February 28, 2007

Testicle farms

Originally published March 26, 2006

It's bad enough that the Pussification of America is turning many men into whimpering bags of confused hormones (just like wimmen, only without the tits), but I never fully despaired over this process. It works only on the Barry Manilow or Alan Alda "sensitive" types of men--- guys who know the difference between mauve and puce--- and NOT on REAL men--- guys who think with their dicks and believe that "shit-stain" is a color.

No, I was willing to bet on the stubborn survival of Mandom, simply because man is so thoroughly disgusting to begin with. I AM a man and I know what I'm talking about here. You wimmen can smoothe off a few rough edges and force us to act civilized in public, but not even YOU, with all the pussy in the world under your control, can change a man from the pig he is into the prince you want him to be. It just ain't natural.

Besides, if feminist pressure really could change men, guys wouldn't think farts are so funny.

But I don't sell wimmen short. They are masters of plot and manipulation and I worry about their ideas for man's role in this world. Someone wise once said that the only reason wimmen need men today is because no one has yet invented a vibrator that can cut the grass. That's why this story made me feel uncomfortable in my pants. I can see a possible Brave New World here.

Men raised in captivity, on testicle farms, where wimmen harvest their jewels for stem cells.

Don't laugh--- it could happen. If wimmen claim that they're doing it "for the children," NOBODY is gonna have the nerve to complain.

Recouperation

Originally published March 29, 2006

I once thought that the Chevy Impala that I inherited from Mama was a smooth-riding car. I was mistaken. After going to the doctor for my post-surgical follow-up visit, I am thoroughly convinced that the goddam car rides like a pulpwood truck and it can find every bump in the road from Rincon to Savannah, no matter how hard the driver tries to avoid them.

That trip to town and back beat the shit out of me.

But I DID get my staples removed and the doctor said that I was healing nicely. A nurse took a sample of my blood to check for deadly, flesh-eating bacteria. I am NOT making that up. The doc told me that the kind of ulcer I had, which ate clean through my duodenum, usually is caused by a hostile bacteria in the stomach. If I've got it, they want to de-worm me to get rid of it. I'm all for that idea if it'll keep me from another trip to the hospital. I'll drink cod liver oil AND castor oil if it keeps me from being cut again.

I bitched and moaned about being in a lot of pain, but the doctor was unimpressed. He asked me what the hell I EXPECTED, considering the fact that I dumped raw stomach acid into my abdominal cavity for quite a while before he plugged the leak. I was not only half-assed when I arrived at the hospital--- I was half-digested internally, too. That shit is supposed to hurt.

Evidentally, based on how I feel, it's doing what it is supposed to do, because it hurts like hell. The doc gave me a refill on my pain medication and ran me off. I went home, took two pills and ate a couple of cherry popcicles; then, I fell asleep on the couch and slept for 14 hours. I enjoyed that sleep so much that I kept it up almost all day and all night yesterday, too. I think I've been awake for about 12 of the last 48 hours and asleep the rest of the time.

I feel better today. I ain't ready for any tree-climbing or sport-fucking just yet, but I'm getting there. The doc said that I'll need four to six weeks to get halfway back to normal and I'm at two weeks and three days right now. That's halfway to halfway, isn't it? More or less? I mean, this is the point where things start getting BETTER every day and I don't have any more relapses, right?

Besides--- I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. I have a garden to plant before I miss the weather. Hell, I haven't even been in my hot tub this month. That's enough fucking around. I gotta get well.

Before I forget--- thanks to everyone who offered to come by and "take care" of me during my recouperation. I'll repeat what I said when you offered the favor: Thanks, but NO THANKS. You don't WANT to be near me when I'm ailing. I am a pitiful, whining, obnoxious patient who could make YOU feel miserable after an hour of being around me, and make you want to KILL me after three hours.

No, I prefer to recover on my own. I've got enough enemies already without creating new ones right now. Besides, I don't want to survive this surgery just to end up planted on a testicle farm by a disgruntled nurse. All things considered, I'm better off alone.

At least I posted something today.

I wonder

Originally published March 29, 2006

I learned to drive on a stick-shift. About half the cars I've owned in my life were manual transmission models. I'm damn sure no stranger to a clutch and I still enjoy stirring the gearbox by hand when I drive. That's another skill like swimming or riding a bicycle--- if you ever learn to drive a manual transmission vehicle, you never forget how.

Unfortunately for the human race, I can name at least a dozen people I know who have NEVER driven a vehicle with a manual transmission. NEVER! Give them a REAL gear shift and a clutch pedal on the floor and these poor souls are fucked. They can't drive the car. And that's a cryin' shame.

Some cars just aren't BUILT for an automatic transmission. Take Recondo 32's Shelby Ford Mustang, for example. That car has a souped-up, short-block V-Eight with enough horsepower to fling your ass from the front seat into the back seat if you're not buckled up securely upon take-off. Putting an automatic transmission in THAT rocket would be akin to cutting the nuts off a very horny goat. The goat may not LOOK much different after the operation, but he damn sure ain't what he used to be.

Besides--- everybody ought to know how to drive a stick-shift just.... because. I've NEVER driven a vehicle with an automatic transmission that was as much FUN to drive as a stick, and I've never felt as "one" with a car as when I've downshifted on a curve and sped on squealing tires around it, feeling the g-forces press me against the seat. That's really DRIVING a car instead of just being on board steering.

I have a sneaky feeling that a lot of people don't know the difference anymore. Besides, if everybody had to operate a clutch to drive a car today, how the hell would they manage to keep a cell phone pressed to their heads all the time? Bejus! They need that clutch-hand free to press their speed-dial numbers. What good is driving if you can't talk on the phone while you do it?

Which brings me to my Poll Question for the week: Can YOU drive a car with a standard transmission? If so, DO you drive one today?

February 27, 2007

Flirting

Originally published October 21, 2004

I am a natural-born flirt. I am NOT ashamed of that fact, either. I'll flirt with young girls, old ladies, fat wimmen, skinny wimmen, good-looking wimmen and plain Janes. I flirt with ALL wimmen.

What's wrong with just saying something nice to someone you don't know? One of the things I hated about my few brief sojourns up north was the fact that people don't SPEAK to each other or LOOK at each other the way we do down South.

I'm not talking about being a leering, braying jackass. That shit will get you shot where I live, and a woman might do it, too.

I'm talking about just being nice and outgoing and being polite to people when you can. I don't see anything wrong with telling a woman I don't know that she looks good, or that I really like her hair or that she has a beautiful daughter. Most Southern wimmen appreciate such attention. I've never been slapped for doing such things, but I have been kissed a couple of times.

Southern wimmen know how to flirt, too. In fact... I think they wrote the book on that subject. They know how to dangle that golden fruit just beyond your reach and laugh quietly when you fall on your ass going for it. They are heartless and incorrigable and I love 'em all.

I want to start a National Flirting Day, where every man, woman and child in this country MUST go out and FLIRT with somebody. Say something nice, complement somebody's looks, kiss a stranger. Be bold. Flirt your ass off.

We'd be a better country if we adopted my idea.

Things I know

Originally published October 21, 2004

Here is a list of things that I KNOW, but I can't prove.

#1-- Osama Bin Laden is dead.

#2-- John Kerry would make a shitty President.

#3-- Dan Rather lied KNOWING that he was LYING and he thought he could get away with it.

#4-- Julia Roberts is not pretty nekkid, with no make-up.

#5-- Teresa Kerry may suck, but she doesn't swallow.

#6-- Barbra Streisand has a very high opinion of herself, but a low IQ.

#7-- Michael Moore wears drawers big enough to serve as a circus tent. He has racing stripes in the back and he never washes them. His idea of a shower is half a can of Right Guard sprayed on his stinking armpits.

#8-- We will win the war on terror, but we will lose the war on drugs.

#9-- I'm going to jail one of these days for Contempt of Court. I'll be guilty as hell, too. Actually, "contempt" is too kind a word to describe my feelings about our court system.

#10-- Democrats will cheat more than Republicans do in the next election, then they'll whine about "disenfranchisement" and other such shit the way poor losers do when they lose the election. Lawyers will come swarming out of the woodwork to sue everywhere.

I may be wrong, but I don't think so.

Aliens

Originally published October 25, 2004

I finally have permission from the Mother Ship to tell the story. Three years ago, I was playing my guitar on the back porch when I saw a strange light in the sky. The longer I watched it, the brighter it became and I finally realized that IT WAS A SPACESHIP! LANDING IN MY BACK YARD!!!

The craft resembled one of those take-out chicken fahita salad containers you get at Taco Bell. The see-through top popped open and a strange-looking creature emerged. He said, "Take me to your leader."

I gave him the Vulcan split-finger salute and replied, "Live long and prosper. You're in MY YARD, so I am Tall Dog here. I'm all the leader you need to know."

He pulled some kind of communication device from his pocket and spoke a strange language into it. I was about to go run for a gun, but two VERY ATTRACTIVE aliens, obviously of what passed for females of their species, emerged from the spaceship. They appeared quite sexy to me. I decided to forget about the gun for the moment. The spaceship became invisible.

While I was gawking at the females, that tricky bastard who was first off the ship shot me with some kind of dart. It hit me right in the meat of my shoulder. I don't know what was in that dart, but it made me collapse on my back porch and experience sleepless dreams.

Let me tell you something about alien wimmen. They are insatiable. They have green skin and only one breast, right in the middle of their chest. That one breast has a very large, sensitive nipple on it. I've been accustomed to dual steering in that kind of situation, but you'll be surprised at how easily you adapt to one large breast with one sensitive nipple on a green-skinned woman who has a prehensile tail. Especially if you have TWO of them at one time.

After they raped me and took tissue samples, they cleaned my kitchen, cut my grass and hung around for almost a month, until I had to run them off. Damn if those fuckers can't drink some beer! They like pizza, too.

I don't know where they came from or where they went, but you KNOW it's a true story. You read it on the internet.

February 26, 2007

Crossword puzzles

Originally published February 26, 2005

I am very good at working crossword puzzles. I'll kick your ass in a game of Scrabble, too. Words are something I like to play with.

Yesterday, mama and I got into an argument about who was the best worker of crosswords. "Phffttt!: she said. "I'm the best that's ever been." She's good, but she can't beat me. I once told her that she paid for my COLLEGE EDUCATION so that I could work crosswords better than she could. She never bought that lame excuse.

When I was laid up at her house after my prostate surgery, I couldn't do very much physically, so I wrote a lot and worked crossword puzzles every day. I bought the Dell "EXPERT" books, too, filled with very complex puzzles, that you have to know your shit to solve. I used to play a trick on my mama.

I'd find a really hard puzzle, fill in a few boxes and go off to take a nap. I'd leave the magazine open on the Florida Room table, because I KNEW that mama couldn't resist. She'd see that partially-worked puzzle and have a genunine hormone attack. That thing HAD to be finished, and she'd go after it. You show my mama a half-worked crossword puzzle and it's like throwing a bone to a hungry dog. She's gonna gnaw on it.

Mama is good, but she's not as good as I am no matter how long she denies that fact. I would rise from my nap, find that puzzle 85% worked, then finish it off while mama watched.

"Phffftt!" she always said. ""You never would have finished it without my help. You were stuck when you quit."

That's my mama. She'll beat your ass at Scrabble or working crossword puzzles if you give her the chance. She ain't slack at either contest. Modesty is not her top quality, either. She'll talk shit at you.

But she's not as good as I am am, whether she admits it or not.

A time for everything

Originally published February 25, 2005

I paid a long visit to my mama today. (Isn't that a strange term? You "pay" someone a visit but you "give" them a call?) We sat in her kitchen and talked. She is still pretty wookie from the medication she's on, so I helped her work her morning crossword puzzle. We finished the entire thing.

The fluid in her lungs is already coming back and the Hospice people gave her a bottle of oxygen today. She's not having to use it yet, but she will have to shortly. She has congestive heart failure to go along with the rest of her medical problems. The Reaper is coming and we both know it, but we didn't speak directly about that.

We talked about my father.

Mama wants to meet with me and my brother to discuss her financial affairs so that we can handle what we need to do whenever we have to. She said that she liked my father's funeral--- short, simple and private--- and she wanted the same thing. She also told me that she has lived a wonderful life.
She found the right man, stayed with him for 40 years, raised two successful sons who make her proud and knew love all of her life.

She received about six phone calls while I was there, all from people just checking up on her to make sure she was okay---friends, neighbors and people from the church. A lot of people care about my mama. I am one of those people.

She's NOT okay, and she's not gonna BE okay. But her spirits are high and she has no regrets. I simply wish that death would be as kind to her as she has been to EVERYBODY all of her life. A lot of the strut I always carried in my step came from that woman. She was a natural-born show-off, too. I don't want to see her waste away into something I don't recognize as my mama anymore.

A week ago, she asked me if I wanted anything from the house. I told her that I didn't want anything FROM the house. I just wanted HER in it. But you don't always get what you want.

There is a time for everything, and she's approaching that ultimate stop sign that we'll all see someday. She isn't afraid. She doesn't feel sorry for herself. In fact, she's still more worried about the people around her than she is about her own problems. I cried on my drive back home today, and I don't know whether I was crying for her or for myself. Maybe both. It doesn't matter.

If you read this blog, you can either like me or hate me and your opinion won't change a damn thing about something I know with all my heart. I come from good stock.

I am my mama's son.

February 25, 2007

The attic

Originally published June 8, 2005

One thing we DON'T have in southeast Georgia is a basement. You dig a hole 10 feet deep around here and you hit water. You won't have a basement--- you'll have an indoor swimming pool or a fish-pond.

I always envied my friends up north who had basements. Those rooms were GREAT! You could put in a workshop, a pool table or just pile it full of junk as you turned it into a sanctorum--- a place to get away for a while. I spent many a fine day drinking beer and watching football on a big TV in somebody's basement.

Down South, we're stuck with attics. That's where all the detritus of life ends up in cardboard boxes or cedar chests over the years, because there's no room for it anywhere else. You don't go to the attic to party or drink beer--- it's too fucking HOT up there. But attics are wonderful places sometimes.

I read this post and remembered the stuff mama had in the attic when she died. Every report card my brother and I ever got from school. All our baby teeth in separate pill bottles, labeled with our names. Drawings, letters and great works of art from our childhood days. Pictures of mama and daddy long before my brother and I ever came along.

I can look at that kind of stuff for a long time before I get bored, even if it IS hot up there. That's a lot of my family history in those boxes and chests. I am very pleased that my mama chose to hang onto that stuff.

In my mind, what is in that attic is priceless.

Swagger

Originally published September 3, 2004

I don't like the word "swagger." It connotes arrogance and false vanity, maybe with some hubris thrown in for good measure. But I'll tell you one thing right now. Southern men tend to swagger, compared to men in other parts of the country. That's the way we walk.

That's NOT just a Texan trait, as Bush mentioned last night. ("Some people say I swagger. In Texas, we call that WALKING!") I've spent some time up north and I don't understand the hunched shoulders, the refusal to make eye-contact with a stranger on the sidewalk and that timid, LEAVE ME ALONE attitude that so many yankees display through body language.

Down South, you are EXPECTED to swagger. You're also expected to keep your word, be nice to old ladies and eat boiled peanuts. We have our traditions and we try to uphold them. Swagger is part of that tradition.

I once liked to walk into the Swamp Fox and announce my arrival with a big HELLO!!! to all the old farmers clustered around the coffee pot. I'd drag up a chair and sit down to catch up on all the gossip from Effingham County. That was the best newspaper I ever had. Those old (yeah, call them red-necks if you want to) fellows had been plowing this land since they were kids following their daddy behind a mule.

They were good story-tellers and fine people. The coffee was Southern espresso--- 30-weight motor oil, with no sugar. That stuff could stand a spoon upright and make your hair curl. You could walk in there and make yourself at home anytime.

But you needed to swagger when you came through the door.

Easily pissed

Originally published September 3, 2004

I don't know HOW I managed to do it, but I seem to have pissed off a couple of wimmen. I've gotten some downright hurtful comments from them. I read those words and began to hyperventilate. I got a case of the vapors. I had to go to my room and cry in the closet for a while. I threw something and broke it for no good reason.

The fact that I WATCHED MY FATHER DIE after a long battle with cancer doesn't seem to matter to these wimmen. I WAS THE ONE who made the call, telling the doctors to back off and leave my dad to die as peacefully as possible. The fact that my mama turned to ME and said, "handle it" after my father died and I had been awake for 36 hours doesn't mean shit, either. I am a heartless sumbitch, a Dancer With Prostitutes, and a pig. That's what happens when wimmen "feel."

If they didn't have a pussy, there'd be a got-dam bounty on them.

February 24, 2007

Advice

Originally published May 4, 2005

I stole this idea from here and here. I've lived long enough to accumulate a bit of worldly wisdom, and I feel that is my civic duty to share some of it with you.

So, here are Acidman's 21 Pieces of Good Advice

1) If it sounds too good to be true, it is.

2) You NEVER get something for nothing in this world. Somebody has to pay.

3) If you never learn to play a musical instrument, you're missing out on one of the greatest pleasures in life.

4) Money isn't everything. Having money is better than being broke, but greed is the ugliest of sins.

5) Never betray a friend. That's a cut that never heals.

6) It's okay to fuck up. Everybody does. Just don't make it a habit to fuck up the same way over and over again. Learn from your mistakes.

7) Love your mama. She's the only one you'll ever have.

8) When you're knocked down, get back up, even when it hurts. Understand that life is going to pound you sometimes and learn to roll with the punches. If the pounding doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger.

9) Don't EVER say, "I love you" if you don't mean it.

10) There is no such thing as free pussy in this world. You're going to pay for it, one way or another.

11) Treat other people the way you want to be treated.

12) Keep your word, but NEVER expect a politician to do the same.

13) Drive in the got-dam right lane if you're not passing somebody. Use turn signals, too.

14) Turn OFF your fucking cell phone in movie theaters, restaurants and churches. Are you really THAT important? You can't go two hours without talking on the phone?

15) If you MUST use a cell phone in your car, pull over and park to do it. If more people HAD to do that, we'd have fewer people talking on cell phones. Those calls suddenly wouldn't be so important.

16) Take shit when you have to, but don't make it a habit. DO NOT take shit when you can stop it.

17) Learn to tell the difference between "friends" and "acquaintences." It doesn't matter whether you slept with them or not. There is a big difference between the two.

18) Be a complete slut in bed. Try it all and never feel guilty about it.

19) Accept responsibility for your own actions.

20) Eat what you like to eat and fuck all the doctors. Drink, smoke and dance with the devil. Who wants to live 100 years being miserable?

21) Read my blog every day. It is witty, well-written and just chock-full of gems such as this post. Trust me. Reading MY blog will make you a better person, not that I'm trolling for traffic or anything.

There. That's MY humble advice.

Cell phones

Originally published April 27, 2005

I would like to drag off and shoot everybody who has one. They are GREAT communication devices, but that's not how most people use them. To most people, cell phones are a neat toy to use to call up and irritate somebody for no good reason whatsoever.

I don't like talking on the phone. I never have and I never will. I have TOLD numerous people that I don't like talking on the phone and what do I get? Hey, I'm on their speed-dial--- so call Rob and ask, "Whatcha doing?"

Is that a great way to start an important conversation or what? "Whatcha doing?" Well, I was minding my own fucking business until YOU called. Now, I'm on the phone with a dip-stick who called me just because he or she had happy fingers.

Georgia called me this weekend. It was the typical cell phone call. "Rob! It's Georgia! Does your carpet cleaner have attachments that allow you to clean a car?" I told her that I didn't know, but she was welcome to come over and look at it herself.

"I can't right now, because we're on the way to Melborne. Huh, huh huh. But when we get back, I may want to come look at it." Good, I said. When you get back from Melborne, you are more than welcome to look at my carpet cleaner.

Maybe I'm all fucked-up here, but I have a question. Why in the hell would you call somebody to ask about a carpet cleaner when you are going as fast as you can in the opposite direction from the carpet cleaner? Somewhere on Interstate 95, you realized just HOW IMPORTANT IT WAS to call Rob, RIGHT NOW about his carpet cleaner?

Bullshit. People with cell phones feel a NEED to call somebody. And they do. What REALLY chaps my ass is when the cell-phone addicts call somebody and hand ME the phone, saying "Talk to them."

If I wanted to talk to them, I would have called myself. I don't LIKE to talk on the phone. I don't make calls to ask "whatcha doing?" I don't find the urge to call somebody and ask about a carpet cleaner in Rincon, Georgia, when I'm headed for Melborne, Florida, either.

I think cell phones should be implanted in people's asses and it should hurt like a rock-hard shit to get it out. Maybe that would stop some of the silly crap I see every day.

Snappin' pussy

Originally published April 24, 2005

The subject of "snappin' pussy" arose somehow at the Georgia Writer's Workshop. My eloquent friend Catfish promised to "blodge" on the subject and now he has done so. Read that post and learn.

The term "snapper" came from the snapping turtles we have in the marshes and swamps around Savannah. When a snapping turtle clamps his jaws on something, he doesn't turn loose. He'll hang on even after he's dead and you cut his head off. "Snapper" means powerful muscles and a genuine death-grip.

Some wimmen have snapping pussies. I've known four in my life and it is truly a unique experience to meet one. They have vaginal muscle control that most wimmen never bother to master. Make love to one of those and IS like sticking your Roscoe in a milking machine, only a LOT better.

You don't even have to move. Hell... SHE doesn't have to move. She does everything internally and seemingly with little effort. Making love to a snapping pussy is a religious experience.

A true snapper can crack a raw pecan in her cooter, then spit out the shell, leaving the nut intact. A true snapper can take the lid off an imported beer bottle and never use her hands. A true snapper can handle a raw egg without breaking it, and then turn right around and crush a 16-ounce glass RC Cola bottle back into sand.

All four told me that ANYBODY could learn those techniques--- it was just a matter of practice. I enjoyed letting them practice on ME.

That's just MY humble opinion. I could be making this shit up.

February 23, 2007

A whirling dervish

Originally published November 14, 2004

I don't know what's gotten into me the past week or so. I've been reading a lot, taking walks in the woods, going shooting every couple of days and....CLEANING HOUSE!!! Yes, you read that correctly. I actually have been trying to bring some semblance of order and hygene to the Crackerbox again.

Now, I'm not KILLING myself with the cleaning, because I can take only so much of that shit at one time, but so far I have managed to shampoo the carpets, scrape and scrub all the grime off my kitchen stove, polish the kitchen cabinets, mop and wax the kitchen floor, shine all the countertops and even clean the refrigerator, inside and out. All the clothes piled in the laundry room are either on hangers in a closet or folded in a drawer now.

The house is starting to look pretty good.

Yesterday, Recondo 32 and Georgia came over to watch the Bulldog's game with me. Georgia walked in, looked around and said, "Holy shit, Smith! What happened here? I think I'm in the wrong house!" She was very impressed with my efforts, but she couldn't help observing that if I didn't let it get so filthy in the first place, the cleanup wouldn't be so much work. Yadda, yadda.

I'm just taking one room at a time for a few hours off and on every day. I'll be tackling my bedroom tomorrow, then on to the computer room. (THAT mess may take a week to unfuck.) When I am finished, I will have a clean and orderly house, which means that I probably won't be comfortable here anymore.

I don't know if I'm doing this cleaning because sobriety is so got-dam BORING or if I'm getting in touch with my gay side. But I find myself sitting on the couch and staring at my nicotine-and-dust-stained ceiling fan. I'm going to remove the blades and the light globes tonight, clean the blades and run the globes through the dishwasher. Then, I'll put it all back together again, CLEAN.

If my mama saw me doing this shit, she would worry about me.

Odd

Originally published November 14, 2004

I never thought Quinton resembled me very much. He always looked a lot more like his mama than he did me. But I had an amazing experience when I saw him today for the first time in almost six months. I don't know whether he's changing or I just never was away from him long enough to notice before.

My boy looks a LOT like me, especially when I was his age.

He's still got eyes the shape of his mama's, almost oriential, with a curious downturn at the corners; but the irises are Scots-Irish hazel-green, the same as mine. He's damn sure got the famous Smith Chin, which my daughter still curses me for giving her. The Smith Chin is long and pointy, almost like a garden spade.

Personally, I believe that a strong chin is a sign of strong character. I don't trust chinless fuckers. They ain't got no grit. I don't trust a man with an ass wider than his shoulders, either, but I'm getting off-topic here.

Quinton isn't bow-legged the way I am, but he's short-waisted and stocky, just like daddy. He even RUNS with that odd, almost straight-legged gait that I've had all my life. His nose is looking more and more like mine every day, too, which may be more of a curse than a blessing when he grows older. But I think a formidable nose is a sign of strong character, too. Maybe it also means he has a big dick. I hope so.

Basketball tryouts start in two weeks, and Quinton is going out for the 11-to-12 year-old league. He won't be eleven until December 28th, but he wants to play with the older boys. "I'll be eleven before the season's over," he explained. "Besides, I'm better than most of 'em anyway."

I think he also inherited my humility.

February 22, 2007

I don't like it

Originally published July 30, 2004

A lot of people believe in things that I don't. That's okay with me as long as those people don't try to shove THEIR BELIEFS down my throat. I'm a live and let live kinda guy. Don't tread on me and I won't tread on you.

But don't fuck with me, either. Too much of the world today is dedicated to the mission of FUCKING with people who just want to be left alone. Look at the federal government. That octopus fucks with me all the time. Look at environmentalists, anti-smokers, lawyers and my ex-wife. They ALL live and breathe for the sole purpose of fucking with me or somebody else. I don't like it.

I don't like goddam "customer service" that runs me through a machine and keeps me on hold for 15 minutes before I get to speak to a human being. I don't like it. I don't like dickweeds who drive in the left lane when they are not passing another vehicle. I don't like it.

I don't like political correctness nor do I like people saying "gender" when they mean sex. I don't like losing my job because of my blog. I don't like a system where what I do on my own time scares the shit out of a multi-billion dollar corporation who would rather fire (excuse me..."retire") a valuable employee than risk a stupid lawsuit from some neurotic nitwit.

I don't like neurotic nitwits who believe that the sun rises and sets right square in the crack of their asses, and insist that the entire universe should stop expanding and cater only to THEM. I don't like whiners. I don't like people who encourage whining (yeah... I watched the Democratic Convention).

I stick by my friends. I don't like squishy people. I don't like being told what to do by someone who doesn't know me or care about me. That uniform doesn't impress me. Any asshole can get one of those. In fact, aside from the military, a LOT of assholes wear uniforms and try to tell me what to do. I don't like it.

I want to be left alone. What is wrong with that?

I mind my own business and I try to live a good life. I believe that the world would be a better place if EVERYBODY behaved the way I do. I am not petty, vindictive, venal or vain, and I don't like people who are. Hollywood celebrities piss me off when they talk politics. Politicians piss me off, period. Leftists piss me off because they are barking moonbats. Our divorce courts piss me off because they side with a bloodless cunt over me.

I stay pissed off a lot.

Slavery was abolished in 1863. Look around today. We are ALL becoming slaves to a government that cares nothing about the individual. Government exists to stretch its own power and it is damn good at that job. Government tells us how much water our toilets can flush, how fast we can drive on a highway, where we can and cannot smoke, what we can and cannot do in bed, and they TAKE OUR MONEY to pay for this shit.

I don't like it.

I cussed them out

Originally published July 30, 2004

I got pissed at several companies today and I cussed them out over the phone. I cancelled my long-distance service because they charged me for calls that I didn't make and then treated me like dirt when I called to complain. I was on hold for 15 minutes before an actual human being spoke to me and I was righteously outraged by then. I cussed the person who actually picked up the phone. I ain't paying that fucking bill, either.

I am pissed off at Earthlink. My email doesn't work any more and the damn thing cuts off and shuts down my computer every five minutes if I try to use that service. I called them, too. I got a mechanical voice telling me to deal with them through my email. HOW IN THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO THAT WHEN MY GODDAM EMAIL DOESN'T WORK??? THAT'S WHAT I'M CALLING ABOUT, YOU ASSHOLE!!!

Customer service has gone right down the toilet today. Once upon a time, I remember being able to pick up the phone and call someone when I had a complaint. You can't do that now. You get a fucking machine that wants you to press a series of menu buttons so that the company hopes you just get frustrated enough to hang up and eat their shit.

Keep up the good work, robots. I got rid of my long-distance service, Earthlink and AOL today. Three different companies lost a lot of money from me because they don't have the common courtesy to provide a living person for me to talk to.

Fuck 'em all.

Pensive thoughts

Originally published July 29, 2004

I took a nap this afternoon while rain fell hard outside the Crackerbox. I woke up not knowing where I was. For a moment I believed that I was still in Costa Rica with bags to pack and a plane to catch. When the fog cleared from my brain and I realized that I was at home in my own bed, I wished that I was somewhere else.

My good neighbor Henry collected all my mail while I was gone and he delivered it today. In the mix was a letter from Jennifer telling me that I still owed her $106 for Quinton's medical bills. I wrote the cunt a check.

The biggest mistake I ever made in my life was siring my son. I love him like a rock and I am proud of him, but if I take a step back and analyze my situation carefully, I know what a mistake his birth was. Jennifer wouldn't have the stranglehold on me that she does without Quinton. And I haven't seen or heard from my boy since Father's Day.

I married Jennifer and I was totally in love when I did. I was totally in love with her the day she divorced me. I left the Effingham County courthouse and pulled off on the side of the road the first chance I got. I sat in my truck and cried like a baby. She went merrily off to fuck somebody else and never thought about me again, unless she wanted some money.

Having prostate cancer is no picnic in the park. Sometimes I wonder if just dying from it wouldn't have been better than what I've been through the past three years.

I wonder why so many sheeple hate George Bush and love Bill Clinton. Clinton is a complete slimeball, the dick-directed asshole. But a lot of people prefer HIM over what I believe is a good man. Bush doesn't please me all the time, but at least he's not getting blow-jobs in the Oval Office. Yeah---I believe that a President of the United States should have more self-control than to do what Clinton did.

Jimmy Carter should either shut up his face or be dragged off and shot. Bejus! The guy was a totally incompetent President. He was a complete fuck-up, and a lot of the problems we have in the Middle East tiday are the results of HIS assholery. If I were going to make an idiot burrito, Jimmy Carter would be right in the middle of the wrap. He wasn't worth a shit when he was Governor of my beloved state of Georgia, and he's not worth a shit today. The Dems love that grinning bastard. Go figure.

I love living in the South. I like the weather, I like the pretty wimmen and I like the way people interact here. I can't see me EVER living up north. And people who vote for a flip-flopping prick from Taxachussettes deserve what they get. Kerry won't carry Georgia, because too many people here think the way I do. The guy is an asshole.

My bullshit detector ran over the red line and broke while I was watching the Democratic convention. That circus of morons wasn't even worth a TV brick hurled at the screen.

Okay, I am finished with my rant.

February 21, 2007

Advice

Originally published February 16, 2005

If one more person tells me that I need a girlfriend in my life, that I need to find "love" again and share all of my wonderful, gentle, caring attributes with a Significant Other, I'm gonna go on a got-dam rampage with a baseball bat while I howl at the moon and smash car windshields and U.S. mailboxes. I don't WANT a girlfriend.

And I damned sure don't want one who would have ME.

(Besides... if I want a companion, I can get one from a warehouse, kinda like shopping at Home Depot instead of engaging in exotic courtship rituals.)

A science lesson

Originally published February 16, 2005

From my brother:

GOVERNMENTIUM

A major research institution has recently announced the discovery of
the heaviest chemical element yet known to science. The new element has
been tentatively named "Governmentium". Governmentium has one neutron, 12
assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 11 assistant deputy neutrons,
giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which
are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.
Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert.

However, it can be detected as it impedes every reaction with which it
comes in contact. A minute amount of Governmentium causes one reaction to
take over four days to complete when it would normally take less than a second.

Governmentium has a normal half-life of three years; it does not decay, but
instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each
reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming "isodopes"
This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to speculate
that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity
in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as "Critical Morass."

You will know it when you see it. When catalyzed with money, Governmentium
becomes "Administratium" -- an element which radiates just as much energy
since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.

(Ain't it the truth!)

I must go cry now

Originally published February 16, 2005

Real men, do, you know. Cry, I mean. When people insult me and my mama and talk about what a big old fart woman-hating, red-necked asshole I am, I really get my feelings hurt. I curl into a fetal ball and weep.

Of course YOU [Ed. Link said "Page not found."] don't have commenters like that, do you? You have nice, flower-tossing people who LOVE YOU. That crap comes only from MY fetid site. Let's see....

It's just the A-Man monthly shitstorm. He does this crap for attention and is a selfish little boy who likes to lash out at people. The scary part is, he actually thinks he's a decent man.

Posted by MK at February 16, 2005 01:17 AM

Gah, that guy seems to be WAY over sensitive if you ask me, he cant even look at what you have writen and get that is not a stab at Jason.

It also seems to be me that he has some REAL women issues (plus he needs to learn how to spell words correctly becuase spelling 'women' as 'wimmen' is the dumbest, hick-est, inbred thing you can do). Sorry dude, your wife left you and got everything you owned, but hey did you ever think that MAYBE you DESERVED it? Since you seem to be attacking women a lot lately, it really dosn't come as a shock to me.

Anyways Gen, you ignore that old, grey son-of-a-bitch, he has some mother and wife issues on the back burner, and you just say fuck it. We all know that you were not attaking Jason for being emotionally aware of a movie, and you absolutly, 120% deserve Jason, don't you think otherwise! Don't let that old crabby bastard get you down, ok?

Posted by Riika at February 15, 2005 10:26 PM

What an asshole, I'm going to go over and say a few words. Posted by Jen at February 15, 2005 09:46 PM

See why I'm hiding in the closet while sucking my thumb and curling in a fetal position? COMMENETERS ARE MEAN!!! And I can't TAKE IT!!!

Here's how I cry about that: "BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!" Fuck every one of you if you can't take criticism. Grow a cast-iron butt or quit blogging. I wrote you an apology (which I seldom do) and if that's not good enough, you can kiss my Cracker ass along with your commenters.

I'm in the kitchen. I don't mind the heat.

February 20, 2007

Conservative blogger

Originally published August 29, 2004

A lot of people group my blog in with the "conservative" wing of blogdom. I am not a feces-flinging leftist, but I do not consider myself to be a conservative. I once preferred the Reagan form of Republicanism over what the left had to offer, and I saw a clear line in the sand back then. But the winds of change have obscured that line and I can't see it anymore.

How can anyone call me a conservative when I like to go to Florida and walk around nekkid for a week? Get a baboon suntan on my ass and let people take pictures of me wearing nothing but a sarong? I don't believe that Jerry Falwell would approve of my behavior. Hell, my mama doesn't either, but she gave up on trying to change me a long time ago.

I believe that the war on drugs should be called off as a lost cause. I believe that ANYBODY who wants to amend the Constitution for ANYTHING should be dragged off and shot. I believe that prostitution and gambling should be legal. I disapprove of abortion from a personal standpoint, but I KNOW that no government will ever stop it from happening, so let's be reasonable about it. Abortion is not an all or nothing issue, no matter what shrieking feminists say.

I believe in holding people responsible for their own actions. I DO NOT believe that government is the answer to every problem on the face of the planet, because I read history and government is RESPONSIBLE for most of the problems it desperately wants to "solve" today. Just give them more of your money and they'll fix the problem this time.

Unlike a lot of other people, I know that government can't "give" anything to anybody that it hasn't taken from someone else first. I disobey laws that I believe are stupid all the time, but I am willing to pay the price if I am caught. I make my OWN goddam decisions. I am a free man.

I will not be a slave to government, even though that's what government expects and that's what a lot of idiots DEMAND today. I am one of the few people who dare to suggest that the Unholy Trinity of American History were Abe Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. All three wiped their asses on the US Constitution and people PRAISED them for doing so.

As I've said before--- some people are just too stupid to live free. And if THAT'S a "conservative" attitude, then I need to listen to your definition of a conservative.

Dead truck, new neighbors

Originally published August 29, 2004

I wanted to go see my mama today. I loaded up a bunch of pictures I intended to show her, and I even remembered to stick a pocketful of Costa Rican coins in my cut-offs to leave for my Uncle Virgil's collection of international coins.

I went outside, hopped in my truck and heard nothing but a "click-click-click" noise when I turned the key in the ignition. WTF? I thought. Did my starter just die on me so quickly?

I did the elementary trouble-checks. The lights work. I tried starting the truck in neutral instead of drive. I rolled the truck a few feet forward, put it in "Park" and tried again. Nothing but "click, click, click."

I thought THEN that I could see a tow-truck or a lot of begging in my immediate future. I took a wild chance and hooked my battery charger up to the battery. The damn thing went straight to zero amps, which told me that it wasn't charging SHIT, because the battery already held a full charge.

I was pissed by then, so I went inside to call mama and tell her that I wouldn't be coming over. I tried to look on the bright side. At least my truck was dead in the driveway instead of dead in the middle of nowhere. I fixed something to eat and started making plans for tomorrow. I figured that I had a lot to do, but the first step was to get that useless battery charger offa my truck.

I did that. On another wild hair, I decided to see if the truck would start. Lo and Behold, it did! It fired up like a tiger. I took it for a 20-mile ride and watched the ammeter on my instrument panel. The alternator was working. The battery was semi-dead.

I took the truck back home and scratched my head. How could the lights, radio and everything else in the truck work if the battery was dead? I am no auto mechanic, but I have a theory: it just takes more juice than the battery had left to turn that engine over. Lights and radio are easy. Kicking that Bendix out on the starter and turning the flywheel on a V-8 engine is difficult.

That's how I met my new neighbors. They moved in yesterday and I saw them sitting on their patio drinking tea this evening. I was sick and tired of fucking with that truck, so I decided that now was as good a time as anytime to go introduce myself to them. So, I did.

They are extremely nice folks and as I bitched about my truck to them, Nathan (the husband) said, "I was meaning to talk to you about that. Did you know that the dome light in your truck just comes on by itself at night and burns for hours at a time?" I told him that I didn't know that. He said, "It does, trust me. I wondered last night if you kept running to the truck and back."

We walked over to my truck to check it out. The dome light was off. I opened the door and the dome light came on. I closed the door and the dome light didn't go off. I said, "It's got a 10-second delay." We waited about 20 seconds and the dome light kept burning. I started opening and closing doors and finally the dome light went off. As we were standing there, the dome light came back on again, all by itself.

I threw a cussing hissy-fit right in front of my new neighbors. "I've got a got-dam short somewhere and I ain't worth a damn at electricity. This has been a goodam good truck and Old Paint never let me down before! I'm gonna get rid of this sumbitch and buy me something else! You better BEHAVE, darlin' because I'm about to pull your fuse." I started to crawl under the dashboard.

Nathan stopped me. "What are you doing, Rob?" he asked. "I'm going to pull the overhead light fuse if I can find it," I replied. Nathan said, "You're looking in the wrong place. The fuses are right here," and he snapped off a compartment on my dashboard that I never noticed before. He pulled the guts out of it and said, "Do you reckon 'Illumination' is it?" I said try it and see.

He pulled the fuse and the light went out. I coulda kissed him. "Thanks a lot," I told him. "You just saved me a lot of money."

"That's what neighbors are for, right?" He just grinned at me.

I introduced Nathan and his lovely wife Victoria to a couple of the neighbors. I don't usually do that kind of thing but I saw the people out in their yards and I wanted my new neighbors to get to know the people around them. Yes, I was Social Director this evening. I kinda enjoyed doing it, especially now that I know what's wrong with my truck. Everybody was polite and friendly, just the way they've always been to me.

Did I mention that Nathan and Victoria are black? No, I didn't think so.

That's the racist in me.

February 19, 2007

Training

Originally published June 30, 2004

I bought an Arby's roast beef sandwich today and I watched the kitchen staff prepare it. Got-dam! The whole process is like an automation and the employees are robots. What the hell has happened to fast food restaurants?

I was a very good grill cook during my younger days, back when waitresses (excuse me... WAITPERSONS) just shouted out the orders, stuck a ticket on a rotating carosel and expected YOU to get it right. I did, or I faced one hell of a cussing from an outraged waitress, who was only passing the words along from an outraged customer. You become good at your job very quickly that way.

I never had a timer to tell me when the french fries were done or when the meat on the grill was ready to flip. I DID THAT! I COOKED THE FOOD!!!! Machines and clocks didn't do it for me. I was proud of my expertise. I was one of the best grill cooks who ever waved a spatula over a stove and I KNEW IT. I could work the prep table like Edward Sissorhands and I could do it in my sleep. You LIKED a hamburger I cooked for you.

I see no such pride in fast-food work today. In fact, if you really want to confuse someone at a fast food restaurant, do what I did today. Have an order that adds up to some kind of dollars and four cents. Hand the employee a $20 bill. Once she's punched in the numbers on the "think FOR you register," say "Wait a minute. I've got four cents," and then hand her a dime. Watch every neural circuit in her brain lock up.

Do you think those people know how to MAKE CHANGE? Hell NO they don't. They've been TRAINED to be robots and they like it that way. Thinking for yourself is difficult. It's much easier to be a witless drone.

I confused that poor waitress badly enough today that I probably could have walked out of Arby's with a free sandwich, but I didn't. I said, "Darlin,' I gave you $20 and a dime. You owe me $16.06 in change." She heaved a sigh of relief and handed me the money.

I did her thinking for her and she was grateful. She's been well-trained.

Pennies

Originally published June 24, 2005

If you just save your loose pennies, they add up after a while. I am surprised, however, that the bank accepted 1.4 million of them. [Ed. Link goes to front page, not relevant article.]

If I were the bank manager, I'd have done it just for the good publicity the bank could receive. Hell, banks have all kinds of coin-counting and auto-rolling machines, so why not let reporters take pictures while you process 1.4 million pennies out of 55-gallon drums for a customer? Sounds like a good idea to me, despite the time and inconvienience involved.

But it doesn't usually work that way.

I was at the bank this morning and some old farmer-looking guy came in with a 5-gallon bucket full of pennies. He deposited a couple of checks and then tried to deposit his pennies. He told the cashier that he had $152 dollar's worth, but she wouldn't take them. They weren't rolled.

The farmer left in a huff after the cashier gave him a handful of penny rolls and told him to come back when his pennies were properly packaged. I've seen this same thing happen before.

Pennies may be a nuisance today (Can you still buy ANYTHING for penny?), but the last time I looked, pennies were still legal tender in this country. I've never seen a convienience store refuse to accept pennies when someone wanted to count out 250 of them for a pack of cigarettes (yeah--- I've seen THAT happen, too). Why can't a bank do the same thing?

Maybe some of the old River Street heads remember Ronnie Reed and the infamous "Hot Dog Cart" episode in the late 1970s. Ronnie owned the Long Branch Saloon and he had the nerve to put an old-fashioned hot dog cart on the sidewalk outside his bar, where he sold delicious hot dogs with all the trimmings for $1.00 each. You could smell that thing from a block away and it did booming business.

EVERYBODY liked the hot-dog cart. Everybody, that is, except some assholes down at City Hall. They busted Ronnie for not having a "street vendor's license" and shut down the cart (I think they arrested the cart, too), even though it was technically on Long Branch property.

After a brief court battle, Ronnie was fined $1,000. He was livid. He went back to his bar and placed small aluminium buckets all over the place, each one bearing the sign: "FIGHT CITY HALL!!! Give your pennies for the hot dog cart!!!" All he asked for was pennies.

In less than a month, Ronnie collected well over $1,000, all in loose pennies, and he hauled them in a wheelbarrow down to the courthouse, where he dumped them on the floor and said, "There's my fine. Count it yourself if you don't trust me."

The people in charge would not accept the payment the way it was. They, too, wanted the pennies rolled. Ronnie wouldn't do it. I'm not sure if he went to jail overnight on a contempt of court charge or not, but I know that he surely did stir a lot of shit downtown. The city finally relented and took the pennies, but Ronnie never was allowed to operate the hot dog cart again.

I always liked Ronnie's take on things. "I may have lost the cart, but the city didn't get any money from me. My customers paid my fine." (His customers did more than that. Ronnie had about $750 in extra pennies, which he donated to the March of Dimes--- a charity that did not insist that he roll the coins first. In the end, the city came off looking like a bunch of needle-dicked bug-fuckers and Ronnie became a local hero.)

"Besides," he told me one night, "Somebody has to stand up to those assholes, even when you DO lose. Gotta make 'em think twice about doing such shit again. Otherwise, they'll walk all over you like a rug."

I wish more people felt that way.

February 18, 2007

Love story

Originally published October 10, 2005

When I was working as a trash-burner, I had one of my Control Room Operators go on long weekend after a Friday shift. He told me that he was going to Atlanta to visit his cousin, who was about to be married. He showed back up for work the following Wednesday with a TREMENDOUS black eye.

I couldn't help but ask what happened.

According to him, he took his cousin out drinking, they got plastered, and when they got back to Cousin's place, Cousin staggered off to bed. The Bride To Be was still awake in the apartment. My operator and the Bride To Be started talking, one thing led to another, and before long they were busy screwing like wild minks on the couch when Cousin woke up and caught them in the act.

He hit my operator in the eye with a lamp and tossed him out of the apartment. The engagement was off after that.

I didn't blame Cousin for what he did, but my operator had an entirely different take on the matter.

"Hell, Rob," he said. "I did him a favor. Marrying that girl would have been a big mistake. If she'd fuck ME, she'd fuck ANYBODY."

Having walked into a similar situation myself after nine years of marriage, I now think that my operator was wiser than I am.

woof! woof! woof!

Originally published October 8, 2005

I had my doubts, but I believe now that my beloved Jawja Bulldogs may have a good football team this year. They handed Tennessee their asses on a plate a LOT worse than the score indicated.

It was a great game to watch. Out of the blue, (because I haven't seen him in a while) Young Jack came over to visit and we sat on the floor in front of the television. I made some popcorn and gave him a Mountain Dew. We watched the game together.

I really enjoyed that experience. Jack is playing Little League football again this year, and he LISTENS when I explain what is happening on the field. He's playing end on offense (because he can catch, after I almost killed him with many lessons that ended up with footballs hitting him square in the forehead) and playing linebacker on defense.

My biggest thrill of the day was when a Tennessee receiver caught a pass that would have been good for a first down, but a Georgia defender ripped the ball out of his hands for a fumble, which Georgia recovered. Jack almost pissed his pants. He started jumping up and down.

"Mr. Rob! Mr. Rob! That's just what you taught me and Quinton to do! KNOCK the ball out of his hands!"

"Don't you ever forget it, either," I replied. "If you're gonna play linebacker, MAKE a fumble whenever you can."

Damn. I miss having kids around the Crackerbox.

But the REALLY good news is that Georgia won and I don't have to listen to eric call me up and sing "Rocky Top" over the phone.

Strange dreams

Originally published October 8, 2005

When I was sick the other day--- I must have been REALLY sick, because I thought today was Friday until I saw the kids playing in the neighborhood while I was trying to fix my mailbox--- I had the strangest dream.

I was riding in a vehicle like a jeep or a Volkwagon "Thing" that was open-air with no roof on it. A grill was sticking out on the front--- not a car grill, but a barbeque kinda grill, and bacon was sizzling on it. The bacon was nowhere nearly done, but the tires of the car were throwing black specks all over the bacon. I knew nobody could eat bacon cooked like that.

We were headed down Bay Street in Savannah, going right by the post office. Jennifer's mama was driving the car. Jennifer was sitting in the seat behind me. She started kissing the back of my neck.

"Your mama is so proud of the award you won," she said. I had no clue what she was talking about. WHAT award? Where was I and what was I doing there?

Jennifer kept kissing on me and said, "I'm starting to like you again. Why don't we get together and talk after you pick up your award? It comes with a lot of money."

You wanna know the damndest thing? In that dream I WANTED to stop and talk with her. I remember thinking, "this can't be real," but it seemed real enough to suit me at the time. I just wondered how to ditch her mama and where we were gonna go to talk. I even thought about making love to her again.

I woke up sick as a dog and had to avail myself of my bedside puke-bucket for a while. I was running a pretty high fever at the time, and I always nut-up when I run a fever.

But what really disturbed me was the fact that I WANTED HER BACK. I could never do that in real life, but in my dream, it seemed perfectly acceptable.

Okay, all you psychologists out there. Explain THAT one to me.

February 17, 2007

A case of the drag-ass

Originally published February 17, 2006

Maybe I'm suffering from Post-Birthday Depression. Maybe my biorythmns are out of whack again. Maybe it's a Post Acute Withdrawal aftershock. Maybe it's something I ate in the Mexican restaurant last night.

All I know is--- I've had a real case of the drag-ass today. The blahs. The don't-give-a-shits. My body feels tired and my mind is numb.

I was hoping to see my son this week, but he never was home when I called and he never answered any of the messages I left. I'm not surprised, considering the way he disappeared during Christmas and HIS birthday, but I still get depressed when this crap happens. I'm afraid that this is one hole I'll never dig myself out of. I can't do anything about it RIGHT NOW, so I shouldn't let it eat at me, but it does.

In other news, an ugly, catty soap opera is playing backstage at the Blog Theater now, and I appear to have a featured role, although I wasn't aware that I ever auditioned for it. Well, it ain't the first time I've seen THAT happen. Still, I'm always amazed that some people have so little to worry about in running their own lives that they can find plenty of time to stir shit in somebody else's. Bejus weeps.

I did manage to haul my dragging ass to the State Patrol Office today and renew my driver's license, which expired yesterday. I opted for the 10-year extension this time and I just hope I live long enough to see THIS ONE expire. I didn't even have to take a vision test. What really surprised me was how polite and efficient everybody was. I was in and out of there in less than five minutes.

After that, I drove into Savannah for a meeting with my Personal Banker to discuss some mega-dollar, high-finance matters involving my vast investment holdings. I felt about as bright as a twenty-watt bulb during my wheeling and dealing, no doubt convincing my banker that I am a drooling cretin, but I did manage to roll my 401-K over into an IRA, which I've been meaning to do for about three years now.

Much to my surprise, I discovered that I had some after-tax money in there! I don't recall where it came from, but I moved it from my bulging stock portfolio right into my wallet before Uncle Sam discovered it and taxed it again. I also received a Happy Birthday gift certificate for a meal at The Exchange Tavern on River Street. HAH! That drive into town was worth the trip.

Now, I just want to go to sleep. I sure hope I feel better in the morning.

Happy birthday to me

Originally published February 16, 2006

As of 0600 this morning, I am 54 years old. Yep, on this day in 1952, at six o'clock in the morning, I came kicking and screaming into this world. I've been kicking and screaming ever since, although that shit wears me out a lot quicker now than it once did. I don't kick as high or scream as loud anymore, either.

Today got off to a good start. Here, I've been selected as blog of the day to add to the glory of my victory in the crap-daddy contest yesterday. See? You can't say that MY LIFE has been wasted. I've got links to prove otherwise.

In waxing philosophical, as I usually do on my birthday, I've discovered that I can divide my life into clear segments--- the phases I struggled through to become the man I am today.

0-7 years: Hillbilly days, in the Kentucky coal mining camp, where the basic values I carry today were ingrained in me. When Recondo 32 and I drove through there in 2004, I didn't recognize the place anymore, but I remember living there very clearly. I have fond memories of those days, but getting out of there was the biggest favor my parents ever did for me.

7-10 years: Difficult transition time, when I learned what it's like to be different from everybody else. I was little, skinny and I talked with a funny accent. I got into a lot of fights.

10-14 years: The Huck Finn period, when I ran the woods like a savage with my equally savage friends. Climbing trees, shooting BB guns, skinny-dipping in the Gun Club Lake, camping out, killing snakes, collecting insects and making war with anything we could find to throw, shoot or launch at each. Bejus! It's a wonder that any of us survived. Today's risk-averse soccer-moms would hyperventilate and drop dead of the vapors if their children did what I did back then. It was fucking WONDERFUL! Every boy should have the chance to live like that.

14-18 years: Tumultuous times, when puberty hit me hard. Those were the Jockstrap Years--- football, basketball, baseball, softball, track and anything else you can name. If it was a game, I played it. That's also when I started regarding wimmen as mysterious, fascinating creatures who made me feel funny in my pants rather than as cootie-depositories to be avoided. They scared the shit out of me, but I wanted one anyway. Physically, I finally lost my cherry. Mentally, I remained confused most of the time.

18-24 years: The Bohemian Period, when I dabbled in higher education while learning to smoke dope, play guitar for money and actually catch pussy when I chased it. I flew the familial coop and started living on my own for the first time. I also discovered that I really liked alcohol. A LOT.

24-29 years: Early Retirement. I chucked a job as an advertising copywriter and became a full-time bar musician. I drove my father crazy by "spinning my wheels" (in HIS opinion) and going nowhere with all that education I had. I didn't care. I was as happy as a dead pig in sunshine. I was responsible for myself and an ugly-assed dog and neither one of us was high-maintenance. Life was good.

29-38 years: Nose to the Grindstone time, when I first learned what marrying the wrong woman can do to you. I put my guitar down and went to work in the chemical plant when that first darlin' decided to get pregnant and lose what little sense she had to begin with when I married her. GAWD! On the plus side, I got a pretty good daughter out of the deal and I learned a very valuable lesson: If you think that you can lift a self-destructive loser UP, you'll end up being dragged DOWN when you try. If I could pick one part of my life to go back and live over again differently, this would be it.

38-40 years: Starting over again. I was flat-ass broke, heavily in debt, homeless and damn near hopeless. I had my truck, my guitars, a few clothes, my job and not much else. I frequently had to make a choice between eating or buying cigarettes because I didn't have enough money to do both. (Cigarettes always won.) I was in a hole so deep that I didn't believe I would EVER see sunshine again. Those were bad times.

40-49 years: The Salad Days in the beginning, except for my father's death. I fell deeply in love for the first time, with a woman who was just as broke as I was. Together, we paid ourselves out of debt and began to prosper. I fathered a son. I bought a mini-farm. I had more than I ever DREAMED I would have and I remember thinking, "This is too good to be true." It was. Cancer and divorce laid a big reality check on my Cracker ass and it damn near killed me. I just THOUGHT I had been in a black hole before. Hell, that was just a rut in the road. I still haven't fully recovered from 2001 and I don't know that I ever will, at least not completely. Strange. I experienced both the happiest and the most miserable days of my life in the same period. I also started blogging.

49-53: Down, down, down days. Impotence. Incontinence. Got a bionic dick and wondered why I bothered. I lost my job because of my politically-incorrect blog and became a full-time drunk. I didn't give a shit about ANYTHING anymore. Spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself. I knew that I was dying, killing myself one drink, one bottle at a time, but I didn't care. When I wrote that I often made a choice at night between setting my alarm clock and reaching for a pistol, I wasn't making that shit up. After I "retired," I didn't have to set the alarm anymore, but I still thought about that pistol. I was a dead man walking anyway. Mama died and I checked myself into rehab just in the nick of time. That was a close one.

53-?: Who knows? I have some vague plans, but I'm not exactly on fire about anything except not taking a drink today. I'm still blogging, working on a book (my 2006 Writer's Market came in the mail yesterday) and living one day at a time. I know better than to say "the worst is over," but I feel pretty good right now. I think I'll hang around a few more years to see what happens next. I've had some pretty remarkable ups and downs in my life, but I've gotta admit one thing: it's not been boring. I've got plenty to write about.

So... happy birthday to me.

[Ed. Twenty hours late, I know. My bad. Sorry, Darlin'...]

February 16, 2007

Southern writers

Originally published January 14, 2005

Somebody asked me this question the other day: "What makes a 'Southern" writer?" Okay, here is how I answer:

A Southern writer sets his stories in the South, but the scenery and the geographical location are not all that permeate the tale and give it a distinctly Southern flavor. You experience the sights, sounds, traditions and tastes of the South when you read a good Southern writer. And only a Southerner can pull off that trick, because he's lived it and he knows it. Southern writers put a flavor in their words that no one outside the South can duplicate.

A few examples are Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, James Dickey and Lewis Grizzard.

In MY humble opinion, the best Southern writer alive today is Pat Conroy. I disagree with his politics and I probably would not like him personally, but he's a Southern writer. Just read The Great Santini and savor how he describes the flavor of a raw oyster. You can taste it YOURSELF when you read his words. That's damn good writing.

If you don't know a Southern writer when you read one, you ain't from the South, and you'll NEVER get it.

Militant middlebrow

Originally published January 12, 2005,

Someone wrote me an email calling me a "militant middlebrow" because I never finished Moby Dick and I don't appreciate "ornate" literature. I don't know what the fuck he's talking about.

I majored in goddam ENGLISH LITERATURE in college. I've read a LOT of books in my life, from the "ornate" to the ridiculous. I read The Canterbury Tales in the original Early Middle English and I loved those stories. I liked many of the Romance Era writers. I think Shakespeare was a genius, even though he stole every plot he ever used in a play. I liked Sinclair Lewis, too.

But I DID NOT like Herman Melville, Henry James or Fydor Dostoyevski. If that makes me a "militant middlebrow" because I thought those guys were long-winded, boring hacks, then so be it. I preferred Mark Twain and Jack London. Hell, I preferred Edgar Rice Burroughs over those "ornate" writers.

But at least I read them, or tried to. I didn't like what I read. Anybody who calls me "middlebrow" for THAT sounds a lot like a New York art critic who calls a pile of garbage "art." Garbage is garbage, no matter how "ornate" you try to make it.

I suppose that I lack the necessary sophistication to see a dog turd and call it a rose.

I told you wimmen were crazy

Originally published January 12, 2005

Just read this. I rest my case.

Man... my balls hurt just from THINKING about that.

February 15, 2007

"Some assembly required"... my ass!

Originally published March 17, 2002

I have a slight sunburn this morning, thanks to wrestling the BASKETBALL GOAL FROM HELL into submission yesterday. It stands tall and proud by my driveway now, but I was one inch away from using chainsaw and shotgun on its excreable self before Sherry walked over from across the street and helped put it together. I will never buy ANYTHING again that isn't ALREADY ASSEMBLED. I swear.

We all do, Darlin'... (Referencing the last sentence...)

Originally published March 28, 2002

As an English major in college and a semi-professional musician for a number of years, I often am amazed to realize that I have been a supervisor in a chemical plant for more than twenty years. I have done well where I work, judging from my performance reviews and the money they pay me, but I remain amazed that my life played out the way it did.

In college, I declared a "Wonderful Wednesday" whenever I felt like it. That was a Wednesday when I decided I had better things to do than go to class all day, so I cut them all. I laid in bed some days, played golf on others, or pulled out all the sofa cushions to find enough spare change to buy $1 pitchers of beer in the afternoon at the old railroad station in Athens, Ga. I was a professional student at the time, so academic work could easily take a back seat to real-life experience; I could make good grades standing on my head back then. My roommate was a law student and I was such a corrupting influence that even HE indulged in a few Wonderful Wednesdays. For me, it was part of a bohemian lifestyle; for him, it was a liberating experience.

Once I hit my semi-professional musician stage, I became accustomed to living vampire hours. I woke up at the crack of noon, or maybe later. I staggered off to bed at about four o'clock in the morning, or maybe later. Time was very fungible in those days, as long as I showed up where I was SUPPOSED TO BE on time and did what I was SUPPOSED TO DO, which was work from 9:00 till 1:00, Tuesday through Friday, then work 9:00 till 2:00 on Saturday nights. That made for a very difficult 21-hour work week, where I kept my nose to the grindstone, did exactly what I wanted to do at the time and got paid very adequate wages for my artistic suffering. A great employee benefit package was included, too, because women like musicians. I won't go into details about that part of the job, because I don't remember enough details to elaborate. Let's just say that I recall a grand moasic.

But I put away those childish things a long time ago. Now I go to work at 5:30 every morning and come home whenever the work is done. Ten hours is a typical shift, plus an hour travel time each way to and from home. I wear a beeper and stay on call 24 hours a day. People from work call me at ungodly hours of the night. I work weekends every tenth week as the "duty" supervisor. I suppose I'm a great American success story.

I've been divorced twice. My son from my second marriage is with me tonight, on a visitation. We played basketball on the GOAL FROM HELL (damn, but I'm proud that I finally got that thing assembled instead of shooting it!) and then I threw football passes at him until the sun went down. He is fed, watered and bathed. He's on his Play-Station II now, but his eyelids are drooping. He'll be out like a light shortly.

My daughter from my first marriage will be in town tomorrow. I have not seen her in five years. She is nineteen and lives in Fort Worth, Texas. She wants to see my son and my son wants to see her. But that may not happen because my BC (bloodless cunt) ex-wife usurped my weekend visitation by booking a trip to Vermont for my son's spring break and she will come to reel him in at 7:00 tomorrow night, whether he sees his sister or not. So it goes. She has airplane tickets and at least one other guy to sleep with.

I could raise a big stink and hire a lawyer to sort this out, but the truth is that I don't care anymore. I just wish I could declare a Wonderful Wednesday every now and then.

I miss the good old days.

F5 on a Thursday

Originally published March 29, 2002

I stole this Friday Five from the WAKE ME UP ON JUDGMENT DAY [Ed. Blog no longer seems to exist.] blog, but I can't get the link to the questions to work. So, I'll do the test the old-fashioned way.

1) "If you could eat dinner with and 'get to know' one famous person (living or dead), who would you choose?"

My literary idol Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) if the "get to know" is purely platonic. My porn goddess Nina Hartley if it's not.

2) "Has the death of a famous person ever had an effect on you? Who was it and how did it make you feel?"

I started to answer John Lennon, but that's not the one that really hit me the hardest. Jim Croce's death put me into a total funk for weeks and I listened to his eight-track tapes (yes, it was THAT long ago) over and over in my car. John Lennon had his success. Croce was just getting started.

3) "If you could be a famous person for 24 hours, who would you choose?"

Easy. Bill Clinton. I really want to know the feeling that the entire universe revolves around MY ass. I wanna see how many BJs I can get in one day, too.

4) "Do people ever tell you that you look like someone famous?"

Yeah. Geraldo Rivera and Sonny Bono. I hate that shit.

5) "Have you ever met anyone famous?"

I not only MET someone famous, she KISSED ME, too. I believe it happened around 1971, when Donna Douglas (remember Ellie May Clampett?) came to Savannah to host a telethon. I was playing in a two-man folk band at the time and our booking agent asked us to go the the WTOC television studio after we finished work that night to do about 15 minutes on the telethon. We said we would, not realizing that every band in Savannah had been told the same thing. We arrived at the studio to discover about fifty musical acts crammed into every nook and cranny of the place. It was 3:00 in the morning, I was tired and full of beer, and we were told our performance would begin at 6:30. I told my partner "to hell with this." I grabbed my guitar case and started for the door. Donna Douglas was there, and she stopped me (she also looked VERY delicious, just like Ellie May). She asked us to stay and do our part for a worthy cause, and I said, "I will if you'll give me a kiss." She did not hesitate. She grabbed the back of my head with both hands and planted a smacker square on my lips. A deal's a deal, and I may have had lipstick stains on my face when we played on TV that morning.

Oh yeah. Soupy Sales once bought me a drink and shook my hand when he heard me play as a solo at the Desoto Hilton in Savannah. I have hobnobbed with many a celeb in my time...

February 14, 2007

Happy Valentines Day

Originally published February 14, 2006

After two divorces, I've spent a lot of money lot of time pondering the concept of "love" and what it really means. I'm beginning to think that love must be a lot like pornography. I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.

I remember seeing my dad asleep on the couch one Saturday. He had a half-read paperback book open on his chest and he snored fit to wake the dead. My mama bustled around the kitchen, doing mama-esque things with a pissed-off kind of energy. I looked at my sleeping dad and then looked at my pissed-off mama.

"Mama, do you ever want to just kill him?" I asked.

"Yes, I do!" Mama replied. "I don't know why your father looks forward to his days off so much. He doesn't do anything but sleep on that couch. He drives me crazy sometimes. But I love him."

I think that's a good definition of love: It's the state of being where the other person drives you crazy sometimes, but not enough to make you actually kill them. You'd rather have 'em asleep on the sofa and pissing you off than not have 'em at all.

Y'all have a happy Valentine's Day!

Public bathrooms

Originally published April 14, 2006

At the risk of pissing off a few people (yeah... I lose a lot of sleep worrying about doing THAT), I want to state a fact I learned the hard way when I was young: Wimmen fuck up a public bathroom worse than men do.

I'm not talking about peeing on the floor--- MEN are bad about that--- I'm talking about doing really disgusting things.

When I was 14 years old, I worked at a hamburger joint called "Chip's Drive In" on Waters Avenue in Savannah. On the night shift, one of my many duties after closing time was cleaning the bathrooms. Bejus! I learned to DESPISE that part of my job. It also destroyed my naive belief in the nobility of mankind.

The public bathrooms at the drive-in were located OUTSIDE the restaurant, at the back of the building. People could come and go as they pleased, without a lot of witnesses. When I went back there with my bucket, mop and disinfectant to muck out the mess, I never knew what I was going to find. Usually, it was pretty bad.

A typical men's room experience meant mopping several gallon of urine off the floor, cleaning greasy fingerprints and urine from the sink, and reading new grafitti, such as "St. Francis was a sissy" on the walls. I could usually handle that job by propping the door open, standing outside with a water hose and washing the place out before attempting to mop. Then, I could just mop, wipe, replace the pull-down towel in the sink rack, put fresh toilet paper on the roller and be out of there.

I always cleaned the men's room first. About the worst things I ever found in there was blood in the sink (probably the result of someone attempting to clean up after a drunken fist-fight) or an overflowing commode, plugged with a giant five-pound turd. Those problems, I could handle, even though I didn't like doing it.

But the ladies' room was different. Open THAT door and you entered an alternate universe, a world of incredibly disgusting filth and corruption. Bejus! That towel rack on the wall? Some sweet flower of Southern womanhood unrolled half of it and left shit-crusted HAND PRINTS all over the towel. How the hell did a woman ever get that much shit ON HER HANDS? And why did she wipe her hands ON THE TOWEL instead of using the sink to clean up?

Overflowing commode? Yep, got it right here, but NOT from a five-pound turd-pluggage. Just half a roll of toilet paper, used to daub the dew from the lilly and then becoming a soggy mass too large for the toilet to handle.

Sometimes, I saw SHIT ON THE FLOOR, something I never saw in the men's room. My Personal Protective Equipment consisted of elbow-length rubber gloves and nothing else. After entering that hell-hole a couple of times, I wanted a level-A Haz-Mat suit, complete with self-contained breathing apparatus, before I opened the door.

Fairer sex, my ass. I've SEEN what you ladies can to to a public bathroom. It ain't a pretty sight.

I've often wondered if cleaning those bathrooms as a young man is the reason I grew up to be such a misogynist today. I've often accused wimmen of possessing a "cleaning gene" that men lack, but they use it only in domestic settings, where they like to put frilly lid-covers on the commode so that the damn thing won't stay up by itself and a man has to piss by grabbing his Roscoe with one hand and holding the lid up with the other.

But they damn sure ignore that genetic "clean" instinct when it ain't THEIR bathroom they're using. I've seen evidence that wimmen can piss on a wall as well as men can, and even BETTER if you consider the contortion efforts involved to do so.

And SOME wimmen will dispose of a used tampon just about ANYWHERE...
But I'm not going to go there.

No wonder I am king of the crap-bloggers. I was tramautized when I was 14 years old.

Seasick

Originally published April 13, 2006

I made my first trip to Key West in 1978 aboard the Blue Fin, the Skidaway Island Oceanographic Institute's research vessel. The Blue Fin once was a shrimp boat, but it was intercepted by the US Coast Guard while carrying a load of marijuana instead of shrimp, and the boat later was sold at auction in Miami. The state of Georgia bought it and converted it into a research boat.

The Blue Fin was 80' long (if I remember correctly--- it might have been 60'--- I thought it was a pretty BIG boat), powered by two humongous diesel engines and equipped with large stabilizing anchors to deploy over the sides in rough seas. The boat had a regular crew of five people, and when we loaded up with me and a few scientists from the Institute, a total of twelve souls were on board for the Key West trip.

Believe it or not, we were headed to the warm waters of the keys to collect a special kind of seaweed, which would be used as worm food in an experiment involving (I am NOT making this up!) harvesting the methane from sea-worm farts as an alternative energy source. (Remember--- this was 1978, Carter was President and we were suffering an energy "crisis." Energy research dollars were plentiful, no matter how ridiculous the research.)

We left Skidaway Island at sunrise on a chilly, overcast morning in October. Cold rain misted from the slate-gray sky and a brisk wind blew robustly from the east. The local weather report carried a small craft warning and predictions of strong winds offshore, with seas 15 to 20 feet. Hell--- when we weighed anchor and left the dock, I was all a-twitter with excitement. I had no idea what I had gotten my ass into.

For those of you who have never been in 20-foot seas, I'll just say this: it's a goddam impressive sight and those waves make for one VERY impressive ride. Even with the stabilizers down and dragging, that boat tossed like a cork on the water. If you hung onto the rail and looked overboard, you'd find yourself staring down into a deep, watery chasm one minute, then staring UP at a mountain of ocean that blotted out the sky the next. Back and forth it went, all day long.

That was a VERY rough ride.

I was one of four people on board who did NOT get seasick. I spent all day up on deck, breathing fresh salt air and getting an occasional glimpse of the horizon between huge ocean swells. Almost everybody else ended up down below, suffering the tortures of the damned.

I tried to make it to my rack sometime that evening, but I took one step down the hatch and had to retreat quickly back out on deck. The smell of vomit in the crew quarters was so strong that you didn't smell it--- it reached out like a gnarly hand and choked you by the neck. I knew that I never would survive a night down in THAT hell-hole.

I ended up spending the night on the bridge, talking to the First Mate, a guy named Zack who pulled the graveyard shifts while the Captain slept. Zack was the son of a shrimper and he had been on the water since he was a little boy. He told me something interesting about seasickness.

Zack said that he had been seasick once in his life. Never as a boy and never as a young man. Never in rough seas or in storms. Never when hung-over and burping tequila fumes. He got sick as a sober grown man in the Gulf of Mexico on a beautiful day when the sea was as smooth as the surface of a mirror. He said that it hit him out of the blue, he barfed and heaved for 24 hours, he prayed for death, he thought he was GONNA die and then... he recovered, never to be seasick again.

"At least not yet," Zach added, at the end of his story.

That's why, although I've never been seasick in my life, I still feel a little trepidation when I head offshore in a boat. Since that night on the Blue Fin, I've met several other bleached-out sea-dogs who told stories similar to Zack's. Evidently, you can be on the water for YEARS and never have a problem, then have seasickness hit you like a ton of bricks for no good reason. (Except maybe to teach you some humility so that you feel sympathy and not scorn the next time you see someone get seasick.)

So, I don't laugh at you lubbers who can't make it out of the sound into deep water before you start talking to Ralph and Huey over the side and chumming the water before we're ready to fish. I'll be nice to you. Maybe my time is yet to come.

You know, I AM planning on a sailboat ride to Beliz this summer... all the way across the Gulf of Mexico...

February 13, 2007

It's Sam...

Hi people! I wanted to check in and give an up date with the family and a link to my new blog. There aren't many posts on it yet, but I really plan to keep this one up.

I talked with Mommie yesterday. She had gall bladder surgery a while back and wasn't doing too well, but other than her eyesight, she seems to be pretty good now. She enjoys watching (or listening to) CMT (County Music Television) and Fox News.

As I was talking to her, my new puppy Schnauzer scarfed down an entire a pile of her own steaming shit and I started gagging on the phone. Mommie made everything better by telling me about having to pull a turd out of Fancy's ass by hand because she was constipated.

As for the rest of the family. Dad's ashes are still at his mom's house. We haven't decided where to distribute them. I haven't spoken to Quinton since the funeral and probably won't ever get the chance to talk with him again.

I know this all has been hard on Dave, but since last I spoke with him and Pam, they are doing fine.

As for me, I've become obsessive in my artwork. I have so much anxiety built up that I use it in my paintings.

Thanks again to Stevie for keeping this site updated.

Love,
Sam

February 12, 2007

Being broke

Originally published February 23, 2004

I read a lot of bloggers who bemoan their financial status, but still manage to blog. They don't get a lot of sympathy from me. I've been fucking broke and I may well be headed that way again.

Blogging? Man, please. I've had to make the choice among cigarettes, gasoline and food too many times in my life. Food always finished last. Not long thereafter, I found myself with more money than I knew what to do with. I was on the verge of becoming a rich man.

Then-- all of a sudden I was broke again. I'm talking seriously broke and looking up from the bottom of a black hole. I had to borrow $10,000 from my 401-K just to get back on my feet again. I owed lawyers. I owed medical bills. I didn't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. I owed fucking everybody and the BC was asking for more. I didn't have a place to live and that surgery screwed me up a lot more than I believed that it would. I was in a bad way for a while. But I bought the Crackerbox because I knew that I could just barely handle the debt.

But the BC and I sold some property and I made enough money off that deal for me to buy beds and a kitchen table for the house. I also bought a refrigerator and and washer and dryer. Oh, yeah! A microwave oven, too. I was outfitted. Quinton could come stay with me now.

And he did, because I dug myself out of that hole one piece at a time. It wasn't easy and I still owe a lot of money on that 401-K loan. But I'm not broke anymore. I may be again shortly, but it won't be the first time. I can find a good job if I want one. But I don't want one right now. As Recondo 32 said at the blog-meet, "At your burn rate, you'd better leave the country or look for a job soon. Your money ain't gonna hold out the way you spend it."

The burn rate accellerated quite a bit today. Lawyers are expensive.

But what the fuck. I've been broke before. The thought of being broke again does not frighten me. I don't relish the thought and I don't believe that I should BE in this position, but I am, and I have a simple choice to make. Do I love Quinton more than I fear going broke again?

Shit. If I have to back to choosing among gasoline, cigarettes and food, I can do that again. I'll just make sure that the boy stays fed. I don't need much to get by on my own.

Symbols

Originally published February 23, 2004

My man, the rivrdog [Ed. Link goes to current front page.] asked for a link to this article, and he'll gladly get one from me. I have a real problem with political correctness and assholes running around trying to erase history are worse than fucking lawyers.

I've written many posts on my opinion about the Confederate flag. I do not see it as a symbol of hatred and racism. The fact that some pointy-headed, sheet-wearing pricks have USED the flag for that purpose does not change my opinion. The fact that the NAACP and race-pimps such as Jesse Jackson have used the flag for the same purpose STILL does not change my opinion.

It is a symbol of the Old South, and it should not be banned because a few loud-mouthed assholes don't understand that fact. It should be studied and put into historical context so that the generations we're raising today DO NOT make the same mistakes their elders did.

I feel the same way about a swastica. NOBODY should EVER forget what that symbol stood for and the millions of people who died because of the philosophy behind it. No, dammit. You teach your children about the Nazis so that they recognize such murderers if they ever try to take power again. As the Jews say, "NEVER FORGET."

Don't attempt to re-write history to spare delicate feelings about controversial matters. Dig into that crap with both hands and show your children just how corrupt, stinking and at the same time worthless, such symbols were.

Look at what those symbols have become today. The KKK is a joke in the South anymore and the NAACP looked like perfect fools with their posturing and whining about the flag. If that's the most important issue those two sides have to argue about today, we've come a long way in this country, boys and girls.

Look at the swastica. The only people who use that symbol anymore are those weird clones who are part KKK and part NAACP, the skinheads, mindless racists and pure anti-Semites. They don't have a fucking clue and they use the symbols to piss off the easily-offended. That tactic works, because we don't have teachers with balls in school anymore. We have wimps refusing to teach history, and they all should be dragged off and shot, just the way the KKK or the Nazis would have done years ago.

Don't FEAR such people. Let them have their pathetic symbols. Then, ridicule them. Insult them. Whip their fucked-up asses. Or just goddam ignore them, which is the best way to shut their yapping mouths.

Quinton knows about Hitler and he knows about Robert E. Lee. He understands the difference, too. You may see Quinton driving a pickup truck with a Confederate flag bumper sticker some day. But you'll never see him wearing a swastica armband. I've taught my boy better than that.

I don't believe in Political Correctness. I believe in the truth. That incompetent woman kicker at the University of Colorado never should have been on the team. When the coach said that she couldn't run, she couldn't tackle, she couldn't play and she couldn't kick, he lost his job. Having that blonde wearing #2 on the field was more important than her competence at playing football. And yes, the word "Nazi" has already been used against him.

That woman never should have been in a uniform on a college football field and anybody with a lick of sense knows that fact. Was she raped? Who knows? But you've got to know that she had no business being where she was. She never had the credentials. She was a symbol.

That symbolism shit can get a lot of people in trouble. That's why no one EVER should forget about the symbols and what they stood for. That's why NO ONE should ever accept different symbols to replace the old ones, just because we have a different idea about Political Correctness today. There is right and there is wrong. Then, there are symbols.

And if you can't tell the difference, you're as bad as any Nazi who ever lived.

February 11, 2007

The way it's supposed to be

Originally published February 16, 2002

My son is with me this weekend. We watched some ridiculous movie on HBO tonight as we both sprawled on the couch. He kept his arm around me and his head on my shoulder the entire time. I felt golden.

When the movie was over, he wanted to know about the Roman Empire and why a short sword was such an effective weapon. I tried to explain that the sword was great weapon, but the well-trained Roman soldier wielding it and the tactics used by the army were what made it really effective. Somehow, that conversation led to what our military did in Afghanistan and from there he launched into a tale about Vikings sacking and looting Paris, France a long time ago. I don't recall that event. But I believe it might be a good idea now. We have Special Forces that can be Vikings if the mission calls for that talent.

He is asleep now. Visions of Roman soldiers and marauding Vikings may dance in his dreams tonight, but that's what little boys do. God, I miss what I'm missing by not being with him every day.

Saturday night sleeping arrangements

Originally published February 10, 2002

I bought a blow-up bed when I furnished my new home. I didn't really have a reason to buy it at the time, but I did, figuring that it would come in handy some day. It did last night. I had a house full of people drinking heavily and in no condition to drive home. Both couches were staked out and claimed around midnight. My son's bed was occupied by an early casualty. I had two tall people eyeing the living room carpet and selecting a crash pad. That's when I broke out the blow-up bed.

We had a magnificent time unrolling the thing and figuring out how the pump worked, and we achieved inflation after only a few abortive efforts. Then we laid on it and rolled on it and pronounced it good. I started to sleep on it myself and give MY bed away, but I was kicked off by my friends and forced to walk to my lonely bedroom by myself while they slept on the blow-up bed. We deflated it this morning and discovered that it won't fit back in the box it came out of. Nothing ever does. I threw it and the box in the closet and we all went to the Huddle House for the kind of breakfast that drives coffee and orange juice stocks higher all over the world. Eggs may be an endangered species from the hurting we put on them this morning.

Then, everyone went home. And so did I.

February 10, 2007

Theme song

Originally published October 23, 2003

Everybody needs a theme song. I've got a new one that's been playing over and over in my mind for the past few days. It's called "I'm All Right," and I love the chorus.

I hate it when people post the words to a song on a blog. Without the music, that crap usually leaves me cold. But I'm going to try to set this one up.

Imagine a slow-picked banjo and a trilling mandolin behind a couple of acoustic guitars and an electric bass. A tamborine makes most of the percussion. The song goes slow and easy. Kim Richey sings the lead, but she has (at least) three other people singing with her. The harmonists keep their mouths shut for the rest of the song, but when they hit chorus, they do the "I'm All Right" part ahead of her while Kim sings all around them. Bejus! I am going to play this song with my friends the next chance I get.

(Harmony here, long and drawn-out) I'm all right, (then, Kim by herself) been shot but I'm still standing
(Harmony) I'm all right, (then Kim) a little banged-up from the fall.
(Harmony) I'm all right, (Kim) a little shaky from the landing,
(Then EVERYBODY TOGETHER) But I'm all right, after all.

That's a beautiful song.

You really need to hear that song to appreciate it. You don't want to live it, but it really makes sense if you have.

I did. That song is about surviving. I LOVE that song.

Good music

Originally published October 23, 2003

I took that depressing shit out of my stereo and plugged in an oldie but a goodie and turned the volume up loud. It's Cream, "Live at the Fillmore," circa late 1960's. Goddam! Eric Clapton can play a guitar. "Slow Hand," my ass. He and Jack Bruce COOK together. Ginger Baker isn't half-bad on the drums, either.

What I really like about that CD is the fact that it was recorded live. That's the REAL DEAL when you play it on stage. Recording studios are very forgiving places. You can go back and fix your mistakes there. You get only one chance when you're up there in front of the crowd. That's when you show what you really bring to the table. A lot of musicians are good in the studio while they suck on stage. I always liked doing it live.

I believe the Cream version of "Crossroads" is about as good as I've ever heard it played. Man! That song makes me want to get up and dance, and I'm not drunk OR stoned right now. Plus, I dance like a fucktard. Bejus! It's just plain, straight-out, good music. Listen to those licks!

I go flying off into my own sphere like this sometimes. If you are not a musician, you may not understand what I am talking about, but TRUST ME about one thing That's really good stuff on my stereo right now. I wouldn't lie to you about that.

I would never lie to anyone on my blog. Well, I never tell BIG LIES. I may elaborate and pontificate, but that's what a writer is SUPPOSED TO DO. Gimme a break. Just listen to the music.

That's the GOOD stuff.

February 09, 2007

Magnets and such

Originally published October 25, 2003

Quinton and Jack enjoyed the box of magnets I bought at the thrift store the other day. They've figured out a lot of ways to be creative with them. I set up what I called a "minefield" with some ball bearings under a towel and told them to find the mines without getting one stuck to a magnet. Jack blew himself up right away, but Quinton cleared the field.

Quinton has learned to placekick a football. I've worked on that skill with him in the past, but he obviously has another teacher now, or else he's doing a lot of practice on his own. He's getting good at it. He kicked four balls the length of my front yard and clean over my truck in the driveway today. Yeah, he shanked a few and hit a few line drives, but when he caught the ball right, he made a good kick.

He and Jack are gone across the street to bounce on a trampoline for a while. I told them that they had one hour to play, then I have to get Quinton dressed for his football game at 3:00 this afternoon.

His team sucks. They got drubbed 36-0 on Thursday and they'll probably get their asses handed to them again today. The coach does a good job of teaching the fundamentals, but the boys don't display a lot of "WANT TO" on the field. I really believe that most of them would rather be bouncing on a trampoline on a Saturday afternoon than wearing pads and helmets on a football field with a coach screaming at them.

Quinton will be there today. It's the last game of the season. I wish he had the "WANT TO" that I did at his age, but he doesn't.

That's okay with me. I love my boy. Football isn't shit when it's no fun to play.

But he is gonna play that last game today. That's what he signed up to do. And a Smith keeps his word. Life is that simple sometimes.

I'll tell you about the game when I get back home.

I'll be damned

Originally published October 25, 2003

The Mighty Eagles spread their wings and flew today! They won 26-13 and the other team scored seven of their points with one second left on the clock at the end of the game. I didn't recognize those Eagles on the field today. They played good football. (As one parent suggested, "I guess they needed eight practice games to learn how to quit losing.")

Quinton did something today that made me proud. He got a couple of war-marks on his helmet from making good tackles, but his finest moment came on a kickoff return. Quinton is one of the side men around the guy the coach wants to return every kickoff. All season long, the coach has told Quinton to FALL ON THE BALL if it comes his way.

All season long, I've told Quinton, FALL ON IT if you are surrounded; but if you've got open field around you, pick up the ball and RUN. He did that today.

The ball came sideways off the kicker's foot and went bouncing crazily down the left side of the field. Quinton had to run his ass off to catch up with it, and I saw him turn and look upfield when he had the ball in his hands. "RUN!" I yelled from the stands. I know that he didn't hear me, but my boy picked up the ball and ran.

Bejus, did he run. He was a snake-hipped hellion, cutting through tacklers left and right. A big wad of enemy bodies swallowed him somewhere around the other team's 40 yard line, and thought that my boy would be crushed. All of a sudden, I saw him pop out of there with nothing but open field between him and the goal line. I thought he was gone for a touchdown.

Some little, nine year-old bastard in a green jersey showed up from somewhere, stuck out a hand and got Quinton by one foot. Quinton fell 50 yards from where he picked up that kickoff and ten yards from the goal line. He left the field to tremendous cheers and I was jumping up and down. "GOOD JOB, BUDDY! WAY TO GO! GOOD RUN!" His team scored a touchdown on the next play.

As usual, Quinton was the smallest boy on the field. I was SO PROUD to watch him run like that. I thought that my chest was going to break.

Damn! I wonder if my father ever felt that way when he watched ME play football?

Never again

Originally published October 25, 2003

I am NOT feeding Quinton and Jack McDonald's fast food and allowing them to drink Mountain Dew EVER again. Boy, did they get a case of ants in their pants after the football game today. I finally got them quieted down and asleep without the use of a baseball bat to the head, but it was nip and tuck for a while there.

Quinton tried to steal MY SEAT on the couch and I ran his little ass off of it. I put a tickle attack and a Wet Willie on him. He surrended to the Tall Dog and I got my seat back. He ended up wrapped in a blanket and hugging me while Jack sat on the floor and played with magnets.

I felt sorry for Jack. "You wanna get up here, too?" I asked.

"Are you going to tickle me, Mr. Rob?"

"That's for ME to know and YOU to find out, Jack. Do you want to get on the couch with Quinton and me?"

"Okay," he replied, and up he jumped. All was quiet for about 30 seconds and then Jack laid a juicy Wet Willie in my ear. As I was laying the Death of 1,000 Tickles on HIM, Quinton hit me from behind and juiced me AGAIN in the ear with another Wet Willie. Goddam! I was surrounded!

I had to subdue both of those hyper-caffeineated young men, sit on them and tickle until they both cried "UNCLE!" and then go find a dishrag to wipe the slobber out of my ears. Thank Bejus they finally fell asleep. I hope that they are not playing possum on me.

I am too old for this shit.

February 08, 2007

I'm going to bed

Originally published September 28, 2003

We had a pie-fight today. I told the boys last night that we would do it, so we went to the grocery store this morning and bought a lot of whipped cream, paper plates and ice-cream toppings. It was really good Three-Stooges fun at first. I gave Quinton one square in the face, and while I was laughing about that, Jack nailed me right in the ear. I picked up another pie and hit Jack in the back of the head with it. We were running around the yard having a fine old time.

Unfortunately, Jack's sisters saw all the commotion the yard and wanted to get involved, too. They came over. That was a mistake. Kiley went after Jack with a pie and Jack RAN INTO MY HOUSE, that little shit. Do you think Kiley stopped at the front door? NO, SHE DID NOT!!! She ran inside, threw a pie at Jack, missed HIM and HIT MY GODDAM TV! I had whipped cream and strawberry topping EVERYWHERE.

That put an end to the pie-fight. I wanted to strangle Jack and kill Kiley. I sent her home and asked Jack to explain just what in the world he was thinking when he RAN INTO MY HOUSE to escape being hit by a pie.

"I don't know, Mr. Rob."

"Well, here's what I know, Mr. Jack. You're gonna clean that mess up because it wouldn't be there except for you. Grab that towel over there and get busy."

"But, Mr. Rob, Kiley threw the pie."

"Jack, you want your butt torn up? Don't back-sass me. You know good and well that the pie-fight was supposed to be OUTSIDE. YOU ran INSIDE. I don't care who threw the pie. YOU broke the rules. Now, shut your yap and clean up this mess." I was pissed.

He did, although I had to go behind him and get what he missed. I love the boy like a son, but damn if he doesn't nut up and go fool on me sometimes. I don't believe that he deals with a firm hand in his everyday life to keep him from going astray. He needs one. I'm closer to him than his daddy is, and that's a crying shame.

Jack's a good boy. He means well. Usually, he is well-behaved and mannerly.

But he can cock his head sideways for one second and his brain rolls right out of his ear.

How do you fix that?

Things I thought about today

Originally published September 29, 2003

* I thought about Palestinian fathers who strap bomb-belts on their sons and daughters and send them off to die. Then, I thought about the pie-fight I had with Quinton and Jack this weekend. How can ANY father love his son and still strap an explosive belt on him, and tell him to go detonate himself in the middle of a cafe? What kind of savages are those people? I would throw myself on a hand grenade to save Quinton's life. I would NEVER take pride in seeing him become a "martyr" in a totally useless, totally stupid cause.

* I thought about my job. I thought long and hard about the fact that I don't qualify for the package that's being offered to people that are a mere three and one-half years older than I am. I wish I could take it. Hell, I would throw my clock number in the hat RIGHT NOW if they would let me. I can retire with reduced benefits on February 16th of next year. If they would sever me NOW and throw in about two years worth of pay, I could do what I really want to do.

I could write, full time, and see how much I could sell.

* I thought about football. I did a lot of coaching with Quinton this weekend about how to line up a tackle in the open field and how to "lead" a runner when he's trying to cut the corner. I also told him to use his helmet first and shoulders second when making a tackle. I don't give a shit what some have-no-clue-about-football pussy such as this one has to say:

admit I have misgivings about Rob's attitudes and values. To teach his son to 'hit to kill" in a game of football does not strike me as wholesome. Macho yes. But wise? I don't think so. It's okay to encourage competitiveness, but that's not the same thing as what Rob said he wanted to encourage.

Dumbfuck. DID YOU EVER PLAY FOOTBALL??? It AIN'T a NICE-GUY GAME. If you are not willing to "hit to kill," your pussy ass has no business on a football field. That ain't fucking soccer you're playing out there. The helmet and shoulder pads protect you, but they are WEAPONS, too. If you can't use them as such, you don't need to jock up and go out there.

I LOVE listening to wimmen talk about football. They have nary a fucking clue, but that fact never stopped a woman from pretending to be an expert on ANY subject. I forget who said it in my comments, but somebody who ACTUALLY PLAYED FOOTBALL mentioned that the boys who try to avoid contact are the ones who get hurt playing football. He was absolutely correct.

If you EXPECT to hit or GET hit on every play, you're ready for it. You learn how to take a lick, how to fall, how to give a lick and keep on your feet. You learn to stay ALERT all the time. People who go to sleep on the football field get hurt. If I stay on my toes all the time, I'LL be the one who hurts YOU. I don't see anything wrong with teaching my son to play football the way I played it. He gives away a lot of size out there, the same way I did. I am showing him how to WIN in spite of physical shortcomings.

Sometimes, in football, it boils down to who wants it badly enough. If you won't hit, hang up your jock and go home. Football just ain't your game. It's a collision sport. If you ain't willing to collide, you'd better just quit, RIGHT NOW.

And mamas who can't handle that fact should NEVER let their darling, precious boys play football. Buy them some goddam Barbie Dolls to play with. You always wanted a fucking girl anyway.

* I thought about Blood Mountain. For some reason, I dreamed last night about being back in the cabin. I dreamed that I had slept all day (Bejus! I wish I could!) and I was late for the blog-meet. I was alone and I couldn't find my car keys. I went into a panic. (I have this real anal part of me that demands total punctuality in everything I do. I live and die by deadlines at work and I'm still alive.) I went running out of the cabin with no pants on and realized that I couldn't ride to Dahlonega UNDRESSED the way I was. I started back to the cabin to find my pants and woke up at 4:20 this morning.

Yes, I dream vividly that way.

* I thought about my mama. We didn't go visit her this weekend. Me and the boys had pie-fights and football games, and I am a shitty son for doing that instead of visiting my mama.

That's what I thought about today.

'Splain it to me

Originally published February 29, 2004

Haiti has been a fucking sump [Ed. Link to supporting news article borked.] since the day I was born. I remember Papa Doc and Baby Doc and I see what the country is today. It's worse now than it ever was.

When I was in Jamaica, I took a cab ride from Montego Bay to Negril. Along that ride, you can see scenes of incredible wealth right next to scenes of incredible poverty. The cab driver told me that Jamaica had a 49% unemployment rate.

I asked him how could that be true? Jamaica is a beautiful country, blessed with a lot of natural resources. I saw sugar cane fields that stretched as far as the eye could see. I know that they make excellent rum and grow the finest ganja in the world. The 7-mile beach strip in Negril is lined, back-to-back, with luxury hotels, where rich Americans spend a lot of money.

"I'm paying you $50 American for this ride," I said. "If you get a couple of fares a day like me, you're doing okay. How can so many people be unemployed here?"

"They shut down the bauxite mines, brother mon. No work for the common man. I pay $500 per year for the licence you see on my window, right here. I am a registered taxi driver and I make a good living, because I own my own cab. Not many people have what I have."

But I learned something different just by paying attention.

The cab driver said that he could find a place for us to stay. He did and it was more than acceptable. I paid him for the ride, paid for the room, tipped him nicely, watched the owner of the hotel rent me a room, then hand some money to the cab driver. That's the secret Jamacian economy.

The driver has a deal with the hotel. He gets a cash kickback for every person he brings there. Winston met me 20 minutes later. He rakes the beach at the hotel every morning for no pay. But the hotel allows him to hang around the place and hire himself out as a "guide" to make what he can off people like me. Winston did well while I was there. He was a good guide and he was paid well.

I asked Jenny one morning-- just how many of these people sucking up American dollars with every hustle they can conceive show up as "unemployed" on Jamacian economic reports? Walk down to the beach and let them descend on you. Tell me that you can't buy anything you want down there.

They'll braid your hair. They'll sell you drugs. They'll give you a full body massage. They'll sell you a necklace, a wood-carving, a man, a woman or anything else you want. It's all right there on the beach. Just go ask for what you want. Someone will get it for you.

Then, you see the money change hands.

You pay the man you made a deal with and he turns around and gives three other people their cut of the money. They argue a lot about what's fair, but that was always their business, not mine. I negotiated a fair price and paid for what I wanted. Then I watched them fight over who owed who how much. I stayed out of those fights. That was THEIR business, not mine.

But I know full and well from seeing it myself that Jamaica has two economies. One is controlled by the government and the other one operates on its own. It is an underground economy, run by people who understand graft, bribes and kickbacks as well as anyone in the world. I don't believe that Winston is registered as a tax-paying, employed person. But he made an ass of cash off of me.

That's Jamaica.

Why can Jamaica do so well with that system while Haiti remains an AIDS-infested sump, filled with ignorant, violent people? They live on a beautiful island, with every asset that Jamacia has. But they chose to turn their home into a fucking sump instead of deciding to make money any way thay can. Got-Dam! I don't understand it.

Cuba, I understand. Castro doesn't want his island to prosper. He just wants to stay in charge. But Haiti? There is no reason for that country to be in the shape it's in.

That's MY humble opinion on the matter.

February 07, 2007

A day in the life

Originally published August 29, 2002

I didn't get back home today until almost 6:00 PM, which made an ordinary work day complete for me. I woke up at 4:14 AM, turned off the alarm and smoked a cigarette in bed. Yeah, I KNOW that's dangerous, but I do it every morning, even on those rare occasions when the alarm clock wakes me up at 4:30 AM. If I don't have the proper amount of carbon monoxide in my bloodstream, my brain doesn't function correctly.

I finished the cigarette, crawled out of bed and took a shower. I shaved by feel, because I left my reading glasses on the computer table the night before, and my ancient eyeballs won't focus on my face in the mirror anymore without help from the 1.75 lenses I buy for $7 at the Super Wal-Mart. I do the best I can with googling, unfocused eyeballs, but I always check with my glasses ON before I leave the house, just to make sure that I didn't miss any blatantly obvious thatch of hair where it doesn't belong.

I got dressed and watched Sportscenter on CNN to learn that the Braves lost last night 1-0 in ten innings, and chuckled with sadistic delight when I saw that the Boston Red Sox lost, too. Poor JB. Forget the World Series tickets, my opinionated friend. Your team ain't a-gonna make it that far.

I boiled two eggs, took the grilled salmon leftovers out of the refrigerator, threw in a bag of boiled peanuts and had my lunchbox packed by 5:00 AM. I watched CNN Headline News for thirty minutes, then left for work at 5:30 AM. I had a busy day, then I had to do a performance review with the 0700-1900 supervisor before he left on his Long Off today, and he wanted to discuss a lot of what I graded him on. I left work at 5:15 PM, arrived home just before 6:00 and found Recondo 32 reclined on my couch watching a movie on the satellite TV. He bitched that I was late bringing my truck to him. I threw him the keys and told him to GO, but bring the truck back in one piece.

That's a typical day for me, except for Recondo 32 being on my couch when I arrive home.

I picked a fight with a new writer on hooked on blogging and I hope I pissed her off very well. I have a talent for such things when I put my mind to it. I'm going to bed now, because I have TWO MORE performance reviews to do in the morning, and my boss is supposed to give me MINE tomorrow, too.

It's a real judgment day.

I have the Duty this weekend, too, so I'll be going to the plant on Saturday and Sunday of this three-day weekend. I have to do performance reviews with both weekend supervisors and have the finished product on my boss's desk on Tuesday morning. If I succeed in getting that chore done, I will have beat an unbeatable deadline, but that's what I do, consistently. When everybody else wails and gnashes teeth while screaming about MORE TIME, I go and DO THE JOB. That makes me look good, and I enjoy not having to worry about it any more. Deadlines have never frightened me. They provide incentive.

Yeah, I am a self-confident ass. I'm proud of that.

100 things

Originally published August 30, 2002

The Damned Yankee [Ed. Blog no longer exists.] made me do this.

1. I believe that alcohol, cholesterol, caffeine and nicotine are the four basic food groups.
2. I drink too much.
3. I smoke too much.
4. I eat a lot of greasy fried foods.
5. My blood pressure is 130/80.
6. My cholesterol is 186.
7. I am 50 years old and have a 32" waist.
8. I don't exercise.
9. I believe that doctors and health nuts are full of shit.
10. I believe vegetarians are full of shit, too.
11. I don't want to live to be a hundred years old if I must give up everything I enjoy to do it.
12. I don't want to live to be a hundred years old PERIOD!
13. I own seven guitars.
14. I own two banjos.
15. I own a mandolin AND a violin.
16. I own an autoharp.
17. I cannot play the violin.
18. I've gotten laid a lot because I was a guitar player.
19. I still play guitar, but I don't get laid nearly as often anymore.
20. I don't play guitar in bar bands anymore, either.
21. One year ago, I didn't know what a "Blogger" was.
22. Now I ARE one!
23. I really love corned beef and cabbage.
24. I once kissed Ellie May Clampett.
25. I once owned four goats and 27 chickens.
26. I have two children that I know of.
27. I live by myself now and I LIKE IT that way most of the time.
28. The Three Stooges still crack me up.
29. I don't know how to operate my new digital camera.
30. I miss John Wayne.
31. I DON'T MISS Bill Clinton, that hockwad.
32. I like dogs.
33. I DON'T like cats.
34. Cats like ME, the creepy little shits.
35. The best dog I ever had was named "Wiggles."
36. The ugliest dog I ever saw was Wiggles.
37. I was born on February 16, 1952.
38. Under the sign of Aquarius.
39. I wrote a novel that did not sell.
40. The novel did not sell because it SUCKED.
41. I own a 1964 Martin D-28 guitar that is my pride and joy. It sounds better than any other guitar I've ever heard.
42. O.J. DID IT!
43. Ted Kennedy should be in jail instead of the U.S. Senate.
44. Jimmy Carter was governor of my state and President of the United States, and I never voted for the doofus. Not once.
45. I like pretty, red-polished, feminine toes.
46. I've been known to suck a pretty feminine toe or two when I have the opportunity.
47. I once drank six beers in five minutes to win a bar bet. I spent my winnings on more beer.
48. I also held the pool table at $5.00 a game for over an hour that night.
49. I've never been in the military or gone to war, but I HAVE been shot at.
50. They missed me.
51. I've been to jail once in my life. I didn't like it.
52. I've been to a nudist resort in Key West. I DID like THAT.
53. I consider myself to be a lucky man.
54. I've also had a lot of bad luck in my life.
55. I was diagnosed with serious cancer one year ago this month.
56. I'm okay now, except for missing a few essential body parts that I wish I had back.
57. The missing parts are all INTERNAL! I look FINE on the outside.
58. I have a LOT of scars, all over my body. But I am a TIMEX-- I take a licking and keep on ticking.
59. I just took a 10-day vacation with a woman I met on the internet. I never saw her before she met me in the airport in Jacksonville, Florida. Talk about a blind date? It was a good vacation.
60. I don't have roaches in my house, even though I'm a LOUSY housekeeper. I have CRICKETS! I really don't mind them until they start that SINGING at odd hours of the night. Then, THEY DIE!!!
61. I have a spider in my bathroom. It fashions a web from the back of the commode to the wall and catches mosquitoes in there. I leave it alone. It's been there long enough to be considered a pet.
62. I don't believe that I will ever drown. Water is my friend.
63. I like having a good, bronze suntan in the summer.
64. I am a supervisor at work. I am GOOD at my job.
65. I am in lust with about a dozen women who write to me on my blog.
66. At least ONE of them is truly in lust with ME.
67. I've had my heart truly broken. That still hurts.
68. I once broke someone else's heart, too. I regret that, and maybe I ended up getting what I deserved.
69. I don't believe in God.
70. Therefore, I really don't believe #68. But I still regret what I did.
71. Howie Mandel has NEVER been funny to me.
72. Steven Wright makes me roll on the floor until my sides hurt.
73. Paulie Shore should be dragged off and shot for the good of the human race.
74. Sam Kineson died before his time.
75. I cuss a lot. I'm good at it.
76. I don't trust people who don't cuss.
77. Environmentalists piss me off. Assholes.
78. Politicians piss me off. Assholes.
79. Lawyers piss me off. Assholes.
80. Jesse Jackson is a sleazeball.
81. Al Sharpton is worse than Jesse.
82. Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas should be black icons; instead, they are reviled by people who should admire them. Jesse and Al are called "black leaders." Assholes.
83. I have friends visiting who have no electricity. They want a shower and somewhere to store their beer.
84. Now they're bitching because I don't have enough clean towels. Assholes.
85. Major league baseball players didn't strike today. The whining turds don't know how good they've got it. I've gone to the stadium for my last game anyway. Assholes.
86. I like the smell of rain.
87. I eat a lot of boiled peanuts.
88. I grow okra in my garden. I like it fried, or boiled with tomatoes over rice. I can eat that slick, slimy stuff until my drawers won't stay up.
89. I have a wonderful fried chicken recipe that I will NEVER share with anyone. You may taste the chicken, but you'll never know how I make it.
90. I once ate a whole habanero pepper out of a jar and said that it wasn't hot, just to impress some drunken friends. I almost died.
91. Now, I only eat SLICES of habenero peppers. And I HATE MYSELF in the morning anyway.
92. I once was a very good golfer. I haven't played in over a year and I'm not sure that I ever will play again.
93. I stopped drinking tequila years ago, because it made me crazy. I've started drinking it again. It still makes me crazy, but I don't give a shit anymore.
94. I never realized when I started this how difficult it would be to make 100 pithy comments about myself in this post.
95. I have enjoyed group sex numerous times.
96. Guitars are wonderful instruments.
97. I know that I am heterosexual. I gave a guy a blow-job once, and I DIDN'T LIKE IT! If you guys haven't tried that, you're left to WONDER...
98. If I could resurrect a dead person and have dinner and wine with him, I would choose Sam Clemmens. Mark Twain. My idol as a young writer. He remains my idol today.
99. If I could make love to any woman in the world right now, I would choose Nicole Kidman. She's one sexy wench.
100. If I had anything in my life to do over again, I would throw a piece of paper with a phone number on it into the Savannah River while I had the chance. Instead, I called the number. That's the worst mistake I ever made in my life. Long story there, folks, and it didn't have a happy ending.

February 06, 2007

Damn Brother, don't b'lieve I'da asked that...

Originally published April 14, 2002

According to this article I found on the Professor's site, my beloved state of Georgia, like Texas, has a law banning dildo sales. That revelation is a complete surprise to me. A few years ago, I went to a Savannah establishment called "Joker's Novelties" to buy a filthy birthday card for one of my friends. Joker's specalizes in filthy birthday cards, edible underwear, bondage equipment, drinking games and a vast assortment of personal pleasure devices, including a giant, two-pronged "condom demonstration device" with a handle on the end that resembles a huge, obscene dowsing rod. That double-dose of vulcanized love is prominently displayed in a glass case right next to the cash register.

I selected the appropriate filthy birthday card and approached the register. A cute, young blonde about twenty years-old was running the show that day, and I decided to embarrass her. "You sell many of those?" I asked, pointing at the two-pronged wonder-wand.

I wish I had not done that.

"Oh, no," she replied, very LOUDLY. "We keep that thing there pretty much as a conversation piece. But we sell a lot of THESE," and she reached into the glass case and dragged out a twelve-inch, blue-veined artificial penis and waved it in my face. "I wouldn't like one like this, but a lot of people do," she said, still waving the dildo in my face. "If you want to buy one, I recommend this." She reached back into the case and produced a mere eight-inch, blue-veined rubber replica (that reminded me a lot of ME, before my prostate operation) and tossed it on the counter. "You get a lot more dick for the dollar with that one."

I paid for my filthy birthday card and got the hell out of there. A crowd was forming around the register by then.

DO NOT think you're going to embarrass a young woman who works all day behind a glass case featuring a giant, two-pronged dildo. She will embarrass YOU. Or, you can BUY THAT THING. They sell them in Georgia.

Father and son week

Originally published April 16, 2002

My son had a baseball game today, so I took him to play. It's the first game I've seen this year, because I won't go if his low-rent slut of a mutha is there, and she usually is, so I'm not. But she's on a business trip this week and I've got my boy for seven whole days.

My son plays for a team called The Vipers. They were 0 and 6 going into this game. They are 0 and 7 now, thanks to the 15-3 drubbing they took today. You could rake all the talent on that team into a pile that would fit in a quart Mason jar and my son WARMS THE BENCH. It was a pretty pathetic exhibition, but the kids had fun. They play again Thursday evening, and they'll probably bite the dust one more time unless there is a team in the league worse than they are, which is difficult to imagine. But I cheered and clapped and rooted my ass off, the way a parent is supposed to do at one of these games. Then I took my son to McGrunge for a cheeseburger, which he ate heartily. Defeat caused him no agony at all.

I hope, however, that he doesn't become TOO accustomed to coping with it.

Call the cops. I was robbed.

Originally published April 20, 2002

My ex-wife showed up unannounced at 9:30 this morning to collect my son. I was cooking bacon and eggs for the boys, because my son had his friend, Jack, spend the night with him. They slept on the inflatable bed I have, but they conked out before I could inflate it, so they slept on the floor last night, on top of the uninflated bed. They slept like a pair of rocks, too. They were hungry this morning, but I never got the chance to feed them. Bacon was still sizzling in the frying pan and biscuits were in the oven when Jack ran home and the bloodless cunt tooled away in her really cool sports car with my son on board.

I went into the usual fit of depression I experience when my son is taken from me. But this has been a well-used and well-enjoyed home for a week. I have the wall-smudges and dirty handprints to prove it, too. God, I miss that boy already.

My son left his bicycle in the garage and a pile of dirty clothes in the bathroom. I suppose I'll have to return those things eventually. But the cunt will come to retrieve them, because she doesn't want me around her house, where the unemployed, dope-smoking lover stays. She's afraid that I'll shoot the bastard if I have a gun, or simply liver-punch the diseased piece of shit and drown him in his own vomit if I am unarmed.

She's right to keep me away from there.

February 05, 2007

Undercover

Originally published February, 28, 2006

I am blogging from an undisclosed location.

I left beautiful Rincon, Georgia at 0700 yesterday morning. The temperature was 27 degrees and I had to scrape ice off the windshield of my car before I could drive. My trip was uneventful after that, except for a truly exciting ride from the airport to where I am now. I thought Jamacian cab drivers were suicidal, but I rode with one yesterday who could put a stoned Rashta-mon to shame.

I always ride in the front seat in a cab here, because I can see better that way. Yesterday, I wanted to crawl into the back seat and cover up my head. Bejus! My driver was either VERY GOOD or VERY CRAZY. He cannon-balled down the streets as if he were playing a damn video game where he got bonus points for colliding with other cars or killing pedestrians. Or scaring the shit out of his passenger.
I don't know how we made it to the hotel in one piece, but we did.

I gave him a decent tip to make up for the hole my anus gnawed in his front seat during the ride.

I'm glad I wore a long-sleeved shirt on the trip. I needed it last night. It's kinda chilly here, with a nasty wind blowing. Still, I think I can survive. If I lived through that cab ride, I can handle almost anything. I'll be here in the city today, then off to the beach tomorrow, where the weather is supposed to be a lot warmer.

I was intending to post yesterday, but I couldn't get into this got-dam iMac computer I'm using at the hotel. Of course, it might have worked better if I remembered the address of my site, which I didn't. It came to me in my sleep last night. Funny how you have to put those slashes and dots in EXACTLY the right place to make a computer do what you want it to do. Finnicky bastard.

For those of you who thought I was dead because I didn't post yesterday, I'm still alive. For those of you who are curious about where I am, take a wild guess.

I think too much

Originally published February 28, 2006

I had a very nice dinner tonight. I don't have a clue what it was, but it had a big chunk of fish, lots of strange vegetables, some kinda micro-shrimp and a lot of rice on the plate. I can't believe that I ate the WHOLE THING, because it should have been hauled on a fork-lift to my table. Bejus! That was a LOT of food and I felt.... I dunno... DECADENT for pigging out the way I did.

The meal cost less than 5,000 colones, and that included two cups of VERY rich coffee after I sat paralyzed at the table, unable to function as a human being because my belly was so full. I did some quick math (I was an English Major--- I don't DO math) and calculated that, after I factored the F of X into the equation, inverted and multplied, did all the gozentas and took a wild-assed guess, that meal cost me $10.00 US, once I included a generous tip for my most attentive waiter.

That's Costa Rica, folks, if you'll just get off the beaten track .

Okay that's enought of me JEERING at you folks because I'm here and YOU'RE NOT! I'm gonna open a travel agency and show people how to have a good time, eat sumptiously and endure insane cab rides for a modest price. I'm gonna get rich and retire to Costa Rica.

But I'm totally off-topic here. Living high on the hog with piglet money does that to me...

Last night when I couldn't sleep, I did a lot of thinking. In the past two days, I've probably walked close to 20 miles. I don't take taxis here in San Jose. I walk. I LIKE walking, and I'm not that far away from remembering when I couldn't make it to my mailbox and back in one trip. I'll be sore tomorrow, but I walked ALL DAY today. It felt GOOD, too.

When I did sleep last night, I dreamed that I had a puppy dog in bed with me and he wouldn't be still. He kept pawing and licking at me until he pissed me off. I dreamed that I grabbed the dog by the nose, stuck his face in my armpit and said, "If you start that shit again, I'm throwing your ass outside for the night! You BEHAVE!" and I dreamed that the dog behaved and slept with his nose in my armpit, just like a fuzzy cuddle-muffin. Is that weird, or what? I MISSED that dog when I woke up.

You'll NEVER dream about a CAT doing that.

I also had plenty of time to get all existential. I thought about the hookers trying to solicit me off the porch last night. And I thought about my BC ex-wife. Guess which one I decided was most honest? Guess which one cost the most money? There's an inverse mathemetical Parallel of Pussy that needs to be taught in school. If a woman sells it outright, you know what it costs, right upfront. Hell, if it's GOOD, you might even throw in a generous tip.

Have her "give" it to you, and that's one expensive damn hole you end up paying for. There's whores and then there's... uh... ex-wives. In MY humble opinion, whores are.... never mind. I don't want every ex-wife in the world wanting to cut my nuts off because I suggested that they are nut-cutters. Gawd! Wimmen are the only creatures on the planet who will nut-cut to PROVE that they ARE NOT nut-cutters. Go figure that one out. I can't.

I'll just tell you guys.... If you don't think a pussy has teeth, you've never been to divorce court.

I'll probably piss off a lot of wimmen by writing this, but I speak with the voice of experience. And if I weren't speaking at least a modicum of truth, there would be no divorce lawyers driving Porches and no such thing as a pre-nup agreement. Guys are totally dumb, and you chicks figured that fact out a LOOONG time ago. Don't give me that "weaker sex" shit. I KNOW better.

Still, I wish I had a woman with me right now. Yes, I do. I would LOVE to show her around San Jose, buy her some killer food and treat her like a queen. I would take her with me tomorrow to Jaco, then down the coast to wherever we end up. If she followed me, I'd give her a time to remember.

And I'm not talking about sex. I'll GET sex while I'm here. It''s for sale, on the open market, just like any other commodity. If I see something I want, I'll rent it. Great fun, no guilt and everybody ends up happy, What's wrong with that? It's really no different than enjoying that fine meal I had tonight.

I just wish I had a companion. I'm funny that way.

But I believe that I'd be better off with a good dog nuzzling my armpit at night. I've never had a dog I treated well turn around and bite me.

February 04, 2007

ADHD

Originally published August 23, 2004

I just saw a commercial on television that I totally disagree with. It was from somebody humping a Ritalin-like drug for "Attention-Deficit, Hyperactive Disorder."

I call bullshit. When I went to school NOBODY had that disease, and I attended school with some really diseased fuckers. We were called LITTLE BOYS. We ran and jumped and played and fought and fell out of trees and set things on fire. We didn't LIKE being cooped up in school all day. We had wiggles in our legs.

I once worked with a guy named Mac (I won't use his last name, although I don't believe he would mind--- but I'm in enough trouble from this blog already.) and he had a son named Mac, too. Big Mac and Little Mac. One day, the school councillor called Big Mac and said that Little Mac had a behavioral problem and she believed that he should be put on Ritalin.

Big Mac exploded. He had quite a temper and he stomped off to the school to tell the authorities in change that there wasn't a got-dam thing wrong with his son. "You people want to punish him for doing exactly what I did at his age," Mac thundered. "You ain't gonna dope my boy to keep him from being a boy. Let him grow up, go to college and THEN do drugs, the same way I did."

Little Mac never got put on Ritalin.

I believe that a lot of what is called ADHD today is nothing more than a lack of discipline at home and boredom in school. My parents KNEW how to get MY attention. I had a hard-wire running right from my ass to my brain, and my parents weren't shy about ringing me up on that thing. If mama said, "Sit DOWN!" you sat down. If daddy said "BE QUIET AND STOP THAT!!" you shut up and stopped. If you didn't, they most certainly would make a direct wire-call from your ass to your brain.

I don't believe enough parents do that anymore.

Conservative blogger

Originally published August 29, 2004

A lot of people group my blog in with the "conservative" wing of blogdom. I am not a feces-flinging leftist, but I do not consider myself to be a conservative. I once preferred the Reagan form of Republicanism over what the left had to offer, and I saw a clear line in the sand back then. But the winds of change have obscured that line and I can't see it anymore.

How can anyone call me a conservative when I like to go to Florida and walk around nekkid for a week? Get a baboon suntan on my ass and let people take pictures of me wearing nothing but a sarong? I don't believe that Jerry Falwell would approve of my behavior. Hell, my mama doesn't either, but she gave up on trying to change me a long time ago.

I believe that the war on drugs should be called off as a lost cause. I believe that ANYBODY who wants to amend the Constitution for ANYTHING should be dragged off and shot. I believe that prostitution and gambling should be legal. I disapprove of abortion from a personal standpoint, but I KNOW that no government will ever stop it from happening, so let's be reasonable about it. Abortion is not an all or nothing issue, no matter what shrieking feminists say.

I believe in holding people responsible for their own actions. I DO NOT believe that government is the answer to every problem on the face of the planet, because I read history and government is RESPONSIBLE for most of the problems it desperately wants to "solve" today. Just give them more of your money and they'll fix the problem this time.

Unlike a lot of other people, I know that government can't "give" anything to anybody that it hasn't taken from someone else first. I disobey laws that I believe are stupid all the time, but I am willing to pay the price if I am caught. I make my OWN goddam decisions. I am a free man.

I will not be a slave to government, even though that's what government expects and that's what a lot of idiots DEMAND today. I am one of the few people who dare to suggest that the Unholy Trinity of American History were Abe Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. All three wiped their asses on the US Constitution and people PRAISED them for doing so.

As I've said before--- some people are just too stupid to live free. And if THAT'S a "conservative" attitude, then I need to listen to your definition of a conservative.

February 03, 2007

Payloaders

Originally published February 7, 2005

Yeah, I can drive one of those, too. I mean a BIG BOY--- a Cat diesel with tires that are taller than I am and a bucket big enough to pick up a couple of cars. Those critters are hinged in the middle, so you don't really drive it with the steering wheel--- you use levers like the joy-sticks on a video game to maneuver that rascal on the job. The steering wheel is pretty much for street traffic only.

I had an operator bury one in an ore pile one day. The angle of repose for TiO2 ore is pretty steep, and you don't just drive up to that 28,000-ton mountain and grab a bucketload off the bottom if you have a brain in your head. That shit may fall and cover you up. That's exactly what she did.

She climbed out of the cab and walked to my office to report what she had done. Bejus! I couldn't see anything but the tail-end of that loader when I went to see it. The rest was buried.

I thought about calling maintenance and getting some cable and a couple of cherry-pickers to drag the loader out, but I decided to try it myself first. That probably wasn't the brightest decision I ever made in my life, but I did it. I crawled through the ore, made it to the cab and got the engine cranked. Then, I tried to back out of there.

No go. I was buried too deep. I tried the crab-crawl, using that hinged drive-shaft to walk my ass out. No go. I tried using the bucket to push my way out. All I managed to do was rock the damned thing up on two wheels and damn near turn it over on its side. Scared the shit out of me, because you sit up HIGH in one of those things and the center of balance ain't all that stable.

I don't remember what all I finally did, but I got that loader out. By the time I finished, I had attracted a crowd of about 25 people who gathered to watch me kill my dumb ass, but they all applauded when I broke free. I parked the vehicle on a flat piece of the ore slab and told my operator that I would fire her and then KILL HER if she ever did anything like that again.

She was righteously contrite. And she buried the loader again two days later.

Wimmen drivers....

Showing my age

Originally published February 7, 2005

Bejus. I've seen some bloggers posting the "Top Ten Rock Bands of All Time" and I've never heard of half of them. Once you get past "Hootie and the Blowfish," you've lost me. I am an old-timer. These wonder-bands of today all sound alike, they are over-produced in the studio and they have too many fucking tattoos. I don't like a goddam one of them.

Nobody is going to remember those cheap fucks in five years.

Here's a REAL Top Ten from an old fart:

#1) Elvis Presly. He WAS the King and he always will be, even if he became a parody of himself later in his career. He changed music forever.

#2) The Beatles. From bubble-gum to psychedelic, they did it all. Their show on Ed Sullivan in 1964 is what made me want to play guitar. GOT-DAM! What a band.

#3) The Rolling Stones. A garage band that went big-time but still sounded like a garage band. I have to give them credit for longevtity. But I NEVER liked big-lipped Mick Jagger.

#4) Led Zeppelin. If I have to explain that choice, you wouldn't understand anyway. Nobody else ever sang like Robert Plant.

#5) Steppenwolf. John Kay just might be the grittiest rock & roll singer of all time. How often do you still hear "Born to be Wild" or "Magic Carpet Ride" today, 30 years after those songs were recorded? I rest my case.

#6) Fleetwood Mac. I know I'll piss some people off with this choice, but when they were in their early days, they were damn good. They had it all-- musicianship, harmony, great songs and good-lookin' wimmen.

#7) The Marshall Tucker Band. ABSOLUTELY the best band I ever saw play in concert. Those guys cooked until the stage boiled. My ears rang until the next morning.

#8) The Allman Brothers Band. Georgia peaches with some of the best guitar licks you'll ever hear. They were ahead of their time, although I never liked Dwane that much.

#9) The Beach Boys. Sweet Bejus. I still like hearing that harmony today. That was some amazing work on what were mostly shitty songs.

#10) The Eagles. Probably one of the most over-inflated EGO bands of all time, but damn good at what they did. "Desperado." "Hotel California." "Take it Easy." You don't get much better than that.

Heh. I think I dropped off the radar screen around 1978. So, you young shits tell me how good U-2 is and how I don't know shit because I don't appreciate the Seattle Sound. Go get another tattoo and kiss my Cracker ass.

Those are MY Top Ten Bands.

February 02, 2007

Curatives

Originally published March 30, 2004

I went out and had me a big steak dinner for lunch today. I cleaned my plate and it actually tasted like real food for a change. I also saw the Dixie Shrimper van in a local grocery store parking lot. I bought celery, lettuce, onions, mayonase, new-baked bread bread and five pounds of fresh shrimp. I'll boil and peel the shrimp shortly, then I am going to make a tub of shrimp salad. I figure that I can eat that stuff for about three days.

I love shrimp salad sandwiches.

I still have about two days worth of antibiotics to take, and I'm going to take every got-dam one of them. I DO NOT want this flu making a comeback on me. That muther damn near kicked my Cracker ass. Truly, I have not been as sick as I was for the time that I was in a long, long time.

Being laid up feverish, aching and hallucinating for a week gave me some time to think about things from a different angle than I usually pursue. I looked at the legal shit that I'm mired in and I felt the custom-groomed talons of the bloodless cunt digging into my back, so I did a few things to protect myself.

I had my will certified and witnessed, put it in a safe deposit box and scattered all of my money across the seven seas. Fuck. In the shape I was in at the time, I don't believe that I can recall where I put it, but I know this much: No asshole judge in Effingham County and no bloodless cunt of an ex-wife will ever lay their claws on it.

That money was meant for my retirement and as a legacy for my daughter and my son. When Jennifer tried to take it all, I had to do something. I REFUSED to pay that cunt for the fucking she gave me. I still refuse to this day.

I kept a $5,000 stash in a different safe deposit box for my getaway money, just in case another judge rules in my appeal that I should go broke because I have a dick and my ex-wife has a cunt, which she doesn't mind giving away out of both pants legs. I won't pay that whore when she's giving her pussy away to someone else.

I'll miss my son, but the cunt doesn't want me around him anyway. She's doing everything in her power, which is considerable in Georgia divorce courts, to keep that boy away from me. I'll be damned if I'll pay her for such perfididy. And I don't give a lovely fuck what the law says.

I either win this appeal, or I cut and run. That's the only two choices I see.

I don't believe that my lawyer is worth a shit. He gets paid whether I go down the tubes or not. The Domestic Law judge in Effingham County is a dickwit. I am caught up in a system that doesn't give a rat's ass about me, and it damn sure doesn't care about the shit my ex-wife pulled on me.

I've always looked at sex as a magnificent sport that should be fun for both partners. Jennifer has always known that she could trade pussy for the next step up the ladder, and she's done it all of her life. She's a good-looking woman, and when you first meet her, she'll charm your ass off. But watch your six anytime you're around her.

What you see ain't what you get.

What causes that?

Originally published March 31, 2004

I've never been a hateful, vindictive person. I can be violent and I can be very dangerous in a fight, but I don't carry grudges forever. They become a heavy burden after a while and you're better off if you just lay them down and go on your way. Hate may be a great motivating emotion, but it usually leads you down the wrong path.

You have no real life when you eat yourself up from the inside out, which is what hate will do to you.

I don't believe in loving all my brothers and sisters all over the world either. If I love EVERYBODY, my love is worthless, no better than alms for the poor. Love and respect are qualities that you bestow on people who EARN THEM, not some shit you throw away to beggars like pennies on the street. That's an important concept to understand.

I lived with hate for a while and finally realized, after a lot of thinking, that I was doing no good to myself and I needed to let it go. I also had to deal with misplaced love at the same time. I loved and hated the same person. THAT concept will fuck you up emotionally.

I'm still not where I need to be, but I'm getting there. I didn't ask for this latest dive-bomb attack on my ass in court, but I've got to deal with it, and I will. I don't love that woman anymore. I don't hate her, either. I despise her for being the money-grubbing cunt that she is, but I don't hate her. I look at her today and I feel nothing. She isn't worth my hatred, or my love.

I save those emotions for people who deserve them.

February 01, 2007

More email

Originally published April 30, 2003

My loyal readers (or people trolling for links on my most wonderful and semi-popular blog) send me all sorts of interesting stuff. I enjoyed this one from the Emuse. [Ed. Blog seems to no longer exist.]

Saw an anti-smoking billboard the other day that tickled my sense of irony.

First, it was some kind of cuddly-appeal-to-toddlers dragon puffing smoke clouds. But what I really liked was the tag line:

Smoking...Sooner or later, you'll end up in a coffin.

Excuse me? Sooner or later, every single one of us is going to end up in a coffin. "Life: Sooner or later, it will end." "Breathing: Sooner or later, it will stop."

This is the best the anti-smoking brigade can create? C'mon, if you're really against smoking, shouldn't your ad portray a really hideous reptile who is not afraid to screech "Smoking Kills Good Little Kiddies Who Take Up the Evil Weed?"

I like the idea, but Emuse doesn't spend as much time as I do telling really spooky stories to little children. I am REKNOWNED in my neighborhood for my ability to scare the living shit out of children so badly that they are afraid to walk home after dark unless I go with them carrying a flashlight.

The kids LOVE it and always come back for more. So, HERE is what I would tell them about smoking:

Did you know that some cigarettes have WORMS in them? You didn't? Well, it's the truth. That's why I always look at a cigarette REAL CLOSE before I light it. Usually, the worms leave a little, tiny hole in the paper, and if I ever see THAT, I throw the cigarette away. I know that it's got a worm in it. But SOMETIMES... they crawl in through the end of the cigarette and don't leave a hole. Do you know what happens if you smoke one of THOSE, with a worm in it? Well, you suck the worm down your throat, it eats part of your supper every night and grows to be as big as a SNAKE! Then, one night when you're asleep, it will eat its way out, RIGHT THROUGH YOUR EYEBALLS!!!

Heh. Kids pay no attention to a smoke-blowing dragon, but the vision of a worm eating through their EYEBALLS hit a home run in their imaginations. After that story, you can THREATEN to put a cigarette under their pillow at night and make them run screaming.

Did you know that vampires can smell cigarette smoke? Well they, CAN, and it attracts them. Plus if the room has cigarette smoke in it, vampires are immune to garlic, holy water and even crosses. That's why vampires ALWAYS look for people who smoke cigarettes. If you don't want to be bitten by a vampire, the best thing you can do is NEVER SMOKE A CIGARETTE. Especially at night.

I could go on, but I believe you get my point by now. If you're going to scare the shit out of a kid, be willing to do it right.

Everybody is PETA now

Originally published April 30, 2003

I live where alligators proliferate. The goddam reptilian throwbacks to the days when dinosaurs ruled the earth are EVERYWHERE around here. Every pond on every golf course has at least ONE alligator in it, and if you walk up to the edge looking for an off-line Titleist, you just might shit your golf pants when an angry mama gator charges out of the water with malice aforethought because she has babies in the water where your golf ball disappeared.

I have no love for those creatures.

That's why I have a difficult time understanding the whining done by people in this story. What, exactly, did they EXPECT one man to do when apprehending a renegade nine-foot gator in a residential neighborhood?

Residents told News2Houston that they called authorities after discovering the gator Thursday in the middle of a road in the 22000 block of Lodgestone Court in a Cinco Ranch neighborhood in Katy.

Witnesses recorded the gator's capture on videotape, in which the game warden was seen tying the animal to the back of his pickup, and then dragging it down the street while children and parents watched.

"It was very inhumane," resident Lara Mercadante said. "It was awful. It was absolutely unreal. If you weren't here you would not believe that it happened. We never thought that it was going to end up the way it did."

Lara, I have another scenario for you. Suppose the gator-catcher never showed up and the reptile ATE YOUR CHILD? Would THAT be more "humane?" The only thing a gator likes to eat more than a dog or a racoon is a small child. Bejus!

Had that been MY neighborhood, we never would have called animal control. My neighbors and I would have shot that fucker dead in the street, then had fried alligator tail for supper that night. Plus a few really nice belts and MAYBE a pair of boots. A nine-foot gator has a lot of hide.

The game warden then took the alligator to the end of the street, and shot and killed it, authorities said.

"We at Texas Parks & Wildlife Department were disturbed as many other people were when they saw this video, as many other people were when they saw this video," TPWD Col. Jim Stinebaugh. "We sincerely regret that citizens were upset by seeing this happen."

What were they upset about? The dragging or the shooting? WHAT ELSE did they expect they guy to do? Feed it some raw chicken, pet it on the head and coax it into the passenger seat of the truck so that it could play with the radio while he drove it back to the wild?

"(The game warden) decided that the alligator was too big for him to catch and relocate and would have to be killed," Stinebaugh said. "It seemed appropriate to him that he would have to move the alligator, because it was not possible to shoot the alligator where it was."

However, officials said that as of a result of the incident, they are now reviewing their policies regarding nuisance alligator removal.

Yeah. Next time, THEY JUST WON'T COME!

Good job, bleeding-heart assholes.