June 30, 2003

a fond memory

Rick, Steve and I went up to Joyce Kilmer State Park in North Carolina for our third trip up to the top of Hangover Mountain. I fell in Slickrock Creek on the third crossing and told them to go own while I put on some fresh socks and dry britches. (It's not called "Slickrock Creek" for nothing) We had been drinking and doping all night long on the way up there.

I changed clothes, ate a can of vienna sausages and smoked a cigarette. Then I went to catch up with them.

I made it to the base of the mountain, where it's nothing but STRAIGHT UP from there, and I never saw my friends. I walked out onto a rock ledge and shouted at them but heard no reply. I KNEW that the fuckers didn't go any farther than where I was, because it was the last decent campsite before the grueling climb to the top of the mountain. Ain't no way they went past there with the sun going down.

So, I camped there by myself that night and had a goddam wild hog come tearing down off the mountain to terrorize me. That sumbitch had a severe case of attitude and sounded like an army of trolls when he came rushing down the streambed in the dark. I bounced several large rocks off of him, but he paid no attention. Shit, I think the bastard LIKED being hit by rocks.

He started snorting and grunting and rooting around the campfire and I am sitting there in my hammock with a Bowie Knife in one hand and a canteen full of bourbon in the other. I looked at the knife, I looked at the hog and I took a drink from the canteen. What else are you going to do?

Bohunkus Boar finally got tired of fucking with me and wandered away. He sounded like a goddam elephant stomping through the woods. I laid down in my hammock and went to sleep.

The next morning, I figured that I would give Rick and Steve until 11:00 to become unlost. Otherwise, I was going on to the top of the mountain without them. I would make my own way back home from there. At 10:45, I saw two heads bobbing up the trail. It was them.

"WHERE IN THE HELL HAVE YOU ASSHOLES BEEN?" I asked, politely.

"Fuh-e-duh! Fuh-e-duh!" said Rick.

"We got all fucked-up, Rob," said Steve. "Where the trail turns down by the river we kept going straight and found a dead end. Rick just said "Fuh-e-duh" and went to sleep. I said "fuh-e-duh" and went to sleep, too. We figured that you would be okay and you would wait for us."

Well, they were right. They left me asshole deep in a creek, ran off and got lost, delared "fuh-e-duh" and went to sleep, depending on ME, who fell in the creek when they didn't, to take care of myself. See what good friends I have?

Steve died in February of this year. The last time I saw him, we laughted about that backpacking trip. We were young, dumb and full of cum back then.

Bejus. I miss those days.

i am going to play again

I posted a Catfish email about golf and I got a lot of comments, most from people who never played golf. I haven't played since July 5th, 2001. I remember that last round as if it were yesterday. I always remember when I play for money.

I won money that day, with a 205-yard five wood shot over 200 yards of water on the 18th hole that ended up ten feet from the flag. I drilled that fucking shot and then I sank the putt for all the money.

Then, I put my clubs away one week later and I have not picked them up since. My life fell apart.

To me, golf has been the most daunting game I've ever played. It's you against the course. You can't blame anything on anybody but yourself if you fuck up. But if you come into #18 with $80 riding on your next shot and your competitor has carried the water and put his shot on the green 40 feet from the hole, you CAN'T lay up. You also realize that if you fuck this shot up, it's all over but the crying. That's when golf really becomes golf.

You KNOW that you can hit that shot, because you've done it before, and you just have to believe. So, you do it.

When it comes off the club, you know. Before you look up to see the ball you're already saying, "Be the right stick, baby!" It felt crisp when you hit it and it was just right. You watch that sucker headed for the green and say "Get UP, you sonofabitch! Be the right stick!"

When the ball clears the water by five feet, bounces on the rim of the green and rolls up right in front of the pin, you feel almost as if you just had an orgasm. I DID IT!!!

People who don't play golf don't understand that feeling. People who don't play poker don't understand that feeling. It ain't like watching grass grow. It's hanging your ass out there with nobody but yourself to depend on. When you do it right, it is BETTER THAN SEX! Especially when you sink the putt and get called a Lucky Sumbitch by the guy who has to slap leather and pay you $80 because you did what you had to exactly WHEN you needed to.

Golf is a sublime game. It will check your character. Especially when you gamble on it.

a floating turd day

This was a long, boring Monday, hotter than hell's barbecue grill and totally worthless. Things were just THERE, with no crises, no challenges and not much to do. This day sucked like Hoover and seemed to last AT LEAST 72 hours.

I cross three railroad tracks on the way home from work. I got stopped by two trains today. The one on President Street was a pain in the ass, but it passed fairly quickly.

Not so on Highway 21. I sat for 15 minutes in Garden City while a 1,000,000 car-long line of freight rumbled at snail-like speed to the Georgia ports and a gully-washing, frog-strangling thunderstorm fell on my truck. Traffic backed up from here to Florida. I finally went two miles down the road and saw pavement as dry as a popcorn fart.

Do YOU ever have those Fleet enema kinds of days? This was one of mine and I'm just surprised that I didn't have a flat tire on the way home. The omens were there. Fate was pissed at me. I was due to be run over by a pulpwood truck while changing a tire on Highway 21 in the rain. Today SUCKED!

I am going to bed early tonight. Tomorrow HAS to be a better day. If it gets any worse than this, I'll THROW MYSELF under a pulpwood truck just to get it over with.

As Mondays go, this one was a real prizewinner.

symbolic protest

Tomorrow the state tax on cigarettes triples. It'll still be lower than most other states (37 cents per pack), but I stopped at Randall's Liquor Store on the way home from work and bought five cartons just to screw the state out of the extra $12.50 in taxes that they would screw me out of if I bought those same smokes tomorrow.

Sonny Perdue hasn't been governor a year yet and he's already made my shit list. Anybody who raises taxes on cigarettes and claims to be "saving lives" is a lying hypocrite. The bastard just wants the money and he knows he can pick on smokers because they are a persecuted minority that nobody gives a shit about.

Yeah, Sonny you'll get me in the long run, but I saved $12.50 today.

June 29, 2003

i heard that

Quinton made friends with a deaf boy this weekend. Michael can't hear and he talks funny, but he can read lips. I just had to make him look at me when I wanted to tell him something. He "hears" you if he can see your lips move. He felt right at home in the Crackerbox and he is damned good with a video game.

I wonder about a nine year-old lip-reader. Can he detect a yankee accent?

flying jesse jacksons

Ha! Group Captain lionel mandrake doesn't like sea gulls any more than I do. He calls them "flying rats" while I call them "squawk and shit machines."

Either way, it's Jesse Jackson with wings.

looky here

wizbang has a new site. It is quite nice. joni with the red toenails did the design and she performed as usual. Most excellent.

Damn. I knew her back when she was only an egg.

never thought about it before

You know what? A Georgia peach looks a lot like an attractive female ass when photographed correctly. I'll never look at a peach the same way again.

I'll still look at attractive female asses the way I always have.

i don't know why

Why does this woman put up with me? I've been mean to her, insulted her and pretty well told her to kiss my ass when I was drunk and depressed.

She told me to kiss HER ass, too, but she never stopped visiting my blog. She leaves cogent comments and I think I love her. I sometimes hurt the ones I love. Ask my mama about that.

My son loves me, too, but I wonder about what kind of daddy I am. Will he ever admire me the way I did MY father? I don't know. I don't know that I deserve that sort of admiration, either.

Young Jack showed up this morning and I fed both boys a hearty breakfast. The turds ate bacon, eggs and the last of my two-for-the-price-of-one cinnamin rolls I bought at Food Lion with my MVP card last Thursday. They're gut-full and playing Playstation II games now and they've found a chainsaw as one of their weapons. Severed limbs and blood are flying everywhere.

Boys like that shit.

"YOU KILLED HIM! NOW CUT HIS HEAD OFF!" I don't see a damned thing wrong with that. I was a boy once myself and I WISH that I had the opportunity to do what Quinton and Jack do today. Of course, my cousin Ernie and I spent a lot of time on the banks of the Cumberland River with a single-shot .22 rifle as our playstation. We shot whatever we could find to shoot.

Boys like that shit.

It's a Sunday. I'm getting all existential and depressed. I'm not a boy anymore. But I have two young men here who ARE boys.

I miss what I see happening around me.

things i was thinking

Why do people say, "I'm going to take a shit" when they intend to leave one?

Why are farts funny?

Why does it feel good to scratch my balls?

Why does it feel good to scratch my balls while it feels even BETTER to have a woman play with them?

I feel sorry for wimmen. They can't piss standing up in the woods. Well, some CAN, but most don't.

Why do some turds float while others sink?

Why does a cat bury its shit outside then piss on a potted plant indoors?

Why are there cats? I hate them.

Why are there monkeys? I hate them, too.

What is the meaning of my life? Am I merely a meat-eating, carbon unit who is an ugly bag of mostly water? Hell, that can't be right. I ain't ugly.

Why do bloggers take blogging seriously? 95% of meat-eating carbon units who are ugly bags of mostly water never heard of a blog. My urologist flies his own airplane and HE never heard of a blog until I told him about mine.

Why do we sleep at night and stay active during the day? It can't be completely natural because bats don't do that.

What makes you love somebody when you don't love everybody?

What is so goddam special about "diversity?"

It's all a mystery to me.

police photo

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