sucks, so I'll give him the nod.

We had a dinner engagement on Saturday night about an hour south of here. The road going there is dangerous enough during the day, and since we left the restaurant after dark, it was even spookier driving back. As I was maneuvering the car through all the turns and twists I imagined the article in the local paper on Monday ... "Local Couple Die in Fiery Accident Because Stupid Husband Can't Drive After Dark Because He Was Too Fucking Old". I did see an interesting sign on the lighted marquee of a local Church that said: "Pray For The Unemployed". I didn't know quite how to take it. I mean ... I'm between jobs, but I think I'd be kind of uncomfortable knowing that someone was praying for me. There seems to be so many other things you could pray for, if you were so inclined. And besides, I'm having a pretty fucking good time being off.

As I mentioned above, it feels like full on Fall here today, and I'm wearing a sweat shirt for the first time in months. I picked my "Fresno State" model, because it's not too heavy, but I'm also wearing my "Boston College" sweat pants. I feel like I'm contradicting myself. I'd like to go to the store, but some people might see the irony in my bi-coastal college wear and snicker at me ... unless I went to Walmart. Nobody cares there.

Since it's Monday, I was supposed to clean the house. But it was a holiday and I gave myself the day off, which means I just have to do it tomorrow morning. I don't mind it so much, except for the toilets. I suppose most of the mess is my fault. Aiming your thing is always hit or miss. I've considered the possibility of just giving up the standing position all together and sitting down, but it seems like I would be admitting defeat. I wonder how many guys piss sitting down ... and would they admit it if asked? Questions for the ages.

Okay, time to get the Labor Day bar-b-que started. No more holidays now until Halloween.

I wonder if there's a way to get that day proclaimed a holiday. It's way more fun.

Next Post: The Long Awaited Mailbag!

Angry Birds

2011-08-30T10:54:00.000-05:00

As a rule, animals and I get along together. They stay out of my house and I don't kill them ... usually. Like most people, there are animals that I tolerate, and those that I don't care for at all.

Of the domestic variety, I don't mind cats, but I generally dislike all dogs. Cats take care of themselves. All you need to do is give them food and water. They even go to the bathroom by themselves. Dogs are fucking idiots that have to be "walked" so that they can be led to my yard where they can shit on it. And they startle me. Just this morning I was mindlessly walking down a sidewalk when I dog raced up the fence that bordered the pathway and starting barking at me. I used to just keep walking, but lately I stop and tell the mutt in a loud voice to "go fuck itself". In this case the pastel print robed old bag who owned the dog yelled at me to stop cursing at her dog, so I fingered her. I think I've mentioned more than once or twice that I'm not the neighborhood's most beloved character.

I don't like any wild animals and give them a wide berth. But there are three particular wild animals in particular that I truly dislike because they've tried to kill me. In order of my hatred of them, least to most, they are:

Deer ... In the Fall of 1996, I bought my first truck; a beautiful all black Ford Ranger. One morning in the predawn hours, I was heading to a meeting about an hour from my house. I decided to take the back roads and was coming upon a bridge when a deer (it had antlers, so it must have been a buck), lept up on the opposite side of the road and stood stock-still, staring at me. I figured I could get by him, but for some unfathomable reason, it's little pea brain told it's legs to "giddyap" and it ran right into the side of me. Not in front of me, mind you, but INTO THE SIDE OF ME.

There was a mighty "WHUMP" and in an explosion of blood and deer parts, it went flying over the cab and pinwheeled on the road behind me. I stopped, grabbed my iron fishwhacker from under the seat and tore back towards it's carcass, hoping it was merely injured so I could beat it to death. But, it had succumbed ... and so had my truck. I'd only had it for a couple of weeks.

I've had a hard-on for deer ever since. They're almost useless animals, good only for cougar food and killing hundreds of motorists every Spring and Fall.

Less deadly, but much more annoying are:

Redwing Blackbirds ... Every Spring, these little pricks build their nests in the most un-nature-like places and then stake out a territory of approximately one square mile, where they attack anything that moves ... including me. In the span of one month a few years ago, I was pecked on the head once and shit on several times by these little bastards. And there is no dealing with them. Throwing things, even hand fulls of gravel at them, ends in failure, because they're too goddamned quick.

And even though I despise deer and redwing blackbirds, I save most of my vitriol for:

Canadian Geese ... These bully boys of the avian world strut around like they own the place. In this area, they have a special penchant for strolling across streets and stalling traffic, because for some unknown reason, NO ONE WANTS TO RUN THEIR FEATHERY ASSES OVER! In my experience, it appears that most motorists would prefer to come to a screeching halt and cause an 800 car pile-up behind them rather than bumper-launch them into the nearest ditch. In fact, these same motorists do even more stupid things, like stopping their cars in the middle lane of a freeway, get out and try to shoo them off the road, wherein another car bumper-launches them into the nearest ditch while the dumbass goose flies off someplace. This actually happened on the Tri-State Tollway near my home several months ago.

When they're not busy tying up traffic, they like to hang around in gangs in open spaces, hissing and attacking innocent women and children with their nubby teeth, while they forcefully relieve them of their purses and cell phones.

But, I'm sure that the three of these beasts never set out to be a menace. The encroachment of man into their living spaces made them at odds with us. At least that's the line of bullshit I usually run across. I can't do much about my dislike for them, but I can amuse myself for a few hours after I post this.

I'll start with a poem, "Four and Twenty Blackbirds, Baked In A Pie", followed with that beloved children's book, "Garfield Goose Gets Plucked", and end it with my favorite movie ...

The one where Bambi's mother gets offed.

Fantastical Blog

2011-08-26T10:27:00.000-05:00

FANTASTICAL BLOG

"This blog goes up to eleven"

Wow, Friday at last! This has been one tough week and I for one am really looking forward to chilling out a bit this weekend. I have some medical transcription to do, but I'm planning on that not taking more than a couple of hours. I hope! (ha, ha).

Took my usual 3 mile walk this morning and found that my back is feeling a lot better, with almost none of the spasms that I experienced Monday and Tuesday. Next time I decide to remove some old landscaping from the yard (that's how I pulled my back), I'll be sure to call my old friend Luigi at Mormino Landscape Services. He does a great job at a fair price. And while I was walking through the Forest Preserve, I ran into my old friend, Pastor Dennis, who watches over the flock at Hope Presbyterian Church. While we were chatting, Pastor "D" gave me a taste of what he'll be sharing with the congregation this Sunday. If you're in the neighborhood, why don't you stop by. I'll be there (if I don't have transcription to do, LOL, LOL!).

Did a couple of hours of medical transcribing this morning (boy, are those Iranian doctors hard to understand) before Bob of Morrison Home Services stopped by to fix that darn leaky kitchen faucet that had been giving me absolute fits for weeks. He's a pip! While he was here, we shared a fresh brewed pot of Folgers coffee. Delicious!

All of that transcribing and coffee drinking made me hungry, so of course, I drove into town in my Chevrolet to have a bite of lunch at Burt's Deli. The Friday special was tuna on rye with a cup of coffee ... only $3.99! Filling and yummy.

Since I did a toilet bowl full of transcribing this morning, I was able to take an after lunch nap on my Simmons Beautyrest Mattress. I was out like a light for a couple of hours. Very refreshing! I don't know why Americans can't take a tip from our neighbors to the south and take a siesta after the noon meal every day.

After my nap, I did another furious hour of medical transcribing (those Pakistani doctors are really hard to understand!), and then it was time for a totally self-serving treat. I'd stopped at Walmart last night to peruse their CD bargain bin, and found a copy of "Sudden Impact", starring Clint Eastwood, for only 3 dollars! Such a deal ... I love Walmart! And it was a great movie. Clint is "da man".

Tonight, I'm meeting my good friend Renee for drinks and dinner at the Country Squire. Renee is a great person and always has a great story to tell, especially after a few Ketel One martinis! (LOL, LOL!!)

Hope you all had a good week and have a fantastic weekend. Here's something to get you started:

LOLCATS.com (Thanks Gretchen!!)

Of course this isn't me ... but there is a guy out there who pens a blog just like this who lives in either Jersey or Philly, I'm not sure which. I started reading his blog after another semi-famous blogger who lives in Texas did a whole post with nothing but the responses he had sent her, which were pretty fucking funny to tell you the truth. So, I started reading his posts, expecting the same type of wit. But instead, it was nothing but him talking about his day. No stories ... no anecdotes ... just talking about his day, with a million links to local and national businesses. I should have just moved on after a few days, but I ended up bookmarking his blog, because its like watching a train wreck on a continual loop. And who knows? Maybe he gets some free shit from all of the links he puts in each and every one of his posts. Hey, maybe I'll get something from this post!

Time will tell.

Like The Sands Of Time Through The Hourglass ...

2011-08-23T11:18:00.000-05:00

"So are the days of our lives". I wondered the other day if this particular soap opera was still on the air, but I keep forgetting to look. Anyway, thoughts and observations from the house-husband in his second month of house arrest ...

As a part of my daily regimen, I try to walk three or four miles early in the morning. Over the weeks, I've found that the maximum entertainment value from this exercise is to be found on Sunday morning before 7 a.m. Apparently there are a lot of people in my neighborhood who like to stay up really, really late on Saturday night, drinking. And of this group, there appears to be a subset of husbands and wives that really don't care very much for each other.

One morning, I came across a woman backing her car out of her garage; while her husband was doing his ding-dong damnedest to keep her from it by trying to push the car back in to the garage from the rear end. However, he was losing. I stood there for a couple of seconds, watching. No words were spoken between them. Just her goosing the car down the driveway in short spurts, and he pushing like hell on the rear of the car. A moral dilemma on my part ... do I say something, or let her run him over? Fortunately, just as I was trying to decide what to do, a squad car pulled up and the friendly policeman jumped out of his vehicle and yelled at them to "cut that shit out!" They did.

Several Sunday mornings later, I was strolling down the street in the same vicinity when I heard someone vacillating between screaming and talking very, very loud. As I walked closer, I saw a middle aged man pacing up and down his driveway shouting into a cell phone. Oh, and he was dressed only in well used, formerly white underwear briefs and black socks. I crossed the street and sped up my pace, but did manage to hear what he was shouting. I gathered he was talking to either his wife or girlfriend, and he kept repeating "I love you to death", scattered with references to how he didn't like going to AA meetings because there were nothing but drunks there. About ten minutes later, I was walking through the parking lot of a strip mall, when the same guy, still nattily dressed in white briefs and black socks, roared pass me in his car, screeched to a halt in front of a trash can and deposited a large garbage bag into said can. Then he sped off again, presumably for church. I already knew what was in the bag, but I went over to check anyway. Sure enough, it was chock full of empty beer cans and wine bottles. I guess that made sense ... hiding the evidence.

Yes, walking is fun. And so is watching instant streaming movies on Netflix during the day. Several weeks ago, Netflix announced that they were going to begin charging more if a customer subscribed to both "instant streaming" and their mail service. There was the usual clamour, but I didn't see where an extra seven dollars a month was going to lower me into the poverty income level. The instant streaming is nice, but I've noticed that Netflix doesn't really offer the best movies with the service. I've treated myself to some really awful movies over the past several weeks, including "The Trailer Trash Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day", the entire "Left Behind" series starring born-again Jesus freak and former "Growing Pains" cast member Kirk Cameron, and ... my personal favorite "4-D Man" with former late 50's and early 60's heartthrob Robert Lansing.

I remember seeing "4-D Man" at the Springfield Drive-In Theatre in about 1959, and I was thrilled to see Robert Lansing again as he was in one of my favorite early 60's television action dramas "12 O'Clock High". In it, Lansing played fearless Army Air Force pilot, Captain Something-Or-The-Other, who flew his B-17 in approximately four thousand missions over Nazi Germany during the Civil War. I recall that he wasn't a particularly good pilot, as he was shot down about every other week.

Anyway, there was a lot of stock footage in this show taken from actual gun cameras during the war. My Dad would study these very carefully to see if there might be any footage of him. I constantly reminded him that this wasn't likely as he was in the infantry, but this never deterred him and he kept looking. He did the same thing during "The 20th Century", which aired on Sunday evening. I don't believe he ever saw himself.

When I'm not encountering self-destructive drunks during Sunday morning walks or watching crummy movies on Netflix, I'm keeping up with maintenance on the house. Over the weekend, I noticed that the two steps on our backdoor stairway need to be replaced. Being meticulous, I purchased lumber, cut it to size, painted it and, as I started to install it, realized that instead of 2 inch by 10 inch boards, I needed planks that were 2 inch by 12 inches. So, a job that should have taken a couple of hours and a few bucks ended up taking six hours and a couple of bucks times a lot.

It's raining this morning, so I'm giving the maintenance thing a rest for a while. My blood pressure and bank account thank me.

While I'm thinking about it, I need to find out if "Days Of Our Lives" is still on the air.

Next Post: Stool Softeners: American Dream or Communist Conspiracy?

Dry Run

2011-08-16T12:37:00.000-05:00

If you've read any of my posts before, you're probably aware that Jan and I are no spring chickens any more. In fact, after a successful 37 year run, Jan is now in her last year of teaching school. A lot of people, including my mother, will insist that I have been retired for the last 37 years, but that is just spite on their part.

Contrary to popular belief, I've had a pretty normal career, complete with its ups and downs. Nearing geezerhood, I've occupied myself for the last five years or so as an "outside contractor". This means that I patiently wait for large companies to lay off too many people, and when they realize their mistake, they call me to come in and fill gaps until they can lay off some more people. In the 1930's this type of employment may have been characterized as being a "scab", but I prefer to think that I fill a need in today's marketplace.

This sort of occupation means that I have periods of employment, followed by periods of un employment. And, it just so happens that I've been in the latter category for about a month now. And rather than lolly-gag around, I decided to treat this down time as a sort of dry run for my looming retirement.

All of the experts say that retirement is a time fraught with pitfalls, mainly because an individual has not made plans as to how to fill his or hers newly found independence. They (experts) advise all soon-to-be retirees to know what they want to do so they don't succumb to boredom and depression.

Personally, I thought they (experts) were full of shit. But, just in case they might be right, I decided to spend the last month or so following some of their tips on how to spend your golden years.

Travel - When Jan and I have taken trips, we've seen more than a few motor homes on the road. Not the small ones, but the monsters meant to go coast to coast, often seen towing a small car so one can park the whale at some Jellystone Park atrocity and go putt-putting about to see the local scenery. The whales that these people travel in are fully equipped with kitchens, bathrooms and sleeping quarters.

They also cost about a zillion dollars to own and operate. We will be on a fairly modest budget, so we experimented with a more thrifty option. We traveled in a smaller vehicle and camped out at our stops.

$29.99 Per Week (Minimal Breakdowns)

The Tent Was Super Easy To Put Up And Take Down

However, the allure of the road is fleeting and you must return home sometime. After decades toiling away in an office, it was time to find out if I had the mad skilz it took to be a handy man. And what better way to find out than to try a little ...

Home Improvement - Our home has stood for almost a quarter century now with an unfinished basement. And I've always wanted to have a "man cave" complete with a wet bar to entertain friends and family. After only 3 days labor and a two thousand dollar budget (just like on HGTV!), I turned this:

How Sad!

Into this:

Welcome ... to "Rob's Grotto"!

Jan was so impressed by the results that she immediately suggested that I put my time and energy into other pursuits. "And why not", I thought to myself. What was the one thing that I had always wanted to try during my many years of toiling for "The Man"? Well, of course ...

Start Your Own Business - Following several hours of studying the needs of the market, assessing my strengths and weaknesses, and writing a two and a half page (double spaced) business plan ... I launched my very own:

"Traveler's ADE - Lemon That Is"

(trademark 2011 - Rob, LLC)

Unfortunately ... due to market forces; including logistics, site selection, failure to obtain a loan from the Small Business Administration, that tricky "license" thing with the village, labor issues and a broken mini-refrigerator; I was forced to shutter "Traveler's ADE" after only one day of operation and lay off all of my employees (sorry Jan). Damn You President Obama for not supporting small businesses! (Vote Bachmann in '12!)

Secure in my knowledge that my business would have flourished if not for the worst recession this nation has experienced in 500 years, I let my thoughts wander and stumbled across that old adage "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy".

And what better way to play than to:

Have A Hobby - This was a dicey one. In my 5-plus decades on this earth, I have only had one leisurely pursuit (drinking doesn't count) that I can remember. Assembling model airplanes. But, even this had lost it's appeal to me. However, I must admit that I'm no stranger in the kitchen and I can whip up a pretty mean Lean Cuisine when I put my mind to it. I decided that I would not only train myself to become a gourmet cook, but a chef. And not any of that sous chef shit either, but a full blown chef. And after all, it's a well know fact that men make the best chefs (sorry ladies). All you have to do is turn on the television and watch Top Chef, Master Chef, Iron Chef, Le Chef, Chef-of -the-Week, Porno Chef, etc. to know that much.

And armed with my trusty whisk and braising pan, I began to conjure up dishes fit for a King ... or Queen as Jan was my dinner partner. Coming from Rob's Kitchen were such culinary delights as:

Soup Le Boeuf

Prawn Chow Mein

Gastropod En Linguine

I must admit, that each one of my dishes were as edible as the others. And even though Jan developed a particularly nasty stomach ailment that lasted two weeks and was, alas, unable to partake of these delightful meals with me, I'm sure she would have been impressed.

And so, that brings me to today. It seems that I've been through a full retirement in only 6 short weeks. And if I've learned anything from my experiences, it's that ...

I need to go back to work ... soon.

Next Post: My full and confidential Resume for your perusal.

Compliments (And Other Insults)

2011-08-04T12:59:00.000-05:00

Instead of being out in the beautiful weather today, I've parked my ass inside waiting for "One of Those Phone Calls". That's the kind where you've been promised a call that will make a situation that's bugging the living shit out of you all better ... or worse ... depending on the answer you want to hear.

So, besides a splitting headache, I've had lots of time to think about other things that bug me, but haven't had time to figure out, until now.

I'm not overly fussy about my appearance, but try to take care of myself and always appreciate the occasional favorable comment. However, after visiting with relatives and friends during July, I'm convinced that I need to go back to the drawing board when it comes to my looks.

Here's a sampling:

My Mother: How long have you had that beard?

Me: I've had it for four years now Ma ... I had it the last time I was here.

My Mother: You really should shave.

My Mother: Turn around, let me see how big your bald spot is getting.

Me: Fuck you Ma.

Okay, okay ... it's my mother. She's going to be that way. But wait ...

My Sister: Holy Shit! You really look old!

Me: Really! You really look fat!

Okay, my sister really never did like me.

My Friend: Hey! I saw your latest picture on facebook. You know, you really shouldn't wear shorts.

Me: (Busy un-friending friend on facebook)

Another Friend: Hey! Your left eye is all droopy. Did you have a stroke or something?

Me: (Too stunned to speak, re-enforcing the notion that I had a stroke)

It sure is nice to get out and visit with people that you haven't seen for a while. I think I'll spend August alone in a cabin someplace in Wyoming. Preferably a place that doesn't have mirrors.

Selective Psycho

2011-08-02T13:07:00.000-05:00

So, I like to think that I'm a pretty normal, level headed guy; who's led a pretty normal, level headed life. Except for that time when I was seven years old and my Mom thought I was crazy.

In performing some later life self psychoanalysis, I determined that I had encountered a mild case of OCD, even though there was no name for it in 1959. While other kids my age were worried about a hydrogen bomb being dropped on their heads, I was worried that I couldn't go to sleep until I had opened and closed my closet door EXACTLY 40 times. Fortunately, I grew out of it.

And, I think I've been okay since then ... until just recently. Yesterday, I posted some nonsense about my truck being in the shop again. Although I appeared to be taking it lightly, it was really eating at my guts.

Why? Because I CAN'T STAND HAVING A MOTOR VEHICLE THAT IS NOT RUNNING CORRECTLY.

I can be in extreme pain, have my leg almost cut off by a chain saw, incur brain damage ... and I will not go to the doctor. But if one of my vehicles emits even the slightest squeak, moan or odd noise, I'm on the phone to the repair shop within 30 seconds.

Yesterday, I paced back in forth, waiting for the call from the Firestone guys to tell me what was wrong with my truck. And then the call came ...

Repair Guy: Hey Rob!

Me: YES ... YES ... What's WRONG!

Repair Guy: Nothing.

Me: What do you mean, NOTHING!

Repair Guy: There's nothing wrong with your truck. You can come pick it up.

Me: Huh?

Repair Guy: Come on over and pick it up ... no charge.

Me: Oh, okay.

Jan drove me over, and I felt very sheepish when we arrived, because I felt like the boy who had cried wolf, and I had made these poor guys take their time to look at my truck when there was nothing wrong with it. So naturally, I tried to make Jan go in and get the keys ...

Jan: Uh, uh buddy. I told you there was nothing wrong with it.

Me: But ...

Jan: Uh, uh. Go in and admit your shame.

Me: Shit.

I guess this type of behavior would be excusable if it only happened once in a while, but a couple of weeks ago, when I had Jan's car in for new brakes before we took the trip to Missouri, the repair guy told me about a possible problem:

Repair Guy: Hi Rob, you're all set to go. One little thing though ...

Me: WHAT!

Repair Guy: Your radiator looks kind of iffy in places, but I don't think it will be a problem. Besides, those things cost an arm and and leg, so go ahead and take your trip and don't worry about it. Just check it when you stop for gas and look at the temperature gauge once in a while.

Me: WHAT!

Repair Guy: Don't worry about it. Have a nice trip.

The next day, Jan and I left on our trip. I made it a mental point to check the temperature gauge as much as I checked the rear and side view mirrors. When I-55 becomes I-44 in St. Louis, the powers that be cut rumble strips into both sides of the double lanes ... just to make sure you would wake up before you plunged off the road into some valley.

And, somewhere in Missouri ...

RUUUUMMMMMMMBBBLLLLLE!

Jan: Geez Rob, that's about the 47th time you've hit one of those rumble strips.

Me: I know, I keep looking at the temperature gauge.

Jan: Well, look at the road in front of you once in a while. Let's see what you're looking at ...

Me: What are you doing?

Jan: Looking at the temperature gauge.

Me: Well, it looks like you're giving me a blow job.

Jan: Look, pull over and I'll drive.

Me: Then I'll be leaning over and looking at the temperature gauge and I'll look like I'm giving you a blow job.

Jan: I don't think they call it that. Just drive and look at the road, will you.

And as it turned out, we finished our trip without losing one drop of radiator fluid. This morning we were in a shopping center parking lot, when an SUV pulled past us, squeaking to high heaven. I told Jan that the woman needed to change her fan belt, stat. Jan told me to shut up.

I'm okay. Really ... I'm okay.

First Of The Month Filler

2011-08-01T11:35:00.000-05:00

This morning I'm waiting for the repair shop to fix my truck again. I had something repaired on it just before we went on our trip several weeks ago, and when I finally got around to driving it again (last Friday afternoon), something else was broken. I had put an incredible 40 miles on it since the last incident. If I pro-rate these occurrences for the next month, I'll probably come to the conclusion that I could have purchased a new BMW if I had simply driven the truck off a cliff on July 1st.

So, while I'm cooling my heels, I thought I'd share something that has been making the rounds for the last week or two. Maybe you've already seen it ... maybe not. It's just an example of why my loathing of facebook is steadily growing, primarily because of this particular type of moron that uses it. I'm sure you'll agree.

Enjoy.

Too Bad They Blocked Out His Name

A New Type Of Competition

2011-07-29T10:29:00.000-05:00

While we were in my hometown taking care of business, Jan and I took some time to scout the city for possible home locations, as we have preliminary plans to move there when we both call it quits and retire.

We looked at the formerly ritzy east side of town, containing the Southern Hills and Brentwood neighborhoods that I remember being so nice when I lived there as a kid. But time had taken it's toll on these areas and we decided that they weren't for us. After driving through the southwest part of Springfield, we found more than one neighborhood that we thought would be ideal for us. And as a result, we plan on concentrating the search there when the time comes.

But first, we have to sell this place.

We've always tried to keep the house and property up, and in the last four years, we've really put the effort into overdrive, both inside and out. Outside is especially important, since all of the home shows tell you that a potential buyers first glimpse of the house is probably the most important, as it's the decider for someone taking the trouble to stop and look at the inside of the house.

Of course, when potential buyers look at your house as the drive up, they're also taking looky-loo at what's around you. Having people look at the outside of MY house doesn't concern me. However, I despair when I look around our small cul-de-sac.

My next door neighbor, Hillbilly Ron, is a frequent mentionee in this blog, mostly because of the way he keeps up his house, particularly the side of his garage. There are always trash piles of one sort or the other gathered there. However, to his credit, the size and the composition of these trash piles change on a frequent basis. Ron has always excelled in trash collection. But lately, I've noticed that there's a new gun in town, and he lives across the street.

Little Marky-Mark lives directly across from us. He's a diminutive little fellow who wears shorts and a T-shirt year round, even in a blizzard. When he first moved in, he was married to someone I nicknamed Princess Leia, but they got divorced soon afterwards. He's the kind of fellow who always seems happy ... too happy. So happy that you know he tortures small animals in the confines of his home.

Marky has four cars, two jet skis and a partridge in a pear tree stuffed into his garage and littering the front driveway. When he first moved in, he built an observatory, which resembles a toy Mount Palomar in his backyard, but it has since rusted out and fallen into disrepair. Two people, which I later found out are his parents, drop by once a day to clean his house and remove bags of trash. I don't know if they do this out of the goodness of their hearts, or if he pays them. To Marky's credit, he mows his lawn twice per year, whether it needs it or not.

And lately, Little Marky has started to pile trash up by the side of his garage, in plain view of the street. And me.

To give you a bit of perspective, here's the side of my garage:

Not "Home & Gardens" Material, But Presentable

And here's the side of the garage of Hillbilly Ron's house:

Note the New "Vintage Jerry Can" Collection Next to the Truck

Impressive indeed. But, in the last several months, Little Marky has made a major push to the side of his garage, and I believe Hillbilly Ron has a top-notch challenger to his title of "Trashiest House In The Neighborhood". In fact, I believe that Little Marky, may be winning. Observe:

A Washing Machine, A Smelly Mattress, Car Seats, Plywood and Other Assorted Shit

I've mentioned something to Hillbilly Ron several times about his mess, but it's kind of like talking to the Jerry Cans. One benefit is that he stopped talking to me. Yesterday, I saw Little Marky's new neighbor yammering at him about his trash, but I think the same thing is going to happen.

So, while these two battle it out for the title of "El Supremo", I suppose I can take comfort in the title I'm sure has been bestowed on me by more than one family around Jan and I ...

Most Annoying Asshole On The Block.

The Road (Part 3)

2011-07-28T11:22:00.000-05:00

Okay, I promise ... no more trip posts after this one. You'd think I'd traveled to London (Ohio) or Paris (Texas) instead of southern Missouri. But, I took all of these damn pictures and I don't have any place to post them except my dumbass facebook page under my real name, and I don't want to do that because it's so lame that I actually spend a minute or two every day contemplating canceling it, but I never do because maybe one day someone else besides the 6 people I have as "friends" now will want to friend me, but I don't know why I think that because I've had the page for 3 years now and it hasn't happened yet. I guess I could put them on my "Frogs For Lunch" facebook page, but no one ever looks at that besides me. So, I'm putting them here.

As I mentioned yesterday, we left Springfield and decided to chop the trip back to Chicagoland into pieces so we wouldn't be in the car for eons and Jan's legs wouldn't swell up like tree trunks like they did on the way down. She actually has very nice legs (normally), but they didn't look too good after the down trip.

If I know my audience, and I think I do, I'm sure you're all saying "Hey Rob, why don't you show us a picture of where you lived from 1963 until 1974?" Glad to oblige:

Future National Landmark

(Providing the Sale to Barry Obama Goes Through)

Jan decided we should stop at Merrimec Springs State Park in St. James, MO on the way to St. Louis because she always wants to stop there due to the fact that she attended church camp at that very location when she was 13 years old and there must be some kind of nostalgia thing going on there, except that I don't know who'd be nostalgic about being 13 years old.

Because the word "Springs" is in the park title, you would assume that they had one, and ... surprisingly, there was:

There's Like a Zillion Fish in There, But You Can't See Them

And by fish, I mean trout, because the Park is also a trout hatchery, and it's always better to put a fish thingy on a river than in the Mojave Desert. At various points around the hatchery, they have vending machines that look like the ones you used to put 5 cents in and get a gumball if your cheap-ass mother would give you a nickel, which she usually wouldn't. And these machines worked just as well as the ones you saw when you were a kid, in that all the gumballs fell on the floor because of the awkward placement of the delivery door, only in this case it was a handful of smelly fish food that fell on the ground. The trout, being no dummies, hung around in schools by the vending machines for a free meal instead of eating yucky flies that happened to land in the water. I'm sure if I'd had enough time, I could have taught them to roll over, play dead and stand on their back fin and beg in exchange for a smelly fish food pellet.

Jan, in a Futile Trout Training Session

In addition to the Spring and the trout, there used be a community of artisans who lived at Merrimec Springs in the middle 1800's who's main source of existence appears to have been making shit out of iron. So, there were remnants of forges and big anvils and other iron making crap that looked like this:

This is Either a Forge, or a Giant Bar-B-Que

I'm at a Loss

Jan Inspects an 1830's Popcorn Machine

It would appear that around 1900, demand for iron hooks fell off drastically, so the residents left en masse for St. James, where they started growing inedible purple grapes to make sickeningly sweet wine and erected hundreds of road signs to sucker in the tourists to purchase said swill.

We would have liked to stay at the park a while longer, but unfortunately, the temperature was hovering around 500 degrees with 200 percent humidity and Jan was getting red as a beet, so we left. We tried to eat lunch, but the Park employees kept giving us the "fish eye" (haha, get it?), especially when I tried to drink a couple of beers out of the trunk of the car. I guess they wouldn't have minded it if I had been gulping down a bottle of St. James wine. Plus I think they got mad at me when I threw a salami and cheese sandwich into one of the trout ponds. I just thought the fish would like a change of pace from the fish pellets.

Put Some Mustard on Mine Next Time, Will ya Pal?

From St. James, we traveled to beautiful St. Louis where we stayed at another over-the-hill Comfort Inn, where the best thing in the room was a chair that looked like it had been taken from Peewees Play House. There was a restaurant attached to the motel that I was excited to eat at because I wanted to meet Wolfgang Puck, but then Jan explained to me that the name of the restaurant was Spazio, not Spago ... and that Spago was in Los Angeles anyway. So we ended up eating at some Mexican place, where Jan pouted until I gave her half of my dinner because she had ordered the wrong thing.

The next morning, we left bright and early for Chicagoland and I only got irritated with Jan once because she kept chewing on handfuls of dry roasted peanuts with her mouth open, flooding the interior cabin and ventilation system of the car with masticated peanut breath.

So, our trip ended and I was satisfied because I didn't crash the car or run over anybody. A less-than-desirable time was had by all, but a trip is a trip and at least we got away from the house for a while.

Next: No more trip posts!

The Road (Part 2)

2011-07-27T12:56:00.000-05:00

I was all set to write a bunch of posts about our trip to Missouri last week, but the fact is, that it was pretty stressful. My mother is very ill and we stayed at a motel because she needed the rest in between the radiation treatments that we took her to every morning. The good news is that the treatments seemed to work and she should be better in a couple of weeks. Not perfect, but better. It's a fact of life that your parents get old and sick ... it's tough on every one in the family.

But, in between the hospital trips and running back and forth across town between our motel and Mom's house, there were some moments when you look around you and life goes on.

We stayed at a Comfort Inn on the east side of Springfield, and of course, like any motel worth its salt in these times, they had a free breakfast. Hey, they also had a free happy hour, although we only attended one. When you're in the Ozarks, you get country food, so every morning, the Comfort Inn's "free" breakfast consisted of the following: Sausage patties, egg "patties" (I have no idea what the fuck they were made out of, I guess eggs because they were kind of yellow), biscuits ... and country gravy. Country gravy is white. I guess it's made out of flour and flour lumps, and the guests ate it up. But after looking at people smothering their biscuits (made out of flour I would guess), with more liquid flour, I just stayed with the coffee. At happy hour, we were allowed one plastic cup of box wine and something that looked like chicken lumps covered with some yellow puss-like shit. I'm glad we only attended one of these.

Well, breakfast is only one meal in the day, and having tired of take out food and eating at restaurants, we took a trip to the grocery store for ... that staple of road trips ... sandwich stuff. We found a very nice grocery store right next to the motel. And here it is:

Actually, Their Prices Were Pretty Inflated

Besides olive loaf, salami, bread and cheese; Jan wanted an entire jug of sweetened iced tea. When we got to the checkout lane, the young man helping us couldn't read the scan sticker on the container. He kept running it across the scanner and ...

Me: Here we go.

Check Out Guy: Sorry, do you know how much this was?

Me: No.

Check Out Guy: Okay ... how about a dollar fifty?

Me: Make it a dollar twenty five and you have a deal.

Check Out Guy: Sold.

I only bring this small exchange up because if this had happened at any grocery store in this area, everything would have come to a screeching halt while some asshat ran to the back of the store to search for the item and then run back to report the price. Hey, I've got to love Price Cutters for cutting through the shit.

Like any other city, Springfield has a number of independent gas stations with mini-marts attached. My favorite is Rapid Robert's, because they have Pabst Blue Ribbon and you can be a member of Rapid Robert's "Go Club" if you want to, but I declined. If we ever move there, I suppose I'll sign up. But the most prevalent independent gas/mini goes by the strange moniker of:

No, This Isn't a Discount House of Prostitution

I made sly references about the name to a few people, but I guess everyone is so used to it, that they didn't give it a second thought. We drove past the Kum & Go World Headquarters, but I didn't bother to take a picture.

While I'm at it, I should include a picture of our motel. It was "okay" and the people were nice:

There Was Some Guy Sitting On A Milk Crate Out Front, But He Moved Before I Could Take His Picture

One morning, we stopped at the front desk to ask the reception person to mail a letter for us. There was an old guy in front of us (shit, I can tell anymore if some one's older than I am unless they're in a wheelchair), dressed in a cabana shirt, dress slacks and flip-flops. He looked like an asshole, but presentable enough where I figured he might be the CEO of Kum & Go. Anyway, he asked the receptionist if he could "borrow" a razor. Before I could stop myself, I said ... out loud ... "Don't forget that I have the razor reserved for 10 a.m."

If looks could kill.

All good things come to an end, and we left Springfield at the end of the week. We decided we wanted to take our time getting back to Chicago, so I'll cover that next.

Next: NOT "The Road (Part 3).

The Road (Part 1)

2011-07-25T12:29:00.000-05:00

Last week, Jan and I took a trip to Springfield, Missouri. Springfield is my home town, and although we hadn't planned on visiting, circumstances dictated that we go. I make fun of my birth place often, as you can see here, but it's actually a pretty nice place. We didn't have much time to prepare and I knew that our car needed a "little" work to make the journey. With our car, a "little" always means a lot, and so after twelve hundred dollars worth of maintenance and repair, it was road worthy once more. Jan's car and my truck like to talk to each other when they are parked in the garage overnight, so the truck, having listened to Jan's car brag about all of the work that had been done on her ... got jealous. The very next day, on an errand, "truckee" decided to quit running, spoiled little fucking brat that it is. I managed to limp it into our car repair place and a thousand bucks later, it was satisfied that it had received equal treatment.

So, 2k in the hole already, we started out on the road. Springfield, Missouri is an 11 hour drive from the homestead, and the first 6 hours, from Chicago to St. Louis, down Interstate 55 is the most boring drive on earth. To add to the boring factor, you have to take into account that if I've driven that stretch of road 50 times, I've driven it over a hundred in the last 35 years. However, once you get to St. Louis, and onto Interstate 44 (old Route 66), the drive becomes more interesting. The people of Missouri have a tradition of naming their towns from the seat of their pants, and it's always fun to see places like Sleeper, Jerome, Cuba, Pacific and Tin Town when you're going down the road. And there are lots and lots of hills. Climb up one and scream down the other side.

Besides keeping your eye on the road and making sure you don't fly off into a ravine, there isn't much to keep you occupied besides finding a station to listen to on the radio. Once you're outside of a metropolitan area, radio pickings are pretty slim. What you can find consists of 10 watt stations blaring out the word of Jesus, on air auctions (Thelma Jean has a crib to sell for 45 dollars) and Rush Limbaugh. Rush owns the airwaves in rural areas.

And once in a while you have to stop for gas. We made it all the way to Eureka, Missouri before we had to stop, and had an argument about where to eat. I wanted to go for the St. Louis Bread Company, but Jan wanted to stop at Applebee's (yech!). Since I had to drive with her for another 4 hours, I gave in. Chains are chains, but some of them keep themselves up better than others. This particular Applebee's had seen better days, and I was wary of the food, but Jan gets mad at me if I don't eat, so ... again I gave in.

An hour later, near Rolla, Missouri, my intestinal track started talking to me and I knew I was about to have a lunch abortion. There's something about the fact that when you have to take a major dump, and you're not near a bathroom, that some lower base level of your brain takes over and your primitive instincts kick into gear. Remembering that there used to be gas stations in Rolla, I veered off the nearest exit without explaining to Jan why we were doing so. While she yammered in my ear, I sped through a construction zone and careened down a service road, looking for a potty.

Since the last time I had been in Rolla, it appeared that no one needed gasoline anymore. My next choice was a motel, but none of them looked to have lobbies that contained restrooms. When all seemed lost and it appeared that I would have to stop by the road and blow a load into the nearest ditch, I spotted ...

At this point, I would like to thank the good people at St. Johns Regional Medical Center in Rolla, Missouri for having a restroom in the lobby. Next time you're in Rolla, be sure to stop and use their excellent restroom facilities. You won't be sorry.

The only problem with the restroom, was that I wasn't the only one who wanted to use it. After I had locked myself in and was giving thanks to the Lord that I hadn't shit my pants, the following happened:

Me: Ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!

Door to Restroom (DTR): Knock, Knock!

Me: What the fuck?

DTR: Knock, KNOCK!!

Me: Occupied!

DTR: KNOCK!

Me: Occupado!

DTR: KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK!

Me: Hey Asshole, someone is in here!

DTR: KNOCK!

Me: That's it ... I'm going to kick some ass once I wipe mine!

DTR: "silence"

Once I'd finished my business and washed my hands (I'm Mr. Hygiene), I jerked open the door, but no one was there. I have to figure they ate at Applebee's too, so I felt a little sorry for them, as they probably had to use the ditch.

Anyway, back on the road and three hours later, we arrived in Springfield, where Jan announced that if she couldn't get out of the car in one nano second that she was going to fucking scream her head off.

Good trip.

Next: (I Haven't Thought of a Title Yet)

I Forgot I Had A Blog

2011-07-18T17:44:00.000-05:00

That must be the reason it's the 18th of the month and I haven't posted anything yet.

Actually, I think I did this same thing last July. There must be something about this particular month that makes people non-bloggy, since I haven't seen too many posts from the other people that I read either. At least I'm not alone.

Oh, not that there's been nothing happening. There was that one Sunday morning that I walked past a man standing in his driveway at 7:00 a.m. in nothing but his tighty whities, yelling at his wife/girlfriend that he promised to go back to AA and that he "loved her to death", and then the strange thing that happened right after. Or the morning I was out walking when the storm of the century whipped up and I was almost killed by a combination of wind, lightning, breaking tree limbs and flying trash cans. Or the 48 hours where I relived part of my childhood ... the part without lights and air conditioning.

But those are stories for another time. I've also been painting my ass off, sawing wood, firing nail guns and getting heat stroke.

So, as a little reward for myself, Jan and I are hitting the road tomorrow to trade the killer heat and humidity of Northern Illinois for the murderous heat and humidity of Southern Missouri. And while we're there, we'll be staying at several fine Clarion Hotels. "Clarion Suites ... where we provide free bath soap and maybe even shampoo if you're lucky."

And after a week back in my ancestral home, I'm sure I'll have lots more stuff to write about besides the guy standing in his driveway in his underwear, yelling.

Plus, I'll take lots of weird shit pictures to post.

Because blogs are always more interesting with weird shit pictures in them.

So, until next time ... Adios Amigos!

Going Apeshit

2011-06-29T11:20:00.001-05:00

This is my second to last day of work and predictably, everyone has stopped talking to me. People that I interacted with every day for the last two years now treat me like I never existed.

Having been a contractor for the last ten years, this is nothing new to me. In the business, this is called “The Stink of Death”, where merely being in the vicinity of the affected party almost assures that, you too, will suffer the fate of being laid off and the economic ruin that accompanies it.

When I leave tomorrow afternoon, my cubicle will first be ransacked by office jackals; then the “regulars” will spray it down with disinfectant, have it exorcised by a priest and then most likely burn it to the ground to assure that all traces of me are gone.

So, today I’m letting my imagination run wild, since I have no regular work to do. And what occurs when I let my mind run free? Well, naturally, I think about the reasons why people need full face transplants.

I’m sure there are a lot of reasons, but the only two I could think of were full frontal shotgun blasts and monkey attacks. And to get some more information on these causatives, I sprang to the internet, where frankly, I didn’t find a hell of a lot on full frontal shotgun blasts.

But I did find a shit pot load of information on how to avoid a monkey tearing your face off. And for your convenience, I’ve taken what I believe to be the most important prevention measures and condensed them into something I like to call:

Ten Tips On How Not To Have A Fucking Ape Tear Your Face Off

Whatever the situation, never heckle a monkey. They have feelings and get irritated, and they are very instinctive. So if you anger or annoy a monkey it will bite, scratch or tear your dick off and shove it up your ass sideways.

Take proper precautions, depending on the situation. Look around and think to yourself: “Hmmm, are there monkeys around here? If there are, take shelter immediately. Don’t answer any knocks to the shelter’s door, as these are probably monkeys who want to tear your dick off and shove it up your ass sideways.

Recognize that even if the monkey is in a cage, you need to stay a safe distance away from the enclosure. Don’t put your hand in the cage, or as my father used to say, “Keep your hands off the chicken or you’ll pull back a bloody stump”. Dad was always so charming.

If you are in a situation where the monkey is not in a cage, you're playing a whole different ball game. Think, "Is the monkey loose?" If so, go back to Step 2.

Step back and look at yourself. If you find you have actually done this, the monkey has probably killed you and your soul has become separated from your mortal remains. Okay, seriously … Do you have food, shiny jewelry, glasses, children or toys with you? If so, you should offer these to the monkey in consideration for it not tearing your dick off and sticking it up your ass sideways.

In the unfortunate event that you are attacked. If the monkey charges you, don't fight back. The monkey can punt, pass and kick better than you, which is why you see them so often in Ford sponsored youth football contests during the halftimes of NFL championship games. Find something to get in between you and the monkey … preferably a Thompson submachine gun on full automatic fire.

Protect yourself by barricading yourself somewhere. If the monkey has escaped from his cage, hide in there. Be sure to turn the tables on the little prick by throwing feces at him.

Notify the owner first and then animal control, but only if absolutely necessary. “Absolutely necessary” might best be defined by the question “Have you had your dick torn off and shoved up your ass sideways or is your face just missing?”

Never get within the monkey's reach. Fucking “Duh?”.

Many monkeys roam wild but are frequently in contact with humans. Check your local ordinances to see if this is true in your area. Ordinance obeying monkeys are frequently taunted by children throwing stones and other objects at them. In these cases, encourage the monkeys to attack these little bastards.

In conclusion, monkeys are particularly vicious little motherfuckers. But by following the above “Ten Commandments”, you can be reasonably sure that you’ll never end up faceless on a very special Oprah Winfrey Show.

It Isn't Easy Doing Nothing

2011-06-28T09:13:00.000-05:00

This is my last week here at Giant Pharmaceutical House. Actually, I’m not even going to finish out the week since my contract ends on the 30^th and they don’t want to pay me for another day. I’d call them cheap shits, but I can kind of understand it for accounting reasons. Besides, it’s like having a four day July 4^th holiday … and I don’t even have to go back to work on Tuesday. Score!

This time I was here for a little over four months after being laid off for about a month. They had overshot on layoffs and their ace-in-the-hole employee had been unexpectedly called up by the National Guard to serve in some God-forsaken place for a year. He wasn’t really crazy about the job , so I think he was just as happy to be assigned to a war zone rather than do this shit.

So, I was called back, because I already knew the job, and mostly because they figured that all of the nifty CEO jobs in my area were filled and I’d be available.

People ask me if I like working off and on like this, but I tell them I don’t mind. Except for the last week of the assignment.

That’s when there’s nothing to do. And trying to look like you’re doing something when you actually have nothing to do is almost harder than working. This morning I have totally meaningless paperwork strewn across my desk, and I have all of my programs up on the computer. However, I’m really just messing around on the internet. But once I’m tired of facebook and Twitter and the newswires and the magazines and the store ads … there’s still about 6 goddamn hours left in the day.

And that’s when time really slows down. Remember when you were in grade school and it was a sunny day in Spring and it was 2:00 in the afternoon and school didn’t let out until 3:15 and for some fucking reason they had put that Simplex clock up right over the teacher’s desk in the front of the room and it just “ticked” away the seconds and you got so bored that you kept timing yourself by it to see how long you could hold your breath, but then that got old and it was only 2:10?

Yeah, it’s kind of like that.

But, at 3:15 in the afternoon on Thursday I’ll be a free man for a while. Thinking about that is nice …

But it doesn’t make the fucking time go any faster.

Tick … Tick … Tick …

Trading

2011-06-23T10:49:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid growing up in the 50’s and early 60’s, I didn’t have a lot of shit. My parents were lower middle class and I had two sisters, so I guess it was pretty common for kids like me not to have a lot of shit. Oh, I had some things … a baseball glove, some marbles, a cloth sack full of plastic army men and some comic books.

My best friend Mike had a lot of shit. He was an only child, his Dad worked for the Post Office and his mother worked in a factory. I’d always go over to Mike’s and play, partly because of all the good shit he had, but mostly because I liked him. My Mom always complained that the Montgomery’s were “privileged”, but I think she was just pissed off because she’d had one kid too many.

After I reached my teens, Mike and I grew apart, he got into drugs and before his twenty-second birthday, he had his head bashed in with a baseball bat during a drug deal gone sour. So much for being privileged and having a bunch of shit.

Anyway, even though I didn’t have many things, I still got tired of them. And without any money to speak of, about the only thing we could do at that time was to seek out other kids who didn’t have a lot of things and trade them. Pretty brilliant concept. Trade your tired shit in on someone else's tired shit, and it’s just like you have all new shit.

This worked well, but after I became a teenager, and started to have money … well, I just started throwing my old shit away and buying new shit. And all of my contemporaries did the same thing.

Wow, just think of all the cool shit that got thrown away, never to return.

With me, this kept up for about 30 years. Then, during the last ten, all of my old shit started ending up in the basement. To me, this is even a worse solution than throwing the stuff in the trash.

So, early this Spring, I started to remove these “old” things and set them out by the curb on Sunday afternoon. That way, at least other people could get some use out of my old stuff. But, this wasn’t a really good solution for two reasons. Number One: I wasn’t getting anything in return for my shit. Number Two: Almost everything I set out was being snapped up by my next-door neighbor, “Hillbilly Ron”, who would immediately pile it by the side of his house.

What to do?

A much better solution presented itself while we were remodeling our kitchen. Jan and I had up-graded several things in the kitchen several times in a cheap-ass attempt to make it look newer before we finally realized we were pouring our money down a rat hole and just had the whole thing re-done. The casualties of this remodel were two almost brand new range hoods, a three year-old refrigerator, an almost new dining table and chairs … and a four-month-old microwave oven.

On the first day of the remodel, the contractor asked us what we were going to do with the refrigerator. I told him we were going to get rid of it, which really meant that we were going to have the appliance store pick it up for free, and then they would re-sell it for over a hundred dollars. Pretty stupid when you think about it.

Turns out he wanted a refrigerator for his basement and he liked ours. So, I told him he could have it … if he took a hundred dollars off of our bill. And he agreed.

Hey … I just traded. And I kind of liked it.

And just last week, a woman at work was complaining that her daughter needed new stuff for her first apartment, but couldn’t afford it. Particularly, she wanted a microwave oven. Since mine was sitting in the basement, I told her she could have it. Since I sort of knew how the person thought, I figured she’d want to pay something for it. And when she did, I told her I didn’t want any money, but I’d trade her for DSLR camera that I knew she wasn’t using. And this suited her just fine.

Why did I ever stop doing this?

I don’t know if it’s the economy, or what … but I suspect that it is … more people are bartering and trading for material items and services than they have for a long time. Amazing. In some ways we advance economically as a society, and in some ways we go back to the things that worked for the people who founded this country.

Some things never lose their simplicity.

The Changing Landscape

2011-06-17T10:30:00.000-05:00

This morning I was getting ready for work, as I do 5 days a week, for now. After I had my shower, I dried off and went to the bathroom counter for the usual round of teeth brushing, shaving and hair combing.

Being Friday, I thought I’d spiff myself up better than I usually do, when I realized something. I’m quickly becoming unspiffable.

As I approach 60, it’s becoming more and more difficult to keep up with things that are adversely happening to my appearance. And it’s becoming depressingly apparent, that there are some things I’m just not going to be able to keep up with.

Like brown spots. They started about 20 years ago. At first they were just on my arms, and then they started moving to my wrists …then to the backs of my hands. One day I woke up and there was one on my forehead. A quantum leap. And it can only get worse.

Like hair. Hair suddenly showing up missing from where you want it … only to reappear somewhere you don’t. In my case, missing from the back of my head. Not so noticeable from the front, but standing out like a sore thumb from the rear-view. And when it falls out, it must be landing in my ears and taking root. And recently, all hair growth must be concentrating on my eyebrows.

I never considered myself good looking, but I would admire my image in the mirror once in a while when I was younger. I avoid that if all possible now. Jan says I’m still handsome, but I think there’s some hidden clause in the marriage contract that requires her to state that out loud occasionally. Our maybe she’s trying to delude herself into believing she doesn’t inhabit the same space with a troll.

Honestly, I can sort-of see now why older guys grow beards, wear their hair long and tie it up in pony tails. Anything to distract from the disturbing truth about themselves.

Fortunately, for me anyway, my aging doesn’t bother me all that much, or all the time. It’s just part of life. And I have about 5 more years to work on that “stately” thing. Sometimes, I think I’m almost there.

This morning I walked into the men's room at work and glanced at myself in the mirror while I was washing my hands. Not to admire myself, mind you, but to look to see if I had anything hanging out of my nose.

And while I was looking, there it was … a two inch hair sticking out of my ear lobe.

Very stately.

The Worst Job I Ever Had

2011-06-09T16:36:00.000-05:00

As my current contract assignment nears its end (at least I think it is), I have some time to think back on the positives and the negatives of the job over the last two years. However, since there’s still the possibility that I might get renewed, I’d better leave those thoughts unsaid just in case someone I work with has accidently run across this blog.

Instead, I’ll take the opportunity to think back over the decades to the jobs I’ve held and try to pick the one that was closest to a living hell. I’m sure a lot of people feel that they don’t have to go back that far, as they probably consider their present position to be the fiery depths of Satan’s lair. But ... I’d venture to guess that most people would look back to the part time and summer jobs they had during high school and college.

I can immediately point to two jobs that I disliked with extreme prejudice. The first was during the summer of 1971, prior to the start of my sophomore year in college. It was at the Dayton Rubber plant in Springfield, Missouri … and I made V-belts. I was never particularly good at production line work, so if you had a car made in 1971 and the V-belt broke, it was probably one that I made. I really sucked at it, so ….sorry.

But as bad as that one was, it wasn’t the worst. The runaway winner in that category happened during the summer of 1969, at the Kitty Clover Potato Chip plant.

My best friend at the time had worked at Kitty Clover for several months and was gushing about what a great place it was to work. He encouraged me to fill out an application, so I did. And I was hired.

However, where my friend was working 1^st shift and enjoying working in the warehouse, I was given the ungodly 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. assembly line/clean-up shift. I spent the first several days trying to decide which was worse … the assembly line part, or the clean-up part.

On the assembly line, I alternated among dumping potatoes in a peeler, cutting potatoes to size that were too big for the slicer, and picking burnt potato chips off the line just after they had come out of the fryer. It was summer, it was hot, it was humid, and a constant mist of fryer oil hung in the air and accumulated on my clothes, my skin and my hair. One evening, I cut off the tip of my finger with the razor sharp knife they gave me to size the potatoes. I managed to get a dressing on it, but then I was shifted to burnt chips detail, and I spent several hours picking up red hot salty chips with my bleeding finger exposed. I don’t think I’ve said the word “fuck” before or since that evening it such a short period of time.

But after production shut down about 9 in the evening, it was time to clean everything up and get ready for the next day. I quickly decided that clean-up was far worse than assembly line. After being sliced and prior to being fried, the wet, limp “chips” are sent through a centrifuge basket, to dry them and remove excess starch. The water is drained from the centrifuge … but the starch isn’t. That had to be dug out with a shovel, and after a full day of washy/centrifugy stuff, there were thousands of pounds of it. After that was done, it was time to drain the fryer and clean it by hand with a mixture of water and foul smelling, corrosive soap.

At about 3 or 4 in the morning, it was done. I would go home covered in a mixture of sweat, oil, starch and cleanser that never really came out of your clothes, or anything else for that matter.

I lasted a month, then I quit. I didn’t give a shit what my friend thought, or my parents thought … I couldn’t handle it anymore. I also didn’t eat potato chips again for 10 years.

But one good thing came out of the experience. I was still in high school at the time and was unsure about my future. That one month in potato chip hell convinced me that I had to go to college and make something out of myself.

Well, that … and the Vietnam War … and a low draft number. Great motivators all.

Empty Threats

2011-06-08T18:20:00.000-05:00

Since I’ve been old enough to understand words and how they are put together into sentences, I’ve been fascinated by catch phrases. These are'nt meant to be confused with quotes, famous or otherwise, but just random things that people put together and have spread through society over the years.

They include among many other things, descriptions of one’s activities, how one feels at a certain time or one person’s opinion of another. The really good catch phrases cause me to conjure up an image that makes me laugh.

Some of my favorites are:

“I’m so happy, I could just shit.”

“Busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest.”

And the wordy, but very descriptive … “He’s so cheap that he walks around trailing a rock on a string so he can catch the grease off his own farts.”

But I save my catch phrase devotion for … Threats …

One of the first great threats that I recall was “I’ll kick your ass up between your shoulder blades.”

So, it’s only fitting (especially after that terrible post yesterday) that I offer you, what I consider to be, a delightful collection of threat catch phrases. If you’re at work, don’t even bother. But if you’re someplace all by yourself, then enjoy …

The Hundred Greatest Movie Threats of All Time.

True Lies

2011-06-07T18:54:00.000-05:00

Okay ... the rennovation of the kitchen is done. Well, it's done as far as the fact that all of the carpenters, electricians, plumbers, tilers and helpers left us last night at about 7:00. There's still more to do to make it look absolutely finished, which may take longer than the seven solid days we had our downstairs taken over by strangers. By "solid", I mean Saturday and Sunday too.

Here are some thoughts after the mental and physical toll subsides (slowly ... very slowly).

Having a room or rooms redone is not in anyway, shape or form, FUN! No matter what you see on television.

Speaking of television. Don't believe any of that shit you see on HGTV. You know, where entire houses are totally transformed in one-half hour, while everyone laughs, giggles and cavorts around while tearing the living fuck out of their house. I'm not watching HGTV again for a long while. I'm going back to the Food Network, where a half hour is just about right to make a meal.

Speaking of HGTV, and especially that horseshit show where they transform rooms for two thousand dollars. Here's the way that happens. The crew goes around on trash pick-up day to supplement the measly pittance they had to do the rooms. "Oh, and here are my receipts to prove I only spent 2 grand". Never mind that the labor was 16 fucking-thousand dollars.

Your house will smell like sweat and farts for days afterwards, unless you buy Glade apple cinnamon air fresheners, then it will smell like sweaty, farty synthetic apple cinnamon.

Enough of the fucking bullet points. I'm tired, unclever, unfunny and downright homicidal right now. Where's the wine bottle? Oh yeah, over there ... I think I'll go take another pull or two ....

Once we have the new table and chairs, the banged up wall patched and repainted, and all the dirt and grime cleaned up, I'll post some pictures that will make the kitchen and dining area look like something out of fucking Country Living Magazine.

Or not. I really don't give a shit. Where's that damned therapist's number?

The Siege - Day 3

2011-06-02T19:10:00.000-05:00

I can't believe that after 3 long days, my contractor still hasn't finished my kitchen. Some people told me that wouldn't happen, but I didn't believe them. Jan and I are still living like prisoners in our own house. Jan has it worse though. She's at home with the artisans, listening to their noise and cursing. I get to stay at work all day, and all that greets me when I get home is chaos and the smell of stale farts.

This is all supposed to be done next Monday night ... indeed the workers are even coming in on Saturday to try to catch up to their (obviously) impossible schedule. We won't be here, so I wish them luck. Here are some pictures so I can share the misery.

Living Room and Some Kitchen Shit All Jammed In a Corner

The White One Goes ... The Stainless Stays. New Dishwasher and Over-the Stove Microwave Hiding In the Corner

Kitchen and Dining. Floor In, But Cabinets Untouched

Oven in the Family Room

And ... I Guess the Cars Won't See the Inside of the Garage for a While Longer

The experts say that the mind doesn't remember pain. I wonder if that also goes for a gigantic pain in the ass? If we don't go crazy first, I'll be back in a week or so with the finished product. Just thought I'd share.

Downsizing

2011-06-01T11:07:00.000-05:00

Several years ago, Jan and I starting toying with the idea of moving far away from Northern Illinois when she retired. Lately, we’ve started to dress up the idea with a bit of reality. If the housing market doesn’t improve, we won’t be moving anywhere for quite a while, but it’s always useful to plan ahead.

One of the questions we’ve been grappling with is how much room do we really need? Right now, we range around in about 1900 square feet of usable space. There are times we think it’s too much (like when we’re cleaning) and other times when it doesn’t seem like enough (like when we’re at war), but the general consensus is that we have one room too many.

In the last few days, I’ve found a way to “test out” how to really know what it’s like to live in a smaller house.

Tear one of your main living areas to shreds.

This week, we’re doing a long overdue kitchen remodel. And it is unusable. It also is empty and all the shit in there had to go someplace. We have our refrigerator and a bunch of furniture stuffed into our front “living room” and our stove and the rest of the furniture smooshed into our back “family room”.

And things are pretty damn tight. Plus we have no table to eat at, no dishwasher and no running water in the kitchen, which we can’t get into anyway.

So, not only are we experiencing what it would be like to live in a smaller, ill-conceived house, we’re learning what it would be like to live beneath an underpass and scavenge for food.

With the way things are going in this world, that may be where we end up anyway.

From Another Archive

2011-05-29T13:56:00.000-05:00

Two years ago this summer, Jan and I took our first real vacation all by ourselves. Sure we were in our late 50's, but that's life. Instead of the usual cruise, or a trip to the Caribbean, we chose to get in our car, and drive west, all the way to the Pacific coast. We spent almost a month on the road and had a great time. I kept a blog that I updated at the end of each day. Sometimes we stayed in some great places ... sometimes we didn't. Over the next several days, I'll post selected days. This was one of the places that we stayed that wasn't so great ... Green River, Utah.

The Town That Time Forgot

We just got back from what I guess passes for dinner in this town. I'm going to guess that Ben's Cafe lost the classification of greasy diner back in 1965 and took the title of "dump" soon after. But there was really no where else to eat. Gaze on the front sidewalk and entrance to Ben's at the right. Jan had pork chops, which was incredibly brave of her. The chops were supposed to come with a baked potato and vegetable, but they ran out of potatoes and vegetables and all they had left was fries. They had nothing left of what I wanted, so I had a BBQ burger. Ecccch!

The rest of the town looks like life gave up on it in the last several decades and the residents all look like they are close to committing suicide. Who can blame them? Join me as we go up and down Main Street in Green River, Utah ...

Abandoned Cafe (not the one we ate at)

Abandoned Bank across the street from Ben's

Abandoned gas station

Main Street

Tomorrow, we're going to visit Arches National Park near Moab, UT ... and then head for Colorado.

More later ...

Nothing Happened - WTF?

2011-05-27T20:33:00.000-05:00

Jan is a teacher in a Middle School in one of the suburbs that surround us. Where I came from, they call these institutions of learning “Junior High”, but that’s down south and we’re all stupid down there, so “Middle School” it is …

Anyway, last night was the commencement ceremony for the 8^th Grade Class, and as a teacher, Jan was required to take part. I’ve never really understood the need for graduation ceremonies for 8^th graders; or for Kindergartners for that matter. But I guess it’s tough enough going to school for 12 or 13 years in a row without some kind of hoopla to break it up.

In order to appear to be a supportive partner, I told Jan that I’d go with her. Even if you have been married for almost 36 years, it’s important for a guy to try to build up a brownie point stash in case he needs an unreasonable favor at some point in the future. Besides, I thought if these forced affairs of family and friends go as they normally do, there might be something to put into a post.

The event started on time, there were a minimum of speeches and the whole thing was over in less than an hour. The kids were all dressed nicely, seemed very happy; and their parents, grandparents and friends were all justifiably proud. What’s more, I felt a sense of belonging, being a part of an American tradition.

What the hell?

I’m losing my fucking edge …

Running Scared

2011-05-26T16:08:00.000-05:00

I used to run as a hobby. Some people call it running, some people call it jogging. To me there was a difference. If you couldn’t keep up with a person walking at a brisk pace, you were jogging. If you could pass the same person, you were running.

I remember the exact minute when I decided to start. It was our first year in Northern Illinois and Jan took a picture of me carving the Thanksgiving turkey. When the photos came back from the lab, there I was … a fat-ass pig, picking pieces of fowl flesh off of a turkey carcass.

So I began running. Short distances at first, then farther and farther until I figured that five miles was about the right distance and the right amount of time. The weight came off … more than 60 pounds of it, and I became semi-addicted. I ran in the cold, heat, rain and snow. I even ran the morning of the day Jan was scheduled to have a Caesarian to give birth to our son. It was an afternoon affair, so I had time.

One of the odd things about running, is the fact that you come across a lot of crazies. I don’t know what it is about people who run, but there are an inordinate amount of other people who don’t like it. A majority of these people are driving cars when they show their displeasure toward you.

I first noticed the phenomena almost immediately after I started. At first, it was the occasional “finger”, then people (guys only) would swerve their cars at you while grinning manically. And then it escalated to thrown objects from cars … coins, beer cans (full and empty), vegetables, lit cigarettes, rocks and firecrackers. Some runners talk about getting into a “zone” when they run, but I was never able to do that because I was always on the lookout for deadly projectiles.

The strangest incident happened to me one Saturday in January. I was running around our still developing neighborhood. I passed a house under construction and noticed that a man wrapped in full winter gear was working on the roof. As I passed he yelled at me “FUCK YOU FAGGOT!” I stopped and looked back up at him, which prompted him to continue with a longer soliloquy, which included something about real men work on the weekends and don’t prance around like pussies. This sort of flummoxed me, so in my best 3^rd grade comeback, I told him that at least I was smart enough not to be perched up on a roof, freezing my ass off and squawking like a parrot. Oh, and I might have told him to go fuck himself.

The next thing I knew, he was scrambling to the edge of the roof and was taking the ladder down five rungs at a time. I’ve only been faced with the “fight or flee” thing a couple of times in my life, but when you have a full bearded nut clad in classic Carhartt winter wear and wielding a claw hammer bearing down on you, I choose flee every time.

Besides, being a seasoned runner, I knew I could lose him. And after a few steps, he seemed to realize the same thing, so he headed for his truck. By the time he had fumbled around getting the thing started, I had finally comprehended the fact that this clown might actually be trying to hurt me, so I jumped a couple of fences and cut through a couple of yards; making it through the front door of my house in time to see the guy roaring around the neighborhood, looking for me.

After a few minutes of this, I thought it might be a good idea to call the police. They came, took a statement and went up to the house under construction, looking for Mr. Carhartt. Of course, he had vanished, and I never heard anything else about it.

Soon after, I decided it was time to stop running. It was probably the best thing for my aging body too, since after years of pounding the pavement, I’m left with gamey knees and a network of broken capillaries in both ankles.

Nowadays, I prefer walking. Jan can join me when she wants to; and it seems much more sedate and dignified.

And no one has tried to kill me. Not even once.

Thoughts On Random Thoughts

2011-05-25T16:10:00.000-05:00

A few of the blogs that I read have one day set aside for “lists”. They pick a subject and just do a list of about 10 things. Maybe it’s supposed to be sort of like David Letterman’s Top Ten things that he does on his show once in a while … only not as funny. A lot of times, when these bloggers write their lists, they encourage their readers to send in their own lists. I figure that all they’re doing is trying to steal ideas.

I guess I do the same thing when I do my “random thoughts” posts. Only I don’t ask any of my readers to send in their random thoughts so I can steal them. I’m real ethical that way. I think the main reason I do the “random thoughts” posts is because they are subjects that just have enough air in them to make up about a paragraph at most. I don’t like to put them on my facebook or twitter pages, because those things are for brain farts that you don’t care if you even see again. I want something a little more permanent … so I put them here. So, on this rainy Wednesday afternoon, here are some more random thoughts.

Last night my next door neighbor, “Hillbilly Ron” was nosing around on both sides of our fence in the back yard. He was especially interested in the back corner, where I always pile my yard debris. I figured he was pissed because I was piling organic shit up against his rotted out fence and he was going to come over and say something to me. So I decided I’d be ready for his accusations, and answer him only in iconic dialog bits from the Dirty Harry movies; like “Go ahead, make my day”, “Did he fire six shots or only five?”, and “A good man knows his limitations”. But he never did come over, so I wasted about 10 minutes on 20/20 foresight.

This morning I picked up my Styrofoam cup of scalding coffee the wrong way and spilled it all over my hand and my desk … and my phone and my keyboard. Even though I was burned like hell, I made sure that all of the mess on my inanimate objects was cleaned up before I bothered to do first aid on my hand, even though it had started to blister. Why? Because I was embarrassed that someone would see the mess I made in my office. This is what polite society has done to me.

Jan I were out doing some errands and I must have broken some sort of traffic etiquette, because some guy fingered me not once, not twice, but three times as he drove off. Isn’t just once enough? And why are the guys who finger you always driving 1975 Chevrolet Monte Carlos?

Several weeks ago, I was gloating because I’d went to Home Depot and taken home a lot of shrubbery at a discount because the cashier forgot to ring up a few items. Last week I was charged double for some plants that I picked up and didn’t figure it out until I got home. Karma’s a bitch man.

Did you ever break up with someone and then run into them several months later? And when you did … after talking with each other for a few minutes, did you wonder aloud to each other why you had ever broken up in the first place? And then did you make a date to go out and see if you could “start over again”? And then about 5 minutes into said date, did you suddenly remember why you had broken up in the first place? That’s kind of how I feel now after coming back to work in the same place that I was laid-off from in January. Thank Jesus it’s only for another month.

Well, that’s only 5 random thoughts instead of 10 … but then this isn’t a list. Oh, and keep your random thoughts to yourself. I’ve got my mind clogged with enough of them already.

The Ghost Of Sam

2011-05-23T20:01:00.001-05:00

Sam the cat died almost 4 months ago. Well, "died" indicates that she did it all by herself, but we helped her along a little bit. She had lived over 18 years and in her last days she couldn't even sit up by herself. So, we had to make the decision we always knew we were going to have to make eventually and had her euthanized. It wasn't a pleasant thing to watch, and for days afterwards, we both felt like we had murdered her. That passed and then there were the weeks that I kept looking up at the landing when I came in the front door, expecting to see her sitting in her bed, looking at me.

Then that passed too. Sam now resides in a small box in the hall closet. I haven't opened the package to see what her ashes are contained in. I hope when I get up the nerve, it'll be something nice. And now that a few months have passed, we're getting used to not having her around.

Except Sam still lives on. Her memory lingers in a physical sense. The sense of smell. Now that the weather has finally become warmer, it's become obvious that Sam left us a gift to remember her by.

When I climb the stairs in the afternoon when I come home, house warm and stuffy from being closed up all day, the unmistakable odor of stale cat urine slaps me right in the face.

Apparently, in her final days, Sam was pissing everyplace on the landing except in her cat box. And since it was dark when we came home, we never saw the evidence.

Febreze doesn't work. Arm & Hammer Pet Odor Cleaner doesn't work. Next up, we'll trying renting a rug shampoo machine. If that doesn't work, it's new carpet time.

I'd like to think that if Sam had human characteristics and believed in the afterlife (would she have been Catholic or Protestant?), that she'd be looking down on us now from kitty heaven and saying "Kill me will you? YOU FUCKERS!"

Goddamn cat.

Almost Total Obscurity

2011-05-10T16:45:00.000-05:00

One of the really nice things about taking the opportunity to read through various magazines and articles on-line is the little “gems” that you pick up from time to time. Events that may have passed you by, that in themselves, point to other events that you never knew anything about.

Case in point: A man named David Mason passed away in late April at the age of 85. That in itself is probably unremarkable, except that in 1967, Mason did something that will live on as long as recorded music is available.

He was the guy who played the trumpet on “Penny Lane”.

In 1967, Paul McCartney was looking for something to embellish the Penny Lane track, when he happened to see Mason on television playing the trumpet on Bach’s “Brandenburg” Concerto No. 2 in F Major.

The morning after, the Beatles’ producer, George Martin recruited Mason to attend a recording session with the band. Mason said later that he didn’t even know who the Beatles were when he got the call (so many people say that crap … I call horseshit on it). To him (so he says) it was just another job.

Mason showed up at the session with nine trumpets and by process of elimination, settled on a B-flat piccolo trumpet for the high-pitched solo. No music was written ahead of time. McCartney sang what he wanted to hear, producer Martin wrote the notes and Mason played them.

There were two consecutive takes, overdubbing on top of the existing song … and it was all over very quickly.

For his trouble, Mason was paid a one-time fee of 45 dollars.

Holy crap, the Beatles’ sure were cheap shits, or shrewd businessmen, or thrifty … or all of the above. Probably just cheap shits mostly, especially that fucking Paul. I never did like him.

Penny Lane wasn’t the only song Mason did for the Beatles. He also contributed to other songs made in 1967: “A Day in the Life”, “Magical Mystery Tour” and “All You Need Is Love”. I’m really hoping he was paid a little better for those gigs. Probably not though.

The good news about Mason, is that there was a happy ending. As is so often the case in stories of this nature, the subject, famous for one point in history, goes on to live a tragic life and dies an early death in obscurity.

Mason went on to play principal trumpet for several distinguished orchestras and was a professor at London’s Royal College of Music.

However, he did hold a lifelong grudge on McCartney and it was reported that he often rang up the aging Beatle late at night, shouting “Where’s the rest of my money, you sodding faggot!”

Meandering Musings

2011-05-03T16:47:00.001-05:00

Tuesday afternoon. The Moody Blues composed a song by that name back in the 1960's. They made it sound like a fun time, but I guess you had to be there.

I'm basically done with work for today, I don't want to do anything else. So I'll do part of this post from here (can't tell you where here is) and part from home (can't tell you where that is either). My mind has been wandering for a while, so I think I'll just summarize thoughts for the hell of it.

I didn't sleep well last night. My extended stay on the day bed in the extra bedroom is taking it's toll on my back, neck, kidneys, gonads ... you name it. I wish Jan's allergies would take a hike so she'd stop snoring and I could sleep in my own bed. But, for as much as I slept last night, I might as well have been comfortable and listened to the snoring.

Sometimes, when you think about a subject too much over an extended period of time, you get to see it in a three-act play in your dreams. Only it turns out to be really stupid, with the wrong people, and inaccurate. Then you wake up and analyze it for all of its script failings. Stupid brain.

The first lawn mowing of 2011 was last Saturday. I always misjudge and wait one week too long for the first cutting. And a one week error is just enough that the mower chokes down elebenty-million times during the 4 hour process that should have taken only one hour if I had only mowed it one fucking week earlier. Choking down the lawn mower is bad on the engine. My 5 year-old lawn mower is now 97 in dog years because of my bad timing. I have legendary bad timing. My friends used to call me "Bulova".

My new neighbor across the street was mowing his lawn (or trying to) with a reel mower. You know, those scary looking scythe things with no motor that you have to push because that's the way they used to mow the lawn in 1901? I think this is his first house and he was trying to save some money by purchasing a cheap lawn care device. A herd of goats would be better than a manual reel mower. That's like taking a knife to a gun fight.

Jan and I planted a shitpot full of shrubs last weekend in our "new, improved" back yard. Here's a tip to save money on plants ... Go to a big box store and buy them. A lot of them, and then cram them all in a cart in no particular order. The eight-dollar-an-hour cashiers will get super-frustrated, give up and just make a wild-ass guess as to what you have. They and others know that big box stores rarely inventory plants ... because ... well they just don't. We saved about 50 dollars.

For the past several nights, I've tried counting the number of stoplights between work and home. I always lose interest after two. I guess it'll always be "one of those mysteries of life".

I heard recently that they stopped making 100 watt incandescent light bulbs. This doesn't bother me much as I don't believe I've ever used them. Too bright. Maybe it's because I'm one-third vampire on my mother's side.

When you come right down to it, aren't vampires and zombies the same thing? Vampires are probably more attractive and socially polished, but that's about the only difference.

Year's back I hit a deer with my truck. I'll always remember the look in it's eyes right before I struck it. It was like ... "Uh-Oh".

An acquaintance of mine is friends with a married gay couple. One of the guy's name is Roy, so I always call them "Ziegfried and Roy". She always gets mad at me, but I don't know why. I like Ziegfried and Roy.

Since Jan is tutoring this evening, it's "Make Your Own Meal" night. This evening I'm having Campbell's soup. Not the good kind, but the kind you where you pour out the can of glop and then add one can of water to it. When I was a kid, my mom would make it with 3 cans of water and told me that's the way the children at Auschwitz had it, which made me feel very regal and sophisticated. Then, after I was married, Jan told me that I was only supposed to add one can of water. She also told me what Auschwitz was. No wonder I resent my mother.

The soup I've chosen is called Minestrone, which judging by the picture on the can, is probably Sicilian for "Vomit". Since I have some left-over Bushes Grillin' Beans, Ill probably throw those in there too.

I still like to feel regal on occasion.

X-Tremely Specialized Blogging

2011-04-26T20:06:00.000-05:00

I read several news/popular culture on-line magazines almost every day. Lately, one of them seems to be getting away from news and opinion pieces, and more into running blog posts that they normally feature in their "open" opinion section.

Granted, all of the blog posts that they feature are very well written. I envy the authors for their creativity and command of the language. But it seems that they all are inclined to be more aimed at inciting the ire of their readers and less about discussions of relevant subjects.

Recent features have included such themes as "I Tried To Have Two Families At Once And They Both Dumped My Ass ... Feel Sorry For Me"; "My Dad Was Married And Divorced Three Times ... Ha, Ha ... What An Asshole"; and "My Younger Brother Raped Me When I Was Seventeen ... And I Liked It".

Today, I was sucked in once more by a guest post titled "When Nature Calls -- In The Worst Way". I was eating my lunch at my desk when I read the first line "You never quite forget the first time you crap yourself."

Okay, this poor woman went on for almost three pages about how, at 26 years old, she found herself dumping in her pants in the most inopportune places. At the movies, in restaurants, at work, in church ...

She chose not to see the doctor, because she didn't have insurance, for TWO YEARS. Finally, her boyfriend (she must have been a real fox to wrangle one of those while having her problem) made her see a doctor after she shat her pants in the passenger seat of his new car.

Turns out that she had a pretty serious problem. Something named Ulcerative Colitis. Basically, her whole colon was covered with constantly exploding ulcers.

Yuck.

I was looking for a happy ending to her story, but unfortunately for me ... and especially her, there isn't one. The only way she can solve her problem permanently is to have her entire colon removed, which she chose not to do. Wisely, I think. So, she tries various medications and diets to reduce the severity of her problems. She relates that some days it works, and some days it doesn't.

The bio at the end of the article reveals that the author lives in the Northwest, where she has a blog exclusively dedicated to Ulcerative Colitis.

Okay.

I'm sure this woman probably can come up with new and fresh ways to explore this very specialized subject, but I was just thinking that I couldn't do it. Seriously, maybe I could come up with three ... maybe four good posts ... things that would be interesting and could help people. But after that ... I can just see me trying to pull this off.

Monday: Crapped my pants.

Tuesday: Crapped my pants at the grocery store.

Wednesday: Crapped my pants at the store again. They barred me for life.

Thursday: Didn't crap my pants! Yay!??

Friday: Crapped my pants again. Shit.

Really, I'd just give up blogging at that point.

Good thing I'm just sticking with the piece of shit I have now.

Theater Of The Mind

2011-04-19T17:45:00.001-05:00

It's Tuesday and Jan is doing her tutoring thing until early this evening, so I'm alone with my thoughts for an hour or two. I tend to build up thoughts to the point of backlog, so I like to take them one by one and try to answer them in order to clear them out for more important things like "I wonder if I should finish off the rest of that bag of Ruffles Brand potato chips so that I can make some room in my undersized pantry for the bag of Fritos I just bought?"

But then, there are thoughts that I can't answer to my satisfaction. And since I deep-sixed the idea of writing about work today (never a good idea if you're still working at the place you're going to write about), I thought I'd just throw them out here.

Which goes faster? The first twenty years of your life, or the last twenty? And when do you know when to start counting the last twenty?

How much money do you throw into fixing up your house before it goes from "I wonder how much this will increase my home's value, to ... maybe I can make this dump look better than my neighbor's so someone will buy mine before theirs?"

If you're married, or have a significant other, do you really need a good friend, or are they just worthless horseshit baggage?

If someone in a superior position to you thinks you did something monumentally, earth-shatteringly wrong, but then it turns out you were right, do you immediately pounce on them, or save it up for a spectacular blackmailing double-cross later?

If you want something really, really bad that costs a moderate amount of money, but know you can get along without it (like a pretty little pony), do you buy said pony to satisfy your underlying selfish wants, or do you "wait 'til later" and savor the time until you buy your pretty little pony?

Why do they show that yogurt commercial with the old bag Greek woman calling her grand daughter a "prostitute" at 7 o'clock in the morning and then your single digit aged child asks you what a prostitute is so that you have to fend off telling he or she the facts of life when you're still half asleep?

Why isn't that 1961 half-hour episode of "The Roaring Twenties" that I saw on You Tube last night as good as I remember it when I was 7 years old?

If you could go back and correct all the stupid things you've done in your life, wouldn't that make you a really, really boring person?

I guess you can't answer everything that pops into your head, even if it stays there longer than it should, so I guess I'll go downstairs and finish that bag of Ruffles so that I'm not distracted by the unopened bag of Fritos.

Fact Or Fiction?

2011-04-12T17:17:00.001-05:00

My annual Spring writer's block is still in full swing. But that doesn't mean I don't read. During lunch today, I happened upon a post in "Open Salon", which I found to be entertaining to the max.

The only thing was, I didn't know whether to mail this guy a pipe bomb, or to congratulate him for a great piece of fiction.

Having witnessed this type of lunatic behavior sort of second handed, maybe it's for real ... or maybe it's not. I guess you can decide for yourself.

Entertaining fiction writer, or TOTAL ASSHOLE?

Sundays With Bobby Orr

2011-04-03T13:59:00.000-05:00

When people think of formulas, they normally think of the boring/horrible mathematical nightmares pushed on them in their school years. But there are other kinds that don't involve numbers, letters and all those other little incomprehensible hieroglyphics that go with them.

These are emotional formulas, and they sometimes come to you out of thin air. For instance, take one cold, damp Sunday afternoon in March + one 50-something year old guy, divided by a wandering mind and you get ...

A bored high school freshman sprawled on his bed on a Sunday in March, 1967 watching his black and white Motorola semi-portable television with bent rabbit ears perched on top of it.

These were the worst days. Too shitty to go outside ... too lazy to do the homework that I should have gotten out of the way when I got home on Friday afternoon and dreading the start of the school week. And with only three channels available on the tube, there wasn't much to watch. So, I usually settled for ABC's Wide World of Sports. You know, "The Thrill of Victory, and the Agony of Defeat". Only in March, there wasn't very much to watch on that either, unless you liked obscure Winter sports like Curling or Ice Dancing.

However, the regional telecast wizards at ABC decided for the month of March, that everyone in Springfield, Missouri would really enjoy watching ... Boston Bruins Hockey! Actually the real reason they broadcast these games was because of a young hockey whiz out of Canada who had just completed his rookie year and was considered a "phenom" in the hockey world.

Bobby Orr.

So, for four or five Sundays in March, I watched Bobby Orr skate around rinks playing hockey, and it was sort of exciting watching the guy. Unfortunately, I never bothered to learn the rules of hockey. I still don't know what "behind the blue line" or "Icing" means. I could care less now, just as I did then. I just liked watching Bobby skate.

But then, it was April, and ABC stopped showing the Bruins, and instead, began broadcasts of "The American Sportsman", which in most episodes, featured host Curt Gowdy and famous alcoholic Phil Harris sitting in a flat bottom boat pretending to hunt ducks. How these two managed to keep from killing each other with random shotgun blasts was beyond my comprehension.

Anyway, several weeks ago, this memory came back ... and suddenly, I wanted to reconnect to the Bruins/bored high school freshman experience in the only way a man my age can.

I fired up the computer, went to the Amazon.com site, and bought a Boston Bruins cap. Several days later it arrived. And I regretfully knew I had purchased the wrong one. Observe ...

Looks nice, doesn't it? But it didn't fit right. For one thing, it was too tight, and secondly, it rode too high on my head, making me look like an American Legion member wearing one of those goofy "USS Saratoga" naval baseball caps. You know what I'm talking about. Those guys always look stupid, especially if they're also wearing polo shirts and white Sansibelt slacks.

So, back to Amazon.com I went, and this time, I picked the right one. Just got it in the mail this week ...

This one is A-OK! It fits right and being a "slouch hat", rides low on my head.

The only thing is; by the time this hat arrived, I had lost the old vibe. Bobby Orr, the Bruins, 1967 March Sunday afternoons ... the whole thing has moved on. So, here I am with two caps, and this being rabid Chicago Blackhawks territory, I probably shouldn't wear either one of them out in public until hockey season is over.

Maybe if I explained that Bobby Orr played 26 games as a Blackhawk before he retired, people would understand.

But it just ain't worth it.

Zip It

2011-03-20T11:52:00.000-05:00

Most of the time, a weekend is defined within five minutes of when you arrive home on Friday night. This past Friday afternoon, I came home in a pretty good mood. However, Jan walked in the door loaded for bear.

In her second to last year of her teaching career, she is trying to educate a bunch of 13 year olds at the local middle school. I used to be 13, and remember that I spent most of time pissed because I was no longer a cute little boy, and pretty far away from being an adult. This meant that physically, I resembled Larry Talbot half-way in his transition from mild-mannered human into the wolfman. Add to this, a case of raging hormones, and I was pretty tough to deal with.

Jan had been on the losing end of a war of wills with these little creatures, and was in a terrible mood. We managed to get through the evening and were determined to start fresh on Saturday morning with renewed good attitudes.

But then we realized we had to do grocery shopping.

This means going to two stores. The first is Walmart ... because, we just have to. The other is another smaller store where we pick up our produce. Walmart tends to coat all of their produce in a thick coating of wax, which I presume extends the shelf life. Coating everything in wax also means they don't have to invest in those produce sprayers that you see at all of the other stores. You know, the shower that comes on just as you're trying to pick something up? One store we go to warns us of the upcoming drenching by playing a snippet of "Singin' In The Rain" right before the sprayers start.

Anyway, we finished at Walmart and went on to our second store. Normally, I don't mind the place, but in the last couple of months there has been an annoying development at the checkout line.

The cashier asks you your Zip Code.

The first couple of times, it didn't bother me, because I knew it was probably for some marketing demographics thing they were doing. But now, three months later, they do it every ... single ... fucking ... time. Several weeks ago, I started giving them every Zip Code in the immediate area besides ours. But yesterday, I had absolutely had it with this stupid question. So, Jan and I went to the checkout line, and ...

Cashier: Can I have your Zip Code?

Me: 85374

Cashier: Huh? Where's that? That's not your Zip Code.

Me: Surprise, Arizona, and yes it is. My wife and I are reverse Snowbirds. We spend the winter where it's freezing and then go south for the summer where it's blazing hot.

Cashier: Sir, just give me your real Zip Code.

Me: Tell me your Zip Code first.

Cashier: That's none of your business.

Me: My point exactly.

At this point, I'm apparently making a scene, so the manager walks up ...

Manager: Is there a problem?

Cashier: This man won't give me his Zip Code.

Me: That's right. And if you don't stop this stupid crap, I'll leave all my stuff on the belt and never come back here again.

Manager: Just check him out.

So, we spent an awkward several minutes getting out of the store. Jan asked me later if it was worth it. And I told her that no matter how stupid, sometimes you just have to make a stand.

Small victories.

Blame It On Late Winter

2011-03-14T19:21:00.000-05:00

I've been grumpy lately. Very, very grumpy. Winter won't go away, and it's making me crazy. So, in my spare time, I think about things that I hate. Hate may be too strong of a word though. I don't really hate anything, but I do dislike a number of things.

For instance, I dislike tattoos. I don't understand the thought process that the people who have them embedded in themselves go through. Perhaps I need to expand my mind ... but I don't really think that's necessary.

The first time I actually expressed myself about tattoos was about 10 years ago. I was working as a production manager for a small company and had just hired a young man to help me with the day-to-day operation. One morning he came in with a tattoo on his inner forearm. It was a rendering of an eyeball, with all of the nerves and shit trailing from it in colorful goriness. And a small hand was grinding out a lit cigarette on the eyeball.

He displayed it for me and grinned as he said "Isn't that cool?"

I slapped him with an open hand on the side of his head ... hard.

He thought I was kidding and laughed at me, but I wasn't ... kidding. Stupid little asshole. Now that he's in his early 30's, I hope he looks at that monstrosity on his arm every morning and thinks how fucking dumb he was.

Tonight, I was tooling around the internet and ran across an article on tattoos. It said about everything I think about them. This is by Brian Moylan, writing for Gawker.

What Your Tattoo Placement Says About You

Neck: You have some sort of personality disorder. If you get a tattoo on your upper body outside the area covered by a long-sleeve shirt, then you are just a little bit crazy. You don't care what people think but not in a way that is healthy. More in the kind of way that Travis Bickle doesn't care what people think.

Inner Bicep: You have something that you really want to share with the world but you just can't bring yourself to talk about. You hope that by putting it on your arm people will ask you about it and your secret will slowly come out.

Face: You have spent time in either: A) Prison, B) A mental institution, C) Both. Also, you smoke cigarettes you bought on the internet.

Bicep: This is a very manly place for a tat. It means you are insecure, lack originality, and will cheat on your wife. If this isn't the result of a mid-life crisis, you will inevitably have one in the most secretary-fucking, sports-car-driving cliched way possible.

Shoulder: You aren't afraid of making mistakes, but as soon as they happen, you pretend like you can't see them. You got a C in Algebra at community college.

Pubic Area: If you are a dude, it means you're unattractive but you have a huge dick. If you're a lady you probably know your way around a pole and a pair of platforms.

Around the Bellybutton: If you're a lady with this tattoo, it means you once wanted to be a marine biologist but then you had little Madison and had to drop out of college. But you still love Lisa Frank. If you're a gentleman, then you are undoubtedly a homosexual. And a bottom. No matter your gender, you have about a 50-50 shot of making a pornographic movie some day.

Finger: You will eventually get divorced. Trust.

Butt: You are the kind of girl who tells people she has a tattoo and when they ask if they can see, you say, "Hehehe. No!" but then after another margarita, you show them anyway. Yes, you're a tease. You also disparage women who appear in Girls Gone Wild videos.

Ankle: No matter what you say or do, no one thinks you're a badass because you got drunk on vacation and decided it was time to decorate your flesh. Please cover it with a pair of pants or a sock. Thanks.

Lower Back: Really, ladies, don't make me say it.

Did I mention I was really crabby tonight?

You Really Don't Have To Read This

2011-03-06T13:39:00.000-06:00

Author's Note: From time to time, I have a few posts that never see the light of day. The reasons vary ... maybe in re-reading them, they don't sound like me, or they make me look like some kind of monster, or they are just plain whiny.

But, something makes me keep them in edit. Today, I was going to write something called "This Week In Pissed", but it concerned my Mom, my sister and friends. None of it was flattering. No need to vent it out into the intertubes, since I'll forget about it by the end of the day anyway.

So, I'm going to air this post that has sat around for 6 months or so. We've all had horrifying washroom experiences, both private and public. What I'm going to describe isn't the worst one. That one occurred when I was 15 years old. It was in a gas station washroom in Soledad, California. And no, sexual molestation was not involved. But that story is for another time. I embellish things on my blog from time to time, but I'm not exaggerating any of the following. It actually happened.

So, here ... we ... go ...

Today started out innocently enough. A female acquaintance and I were chatting about this and that, when the conversation veered into the subject of who is more disgusting in the restroom ... men or women. With neither of us having a lot of experience visiting the others restroom, we agreed that it depended on the individual, and that no matter whether they be male or female, some people were capable of some appalling acts.

As I've mentioned here before, I work at a large pharmaceutical house and am surrounded by, what I consider to be, some very intelligent and fairly sophisticated people. Intelligence and sophistication are admirable qualities, but they don't always translate into what I would consider acceptable restroom behavior.

Although my trips to the men's room during the day are usually non-eventful, today turned out to be the Perfect Storm of urinal, toilet and wash sink grossness.

Normally, I'll drink two or three cups of coffee before I go to work, so by the time I get there, I'm ready to relieve myself of some of it. On my first trip this morning, I walked into the mens room and was greeted by the sight of a man using the middle urinal. Absolutely normal, except for the fact that he had his slacks down around his ankles and his underwear briefs pulled down to his knees, exposing his ass. He looked like a three year old boy using the potty for the first time. It took me approximately one and a half seconds to take this all in, at which time I turned quickly on my heels and walked out of the room. The mind can be a terrible thing. It will burn images into your brain, and unfortunately, this is one that will stay with me for a while.

Later on in the morning, I realized that I had to do a Numero Dos. To me, this is bad. There is a laundry list of things in life that I hate to do, and taking a shit in a public restroom rates right up there at the top. So, I have to be pretty desperate before I'll do it ... and I was ... desperate.

In my building, there are three mens rooms. My first choice was the one staller, because it afforded the most privacy, good ventilation and a fair amount of white noise. But it was occupied. My bowels were starting to talk to me, so I rushed off to my second choice, a two stall model with poor ventilation, but good noise.

As I walked in, I noted that one stall was occupied. Almost immediately, the smell hit me, followed close behind by the noise of repeated gaseous mini-explosions and the sound of grunting.

No good. I had to make a break for restroom number three, on the far side of the building. As I hip-hopped down the hallway, my sphincter was going to code red, warning me that it was about to give birth to last night's dinner.

I crashed into the doorway of number three, a five stall beauty. A little cold and too quiet, but this was no time for niceties. Stall One ... occupied. I opened the door to Stall Two and was greeted by a bowl full of unflushed shit, a feces smeared seat and smeared feces and toilet paper on the floor with a shoe print in it.

Gagging, I opened the door to Stall Three ... the bowl clogged with used toilet paper. Stall Four, occupied.

There was no time left. It was Stall Five or shit my pants.

Mercifully, it was clear.

Yes, I made a lot of noise. It was unavoidable. So, I sat ... mortified and red-faced until I heard the occupants of the other stalls finish and leave. I quickly finished my business and moved out to the wash basins, where I found that the former occupant of stall two had not left his atrocity confined to that spot. Apparently, he had shit on his hands and had slopped it all over and around the basin in a half-hearted attempt to clean himself up.

It was at this point that the cold hand of terror reached for me. What if someone walked in and thought that I was responsible for all of this sickening havoc?

So I ran for the door ... and made a clean escape.

I didn't use the mens rooms for the rest of the day. I tried to tell myself that I would never use them again, but of course, that would be impractical. So I reset myself, and tried to forget that the 15 minutes of horror had never happened.

Later in the day, I passed by the young lady who pushed the bathroom cleaning cart around. From appearances, she cleans out the restrooms every day right after lunch. And as I passed her, she was heading to mens room number three.

And the thought flashed through my head ... "May God have mercy on your soul".

Quandary

2011-03-01T17:47:00.000-06:00

I see-sawed over what to title this post. "Quandary" came to mind first, but I sort of forgot how to spell it, so I had to go to the dictionary, where I saw the word "Quandong", which looked like a neat title for a post. However, "quandary" is an uncertainty over what to do in in difficult situation and "quandong", is an Australian tree, so I went with the first because "Australian Tree" would probably confuse my post even more than it already is now.

Anyway, did you ever notice how having a job really pisses with your leisure time activities?

After only seven weeks off, I was suddenly called back to Giant Pharmaceutical House to work in the job I left. Guess they missed my sparkling personality. Going back to work really puts a crimp in doing the things you really like to do. I guess they call these "things" hobbies.

I've only had a few hobbies in my life. I used to like to build model airplanes. Then, I was a box wine connoisseur. In the past several years, I've taken up blogging, and find that the absence of model glue fumes and alcohol, or the combination of both, is much better for my health.

But, for the past several weeks, I've found that getting up at 5 a.m., working until 4 p.m., driving home, making dinner, cleaning up dinner, laying on the floor digesting dinner while watching HGTV, The Science Channel and The Discovery Channel; then going to bed at 9 p.m. really, really puts a crimp in the old posting, even if I think I have something interesting to say.

Speaking of The Discovery Channel, has anyone watched that "Gold Rush" thingy? What a bunch of retards! And I can't get enough of them! I'm sure it's just a crush though.

For the first time since I've started this blog, I've felt something that's rather odd. I feel "guilty" when I haven't posted anything in a long while. And what's even more odd, is I'll bet I'm not the only one that feels this way.

A strange hobby indeed.

I figure that in a week or two, I'll be adjusted to the routine and can incorporate a little of my hobby back into the daily action.

But, if not ... there's always airplane glue and cheap wine saturated in migraine inducing nitrites.

Life is good.

Questions Of The Week

2011-02-15T08:55:00.000-06:00

This morning I'm doing my best to avoid doing anything house-husbandy by watching The Today Show. Switching from Good Morning America to The Today Show was my only New Years Resolution. Except for a few lapses of memory, I've pretty much kept it and I'm pretty damned proud of myself.

I'd like to go buy some new underwear this morning, but I'm wondering if there is a socially acceptable time to purchase boxer shorts. Is before 9:00 a.m. too soon?

While I'm mulling that over, I find myself pondering various questions that are whirling around in my mind.

After just one and a half months off, I'm going back to work next week. Is this good, or did I really want some more time off? If I did want more time off, would I admit this to anyone but myself? Is this normal? What about those people you always see who say they can never imagine not working? Are they just trying to bullshit everybody else in their pathetic bid to paint themselves as superior to every other human, living or dead?

After 18 years, we had to put our cat to sleep last week. Several days later, we received a sympathy card from the crematorium. When did this shit start? Do the survivors of a deceased human being receive a condolence card from the crematorium?

Speaking of cat ashes, I'm dreading getting a call from the Vet's office telling me that what's left of Sam is ready for curbside pick-up. What's the protocol for doing this? Do I look somber? Do I take a recyclable shopping bag? I guess they come in an urn or something. Do I look inside they urn while I'm at the office and say "Yep, that's her all right?"

I read an article yesterday proclaiming that "50 Is The New 30". How is this possible? Did the earth change its orbit recently so now it takes one and a half times as long to circle the sun? Why wasn't I informed of this important development?

Okay, it's getting near 9 a.m. now, so I've decided it's safe to go hunt for underwear. Boxers or briefs? Plain or patterned? Hanes or Fruit of the Loom?

Questions, questions ...

99942

2011-02-10T10:02:00.002-06:00

In the month that I've been off work, I've had lots of time to indulge in my favorite activity. This would be goofing off while reading hundreds of news stories every day. I guess I could pick worse things to do. Of course, I read all of the headlines, but I tend to gravitate to the smaller, quirky stories. Most times, these little news items are "one and dones", but occasionally, they form a trend.

In the last several weeks, there have been a lot of stories about ... asteroids. In particular, how close these little iron clad boogers are getting to the mother planet as they zoom by. Close is a relative term, but most astronomers define close as less than the distance from earth to the moon, or about 239,000 miles.

This morning, there seems to be a big hullabaloo in the scientific community about one asteroid about the size of two football fields. Officially, the asteroid is named Near Earth Asteroid 99942, but is more affectionately known as Apophis.

Cute moniker, because Apophis is the Greek name for the ancient Egyptian enemy of Ra the sun god. It is the Uncreator, a snake that dwells in the eternal darkness of the middle earth and tries to swallow Ra during his nightly passage.

Brrr ... pretty scary kids.

Anyway, a bunch of Russian scientists are in the process of chilling their own shit because they believe that Apophis is on track to hit the earth on April 13, 2036. They say that the normally harmless asteroid will whip by the earth in 2029 and will pass through something called a gravitational keyhole, which will suck it in just enough so on its next pass, it will smash right into old Terra Firma.

Of course, other scientists, including those at NASA, say that the Russians are full of shit. However they do admit that if this gravitational keyhole thing does happen, there's about a 1 in 250,000 chance that the mash-up could occur. I have to take this seriously as these odds are better than those of the Chicago Cubs ever making it to the World Series.

So, let's see ... if I live past my next birthday, I'd be about 84 years old when the Uncreator takes a bead on Earth. I ask you, what better way to go out than to be vaporized by a Killer Asteroid named after an Egyptian snake?

After a bit of shallow web surfing, I found an excellent animation that was put together depicting what the Apophis/Earth smackdown would look like. The fact that I'm a Floyd-head from way back and this animation is scored to PF's "The Great Gig In The Sky" makes it doubly awesome ... and a bit frightening.

If you don't do anything else today, check this out.

Single Digit Thoughts

2011-02-09T09:41:00.000-06:00

For reasons I'll explain sometime in the future, this has been one of the shittiest weeks I've experienced in quite some time. And it isn't even over yet.

This morning, the mountains of snow surrounding my house glitter in the morning sun. But that's all they're going to do today ... Glitter ... as the temperature outside is at a balmy two.

My neighbor and I have come to an uneasy truce after days of blowing snow on each other's driveways. The village has made their last attempt to clear our small cul-de-sac, piling giant hills of frozen precipitation half way into our front yard. The only way I can see anything but the roofs of any of my neighbor's houses is to peer out from the second floor windows of our house.

There comes a point in every one of my 33 years in this part of the country where something snaps and you can't stand winter any more. The point where you don't even want to go outside and that you feel that some animals are much smarter than you because they have enough sense to simply sleep during this period of time.

This morning, my thoughts turned to where we plan to be in another couple of years. About 600 miles south of here, where the winters are milder and it hardly ever snows or gets below freezing. And then I opened the on-line newspaper for the town and saw that they were in the middle of their third blizzard in as many weeks.

Did I mention what a shitty week this has been?

Snow Day

2011-02-03T10:16:00.000-06:00

I live in Northeastern Illinois, just a stone's throw from Chicago. As you might have heard, we had a bit of a blizzard recently. It's interesting how advanced weather forecasting has become. All of the weather parrots predicted that the blizzard would start at exactly 3 p.m. on Tuesday. And as I was out clearing the drive of the minor snow we had received earlier in the day, at 3:00 the winds started howling and the snow started coming down heavily; sideways and in sheets. I worried and fretted for about an hour until Jan arrived home and pulled into the garage. Then we could both relax.

The power stayed on and the house remained in one piece as the wind howled and the snow came down throughout the evening and overnight. There's something special about that period of time. You can't do anything about what's going on outside, and there's the fact that everything is cancelled for the next day and you have no worries about going to work. You can just watch and marvel at what's going on around you.

Jan went to bed early, but I turned out the lights and wandered from room to room, looking out the windows at what was going on in the orange hued semi-darkness outside. Even after midnight, in the worst part of the storm, I saw a car making it's way down the street and I wondered what the hell could be so important that they had to be out driving around. At about 1 a.m. the man across the street came out and started shoveling his driveway. The winds were shrieking about this time and every shovel he took was almost immediately filled in with half as much snow as he had taken out. He kept this up, working like someone crazed, for about a half-hour, then he went back inside and his house lights went out.

I've been though two of the three worst blizzards ever recorded in this area and I still don't know what's worse ... continual 5 to 10 inch snows that occur every 3 to 5 days, like they've had in the Northeast this year, or one big horrendous dump of over two feet, like we had Tuesday night.

Things still operate when you get a bit at a time, but it works on your head gradually. All at once paralyzes everything and you have a shock to the system that doesn't go away real fast. Particularly if you're an adult. Because you know that you're responsible for getting yourself out.

Jan and I spent three hours yesterday clearing out modest driveway. And we have a big-ass snow blower. Snow blowers are nice, but they don't work real well when you're attacking a drift that's as high as your chest. You have to knock it down with shovels and then blow it away. So, after three hours of work, we finally had the driveway looking like this:

Great, the driveway was clear. But there was a 3 foot wall at the end of it because the street hadn't been plowed. At that point, there's nothing you can do, but go back inside and wait it out. Snow is pretty at first, but after a day shoveling the shit, it gets pretty ugly. I was glad when night fell yesterday evening, so I didn't have to look at the shit anymore.

Today, I'd like to relax. But as a two person household, we produce trash. This is where my trashcan is:

Somewhere On The Other Side Of That Door

So, I've got my work cut out for me later on this morning. I'll wait until the temperature gets above zero though.

What's really discouraging ... and what you really have to put out of your mind, is that the odds of seeing bare ground again for about a month are slim to none.

Shit. I hate snow.