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May 31, 2008woodworkingOriginally PUBLISHED July 24, 2005 My father once enjoyed building model ships. I'm talking about the ones that came in a box with a million wooden pieces and you had to buy your own glue to put them together. He would sit in the den and work on those things for hours. It drove me crazy to watch him do it. When he was finished, he had something impressive, complete with sails and even tiny belaying pins stuck in the gunnels along the deck. I just never had the patience to do that kind of work. I was looking at a couple of my guitars today and thinking about the craftsmanship that went into them. I admire anybody who can do that kind of work. I am lucky enough to have THIS GUY living not far away from me, and he's one of the best luthiers in the world. He's done a lot of work on my guitars in the past (including one repair on my Martin that I didn't believe was possible) and I need to go visit him next week, if I can make it. My banjo, my fiddle and my Papoose all need some repairs. Randy is reasonable on his prices and he does excellent work. He's also doing something else that I think is great. The last time I was in his shop (Which is a WONDERFUL place---smells like fresh sawdust and old wood, with some varnish thrown in), I saw that he's training several apprentices to carry on his skill. That's in Bloomingdale, Georgia, by the way. That's a good thing. I don't have the talent or the want-to to do that kind of work, but I'm all for others who do. And Randy is like a Jedi Master when it comes to guitars. He's built 'em from scratch for some very famous musicians. I'm glad to know that his talent and skill won't vanish when he quits doing what he's been doing for a long, long time.
Mrs. RobinsonOriginally PUBLISHED August 15, 2004 I'm gonna say something that probably will piss some people off. But it won't be the first time I've done that and I don't expect it to be the last: Men age better than wimmen do. I'm sorry, but that's a fact. Men can get away with gray hair and wrinkles around their eyes. As long as they are half-way fit, with no huge beer bellies or sagging tits, men look RUGGED as they grow older. They exude character, wisdom and maturity. (They usually have MONEY, too.) Younger wimmen sometimes find those traits attractive. Wimmen just grow old. Their titties droop, their hands resemble crab-claws and they get varicose veins. They don't look good in a bathing suit anymore. They grow wattles under their chins. Their asses either expand to tremendous porportions or shrink to withered shanks. They can't GIVE AWAY the pussy that young men once fought over. I always wanted to bed an older woman when I was young. I had my chance when I was 27 years old and playing guitar at the Red Lion Lounge at the DeSoto Hilton in downtown Savannah. A teacher's convention was in town that weekend, and I met a woman from Nashville, Tennessee who really liked my music (or liked ME---I'm still not sure which.) She bought me a couple of drinks and I played every request she asked for. She was 45 years old. I ended up in her room that night and she flat wore me out. BEJUS! That woman knew her way around a bed and she almost killed me. My Mrs. Robinson fantasy was everything I ever dreamed it would be and more. I caught her right at the peak of her sexual prowess and she caught me at the peak of mine. We damn near set that room on fire with the sparks we threw. I remember taking a brief break that night and just studying her body. She had firm breasts and a tight belly. Her ass was to die for. She had a slight tracing of stretch marks, but they weren't obvious unless you looked closely. She was a very attractive older woman. She had almost no hair on her lower body except for a thick nether bush (that was before wimmen started doing bathing-suit cuts) that I found quite attractive. I grazed there for a long period of time and she had no objections whatsoever. I made her toes curl. I left the next morning and never saw her again. I'll bet she's an old woman now.
you be the judgeOriginally PUBLISHED December 21, 2004
I don't know about you, but I count at least 10 store-bought titties in this picture. (That's 5 of the wimmen, for fellow English majors who don't do math.) From left to right, I see... real, fake, real, fake, fake, fake, fake, real, real. I'd like to do some more research on this subject, but I don't have a hot tub.
May 30, 2008alliterationOriginally PUBLISHED July 25, 2005 Just an exercise in playing with words. Decorum and Debauchery I believe that decorious debauchery is possible. In fact, I've done it many times. A woman can still be a lady, even when her inhibitions hit the floor with her clothes and you end up playing with garden vegetables and battery-powered vibrating devices until you both lie totally spent in sweaty sheets as the morning sunrise creeps in through the bedroom window. Treasure and Temptation Often, these are the same things. The idea of gaining TREASURE has always TEMPTED people to do foolish things. Bank robbers succumb to this lure. So do theives, rapists and newlywed husbands. Science and Superstition Science tells me that I'll see sunrise in the east tomorrow, and that if I drop a hammer from my hand, it will fall to the ground. Those things happen EVERY SINGLE DAY, every time you try them. Never fails. THAT'S science. Superstition, on the other hand, is something you "feel." Plug Global Warming, Gun Control, Environmentalism, Voting Democrat and Bottled Water into that "equation" and you'll see what I mean. It ain't very scientific, but it sure is superstitious. Welcome back to the Dark Ages. See? Playing with words is fun. Now... will somebody send me some money? I'm broke, starving to death, my feet are swollen and I can't afford to go to the doctor. PLEASE HELP ME!!! If you do, I'll tell you all about the new recording equipment I bought with your my money, just as soon as I purchase groceries, pay my doctor and take care of all these TERRIBLE bills. I'll do that just as soon as I return from my trip to Costa Rica.
two ripe tomatoesOriginally PUBLISHED June 3, 2006 I picked two baseball-sized ripe tomatoes from my garden this morning. I also harvested two more squash and a pretty good-looking bell pepper, plus 13 banana peppers and a double-handful of new potatoes (that I collected by just kicking down about a foot of mound, and then rolling the potatoes out with my bare foot. Diggin' bothers my shoulders.) Now, I gotta figure out what I'm going to do with my bounty. I put a nice 2" thick New York Strip steak out to thaw, and I think I'll sautee the new potatoes in real butter with shredded cheese and smashed garlic, with some chives, salt and pepper sprinkled all over. Maybe slice the squash and cook it with the potatoes. I'm gonna stick the tomatoes and the banana peppers in the refrigerator for a couple of hours, then slice them up and make veggie-bobs, with some bell pepper, pineapple chunks and Vidalea onion stuck on the skewers, too. I'll douse that stuff with some soy sauce, a little squeeze-on margerine, salt and pepper, then sizzle 'em on the grill when I cook my steak, with some damp mesquite chips scattered in the charcol... and lots of good-smelling smoke... OOO-RAH!!! Just damn! If I wasn't back on the wagon again, I'd like to have a nice glass of burgandy wine to go with that meal. Oh, well... I'll just have to make do with decaffienated iced tea, very sweet and VERY strong. Just think about it!!! Except for the steak and the Vidalea onion, the chives and the margerine, and the garlic and the soy sauce, the charcol and the mesquite chips and the pineapple and the tea.... I GREW IT ALL MYSELF!!! I'm damn PROUD of it, too.
my green thumbOriginally PUBLISHED May 15, 2006 A nice rain fell last night, so I decided to take a tour of my garden when I returned home from my visit with the sports-medicine doctor today. I LIKED what I saw. I have tomatoes out the wazoo. Big, softball-sized rascals that are tugging the plants down to the ground in spite of the poles I have them mounted on. Some of them should be ready to eat in a few more days. Hell, I MAY harvest a few and fry 'em green. I'm gonna have a BUNCH of tomatoes. I PICKED three ripe squash today. I have a lot more where those came from. ALL of the pepper plants are producing--- the little bell peppers aren't much bigger than marbles now, but they'll be ready to pick in another week or so. My banana peppers look like little green icicles hanging off the plants and they are ABUNDANT. My corn is about two feet high now and getting ready for some high-nitrogen fertilizer. My Silver Queens are whoring for me quite nicely. If I don't have some kind of disaster soon, I may get a bushel or more offa those plants. I must have a green thumb, because I threw some watermelon seeds out around the back of the garden a couple of weeks ago, and the vines are running like crazy now. Just damn! If I had believed that the melons would prosper so well, I woulda planted some cantelopes, too. My okra plants aren't very tall, but they're blooming beautifully. If I trim those when they start producing, I may get a LOT of okra this year. And I LOVE fresh okra. And beans? I gotcha some beans growing. I planted the bush-type this year, so I don't have to fuck with giving them something to climb on. Those suckers are getting as thick as hedge bushes now and THEY have blooms all over them, too. That row of potatoes I planted is standing tall. I can start "scrabbling" a few of the new potatoes in another week or so. The ONLY things I planted that do NOT look really good are the cucumbers. They seem kinda puny and anemic, but they aren't dead and THEY are covered in blossoms, too. All of this is happening amid a profusion of weeds. I've been too puny to really tend my garden the way I should, but it appears to be flourishing despite my slackardly ways. By Gawd, I SHOULD have planted some marijuana, for medicinal purposes only. I think I coulda put a Columbian to shame... My mama always said that I grew a good garden because I come from a long line of Kentucky farmers, and growing crops is in my blood. Maybe she was right. It's lookin' gooood out there.
May 29, 2008interracial marriageOriginally PUBLISHED July 2, 2005 I got this idea from watching an episode of "Gunsmoke" today. In the story, a white man takes an Indian bride. All "respectable" citizens of Dodge City start to call him "Squaw-Man" and "Dog-Eater." They treat both him and his wife like shit. (Yes... bigotry has been around for a LONG time.) I could probably handle that cold-shoulder bullshit. I learned a lot about THAT when I moved from Kentucky to Savannah. I was a scrawny boy with no friends who talked really funny, too. I was picked on all the time and that's how I learned to fight. But I spent a few VERY lonely nights wondering if I EVER would fit into my new environment. That's why I disagree with inter-racial marriage. I've got enough of a cast-iron ass to tolerate WHATEVER anybody throws at ME today, and if I married a black woman, I'd expect her to be just as proud and strong as I am. I don't CARE WHAT "those" people think of me or my wife. Fuck 'em. But I would NOT put a child in that situation. YOU may have a cast-iron ass, but you have no right to inflict such trouble on a kid. They don't know any better and they don't have a clue about what's wrong. But they hurt, just the same. I see nothing wrong with inter-racial marriage. But I DO believe that some people don't think it all the way through. Do you REALLY want to explain.... well, never mind. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm wasting my breath anyway. Just sometimes... think about the word "selfish."
the "gunsmoke" marathonOriginally PUBLISHED August 28, 2005 I've been watching it, off and on, for two days now. Get ready for a trivia test. Matt Dillon has killed 68 people so far, but I had to sleep some, so I probably missed a few others. Miss Kitty killed one herself, with that little lady's gun that she kept in her purse. I also saw an episode today where some mountain man tried to molest her, was turned down, and he threw her in a horse trough outside the General Store on Front Street. Kitty came out of the water pissed off as she could be, grabbed an iron rod from a basket in front of the store and beat the shit out of the mountain man with it, until Matt pulled her off. It's NOT a good idea to piss off Miss Kitty. She meant to kill that man. One sad thing, though. James Arness is still alive and he was interviewed about all the time he spent making "Gunsmoke." He said those were shining times. But he looks like an old man now, weathered, wrinkled and feeble. Hell--- he's in his 80s today. Got-dam Father Time. He catches up to everybody eventually. I'm just about out of boiled peanuts now, but I'm going to watch until this show stops. It reminds me of my childhood, when I still believed that good guys win and bad guys lose. Justice always prevails. I don't believe that anymore, but I still like "Gunsmoke."
combo cookingOriginally PUBLISHED August 25, 2005 I am multi-tasking today. I have a pot of fresh green peanuts cooking on the stove right next to a pot of chicken and dumplings. The Crackerbox smells wonderful. I intend to eat the chicken and dumplings for supper tonight and save the boiled peanuts for tomorrow, when the 50-hour "Gunsmoke" marathon starts on the Western Channel. I'm going to eat boiled peanuts and count how many people Matt Dillon kills. I was up to 185 when they started re-running re-runs of re-runs, so I kinda lost track after that. Hell--- I saw Matt kill Bruce Dern, George Kennedy, Jeremy Slate and even Jack Elam a dozen times apiece so far. Matt killed Leonard Nimoy, Denver Pyle and Slim Pickens more than once, too. He got Warren Oates, Albert Salmi, and even Ken Curtis once before Ken started playing Festus. Matt gunned down some of the best. I'm going to start my count from scratch tomorrow. And I'm going to eat boiled peanuts while I do it. (UPDATE: I think it was an Emmy award James Arness received that night, but it happened long ago and I can't be certain what the award was. But John Wayne presented it, and that's the only time in my life I saw The Duke look small on stage. James Arness TOWERED over John Wayne. That's a big man.) (UPDATE II: If you don't know what boiled green peanuts are, you have my heartfelt sympathy, except for the fact that you're probably a got-dam yankee.)
May 28, 2008hometown memeOriginally PUBLISHED April 21, 2006 1) St. Patrick's Day. Savannah is a fairly conservative place, but once every year the city becomes a painted whore in full party mode. Drunken debauchery is the rule of the day, with a big parade thrown in for good measure. Port-o-Lets overflow with beer piss and downtown bars are standing room only. Lotsa sport fucking occurs that day and usually at least one person dies from falling into the Savannah River and drowning or toppling off a River Street railing to land head-first on the cobblestones below. Titty-flashing once was a popular activity, but police frowned on that practice, the bastids, and they started arresting wimmen who displayed their goodies. You don't see many bare titties anymore, but you can see LOTS of wimmen with half-masted pants, squatting to pee outside the overflowing Port-o-Lets. One of my fondest St. Patrick's Day memories is holding my wanger with my left hand and shaking hands with Savannah Mayor John Rossikas (sp?) with my right as we both pissed in a River Street alley and I told him that I never voted for his ass. Hizzoner was drunk as a skunk. 2) Movies. LOTS of movies besides Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil were filmed in Savannah and it's always a hoot to watch the finished product to see how many places and people you recognize. Remember the Burt Reynolds flick, Gator? A lot of that movie was shot on River Street, and Jerry Reed's "office" was in "The Other End" tavern, where I once played guitar and sang back in the day. I also saw River Street transformed into 1860s Boston for the movie Glory. There have been a bunch of others, but I'm too lazy to name them all. 3) Good Food. I don't care what kind of food you like--- you'll find it in Savannah. I love the fresh seafood myself, but you have lots of other options. Home cookin'? Try "Mrs. Wilkes' Boarding House." "The Lady & Sons" is good, too, but kinda pricey. "The Pirate's House" has a reputation a lot better than the food, but people like to eat there just to say that they did. "Ethnic" food? Name your poison. Hell--- my brother told me last weekend about a vegan Indian restaurant that's really good. 4) Oak Trees. Savannah was the first "planned city" in the country. James Oglethorpe laid out the downtown area in neat squares, which form little parks where people who work downtown go to eat lunch and feed the tree rats squirrels. The squares are filled with majestic live oaks draped in Spanish Moss that provide shade and beauty for lazy folks who like to sit on a park bench and vegetate for a while. It's VERY pretty. Of course, once you leave the "planned" area, Savannah resembles something a kid put together when he was off his Ritalin, but I believe that every city has its urban sprawl and Savannah is no different. Just stay out of the "projects" after dark. There, from their government-subsidized, low-income housing, members of a downtrodden ethnic minority seek acceptance from a racist society by robbing and killing a lot of people, usually each other, but they'll occasionally prey greet an unwary tourist with the same hospitality. But if you simply MUST have your crack cocaine, that's the place to go. There. Meme complete. Doesn't it make you want to visit Savannah?
Hammer it againOriginally PUBLISHED August 25, 2004 I developed my pineapple fixation on my last trip to Costa Rica. Pineapple is served for breakfast EVERYWHERE I've been there, and most places have a cook that will make you anything you want for breakfast. I seldom ordered huevas y papas fritas con arroz y pintos. which is a typical Tico breakfast. I grazed at the fruit bar and ate everything except mangoes. I believe that I hurt the cook's feelings at first, until she became accustomed to me doing the same thing every day. I don't like mangoes. They don't taste good to me and they'll attack you like vampire bats in the dark. But I missed my pineapple when I was going cross-country with Recondo. My belly missed it, too. I know I sound like a tie-dyed, tofu-eating hippy here, but I AM NOT trying to live forever. I don't have a religious experience when I eat pineapple. I AM NOT trying to make you see the light of some new miracle food. But that stuff works for me.
May 27, 2008existential thoughts againOriginally PUBLISHED November 15, 2004 I have a serious, heart-felt question to ask, and I want an honest answer. This is for all you Wimmen who read me: "Do you think you have a fine ass?" I realize that I just asked a LOADED QUESTION (BWHAHAHAHA!!!) but I'm serious about it. Wimmen and their asses have always intrigued me. I believe that the feminine Butt-Ox is the most sexy part of a woman's body, just because the SHAPE is so different from a man's. Plus, wimmen alway WORRY about their butts, where men never think twice about theirs unless the dookey-chute gets plugged-up, or something. This is a really species-specific question. I wanna know. Ladies, when you put on a new dress, turn seventeen different ways in the full-length mirror, primp, strut and slut while admiring your own bounty, why do you THEN turn around and ask your husband, "Honey, does this dress make my butt look fat?" WHAT THE HELL IS HE SUPPOSED TO SAY??? *"Yeah, darlin.' Your butt's blocking the TV and it's fourth and goal from the one. Get out of the way." *"No, honey. Your butt looks fine." *"Bejus! You are AWESOME! Come to me! I must have hot, wet passion RIGHT NOW!" *"Christ! If you were gonna haul ass, you'd have to make TWO TRIPS!" *"Butt? WHAT butt?" *"Why do you ask me about your butt every time you put on a new dress? When I married you, I married your butt, too. You know, thick and thin, better or worse, yadda, yadda. Get dressed and let's go." I ask only one True Confession from you wimmen. If you've got a nice ass and YOU believe it's a nice ass, you FLAUNT IT, don't you? C'mon, don't lie to me. You wear stuff to make your ass look good, you walk to make your ass look good and you LIKE knowing that your ass looks good. You ALSO like it when men notice your fine ass. I'm not talking about the pawing and slobbering shit that some dorks do to give all men a bad reputation. I mean guys who turn their heads, raise their eyebrows or nod approvingly when you walk into a room. If you've got a fine ass and you dressed to show it off, you EXPECT that kind of appreciation. THAT IS NOT SEXUAL HARASSMENT!!! That is simple he-ing and she-ing and we would have died out years ago if we didn't do such stuff. Welcome to Human Nature, 101. I just don't like people pretending that they don't understand the game. Big-titted wimmen wear low-cut, spagetti-strap tops that spill half their breasts out for a suntan and they become "insulted" when some man notices. Is THAT ridiculous, or what? Suppose men walked around with HALF OF THEIR DICK hanging out of their pants. Would wimmen NOT notice? Would it be really rude and impolite to say, as a female in a group of females, "Holy Bejus! Look at the rack on THAT ONE! DAMN! I'd ride it in the Bedroom Rodeo." I don't think that behavior is crazy. I think it's NORMAL. Okay, enough diversion. Back to my original question: Do you have a fine ass, or not?
things I learned from moviesOriginally PUBLISHED September 28, 2005 I've been studying and here are the facts: * All cars blow up in a big fireball when they wreck. * All wimmen are beautiful and horny for an action hero. * You should ALWAYS hold a pistol sideways in your hand. * If you are diving or doing summersaults, you can't be shot. * If you know kung-fu, you can fly. Why the NBA doesn't recruit those air-ladder climbers is a mystery to me. * Good guys always get wounded in the left shoulder or the leg. * Whores have hearts of gold. (Some actually do! But most don't.) * All action heroes can drive with the skill of a NASCAR racer. * Bad guys can't shoot for shit. Even with automatic weapons. * ALL bombs on timers tick down to about two seconds before the action hero figures out which wire to cut to disarm it, and then go fuck the girl. * Magic guns exist. A six-shot revolver can fire nine times without reloading. I've SEEN that on television, and I want a gun that loads itself. I'd pay good money for that. * Every Vietnam veteran has a footlocker stored somewhere with grenades, dynamite and some kind of exotic high-powered rifle in there. * Wimmen who go through the wringer, damn near get killed and have to crawl through a sewer to survive emerge with manicured nails with no dirt under them. Their coif usually doesn't look too bad, either. Movies---just like a real slice of life.
my spanishOriginally PUBLISHED July 17, 2004 I know that my Spanish sucks. I speak in the present tense all the time, I have a limited vocabulary and I sound as if I'm reading from a Dick and Jane primer to someone fluent in the language. Yeah, I'm kinda like Johnny Weismuller's Tarzan ("Me Tarzan. You Jane.") or one of those heathen Indians from an old western movie ("White man bad. Speak with forked tongue. Indian no trust."). But I'm getting better. I still have troulbe with the difference between "estar" and "ser," the difference between "mucho" and "mas," and the difference between "bueno" and "bien." I'll tell you what else fucks me up frequently. The Spanish language has GENDER!!!! Yes, gender in the true meaning of the word, not some kind of pussyfied, politically-correct, hide from the truth bullshit people use when they really mean sex. If a dog has a litter of puppies, some are male and some are female. They are male or female because of their SEX, not their goddam "gender." But in Spanish, words are different by gender. You have "chicas bonitas," who are "muy buena." But you also have "ninos bonitos" who are "muy bueno." Something can be either "linda" or "lindo," depending on what it is. THAT is goddam GENDER, folks. And people who use the word "gender" when they mean sex should be dragged off and shot for being the cowardly asshole that they are.
May 26, 2008old westernsOriginally PUBLISHED April 11, 2005 Just a few random thoughts after watching The Western Channel today: * Matt Dillon carries a bone-handled pistol. He always gets off the SECOND SHOT in that famous showdown to start the show. He ain't the fastest draw, but Matt doesn't miss. *Notice something about the streets in a western movie. Everybody is riding a horse, but you don't see horse-shit anywhere. * Two guys camp in the desert. There is not a tree or water for miles around. Somehow, they manage to make a campfire and boil a pot of coffee. I call bullshit. * All frontier whores are beautiful wimmen. Shit. * Nobody EVER got laid upstairs at the Long Branch Saloon. Shit. * If you have a horse-trough in a scene, a bullet MUST go in there, and create piss-streams and ripples while the hero is never hit. I learned that if you want to save yourself in a gunfight, either get behind a horse-trough or a wagon wheel. No bullets can hit you then. * Bad guys aim for your shoulder. That MUST be true, because that's the only place you ever see heroes being shot. * A six-shooter in the old west reloaded itself. You could get 20 rounds out of that revolver without ever reloading. I saw it happen today. * Everybody was CLEAN! And WELL-GROOMED!!! ALL THE TIME!!! * Every town doctor was a grumpy old man, capable of saving lives when nobody else could. * Gene Autry was bullet-proof. If you don't believe me, just watch the Western Channel.
picking blackberriesOriginally PUBLISHED April 11,2005 I immediately ran to collect my friends. We grabbed cans and buckets and I led them back to that place. Barefoot and barebacked. we must have picked more than 20 pounds of blackberries, and that doesn't count what we ate while we were picking. Mamas made jelly and jam, we ate blackberries with sugar and cream, had fresh blackberries on our breakfast cereal every morning and we shat like gooses for a month after that. Have you ever picked a lot of wild blackberries in the woods? If so, you probably already know what I'm going to warn you about. First of all, those vines have some very tricky thorns on then, and they'll get stuck under your skin in a way that you don't even feel, until you develop a humongous pustle where that sticker is residing. It'll look like a giant pimple until you take a needle and dig that barb out of there. That's ugly work. Second, snakes like blackberry thickets. Be careful where you step or where you stick your hand. We must have killed a dozen copperheads and run damn near that many black snakes (including one that I SWEAR was long enough to wrap around a good-sized house. Okay--- maybe just a good-sized car--- but he was still a big 'un.) out of there while we pursued those berries. We were picking berries when I heard a sound I learned to recognize a long time ago. I told everybody to hold still, because I couldn't tell where it was coming from. As soon as we stopped moving, the sound quit, too. But I knew what it was. A fucking rattlesnake. Have you ever heard that sound in the tall weeds or palmetto scrubs? It sounds just like a plastic Easter egg filled with sand that somebody is shaking vigorously. If I could spell that sound, I'd do it with "chicka-chicka-chicka," but really fast. I knew damn well WHAT that thing was, but I couldn't tell WHERE it was. That put an end to blackberry-picking that day. I told my brother to back out just the way he came in. (If ANYBODY was going to get bitten by a rattlesnake, it would be my accident-prone brother.) We had plenty of berries, and that RATTLER was letting us know that it was time to go home. We took our berries and backed out of there. I never went back to pick any more, either. We made one hell of a haul that day and I became tired of eating blackberries after a while. But I never forgot hearing that rattlesnake, either. If you know what it is, it's a sound that will freeze your blood.
aieeeee!!!!!Originally PUBLISHED May 14, 2006 My trash can was full, so I removed the garbage bag, twist-tied it shut, and reached in the cabinet below my kitchen sink for a fresh bag. I got the bag all right, but it came with more than I bargained for. A GODDAMFUCKINGBASTARDSHITASSOHMYGAWDSUMBITCH PALMETTO BUG was clinging to the empty bag, and when I fluffed the plastic before sticking it in my garbage can, the nasty fucker RAN UP MY ARM and disappeared INSIDE MY TEE SHIRT!!! Incredible hilarity ensued... I forgot all about the pain in my shoulders. I forgot all about my dignity and my self-respect. I screamed like a girl and performed a crazed St. Vitus dance on my kitchen floor as I ripped off my shirt and shook that disgusting roach out. HOLYFUCKMEDEADIMGONNADIEYOUSHITASS!!!! The bastard took wing on me and FLEW RIGHT INTO MY FACE!!! AIEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! Even MORE incredible hilarity ensued... I finally knocked him down and stomped the creature into a soggy mess on my kitchen floor. I then had to grab a paper towel and scrape the bug-guts offa my bare foot. It was a life-and-death struggle for a moment, but I prevailed, if you call "Dancing With Cockroaches At 5:00 AM" any kind of victory. Bejus! What a way to greet the day. If you live where Palmetto Bugs do not thrive, let me enlighten you about those critters. They are OHSHITOHSHITOHSHITFUCKFUCKFUCK NASTY. They look like cigar butts with legs, they can fly and they make a sound similar to a ladyfinger firecracker exploding when you stomp on them. They are packed with multi-colored guts that stick to your bare foot, too. And they WILL crawl right inside your tee shirt if they get the chance. Man. I did NOT need that kind of shit to start my day... If it goes downhill from HERE, it's gonna be a real pisser.
May 25, 2008outrageous!Originally PUBLISHED August 11, 2005 I also saw something else in the produce section that made me stop and think. They had "Personel Watermelons" for sale. Those little suckers were about the size of a soccer ball and priced at $1.99 each. I hefted one and put it back in the bin. "Personal Watermelon," my ass. What's next? "Designer Grapes?" Goddam yuppies. I did buy six ears of Silver Queen corn still in the shuck. They were three for a dollar and that ain't a bad deal for fresh corn, since I don't grow my own anymore. I'm going to eat that tonight, along with a special treat I also have. I went by the seafood market and bought two pounds of fresh shrimp and a couple of frozen deviled crabs. That's all cooking now, and I'm going to pig out. I also have a six-pack of Shiner Wheat beer that I purchased at Randall's today when I stopped by there for cigarettes. BWHAHAHAHAA!!! Sometimes, it's good to be me.
a romantic storyOriginally PUBLISHED August 10, 2005 The eventual marriage of my mother and father started with egg salad sandwiches. My father was a semi-orphan. His dad died when my father was 12 years old, and his mama flipped out, dropped him off with an aunt and uncle (who was a Baptist minister and a shitass), and left Dad to fend for himself while she ran off to God knows where. Dad had a hard time of it. In all the old pictures I have of him, he's skinny as a rail, but he WAS a strikingly handsome young man. In high school, Mama noticed that my father never ate lunch at school. In those days, you brought your own lunch or you didn't eat. Nobody made my dad a lunch. He didn't eat. Mama started making egg salad sandwiches--- one for her and one extra one--- and taking them to school. She walked up to my father one day and said, "I brought more than I can eat. Would you like an egg salad sandwich?" She started feeding my father every day after that, they became sweethearts and the rest is history. They're both dead now, but I still like to tell that story. I wouldn't be here today except for an egg salad sandwich.
piesOriginally PUBLISHED September 13, 2005 I'm a good cook, but I've never been worth a damn at making pastries. Hell--- even my biscuits suck. I can make damn good cornbread, but that's about it. Me and flour just don't mix. I bought a cherry pie yesterday and I have thououghly enjoyed munching on that thing. Whoever made that one knew what she was doing. It tastes like something Mama baked. SHE could cook anything and make it taste good. I sometimes make pies, but I buy the frozen crusts and stuff them full of seafood. That makes a damn good meal. Here's how I do it: Catch some shrimp or crab (even crawfish) and dice the meat up into small pieces. You can use all three at one time if you want to. Sautee some celery, Vidalia onion and bell pepper in a pan until the onions are tender. Throw all of that stuff and your seafood into a bowl. Crack in TWO raw eggs and mix the contents of the bowl into a nice goo. Add some black pepper, some Worchestershire Sauce, some cayanne pepper, a dash of salt and just a dab or two of Tabasco Sauce. Then, mix some fine-shredded chedder cheese into the goo. Pour it all into a pre-baked pie crust, sprinkle some more cheese over the top, then mash up some Ritz crackers and cover the goo with those crumbs. Pop it into the oven at 400 degrees and let it bake for thirty minutes. Serve with wine and a tossed green salad. You can get laid making that dish.
May 24, 2008southern floraOriginally PUBLISHED May 14, 2005 But a magnolia tree ALWAYS has something falling out if it. Except for when they bloom, they are a gigantic pain in the ass. The leaves are difficult to rake, the "fuzzy-wuzzies" that fall down right before they bloom are pure-ass, foot-piercing stickers, and the roots run so close to the ground that you can never get grass to grow around one. The flowers smell wonderful, but it ain't worth the hassle. That's a high-maintenence tree and I won't have one in my yard. I happen to LIKE mimosa trees. That's the only tree I've ever seen that goes to sleep at night and the red blossoms are both beautiful and aromatic. I tried to plant several over the years, but that was back when I had Bud as a dog, and he thought that anything I stuck in the ground was a new piss-post for him, and he always peed my trees to death. Have you ever watched a minosa tree go to sleep at night, then awake the next morning? I think that's an amazing sight. All the leaves curl up when the sun goes down; then, they spread out again the next morning when they feel the sunshine. Incredible. I've always liked weeping willows, too. That's one of the best shade trees ever, and they are pretty to look at. I like the way their branches bend all the way to the ground and almost make a leafy tent. If you use your imagination, you can look at one of those and picture a young widow kneeling by the grave of her beloved husband and crying with her face in her hands. Yes, those willows DO weep. Live oaks are majestic trees, and I've climbed many ancient ones. Stay out of the Spanish Moss, because it's full of chiggers, but a good live oak has limbs on it that you don't have to climb. You can WALK along those without holding onto anything. Just keep your balance. Some live oaks have limbs thicker than most other tree trunks and they grow to be older than old. I've probably climbed some that were here when Oglethorpe landed in Savannah. Georgia pines are genuine Cracker trees. They grow in any kind of soil, they grow fast and they ain't worth a damn in your yard. They are good for producing turpentine, pulpwood and two-by-fours. Other than that, they ain't worth diddly-squat. They throw out more got-dam pollen per square inch in the spring than any other tree I've ever seen, and that yellow dust coats EVERYTHING and raises hell with my allergies. DO NOT cook meat over a pine-wood fire. That can make a good steak taste like a railroad cross-tie. I live among MANY pine trees, and I won't have a tall one near my house. They tend to break off about 5' off the ground in a high wind when they start swaying in their limber way. They also have a disturbing tendency to fall on your house or your car. I believe that they are natural lightning rods, too, because they surely do seem to attract a lot of strikes. Did you know that Robert E. Lee never saw Kudzu? That's true. Kudzu didn't arrive in the South until the 1890 World's Fair and people thought it might make good cow fodder and stop erosion on hillsides. They planted it, the damn fools. Cows wouldn't eat it (hell, a GOAT won't eat kudzu and a goat will eat almost ANYTHING.) and the shit spread everywhere. Now you see entire hillsides with all the trees covered in that creeping vine. It's almost impossible to kill and it isn't good for anything. Trivia note: Kudzu grows tall, but it never goes above 40' from it's root. It also can grow 6" in one night. I once had a friend who got drunk at the Athens Old Railroad Station one night and left his car in the parking lot there for two days. When we went back to get it, we had to hack it out of the kudzu that was attempting to devour it at the time. That shit was trying to EAT HIS CAR! Southern flora. Damn... I love it all.
on a dareOriginally PUBLISHED March 22, 2005 Here is a genuine pussy-blog, just for A FEW perverted PEOPLE who DARED ME to do it. All right, assholes--- you think I WON'T??? I have always been fascinated by a woman's pudenta. I've seen pussy in all shapes and sizes and they all ARE different--- some for the better and some for the worse. I never saw a damn one that I couldn't tolerate, but some are more beautiful than others. Pop open a raw oyster and look at it sideways. Tell me that it don't look just like a pussy. Liar! IT DOES, with the same kind of lips on it as a labia. I eat raw oysters and I eat pussy, too. I am very good at both jobs because I enjoy my work. I don't like a hairy thatch on a woman. Back in the days when I first started casting my net far and wide, very few wimmen shaved their privates. I've seen some bushes where a goddam lion could hide. I've seen wimmen with more body hair than I had. I didn't really like that crap. But then they went in the opposite direction, and started shaving their pussies bald. I don't like that, either. When I am confronted with a bald-headed pussy, I feel like a goddam child-molester mounting that woman. Oh, I'll DO IT, of course, but that's not really sexy to me. I much prefer the Mohawk or the well-trimmed Van Dyke around the honey-hole. I think a woman should smell like a woman. I like the rich, fecund and NATURAL smell of a woman's well-maintained snatch. I don't want it to smell like flowers of The Great Outdoors. Of course, I don't want it to smell like three-day-old tuna either. You can hit a happy medium there. As far as appearances go, a nice pink set of lips is a real turn-on to me. One that doesn't lay there gapped open when you look at it. One that looks PRETTY and feminine, not like some ragged retread tire that an 18-wheeler threw off on the Interstate. One that doesn't look like a team of pile-drivers have been augering the BIG STUFF in there. One that doesn't resemble a vertical taco with the meat and cheese missing out of it. I don't like the big, flexible hangy-down lips, either. I've seen a few of those and I always think that it is the result of trying to insert a box of rubber bands up there, and a few didn't stay in. Combine a hairy thatch with the hangy-down lips and an empty vertical taco and you've got an ugly pussy. That's MY humble opinion on this matter.
May 23, 2008trainsOriginally PUBLISHED February 7, 2005 I've always loved trains. The power, the noise and the sheer FORCE of those things fascinated me for as far back as I can remember. I still love the music of a lonesome train whistle in the night. And yes, I PLAYED ON A TRESTLE many a time, too. I know that memory magnifies everything, but I SWEAR that trestle below the tipple at Louellen must have been 500 feet high and a mile long where it stretched over that rocky fork of the Cumberland River below the coal mining camp. I walked across it many times, and I recall looking down through the gaps in the ties to the river below. I often wondered what I would do if I got caught out there when the train came. I knew damn well that I couldn't out-run it. I heard a story once about a couple of boys who did exactly that. They got caught out there and opted to drop over the side and hang on to the ends of the ties while the train passed. One of them made it, covered with coal dust and diesel fuel after having six engines and more than 100 gondola cars roar past, but the other boy lost his grip and fell to his death on the rocks below. I think people told me that story to keep my silly ass from playing on the trestle, but I did it anyway. My cousin Ernie and I used to walk up to the switch yard frequently and place coins, nails and small pieces of chain on the tracks and watch while the switch-engines ran over them, creating works of flat metallic art. We both liked trains. Later, in my semi-adult life, I was camping with a girlfriend near the trestle over Little Ebineezer Creek, close to where I live now. We heard the train coming at sunset and I dared her to climb the trestle from the bottom with me and make love amid the creosote timbers while the train crossed over our heads. We did exactly that, standing up, while the whole bridge rocked as if we were in the middle of an earthquake. I don't know which was louder--- the train whistle or her screams of delight. THAT kind of experience will make you feel studly. Yeah. My trestle-climbing days may be over, but I still like trains.
picking crab meatOriginally PUBLISHED August 12, 2005 I've been catching and eating Georgia (and South Carolina) blue crabs all of my adult life. (Taught my DAUGHTER AND STACY how to do it, too.) There is a technique to getting the meat out of those critters, and I was taught to do it by an old black woman many years ago. Take the crab (COOKED!), peel off the top shell and scoop out all of the "dead man's fingers" (gills) on the inside. Also get rid of that yellow shit in there (although some people like to eat that, too). Break the crab in half, sideways. Crush the shell around the back leg and tug gently. You'll end up with a big chunk of beautifully white crab-meat that looks like a flower bouquet. Then, pull the other legs off one at a time and do the same thing. After finishing that, break the half-crab in half AGAIN, and get the meat out of the middle by pulling gently where the legs once were attached. That's a little more work, but it's well worth the effort. The claws are easy. Just break them off, grab them by the short part on the bottom of the claw, crack the shell, and drag the whole thing out in one piece. Get rid of that strip of cartiledge in the middle. I've picked many a crab in my life. Hell, I thought I was GOOD at it until I watched a show on TV one night about the wimmen who work in crab factories around Baltimore. BEJUS! Those wimmen work with little knives and can pick POUNDS of crab meat in 15 minutes. Watching THAT impressed the hell out of me. I'll never be THAT fast, but I don't do it for a living, either. Still... I could teach YOU how
me and the bobcatOriginally PUBLISHED September 8, 2005 I walked out there to see what was going on. My operator told me to be careful, but I thought the dumb bastard was hallucinating, so I just snatched the door open and took a step inside. HOLY BEJUS!!! A bobcat mama had snuck in there and dropped a litter of bobcat kittens right behind my fire pump. She reared up and snarled at me, with what appeared to be, at a quick glance, three kittens hanging from her teats. I stepped back outside and left the door cracked open. "Leave 'em alone," I told my operator. "We'll fire up the diesel pump when she decides to move out." Have you ever seen a WILD BOBCAT? They are impressive animals. A LOT bigger than a house cat, with a mouthful of teeth that mean business, no tail and a VERY pissy attitude. I wanted no truck with that mama. From my office window, I could see the firehouse, and I watched that bobcat carry all three kittens out of the pump-shack and take them off into the woods. She carried one at a time, by the scruff of the neck, and once she was gone with her litter, I never saw her again. But don't tell me we don't have bobcats around Savannah. I've SEEN FOUR and if that mama had kittens, there had to be a daddy involved in that equation. That makes FIVE. They are mean-looking bastards, too.
May 22, 2008key wastedOriginally PUBLISHED June 16, 2004 My last day in Key West was a memorable one; unfortunately, I don't remember all of it. The day started on a sour note when the quaint little restaurant where I had breakfast caught fire and burned damn near to the ground about an hour after I left. I finished my eggs and grits, walked down to the internet cafe (hoping for someone to put some more fruit punch on my tab) and went back to the hotel when no good-looking wimmen tried to pick me up. I turned the corner and saw thick, billowing coils of noxious smoke boiling out of the restaurant. My first thought was... "I DIDN"T DO THAT... DID I?" No, I couldn't possibly be responsible. Florida has their new-fangled anti-smoking nanny-law (one which most bars and restaurants aviod by having open-air seats and rear "gardens" for the nicotine-addicted wretches who frequent such places), so I never even lit a smoke in the place. Hell, I didn't even go to the bathroom there. Okay, I didn't do it, but the place was on fire. I arrived on the scene just in time to watch the fire trucks and cops cars come rolling to the rescue. Firemen in full turnout gear poured from the trucks and began stringing hoses all over the place. The cops started tying yellow barricade tape on anything that wasn't moving. I almost became taped in yellow myself. What the fire didn't destroy, the firemen did, with axes, sledgehammers and water hoses. They tore that place apart. I was pissed, because I needed to find a new place to eat breakfast after this disaster. I wondered if my waitress got out of there alive with the generous tip I left her that morning. Thinking made my head hurt, so I went down the street, away from the smoke and toward beer and Bloody Marys. I'll try to sum up the rest of the day as quickly as possible. I lost my hat and my sunglasses sometime around sundown. I believe that I bought another hat and gave it to someone I met in a bar. A homeless guy came up to me, rolled up his shirt sleeve and showed me a USMC tattoo on his arm. He asked for $2 to buy a drink. I gave him two dollars and then saw the lying sumbitch in the Key West Cookie Store not five minutes later. I started to confront him. I was willing to buy him a drink, but if I had known he was going to piss that money away on FOOD, I never would have given it to him. I ended up in an obviously gay bar for a while. I got up on stage and sang "Piano Man" on a dare, with accompaniment from the piano "man" employed there. I received a standing ovulation from the crowd, and I also got a free beer from Paul, the bartender. I'm not sure what all happened next, but I believe that tequila was involved. I made it back to the hotel late last night. I asked a couple in the lobby as I was checking out this morning about whether I showed my ass or not during my revelry. They told me that I staggered into the lobby the night before, took one look at the stairs, pointed an accusing finger at the steps and said, "FUCK THAT!" and rode the elevator up to the second floor. I must have gotten my key in the door, because I woke up in the right bed this morning. Actually, I woke up ON the right bed this morning. I never bothered to turn the sheets down. I was a fucked-up Cracker boy. Now... I remember going out wearing underwear. I woke up in commando mode this morning. I don't believe that I WANT to know everything I did last night.
lightningOriginally PUBLISHED August 21, 2005 I was playing golf one day with my friend Leo. It was about 4:00 in the afternoon. The sky was overcast, but there was no rain and we didn't even hear distant thunder. We were on the 17th hole. I hit a good drive off the tee and had a little sand wedge left to the green. But we'd both been drinking beer all day and I needed to piss. So--- I stepped out of the cart, grabbed my trusty sand wedge, unzipped my pants, flopped Roscoe out and started to piss, right there in the the fairway. I was in the middle of telling Leo how I was gonna birdie the hole and win all of his money when.... KA-BOOM! A bolt of lightning shot over our heads and hit a pine tree on the other side of the fairway. That's ONE TIME when I saw lightning and heard thunder at the same time. I almost snatched my Roscoe off. I cut myself off in mid-piss to get back in the cart, but Leo already had the pedal to the metal heading for the clubhouse, that rotten bastard. I had to chase him down to jump on board. Behind us, the pine tree was in flames and limbs were falling out of it. I could smell ozone and I noticed that Leo and I BOTH had hair standing on end all over out bodies. That wasn't from fright, either (although that incident scared the shit out of both of us)--- it was from electricity in the air. Mother Nature ended that round of golf right then and there. I didn't even go back to retrieve my brand-new Titleist golf ball. So much for making a birdie on THAT hole. Never trust lightning. It can come from anywhere at any time. I realized later that we were lucky that one or both of us weren't killed. Especially ME. I was standing on the ground, wearing a pair of metal-spike golf shoes, with a Wilson Staff sand wedge leaning on my knee and PISSING ON THE GROUND at the time. I know why I survived. My expiration date wasn't up yet. I once saw lightning hit a pine tree across from my mini-farm and it blew my neighbor's concrete driveway to pieces when it made the roots of the tree explode. That was an impressive sight, and the lightning killed the hell out of that big tree. My power was out for five hours after that, but my neighbors had to pay to have the tree cut down and then repair their driveway. Mother Nature is a real bitch.
stormy weatherOriginally PUBLISHED July 15, 2005 Mother Nature has been lifting her skirt, dancing like a drunken slut and really kicking up her heels for the past few days where I live. The mornings are bright, with lots of sunshine and clear blue skies. But the evenings are different. VIOLENT thunderstorms, with lots of rain and tremendous lightning have rolled over the Crackerbox for four straight days. I've had my power knocked out during two of those episodes and I see the clouds building off to the west again. I hear distant thunder. I think I'm getting another BOHICA--- Bend Over, Here It Comes Again.
May 21, 2008men and wimmenOriginally PUBLISHED February 27, 2005 If everybody KNOWS so much, why are we still fucked up? Young King Arthur was ambushed and imprisoned by the monarch of a neighboring kingdom. The monarch could have killed him but was moved by Arthur's youth and ideals. So, the monarch offered him his freedom, as long as he could answer a very difficult question. Arthur would have a year to figure out the answer and, if after a year, he still had no answer, he would be put to death. Heh. I'm not giving you the answer. I'll post it tomorrow.
me and the water hoseOriginally PUBLISHED September 2, 2005 I thunk a thought. Those booster pumps might not belong to ME, but I could use them. I talked to the contractor doing the work and asked him to replace a ninety on the discharge side of the pumps with a tee, complete with a reducing flange, a 2" outlet, a valve and a Boss fitting where I could connect a water hose. He bitched. "Rob, this is a flat-bid job. Valves cost money." I negotiated for a while and finally agreed to order the additional parts from the company store-room. I gave 'em to him, he installed them and I had exactly what I wanted. I ordered 50' of 2" hose and hooked it up. My calcincer operator was a guy named Melvin, and I asked him to help me check out my new washdown system. We did that by me grabbing the end of the hose and Melvin opening the valve for me. BEJUS! The booster pumps put out 80 PSI and that force backed me up a few steps when it first came out of the nozzle. But I could shoot water all the way to the packing area from where I stood. I could turn around and hose down the BLEACH area from 100' away. I was having a big ole time. I washed down the rafters, washed off all the tank-tops and hosed all the rust, dust and pigment from the floor into the ditch. I was one hose-wielding bad-ass. After about 20 minutes of that stuff, my hands started to get tired. I was ready to quit. If you've never held a hose with 80 pounds of water pressure going through it, you may not understand what I'm talking about. Just trust me: it's WORK! "MELVIN!" I yelled. "SHUT THE VALVE!" Melvin wasn't around anymore. He had gone off to make his rounds, take his samples and visit the lab. I figured that even if he DIDN'T stop for a cup of coffee in the lab, he wouldn't be back for another 15 minutes, minimum. I wasn't certain that I could hold that hose that long. I started yelling for help. Nobody came to my rescue. I couldn't just throw the hose down and run. That sumbitch would beat the shit out of me. I thought that MAYBE I could get to the booster pumps and close the valve myself, but that was a pretty confined space and there was no way I could do that without appearing that I had strolled through a car wash after all the water coming through that hose finished with me. I saw a structural beam with a Y-Brace on it. I jammed the business end of the hose into the slot of the "Y," stomped on it with my foot to anchor it, then ran like hell for the shutoff valve. The hose broke loose before I got to the valve, and it reared up like one of those snakes from the "Anaconda" movies. That sumbitch was whipping around as if it had a mind of its own. I got the valve closed before the bastard ate me alive, but that episode made me reconsider my brilliant idea. I ended up installing a shutoff valve on the end of the hose to keep from making operating that thing a two-man job. Even after that, I saw that hose knock grown men on their asses. But it damn surely would shoot water a long way. Sometimes, I'm too smart for my own good.
the wolfmanOriginally PUBLISHED February 11, 2005 I didn't know until today what a big influence he was on The Rolling Stones. They worshipped the man. I also didn't know that Wolf actually got rich off his music, which was unusual back in those days. Most of those old blues pickers pissed the money away or shot it up their arms. He didn't. He had a core group of musicians that he liked to play with and he actually paid them UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE to tide them over between gigs. Just damn. One of the clips they showed had him on a show called "Shindig" sometime back in the mid-sixties, when the Wolf was an old man. He still had more booty-moves than Elvis ever dreamed of. He still could rock the house. I ordered two of his CDs today. I had forgotten just how good he was. If you get a chance to see that show, watch it. Howlin' Wolf was one of a kind.
May 20, 2008excitementOriginally PUBLISHED October 20, 2004 I became very excited today when I was attacked by the vengeful mockingbirds. I really thought those fuckers were setting me up to go for my eyes. I wasn't certain that I could escape. The old adrenalin pump kicked into high gear. Even in that height of madness, I remember thinking--- "What if you can't get away? You can't call 911 and tell the Effingham County EMS that a bunch of BIRDS beat your ass and put your eyes out. They'll laugh their asses off at you. So will the birds." But I gotta say one thing. Becoming very excited surely does make you feel alive for a few glorious moments, doesn't it? You feel a tingle in your body and all kinds of primitive instincts come bubbling up from the primordial swamp to give you the "fight or flight" impulse your simian ancestors had. You can FEEL it, and it feels GOOD. Now I know for sure why people toss themselves out of perfectly good airplanes, ride roller-coasters, bunji-jump, haul-ass on motorcycles and like horror movies. Civilized life is pretty boring most of the time. I believe that human beings crave thrills, if they have any imagination at all. I know that I do. And I had a good one this morning.
things I've heard but don't know from experienceOriginally PUBLISHED August 12, 2005 I live around a lot of farmers. I like to talk with those grizzled old bastards, because some of them remind me of my grandfather. Here are some things they told me that I've never tried myself. 1) If you raise cattle, get a mule. Turn it out to graze with the cows. It'll take care of any predators that try to raid the farm. Mules become territorial, and they are real bad-asses in a fight. 2) Tobacco juice is not only good for relieving the sting of insect bites, but it is a VERY effective insecticide. Boil a bag of Levi Garret as if you were making tea and pour the juice all over your orchads or roses. Bugs won't touch 'em. 3) This one I DID try, and it works. If you want to keep deer out of your garden, put up a scarecrow and piss on it every day. Deer once raided my garden on a nightly basis until I started doing that. But the scent of human urine makes them wary, and they'll stay away. 4) Bees won't sting you once they become accustomed to you coming around. A LOT of farmers where I live keep bee-hives. They harvest the honey and sell it, but the main reason for keeping bees is to pollenate their fields. They tell me that they can walk right into a swarm around their bee-boxes, take the honey and the combs and never get stung. I wouldn't want to try that myself. 5) Kerosene cures mange on a dog. The dog doesn't like the application, but it works. 6) You can housebreak a pig. They are smarter than dogs. 8) Don't plant hot peppers next to anything that you don't want to be hot, too. Those old farmers tell me that you can produce hot ANYTHING if you plant hot peppers next to it. 9) You can tell if a pregnant woman is going to have a boy or a girl by seeing the way the baby is "carried." Boys hang low. Girls ride high. 10) Animals can tell when a storm is coming. If you see a blue sky and all the animals want to get back to the barn, they know something that YOU don't. Pay attention to them. I DEFINITELY believe #10, because my goats did the same thing.
deviled crabOriginally PUBLISHED August 11th, 2005 For yankees and inlanders who don't know what deviled crab is, I'm going to enlighten you. It's a damn fine, tasty meal. I catch my own crabs in the creek where they live, but you can buy crab meat, already cooked, in almost any grocery store. If you're using fresh crabs, boil them in a pot of water for 15 minutes on the stove with plenty of salt and seafood seasoning. Mix one egg (maybe TWO if you had a good day crabbing) a splash of milk, some diced Videlia onion, maybe some diced bell pepper and a handful of cracker crumbs with the crab meat in the bowl. Stir it all up into a nice goo, while adding celery salt and some more seasoning. Pack the crab shells with the goo, put them on a baking sheet and pop them into the oven at 350 degrees. Bake until they are brown on top (usually about 15 to 20 minutes). (UPDATE: You can play with this recipe all you want to. Add diced celery. Tabasco Sause is good. Put anything in there that you like to eat--- just don't forget the egg and the cracker crumbs. That's what holds the whole thing together.)
May 19, 2008southern injuriesOriginally PUBLISHED August 13, 2005 2) "Seven Year Itch." That's a stinging nettle that grows around here and it'll go right through a pair of Levis. That sumbitch burns, itches and will cause you to break out in a bright red rash. It's like a jellyfish sting that comes from a plant. 3) Poison ivy. Any kid past the age of six should learn to recognize and STAY AWAY from that venemous plant. That sumbitch will make you wish you were never born if you get it all over you. That's nasty stuff. 4) Hornet's nests. They hang from trees and I've seen some as big as a watermelon. They usually have one sentry on patrol outside, circling around the hole at the bottom of the nest. DO NOT hit a hornet's nest with a stick or a rock. You may think you can run fast, but you ain't gonna outrun angry hornets when you piss them off. They'll tear your ass up. 5) Rock salt. A lot of farmers keep shotguns loaded with that stuff to run varmits away and keep horny boys such as I once was away from their daughters. Get shot with a dose of that and it won't kill you. But your ass will burn for a week. I could go on, but I'm hungry now. I want to eat something that's BAD for me.
stupid people do stupid thingsOriginally PUBLISHED February 23, 2005 I'm going to call that Acidman's First Rule For Smelling the Coffee. Face it--- we have a lot of downright, purely STUPID people in this world. You can love your fellow man and call him your brother all you want to, but don't deny the fact that a lot of them are STUPID. Because they ARE. Just ride with me down highway 21 from Garden City to Rincon, Georgia. I GUARANTEE YOU that we'll see at least a dozen stupid people doing stupid things on that 10-mile trip. Asshole with cell phone pressed to his ear as he zig-zags all over the road. Too busy to STOP and make that call, but too stupid to get off the road before he kills somebody. Little old lady driving a 10,000 pound road-boat in the left lane at 35 MPH while traffic is whizzing by at 70 MPH. She also has her right-turn signal blinking the entire time. The dipstick moonbat who pulls out in front of you going 10 MPH when you had NO TRAFFIC behind you, and the bastard takes a mile to work his way up to that terrifying speed of 40 MPH, at which time he moves over to the left lane just because he likes it there. The fat black woman who manages to bring six lanes of traffic to a screeching halt because she wanted to make a left turn from the Enmart station right from the parking lot instead of exiting on the access road that has a traffic light. She would have a cell phone, too, except she's too stupid to figure out how to use it. That's just what I see on the road. Today, I went to the grocery store to buy some much-needed supplies. The woman in line ahead of me didn't have enough money to pay for her groceries. "Okay, if I put this back, what do I owe?" she asked the cashier. Still too much. "Okay, if I put THIS back, what do I owe?" Nope, still too much. "Okay, how about this?" and she threw her hamhocks, chitlins or whatever the fuck it was she wanted but couldn't afford. That brought her 50 cents to the good. She was delighted. I was frustrated. I don't know why the cashier wasn't authorized to shoot her. The woman paid with food stamps and left half a cart of groceries behind for somebody else to replace on the counters because she was TOO STUPID to do elementary school math. Got-Dam! I don't claim to be a genius (just a pretty sharp guy) but I don't do stupid shit like that. I know the rules of the road, I KNOW how much my groceries are going to cost me before I ever hit the checkout line in a grocery store and I DO NOT drive the wrong way down a one-way street and then honk my horn at the obnoxious bastard coming the other way. I've learned to survive among such people, because I've had a lot of experience at it. Stupidity is incurable once it sets in to stay. But some of those people really frighten me They vote.
dammit!Originally PUBLISHED September 24, 2004 Four hours without power and Jeanne hasn't really done diddly around here. Oh, we've had some wind and rain, but nothing spectacular. I think I know what happened. Georgia called me around 4:00 this afternoon to tell me that HER power was off. As we were talking, her power came back on. Mine went off at almost the exact, same moment. Georgia SUCKED ALL THE ELECTRICITY OUT OF RINCON and sent it to Bluffton, South Carolina, right through her cell phone. I was the dupe she used to do it, too. She left me in the dark for four fucking hours. I got an ear-worm during that time. What band played "Time of the Season" back in the late 60's? I can't think of any other logical explanation.
May 18, 2008whitemarsh sundaysOriginally PUBLISHED September 24, 2004 About 25 years ago, Recondo 32 and Georgia had a tiny house on Whit-Marsh Island. It bordered on Richardson Creek with a dock and a boat ramp right in their front yard. We all worked in the bars back then and Sunday was our only day off. A whole bunch of us made a ritual out of going over there and drinking beer, shooting the shit and skinny-dipping in the creek at night. We called it "Whitmarsh Sunday." I wrote a song about it, but I've forgotten the words now. Georgia remains pissed at me about that. She thought it was an excellent song. We had some good times there. The attendees were about 50-50 male and female and Bejus help you if you passed out. Another ritual was the first person to fall asleep got attacked by the wimmen. They would paint your fingernails and toenails bright red, put lipstick, rouge and eye-shit on you and laugh like hell while they were doing it to an unconscious man. If you made the mistake of passing out back then, you woke up looking like a painted whore in the morning. Man. I miss those days.
embarassing momentOriginally PUBLISHED May 27, 2006 I bought my necessaries, and threw in some Mexican popcicles, a bag of blue corn tortilla chips, a case of Ensure and a bottle of OTC Pepcid. Catfish told me when he dropped by the other day that green peanuts from Florida were hitting the grocery stores now, so I ventured to the produce section (I needed lettuce, too) and I found 'em. Shit!!! $1.79 a pound!!! That's steep, but not THAT steep for this time of year. The peanuts looked pretty good, too. I opened one and it was full, so I loaded a plastic produce bag with about five pounds of them. I twisted the top of the bag shut and placed it carefully in my buggy. I must not have been careful enough. The side of the plastic bag split open and green peanuts spilled EVERYWHERE!!!! The sumbitches clattered through the mesh bottom of the buggy, hit the floor and went rolling, bouncing and spinning all over the place. Just GREAT!!! Withered old ladies, fat mobile-home dwellers and bratty children ALL stopped what they were doing to STARE at me as green peanuts kept spilling from my buggy. I looked down at the mess, picked up the bag with a few peanuts still clinging to the plastic and tossed THAT defective bastid into the onion bin. Then, I tried again, this time after grabbing a handful of those pissant, suck-ass, flimsy, Korean-made, plastic-see-through containers and TRIPLE-BAGGING before I reloaded. I got THOSE peanuts into my buggy without another embarassing incident. As I crunched my way through the spilled peanuts, I saw a pimply-faced young man in a Kroger's red vest. He was stocking hamburger buns over in the bread aisle. I told him, "You need to call for a cleanup detail over in produce. Somebody spilled green peanuts all over the floor. A customer may slip and fall on that mess." He thanked me and went to see to it. I didn't mention that I was the one who made the mess. But it really wasn't MY fault. It was THEIR fault for offering shitty, shoddy produce bags. At least I reported the spill. Still, the scene was very embarassing. The good news is... I bought everything I set out to buy. The peanuts are cooking on the stove as I write and they smell GOOD. I am sipping on a warm Mountain Dew and my belly doesn't hurt at all, not since I ate three OTC Pepsid. I just hope that the peanuts are better than the got-dam bags they came in.
movin on upOriginally PUBLISHED June 8 2004 I bought the Crackerbox NOT because I was charmed by the house or the name of the subdivision. I met Young Jack while I was waiting for the realtor to come with the keys and when I told him that I had a boy about his age, he was very excited. He wanted me to move in across the street so that he would have someone to play with. He sold me on the house. The houses here sold in the $80,000-$85,000 range (mine was $82,500) three years ago and every one is now assessed at well over $100,000. Young families are cashing their equity and moving up to bigger and better things now. I don't intend to sell the Crackerbox. Fate may dictate otherwise if the BC continues to roast me over a slow fire financially, but I like living here. Besides, the boys and I have trashed this place so badly that I could NEVER get $100,000 for it. (Not without a team of Merry Maids, two Stanley Steamer carpet-cleaning trucks, a fully-equipped Haz-Mat team and Martha Stewart along to supervise the Superfund cleanup.) In my younger and more blissful days, I house-hopped all the way to a BIG home on five acres of land. Jennifer and I bought as much house as we could afford, fixed it up with some elbow grease and a few visits to Home Depot, then sold it for a considerable profit as property values rose and interest rates dropped. We then moved up to something better. I envy the people I see doing the same thing today. They have dreams and they are working to make them come true. That's the American way. I don't dream like that anymore. What for?
May 17, 2008wearing nothing but a smileOriginally PUBLISHED October 10, 2004 I was a young rounder at the time, and I took a date to the beach at Tybee to watch a meteor shower. The meteor shower wasn't what the forecasters predicted, and we became bored, sitting in the sand dunes and swatting mosquitos. I decided to go swimming. I shucked my clothes and ran nekkid into the sea. The water felt good. The night was moonless and nobody else was on the beach. My date was appalled at first, and I still remember her standing on the beach asking me what in the hell I thought I was doing. "I'm swimming," I replied. "Why don't you join me?" A street light way back on Butler Avenue cast her in perfect silouette. "I don't have a bathing suit," she said. I replied, "Sure you do. You can wear the same thing I'm wearing." "You're not wearing ANYTHING!" "Yeah. So what? That can be YOUR bathing suit, too." I didn't believe that she would do it. I was amazed when I saw her look around for casual observers, find none, and strip off all her clothes. She stood there nekkid for a moment and asked me if the water was cold. I told her that the water was PERFECT. She came in wearing nothing but a smile. That was better than ANY meteor shower I ever saw.
field tripOriginally PUBLISHED June 9, 2004 I'm going to Charleston today. I don't have any good reason for going. I just want to walk around the old town area and take some pictures, get something good to eat and drink a few beers. I'll probably spend the night there, so don't look for much posting today. Charleston is a beautiful city and the ride up there is a real eyefull as Highway 17 winds its way through the salt marshes and the stands of live oak trees dripping with Spanish moss. It doesn't get much more Southern than that. I'll see y'all later.
May 16, 2008what am I afraid of ?Originally PUBLISHED July 2, 2004 That's a good question and I'll try to give a good answer. 1) I am afraid of snakes. I don't know why, but just something about a head on the end of a tube that crawls around, disengaging it's jaw when neccessary to eat prey disgusts me. I have a really visceral reaction to snakes, and it is ALL Fight or Flight. I usually kill them, bury them and go back to check that the headless bastard didn't crawl out of his grave while my back was turned. I fucking HATE snakes. 2) I am afraid of heights. I wasn't like that when I was young. I could climb the highest tree in the woods and LAUGH while I was up there waving in the wind on small branches. But as I got older, I developed vertigo, which really plagued me at work. I HAD to climb to a lot of high places, and I got so dizzy that I could barely stand up. I don't know if I really call that fear, but it damn sure discombobulated me. My handprints are still on handrails at that plant. 3) I am afraid of my government. My ongoing, never-ending divorce has given me a taste of what THE STATE can do to you, and I find it frightening. Just suppose that you were accused of a crime that you didn't commit. Do you realize what you're up against? You may be innocent, but you'll lose everything you've got trying to prove it. THE STATE will grind you, break you and spit you out like sugar cane in a grist mill. That's scary. 4) I am afraid of wimmen. They're ALL crazy. And MEAN. 5) I am afraid of the booger-man. I don't know who he is or what he looks like, but I know that he's out there. He might be disguised as a mango right now and waiting for me in Costa Rica. He might be a good-looking woman with red toenails. He could be anything and he could be anywhere. But I KNOW that he's out to get me. 6) I am afraid of sounding paranoid. Have YOU seen the booger-man lately?
old manOriginally PUBLISHED May 12, 2006 I wanted to be, (in order) a 1) Professional football player for the Baltimore Colts... 2) an Astronaut, preferably the first to walk on Mars, or 3) a Fireman, with a really cool hat. THAT'S the sort of thinking a young man OUGHT to be doing when he has a head full of dreams and hasn't yet been kicked in the nuts by the ninja-foot of Life. I wanna PUKE when I hear young people today say, "I want to save the planet" or "I want to live on a government welfare check, have six chil'ren before I'm 24 and die in a drug-related, drive-by shooting in the ghetto, IF a drug overdose doesn't get me first." Okay, maybe young people don't say that last part, but they're damn sure living it today. And the ones who want to save the planet are just as hopelessly delusional, with no hope of EVER having a clear thought. Combine the two and you have the apathetic leading the clueless, which is a grand formula for success today. Maybe I'm just a bitter old man, but I miss my old dreams. When I was young, I relished possibilities and my dreams were full of them. Very few ever ended up being realized, but they gave me a target in life, something to WORK FOR, and when they WERE realized, the reward was great. I'll tell you what's REALLY wrong with this country today: we discourage dreamers. We preach entitlement instead of hard work. We call success "life's lottery" instead of Survival of the Fittest. We promise a check in the mail instead of getting OUT of life exactly what you put INTO it. We glorify losers and punish achievers. Awwww... fuggedaboudid. Ignore this post. I'm in a got-damn pissy mood. That happens to me sometimes when I don't sleep well. I really miss my dreams.
i was a telemarketerOriginally PUBLISHED September 27, 2004 I was in between guitar gigs and I was broke. I needed some money, so I figured that the best way to do that was to get a job. I saw a want-ad in the newspaper for a "telephone salesman---$350 a week guaranteed!!!" I applied for the job and they hired me on the spot. I received about 30 minutes worth of training, almost all of which involved me reading three different speeches from a printed page. Page one was the pitch for advertising in a local newspaper. Page two was something about cemetary plots and I don't remember what page three was. I knew before I finished reading that shit that I didn't want that job. But I gave it a try. I sat in a small cubicle and called phone numbers from a fat list the company had. I read the spiel from the printed paper I had and felt like a fucking whore the entire time. I lasted six hours and I quit. I never sold anything and those bastards never paid me a dime. I felt dirty when I walked out of there, but I was happy to be gone. I got a guitar gig at Charlie's Sports Lounge on Tybee that very evening. It was good for a month, so I was back in the saddle again. I never went back to telemarketing. I preferred honest work. In a bar.
May 15, 2008wild greensOriginally Published September 14, 2005 The wimmen encouraged us boys use our pocket knives to peel the bark off a beachnut tree to make tea for drinking on the porch in the evening. That stuff is very tasty just to pop in you mouth and munch on. It's hillbilly chewing gum. I always enjoyed the trip to Aunt Chassie's house. It was WAAAAYYY back up a hollow and you had to drive a car (or a truck) across three creeks to get there. A rutted dirt road with no bridges, and nobody around for miles. Sometimes, after a heavy rain, Aunt Chassie was stuck there until the water in the creeks went down. That's where I was spurred by a rooster, run up an apple tree by a horny bull and spanked for feeding one of the dogs that always slept under the front porch. We ate that rooster in a pot of dumplings after Chassie broke its neck with one expert twist, my grandfather hooked the bull by the ring in its nose and led it away so that I could get out of that apple tree, and I learned that farm dogs aren't pets. After Chassie died at the terribly young age of 93, I heard that one of her sons sold the propety for the mineral rights and some coal company came in and strip-mined the entire place. I'm no environmentalist, but I think that's a crying shame. I have a lot of fond memories of that farm.
climbing mountainsOriginally Published September 24, 2004 I once really enjoyed hiking and backpacking. I've walked all over the Appalachians, the Smokies and the Blue Ridge Mountains. I've spent many a night in the middle of nowhere around a campfire. I learned to chew tobacco while hiking. I learned to carry food, clothes, shelter and whiskey for FOUR DAYS in the woods and tote 40 pounds on my back. (That's a light pack--but I had everything I needed.)
May 14, 2008red-headed irish wimmenOriginally Published July 21, 2005 In my younger days, I found blondes very attractive. But after I bedded a few, I learned a few facts about most "blondes." #2) They aren't that special in bed. #3) Most of them have something in common with a 747 jetliner--- they have a black box. As I grew older, I fell into the clutches of a few red-headed Irish wimmen. They changed my mind about blondes. Lemme tell you about THOSE lovely ladies: #1) They have very fair skin, almost translucent in the right light. Usually, they have a lot of freckles, too, which THEY find embarassing but I always found sexy. #3) They all have hollow legs. They can drink like fishes and still walk when you're lying under the table in a puddle of your own puke. Be forewarned about that trait. But they are so kind that they will drag you out to your car, pour you in, drive you home and put you to bed. And she's not angry at you in the morning, either.
good storesOriginally PUBLISHED April 22, 2005 Old Man Wyndam was a crotchety old bastard who didn't like kids in his store. He always was convinced in HIS mind that you were in there to steal something from him, and he watched you like a hawk. I had a newspaper route and I had money at the time. I talked Mr. Wyndam into stocking two extra cases of football cards every month so that I could buy both cases. They cost $1.00 a case. I bought two every month for a couple of years. He finally came to like me and didn't treat me like shit anymore. But he died and his family sold the store and the land it rested on to the Catholic Church next door. It all belongs to St. James Cathedral now. I missed the old man, but I was finished collecting football cards by then. Maycrest Hardware was one hell of a store. It was run by a crabby old jew (I didn't know what a jew was back then, but my father often gave me some obscure piece of hardware and said, "Ride your bike down to Maycrest Hardware. See if the old jew has one of these.") and I don't think I EVER struck out. I would hand him the part I wanted, he would walk right to some dusty shelf and match it up. I don't know how he ever found ANYTHING in that place, because it resembled a junk-pile, with stuff stacked everywhere, but he never missed. He didn't like kids, either, but he damn sure had a fine hardware store. He's dead now, too. You just don't see stores like those anymore.
whittlin'Originally PUBLISHED June 25, 2005 Whittlin' is another art that is vanishing fast in this country. When I was a boy, I always liked to hang around the "gossip bench," where the old men sat, chewed tobacco, told tall tales and whittled with their razor-sharp pocket knives all day. Those old men could create wonders. I watched them pick up a piece of fresh-cut pine, test it for heft and feel, and then sit down to start whittling. When they were finished, they'd have a big pile of wood-shavings between their boots and the most wonderous carving you ever saw. They could make dancing puppets, a perfectly ROUND ball inside a cube of wood that would rattle around when you shook it but wouldn't come out of the cube no matter what you tried, and miniature wooden Indians, just like the one that stood outside the tobacco shop in downtown Harlan, Kentucky. I don't see many talented whittlers anymore. I kinda miss that, because I'm old enough now to warrant a spot on the "gossip bench" with the rest of the old men. I can chew tobacco and I can tell tall tales, but I never learned to whittle very well. My grandfather could do it. I can't. But I wouldn't mind learning. Hell, kids like watching old men work wood that way, and if he's a polite kid while he watches (and don't think those little pitchers don't have BIG ears) and listens to the stories, he just MIGHT walk off with a hand-made toy and a lot of good stories to tell himself. I did, many a time. I think that experience shows in my blog. Alas, whittling is another part of my childhood that's going the way of the buggy-whip and the outhouse. That crap is obsolete today. I DO NOT believe that we are better off as a society when whitting becomes a lost art.
like the moon in the treesOriginally PUBLISHED May 25, 2006 Did you ever lay semi-asleep in the woods when the fire was burning low and your camping buddies were all snoring? Did you ever look up at the sky and watch the clouds perform mime-routines in the light of the moon? Did you ever close your eyes and listen to the "quiet" of the forest?
May 13, 2008WIMMEN AND SEXOriginally PUBLISHED August 23, 2004 Paul Rodrigas once told a joke that I really liked. "Wimmen are telepathic. When you pick them up for a date they KNOW if you're going to get laid that night." 3) Very few wimmen, even beautiful ones, are content with the way they look. Wimmen are more insecure than most men I know. 4) Wimmen are vicious if you ever piss them off. Men may get into a fist-fight or a gun-fight if they are pissed off. Wimmen hire lawyers and steal all of your shit. That just ain't fair, either. 5) In outer space, astronomers have found black holes, quasars, nebulas and numerous other galaxies. The universe is a huge place. But some wimmen believe that they are sitting on the only pussy in the world and they get pissed if YOU don't believe it, too. 6) Wimmen spend hours getting dressed in sexy clothes, applying makeup to make themselves look as good as possible, then cry "SEXUAL HARASSMENT!!!" when men notice. 7) Men BEG to be sexually harrassed. 8) If a twenty-something-year old MALE schoolteacher bedded a 14 year-old girl, I'd call the guy a letcher and demand that he be dragged off and shot. But when a twenty-something FEMALE teacher beds a 14 year-old boy, I wonder where she was when I was in school. I WANTED a teacher like that one. 9) Some wimmen really LIKE to perform oral sex, but they don't like the same thing done to them. I've never figured that one out, but I know it's true. They'll polish your knob with utter abandon, then become all modest and ashamed if you want to go down on them. Got-Dam, woman!!! Do you think I've never seen a pussy before? I HAVE and I believe that every one I ever saw was beautiful. I know what I'm doing. Lemme have a crack at yours... or a crack OF yours. But sometimes they just don't want you to do it. 10) Wimmen remember every fuck-up you ever made. They'll bring that shit up FIVE YEARS LATER, long after you've forgotten about it. But to them, it's like it happened yesterday and the fact that YOU forgot about it makes you an even bigger sumbitch than she first thought. You'll have hell to pay, buddy, and you'll slink off like a dog kicked for no reason. Like the dog, you'll wonder, "What the fuck was THAT all about?"
THINGS I REMEMBEROriginally PUBLISHED July 28, 2005 #1) I showed up unannounced at my parents house one evening and discovered them skinny-dipping in the pool together when they were 60 years old. I was sorry I interrupted their fun. #2) I found a small bag in Mama's cedar chest that had "ROB" written on it. Inside, I found every baby tooth I put under my pillow for the "Tooth Fairy" to find. She had another bag just like it with my brother's name on it. She saved every one of those teeth. #3) I once dated a waitress who was willing to go to jail for a crime she DID NOT commit. I finally talked her out of confessing, and I'm glad that I did. But as she put it at the time, "I can handle jail better than she can. If they lock her up, she'll die. She's like my sister, Rob. I can't let that happen to her." The guilty party got off with a plea-bargain and nobody had to go to jail. But I damn sure saw somebody willing to do it for somebody else. #4) I once saw my Uncle Gene get banned at a Turkey-Shoot. He was fresh out of the 82nd Airborne and a crack shot with a rifle. The guy running the show ran him off because he didn't want Gene to win ALL the prizes. He made us leave, but he let Gene keep everything he'd won up to then. Gene laughed all the way home. #5) I once thought that I might die of hypothermia on a backbacking trip. The temperature was about 26 degrees and sleet was coming down from the sky. I was wet as a drowned duck, too. I couldn't stop walking because I started to shiver when I did that. I just kept going to the top of the mountain. #6) I survived a T-Bone automobile collision on highway 278 in South Carolina where a friend and I TOTALLED his brand-new Chrystler LeBaron. It wasn't our fault (a dumbass did something stupid right in front of us), but we absolutely destroyed that car. Neither one of us was wearing a seat-belt. I put my head through the windshield and we both bounced around that car like ping-pong balls. We BOTH should be dead! #7) Getting my driver's license--- the FIRST TIME!!! Weren't you proud of yourself when YOU did it? #8) The who, what, when, where and how of the first time I ever got laid. And I also remember wondering why I didn't feel different after that happened. #10) The birth of both of my children. You talk about a RUSH??? You're worried. You have no control. You're scared shitless. Something is gonna go wrong. You want to DO SOMETHING, but there's nothing you can do. Then, everything works out fine and you smell the breath of a newborn baby. And you bubble inside with so many emotions that you spend the next 20 years trying to figure them out. #11) My first new car. A 1982 Camaro. Swift and very evil-looking. It appeared to be speeding when it was stopped at a traffic light. I called it "The Silver Bullet," and I LOVED that car. I've owned several new vehicles since then, but there's nothing like that first one.
May 12, 2008THAT TIME OF YEAROriginally PUBLISHED June 24, 2004
Being SouthernOriginally PUBLISHED April 3, 2005 1. That farm boy you see at the gas station did more work before breakfast than you do all week at the gym.
May 11, 2008FISHINGOriginally PUBLISHED April 04, 2005 Ed. note: For any frustrated sheephead fisherman/woman out there, Rob supplied the answer in the comments section-to quote "...the bait the guy used was a raw oyster tied in cheesecloth. The sheephead could get a taste of the oyster but couldn't suck it off the hook. The fish would get pissed and just bite the whole thing in a fit of frustration.
HummingbirdsOriginally Published May 24, 2005 I put up three of my feeders today. I'm a little late doing it this year, because I've been so busy doing NOTHING that I didn't get around to it sooner. I didn't have the feeders hanging for more than 15 minutes before the first hummer came to call. By this evening, I could count at LEAST six different ones buzzing around my back porch. I like birds (except for pigeons, grackles, crows, turkey-buzzards and blue jays) and I feed them well. I get a lot of pleasure out of watching and listening to them. I like mockingbirds a lot, because if you sit and listen to them sing, you can almost hear WORDS being spoken. I can call 'em out by playing a guitar on my back porch, and several will land on my telephone line to sing harmony with me. I like doing that. But I heard a bunch of baby birds chirping in a nest in my woods while I was picking blackberries the other day, and I made the mistake of investigating that noise. I saw the nest and counted ar least four featherless baby birds sticking their heads out of there when I was ATTACKED by mama and daddy mockingbirds. Those aggressive bastards launched a two-pronged assault on me and ran me back into my house after I lost a few hairs from the back of my head and got pecked a few other times. They didn't want me around that nest and they made their point VERY clear. That's one of the things I like about mockingbirds. They don't take any shit. I've seen them attack CATS before. But hummingbirds are still my favorite birds to watch. They have day-glow green feathers that gleam when the sunlight hits them just right and they fly like fighter jets. They fight over a bird-feeder, too. They are damn near as aggressive as mockingbirds, even though they are 1/8th the size. But you haven't lived a complete life until you've watched a good hummingbird fight. Those bastards are MEAN! Back on the mini-farm, I was sitting on my back deck one morning. I was wearing a pair of cut-off blue jeans and a white tee shirt with a red apple logo on the front. I was reading the newspaper when a hummingbird appeared out of nowhere, pecked at the apple on my shirt, then buzzed up in front of my face as if to say, "WTF? I can't eat THAT!" before he went hurtling off the way he came. I really like those entertaining little shits. Just be careful what kind of tee shirt you wear around them. They don't like to be fooled.
BAG INTACTOriginally PUBLISHED March 8, 2006 I got my travel bag back from Delta today with nothing missing--- not even the pound of marijuana, ounce of cocaine, two assault rifles and THREE hand grenades I smuggled back from Costa Rica. I guess that my clever ploy of disguising those things as a pile of dirty laundry fooled both the Customs Inspectors and Airport Security.
BURGER BOOSTEROriginally PUBLISHED April 15, 2006
May 10, 2008THE GARDEN OF EDENOriginally PUBLISHED December 11, 2004 I've studied the story of Adam and Eve for a long time, and I have reached two profound conclusions. First, God was an idiot parent. You don't EVER plant one special tree in your garden and make a big deal about the kids keeping their hands offa it. When you do THAT, you draw attention to the tree and kids want to know why it's so special. They forget about every other tree in the garden and think about that one all the time. Second, the story demonstrates the essential difference between men and wimmen in this world. If I planted that tree in MY garden, I could convince my boy to leave it alone by threatening to grind his ass to hamburger and feed it to the dogs if he touched it. He might LOOK at the tree and wonder, but he would leave it alone. My daughter, on the other hand, would ignore my threats, wait until she thought no one was watching and go fuck with the tree. That's what wimmen do. You want a woman to do something you don't want her to do? Just tell her NOT to do it. Like a cat, she simply HAS to do it after you asked her not to, just to spite you. (Besides, you're probably up to no good with that tree and she wants to find out what evil you are plotting by being even more evil herself.) She won't DEFY you and go check out the tree right under your nose. No... that's too direct. She'll be SNEAKY about it. Wimmen are naturally sneaky people. If you don't believe me, just leave something in a suit pocket and see if she doesn't find it, even if you haven't worn the suit in five years. So, God tells Adam and Eve to leave that special tree alone, and Adam is okay with that dictate. He's off drinking beer, watching football and farting blissfully. He could give a shit about that tree. As long as he has something to eat, something to drink and a piece of ass every now and then, he's happy. But not Eve. Once God declared that one tree off-limits, Eve never saw anything else in the garden. Just THINKING about that tree put her in a hormonal uproar, and she suspected all sorts of evil, mean, nasty things about it. She beagn to hyperventilate and develop the vapors. The more she thought about it, the more certain she became. After some serious hyperventilation and vapors, combined with soap-opera plot-knitting, the TRUE FACTS became clear to her, as they would to any sane, logical mind. God is up to no good, Adam is part of the plan and I'm going to CATCH HIM in the act. She could "feel" it. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to me that Eve would listen to the snake and break God's command. She had a head full of snakes herself. Some people might say, after the shit hit the fan, "I was WRONG!" But NOT Eve. If Adam had been around more and understood her problems and cuddled her warmly at night and not farted in his sleep and watched more episodes of "All My Children," none of this shit would have happened. IT'S HIS goddam fault!!! There is the story of Genesis, as translated by Acidman.
A NIGHT IN THE WOODSOriginally PUBLISHED May 15, 2005 I found lots of deadfall wood and had a nice campfire in a clearing about 50 yards from the creek. I didn't bring my fishing rod, but I did take a rack of ribs that I cooked and ate by the fire. I also discharged about 100 rounds from my non-existent guns that I took with me. I murdered every face-card in a deck of Bicycles before the sun went down. After that, I sat in my hammock and just listened. The first thing you notice back in the woods like that is how quiet it is, until you stop to pay attention. I could hear the wind in the trees. Frogs and crickets were courting down by the creek. Every now and then, I heard something rustling in the nearby leaves. An owl piped up, asking me "WHOO?" I was for about an hour. It was very relaxing. I have no idea what time I went to sleep. The morning birds woke me just before sunrise. They like to sing to greet the day, and they were in fine fettle today. I lay in my hammock and listened for a while as the woods came alive around me. I smoked a cigarette and enjoyed the concert. I had a Snickers bar for breakfast. My fire was burned to smoldering ashes, but I went down to the creek with my coffee pot and fetched water to put it completely out. I listened to Smokey Bear when I was young. I didn't want to walk off and set the woods on fire. I packed up all of my crap, made sure the fire was extinguished and trudged back home. I took a good, hot shower to wash all the dirt, gunpowder and wood-smoke off of me, and I didn't notice any obvious ticks or chiggers in the usual places you find them. I felt a lot better than I have for the past few days. All in all, it was a very pleasant experience that intend to repeat very soon. I believe that I really AM a 19th century man.
May 09, 2008MORE ON NAMESOriginally PUBLISHED May 16, 2005 I sat around the fire and started chuckling. Jennifer asked me what was so funny. I said, "We have three young ladies with us tonight. But you wouldn't know it by what we call them. Sounds like three boys if you think about it." That was true. We had Jessica, Nichole and Samantha. We called them "Jessie," "Nick" and "Sam." I'll guarantee you that if anyone heard me calling for them by those names, that person would expect three boys to pop out of the woods somewhere. They all grew up to be beautiful young ladies, but I still call them by those same nicknames. Jessie, Nick and Sam.
DON'T SELL US SHORTOriginally PUBLISHED August 12, 2005 An elderly man in Florida had owned a large farm for several years. He had a large pond in the back, fixed up nice; picnic tables, horseshoe courts, and some apple and peach trees. The pond was properly shaped and fixed up for swimming when it was built. One evening, the old farmer decided to go down to the pond, as he As he came closer he saw it was a bunch of young women skinny-dipping The old man frowned, "I didn't come down here to watch you ladies swim naked or make you get out of the pond naked." Holding the bucket up he said, "I'm here to feed the alligator." Moral: Old men can still think fast. (Thank you, Bob! I liked that one!)
May 08, 2008EROTIC FRUITOriginally PUBLISHED August 5, 2005 When I was taking a class in Romantic Poetry in college, the professor (a woman) asked the question: "If you read carefully, you'll find a lot of allegorical connotations in these poems. Erotic fruit is one of them. Can someone name an erotic fruit?" I blurted out, "A BIG banana!" That was not the correct answer, but I thought it was funny as hell. I was never known for keeping my mouth shut. So... I'm taking a poll. What do YOU think is an erotic fruit? (and any reply containing the name of Michael Jackson WILL be deleted.) (UPDATE: What made me think of this topic is the fact that I BOUGHT some "erotic fruit" at the grocery store today. I am enjoying eating it. It might be nice to have someone to share it with, but right now, it's MINE!!! ALL MINE!!!)
VERILY I SAY...Originally PUBLISHED November 9, 2004 Wisdom from Jesusland: *Don't name a pig you plan to eat. *Country fences need to be horse high, pig tight, and bull strong. *Life is not about how fast you run, or how high you climb, but how well you bounce. *Keep skunks, lawyers and bankers at a distance. *Life is simpler when you plow around the stumps. *A bumble bee is faster than a John Deere tractor. *Trouble with a milk cow is she won't stay milked. *Don't skinny dip with snapping turtles. *Words that soak into your ears are whispered, not yelled. *Meanness don't happen overnight. *To know how country folks are doing, look at their barns, not their houses. *Never lay an angry hand on a kid or an animal, it just ain't helpful. *Forgive your enemies. It messes with their heads. *Don't sell your mule to buy a plow. *Two can live as cheap as one if one don't eat. *Don't corner something meaner than you are. *It don't take a very big person to carry a grudge. *Don't go huntin' with a fellow named Chug-A-Lug. *You can't unsay a cruel thing. *Every path has some puddles. When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty. *The best sermons are lived, not preached. *Most of the stuff people worry about never happens. Yeah. We sure are ignorant in Jesusland.
May 07, 2008Train sings revisitedOriginally published August 25, 2003 Yeah, I sang this one as a kid in school, even before I learned to play guitar: I'm sure you sang this version of "The Wreck of Old 97" in the schoolyard too: Thanks, Phil. I had forgotten all about that one.
Notice the reactionOriginally published June 4, 2004 I've admired Bill Cosby since I was a kid. The man is a brillant comedian, a great actor and a fine father. He also got a college education and took the road to success at a time when it was much more difficult than it is today for a black man to do it. Have you ever noticed that he can do a one-hour comedy routine, have the audience rolling in the aisles and NEVER use the word "motherfucker?" In fact, Cosby doesn't cuss on stage at all, except for that hilarious story about believing his name was "Dammit" when he was a boy, because his father always yelled, "Dammit! Come here to me!" when young Coz was in trouble. (Wasn't Coz also convinced that his brother was named "Jesus Christ" because that's how dad called his brother to task? "Jesus Christ! Yeah, you. Not YOU, dammit. The other one. Jesus Christ, come here to me!") Cosby said some things that a lot of black people and guilty liberals don't want to hear. I am not surprised that the speech he gave didn't get a lot of coverage. It was politically incorrect. The guy who really nailed the Cosby story was Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service editor Gregory Clay. He witnessed Cosby's speech, and penned an op-ed. Clay wrote, "Cosby openly chastised some black people for our dirty, little secrets. We are exposed.... Cosby broke the black code.... Give Cosby credit for having the guts to voice his displeasure at such a regal event.... Some have said Cosby is pitting lower-income blacks against middle- and upper-class blacks. That's silly. Cosby's central theme simply was this: Better parenting and educational achievement are in black people's best interest, and some have failed miserably. Don't let the Brown case die on the vine. We have to admit this; it's about survival." I've beat this drum before and received a lot of flack about it. But I don't care. I WANT to see black people succeed in the USA. I WANT this place to be a true melting pot, a gumbo of every cultural ingredient anybody can bring to the party and throw in the stew. I WANT to see rich, prosperous people all around me, and I don't care what color they are. But blacks will never get to the party if they stay on the track they've been following for the past 40 years. Illegitimate births. Gangs. Ghettos. Prison. Murder in the street because somebody "dissed" you. Wearing pants around your goddam knees with only boxer shorts covering your ass. Illiteracy. Dropping out of school. Becoming "street-wise" instead of educated. Crack cocaine. That IS NOT the path to success, people, and when society either turns a blind eye or condemns you as a racist for saying so, we're in a world of trouble. I don't give a damn what the Democrats say--- I know one thing for a fact. NOBODY can help someone who isn't willing to help himself. Just look at Bill Cosby. He is rich, successful and he also has the intelligence to recognize a problem when he sees it. But when he speaks his mind, he is ignored or chastised for doing so. There are some things you just don't say in this free country, because the truth pisses people off. I don't buy that philosophy.
I agree, sort ofOriginally published October 15, 2003 I believe that this post is overly pedantic, but she does raise a valid point. I know several people who have college degrees but write as if they were barely literate. I don't claim to be great at spelling (as people who read this blog regularly already know) but I'm writing a blog here, for crying out loud. It ain't like I'm getting paid for it or I get a letter grade on every post. I am simply too damned lazy to look up words that I don't spell regularly, so I just take a wild guess at them. If the result looks TOO obviously fucked-up, I'll try to substitute a word that I CAN spell. I don't do that "wild guess" thing if I am writing business correspondence. I'll check my spelling every time. Business correspondence is important literature. This blog is not. I also commit several Crimes Against Grammar regularly on this blog that I would not put in formal communication. I frequently address the reader as "you." For example, you might read a sentence like this on my page. "One might read a sentence such as this one on my page is proper diction, but it feels STILTED to me. I don't like feeling stilted. I prefer the vernacular. I sometimes begin a sentence with the words "There are..." or "It is...", which are both no-nos. I use the word "ain't" on occasion. I also use potty-mouthed language and write a few run-on sentences here and there. I don't call those lapses of mine examples of poor grammar. I call them STYLE. I know better than to write diction-impared sentences, but I write them anyway. It's my blog. I can do whatever I want to here. I DO have a few pet peeves, however; some mistakes are unforgivable. 1) KNOW the difference between "affect" and "effect." 2) DON"T write "it's" when you mean "its." 3) STOP before you write "your" when you mean "you're." 4) BE DRAGGED OFF AND SHOT for confusing "there" and "their." Okay, there's my rant on grammer. I DO find it odd that the person who authored the post that I linked to once wrote everything on her page as if the "CAPS" key was missing from her keyboard. Yeah, I remember, darlin.' That's another one of my pet peeves. PUNCTUATE AND CAPITALIZE, dammit
May 06, 2008My mamaOriginally published August 24, 2003 I took the boys over to see mama today. We stopped and bought a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken with all the fixings on the way. I spilled the goddam gravy on Mama's kitchen table as I was lathering up my mashed potatoes. I made a mess, but my Aunt Peggy cleaned it up. Aunt Peg and Uncle Virgil are visiting to keep an eye on my 92 year-old grandmother while my mama undergoes chemo and radiation therapy. She's got a pesky case of cancer that won't rub off. She had me sign a lot of papers today giving me access to her bank accounts and personal financials. My brother signed them all last weekend. I don't want my mama's money. I want my mama. She ran a marathon when she was 50 years old. She taught me how to farm. She took me in and cared for me when I had nowhere else to go after the Bloodless Cunt threw me out of MY HOUSE and the doctors cut up my guts. She's put up with a lot of shit from me over the years and she still loves me as much as I love her. The chemo has made most of her hair fall out, but my mama is a GOOD-LOOKING bald-headed lady. That fact is not surprising. She was a baby-doll when she was young. My dad was a lucky man. I am lucky, too. I had a father who taught me to be a real man and a mother that I woudn't trade for the all riches of the world. A lot of kids never have that experience. I did. Bejus smiled upon me when I was born. My mama feels good and remains optomistic. 15% of people with the cancer she has survive for five years or more. She says long odds are excuses for losers. And she is a WINNER. She looks good bald-headed in a baseball cap, too. I wasn't going to blog about my mama, but I become really emotional on Sunday evenings. Quinton is gone. I'm alone in the Crackerbox. I feel like shit. So, I wrote this post.
Train songsOriginally published August 24, 2003 I always figured that you couldn't be a musician unless you knew AT LEAST five train songs. I learned these right away, and I still believe that they are EXCELLENT train songs. #1: Folsom Prison Blues #2: The Wreck of Old 97 #3: City Of New Orleans #4: Orange Blossom Special #5: Canadian Railroad Trilogy If you know any better train songs, let me know. ("Rainy Night In Georgia" would qualify, but it's not reallly a train song.)
NamesOriginally published June 4, 2004 I don't know what kind of statement some parents try to make when they name their children after fruit. That question puzzles me. I grew up with the name Robert Smith. I had two strikes against me right off the bat because I have the most common name in the USA. You can't shake a got-dam bush ANYWHERE in this country without a dozen or so Robert Smiths falling out of it. Try using that name if you want to perform music on stage or write for a living. You won't exactly stand out in a crowd. When my daughter was born, I named her Samantha because I liked the alliteration in Samantha Smith. The first name was unusual without being ridiculous and I always had a secret lust for Darren's wife on "Bewitched." I remain proud of the name I chose for her today. When my son was born, I named him Quinton Robert Smith. That way, he could share the Robert that my grandfather, my father and I bear, but he could have a unique identity of his own. Quinton also is a fine Southern name. I'm proud of that one, too. But I don't believe that in my wildest, drunken, dope-fueled delusions I could EVER name a child "Apple." Or "Moon Unit." Or "De Wonton." What the hell are parents thinking when they curse their children with horrible names that they'll have to lug through life like a millstone around their necks? Names count for a lot, and what you think is "cute" now may backfire later. Face it. If someone in a Human Resources Department is sifting through a stack of job applications and sees "Rainbow," "Dewberry," "Toyota La' Trelle" and "Gary" in the mix, who do you think gets first shot at the job? It'll be Gary every time. The other names just sound too flaky. Even a Robert Smith stands a good chance when faced with competition from "Placenta," "D'Andre Lawanna Shithead" and "Blossom." Graham Nash said "Teach Your Children Well." I say name them well first.
Good questionOriginally published October 14, 2003 Jay Solo posted a Question of the Week that I want to answer. Maybe my answer will explain something about who I am. Here is the question: Even if you are religious normally, pretend that we have learned there is no deity or anything along those lines. The prophets and such were all just men, whether deluded, imaginitive, or what. What we see is what we get, plus what we can't see that is more extensive and strange than we have yet imagined, however natural in origin. Once upon a time, a village of the MOOG tribe learned to move out of their caves and live in huts that they built from wood and thatch. They hunted and gathered for a while, until Moffer, a smart little boy, learned to save seeds and plant his own crop. He grew a lot of the sacred weed that the village elders made beer from and he became rich selling his crop to the drunkards. After that resounding success, EVERYBODY started growing his/her own crops. Life was good for the MOOG. Then, one night, a terrible thunderstorm decended upon the village. Lightning flashed from the dark sky and the ground trembled from the thunder. Everyone was frightened and the children screamed. "What can we do? What can we do?" asked the bravest hunters in the tribe. About that time, Alfonso woke up. Alfonso was a skinny, pock-marked skuzzbucket who never hit a lick at anything in his life but somehow managed to bum enough beer to get drunk unto unconsciousness every day. Men hated him and wimmen wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole. But Alfonso was smart, the way a rat is smart. He saw a golden opportunity in that thunderstorm. "I'LL SAVE US ALL!" he yelled, and ran outside to do a crazy dance amid the rain and the lightning. He figured that he had nothing to lose. If he got struck by lightning and killed on the spot, it was no big deal. His life sucked. So, he yoo-hooed and boo-hooed and howled at the sky. People watching were most impressed. The storm went away and nobody in the MOOG tribe was dead. Alfonso said, "You have ME to thank for that, because GOD listens to ME," and he became the very first priest in the world. The next time a thunderstorm came, Alfonso was so drunk that he slept through the whole thing. Orrg woke him up the next morning. "I need a favor, Mr. Priest, sir. My hut was hit by a lightning bolt last night and I never want that to happen again. Can you make my bad luck go away?" Alfonso assured Orrg that he could, but insisted on sleeping with Orrg's wife and taking the fattest pig from his herd as payment. Orrg reluctantly agreed. So, Alfonso screwed Orrg's wife, ate his fattest pig and went back to drinking beer. Another thunderstorm came, Orrg's hut was hit by lightning again and Orrg was pissed. He came to kill Alfonso for dicking out on a fair trade. "YOU GODDAM LIAR!" he said, while poking a spear into Alphonso's throat. But Alphonso was smart, the way a rat is smart. "I spoke to God and he told me that you were not sincere in your sacrifice. You hid your fattest pig and gave me the second best one. Then, your wife was a dud in bed. I did not receive what I was promised and God hurled down his wrath upon you. I didn't screw this up. YOU DID!" Orrg had to admit that everything the priest said was true. He DID hide the fattest pig. His wife WAS a dud in bed. "How do I make this up to you, Oh, Man of God?" Orrg asked. "I want your fattest pig and I want to screw your wife again," replied Alphonso. "And this time, she'd better give me a blow-job!" Orrg went back to his burned-out hut, beat the shit out of his wife and sent both her and his fattest pig over to Alphonso's place. The wife put out like a Las Vegas hooker and the pig was delicious. Orrg never had lightning strike his hut again. Some people might call that sheer coincidence, but Orrg believed in God after that. Alphonso got a lot of pussy and a lot of pork because other people starting believing, too. Pretty soon thereafter, we had the Catholic Church. Unlike Alphonso, a lot of Catholic priests prefer to screw your children rather than your wife. That's the only real difference I see between then and now. Man didn't invent God. Con-men did. That's what I think about religion.
May 05, 2008My DadOriginally published August 24, 2003 I was over at my parent's house one day and my dad said, "Watch this. That dog is about to shit in my yard." Sure enough, the 90-pound rascal made a special stop and pinched a large loaf right in the front yard. He scampered off happy after that. My dad said, "I don't have to put up with this. I've talked to those people a BUNCH OF TIMES and they just don't listen." He went to the garage and got a shovel. He scooped up the dog-loaves from the front yard. Then, he strolled down to the neighbor's house and rang the doorbell. When they opened the door, he said, "I believe that this belongs to YOU", and pitched the shovel full of dogshit into their foyer. He turned around and walked home after that. The dog never shit in his yard again. My dad was one hell of a man. He didn't take shit from man nor beast. He helped raise me. Does it show?
Notes from the homefrontOriginally published June 3, 2004 Katie, the Fertile Rottweiler, is down to two puppies now. Somebody took "Brownie," an alpha male, and the two leftovers are brown females. All the ones who looked like genuine Rotties went pretty quickly. Henry got kicked out of his house by the darling wife, came over to the Crackerbox in search of beer, told me his sob story, but charmed his way back in one day later. That guy makes ME feel sane. I haven't seen THE JOGGER for a while now. Maybe the running bastard dropped dead of a heart attack the way Jim Fixx did on his way to perfect health. The FAT LADY might not be singing, but she's walking several times up and down the road every day. She does that ridiculous power-walking thing that makes me want to run over her with my truck. Maybe she ate THE JOGGER. (Side note: never trust a woman with a belly bigger than her tits.) A grackle attacked me in my back yard today, then had the nerve to hang around and squawk at me. I shot his ass dead with my pellet rifle. I don't trust one of my neighbors. He has three things going against him. His ass is wider than his shoulders, he smokes brown cigarettes and he has an electric lawn mower. I have an Effingham County sheriff's deputy living on my street. He knows me by name. I'm not certain whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. I ate lunch at Weisenbacker's Restaurant today after my visit to the dentist. I must be going there too often. As soon as I sat down, the waitress came to me and said "The Killian's Red is on tap again, Rob." That tap has been broken for a couple of weeks, and that's what I always ask for. I had a Killian's, with a meal of BBQ ribs, mashed potatoes, fried okra and corn and tomatoes. It was good and I tipped my waitress generously. I cut my grass. And I didn't use an electric lawn mower. As you can tell, it doesn't take much to excite me anymore. That's one of the reasons I love living in Effingham County, Georgia.
UglyOriginally published October 14, 2003 Quinton had another football game at 5:30 this evening and I went to watch it. His mighty Eagles got beat 20-0 in a humiliating defeat. Quinton made two individual tackles, but blew two others, which pissed me off because he didn't do anything resembling what we practiced last weekend. He didn't take a good angle, he gave away the sideline and he swung the gate, allowing one long touchdown run right past him. More work is in order here. I take football seriously and I want my boy to do it right. He's not where he ought to be yet. But he's getting there.
May 04, 2008Beer in costa ricaOriginally published June 3, 2004 Imperial is a damn good beer. A brand called Pilzen also is brewed locally in Costa Rica, but it tastes a lot like Miller Lite. I preferred Imperial. But be careful when you order a beer in Costa Rica. For some reason, they serve it in a glass over ice if you don't tell them differently. Da mi una cervesa, por favor. Un Imperial, con no vaso y no hielo. You need to master that bit of Spanish if you visit Costa Rica. That phrase means "Give me a beer, please. An Imperial, with no glass and no ice." Drink it straight out of a cold, frosted bottle. Otherwise, some well-intentioned bartender will pour your beer into a glass full of ice and hand you a saltshaker on the side. Yes, Costa Ricans like salt in their beer. I wandered into several establishments that might be called "working-class bars" by American standards. They weren't fancy and the crowd wore work-boots and raincoats because of all the lluvia falling from the sky. They sat around drinking beer on ice, with a dash of salt, while they ate arroz con pollo (chicken and rice) from steaming bowls, piled high. These weren't rough joints, just down-to-earth, and I enjoyed visiting them. With my shitty Spanish, I didn't exactly fit in with the crowd, and I am certain that they knew I was a tourista, but everybody was polite and friendly. The beer was cheap, the music was good and arroz con pollo ain't half bad when you've been walking around in the rain all day. It felt pretty good on a hungry belly. One other thing to remember: They also put the hot water faucets on the RIGHT HAND side of every sink and shower that I saw there. I knew what "F" and "C" meant on the faucets (That's "frio" and "caliente," cold and hot) but I never quite got the knack of remembering that the faucets were backward down there. I damn near scalded my Cracker ass a few times in the early morning before my eyes were open well. I didn't get my fill of that place. I'm going back very soon.
Great heaviesOriginally published October 13, 2003 I don't know why, but I started thinking at work today about some of my favorite actors who always played sleazeballs in some of my favorite movies. Bruce Dern is probably my all-time favorite western bad-guy. I've seen him shot, hanged and killed dozens of times and he always came back for more. My favorite line in his entire career was in Hang 'em High when Bruce was part of the lynch mob fixing to hang Clint Eastwood. "Heh, heh, heh.. I want his WALLET!" Bruce Dern just had the teeth and the face and the feral grin to make me want to shoot him every time I saw him on the screen. I liked L.Q. Jones, Strother Martin, Dub Tailor and Warren Oates. I liked Jeremy Slate and Albert Salmi. Who was that one-eyed sucker who went from westerns to Bert Reynolds movies? Oh... Jack Elam. I remember now. I liked him, too. Claude Aikens wasn't bad a few times and Luke Askew is another one of my Unknown Favorites. Luke was in Easy Rider. Hell, Dennis Hopper did a fine job of playing a character named "Moon" in True Grit. If you want to go 'way back, we can talk about Dan Dureya. Slim Pickins and Ben Johnson were rodeo rodeo cowboys who learned to act. Neither one was very handsome, but Ben looked a lot better than chinless Slim. I liked both of them. I like Western movies. I am a American and that's my heritage. I worship John Wayne. I also worship the bit-part actors you never heard of who played in his movies. If I wanted to act today, being 51 years old, I damn sure should pick a character part to play. My leading man days are over. Yeah. I'll settle for a bit part now.
The wordsOriginally published August 24, 2003 I cannot believe that some people never heard this song. THE WRECK OF OLD 97 Well they gave him his orders in Monroe, Virginia Old Speed turned around to his black, greasy fireman It's a mighty rough rail from Washington to Danville He was flying down the grade doing 90 miles an hour If you've never heard that song, you need to be dragged off and shot.
May 03, 2008That was funOriginally published June 3, 2004 I no longer have an abcessed tooth. In fact, I never really had one to begin with. The tooth is perfectly healthy, with no cavities. It's just fit as a fiddle. But my gums are not. I have an advanced case of gum disease in spite of brushing, flossing and using peroxide in my mouth as part of a daily routine. The dentist examined me, listened to my complaints and took a couple of X-rays. After that, he grabbed some sort of tool off his tray, told me to hold still and he cut me, right above that tooth that was driving me crazy. I could feel all sorts of blood and corruption draining into my mouth. Believe it or not, but it was a GOOD feeling. All the pressure went away from my left eyeball and I felt almost human again. That's when the dentist began pressing strong fingers against my sinus cavities and attempting to break every bone in my face. "Ow, doc! That HURTS!" I whined. "Yeah, and it smells like a dead cat in there, too." he replied. He kept mugging me until he was satisfied with the results. "You can rinse and spit now." Bejus! I don't want to talk about what came out of me. Just imagine squeezing the biggest pimple you ever had in your life and seeing the results come out of your mouth. It was disgusting. It was humiliating. It was horrible. But it was one hell of a relief, too. I feel a lot better now. I DON'T feel good about the fact that I'm probably going to have to do this again or lose my teeth in a few years, or both. Gum disease is no laughing matter and that's another complaint I have with God. If I were omnipotent, I would have made better gums than God did. Going to the dentist delayed my lawyer appointment until tomorrow. That's a good thing, because the swelling is gone and I can talk to him with a straight face now.
Good songsOriginally published August 23, 2003 I stole this idea. Big deal. I steal good ideas all the time. I don't come up with good ones every day all by myself. I am a pirate at heart anyway. Here are some songs people don't hear anymore that I play and love. "Fever" by Peggy Lee. "Charlie Brown" by the Coasters. "Stagger Lee" by everybody. "Jailhouse Rock" by The King. "Long Black Veil" the way Johnny Cash did it. "Wreck of the 97" the way I DO IT!!! Take THAT, music lovers.
Trust meOriginally published October 13, 2003 As a genuine pervert and a person who enjoys adventurous sex, I don't want to hear any more "uuugggghhhs!" about mentholated cough drops. If you've never tried them, you're missing the Midnight Train. Let me tell you how this works. For MEN: Put a Hall's Cough Drop in your mouth and work it around really good until you feel mentholated coldness on your tongue when you draw in a breath. Then, go down on your woman. Keep the cough drop in your mouth, but use a lot of breath and tongue as your mentholated saliva annoints her nether regions. She'll curl her toes and cum like a mink in heat. For WIMMEN: Put a Hall's Cough Drop in your mouth, work it around really good, then go down on your man with the cough drop tucked away in your cheek. Be sure to use lots of breath. That REALLY accentuates the menthol. When you see his toes curl and he starts to scream for Bejus, you can either quit or get ready to swallow. That's up to you. That is an Acidman Handy Hint For Mentholated Sex. If you've never tried a Hall's Job, you should. If you think the entire idea of mentholated oral sex is disgusting, what the hell are you doing reading this blog? I'm giving good advice here. I don't claim to be rated "G."
Long lost pizzaOriginally published August 24, 2003 I order delivered pizzas from the local Domino's about twice every week. The boys announced hunger pangs at 6:30 yesterday evening, so I called Domino's and ordered TWO pizzas. Cheese and sausage for the mutts and All The Way for me. The person I talked to said the delivery would be here in 30 minutes. At 8:30, I called back to ask where in the hell were my pizzas? Nobody knew. The delivery person left over an hour ago. I hung up and the phone rang almost immediately. "Is this Rob Smith? Where do you live? I've got your pizzas but I can't find you." The dingbat was halfway across the county and Effingham is a BIG county. I gave her instructions, starting with "TURN AROUND!" and told her how to find the Crackerbox. She finally arrived at 10:00 when the boys were almost asleep. I probably could have called Domino's, raised hell and gotten the pizzas for free. But I didn't. I paid for the pizzas and tipped the delivery person $5.00. I figured she needed gas after all the driving she had done. She was apologetic, explaining that she was new to the job and she didn't know Effingham County very well. I hope she gets better at her work. Otherwise, she won't last long. Not everybody who orders a pizza is as nice as I am when it finally arrives three hours late and I have to tell the driver how to get here. I kept the boys awake long enough to eat, then I let them fall out for the night. I never even took a bite of my pizza. I was too sleepy by then.
May 02, 2008Running for presidentOriginally published August 23, 2003 Howard Dean has promised to make every marriage work forever, even if it is homosexual, when he is elected. Dick Gephardt has promised to repeal the law of gravity when he is elected. John Kerry, who resembles a Frenchman even though he served in Vietnam, promises a chicken in every pot, plus FREE POTS when he is elected. Joe Lieberman says WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE if we don't elect him. I say vote for me. Piss on being governor of a nut-bowl state. I want to be PRESIDENT.
My agendaOriginally published August 23, 2003 If elected President, I will personally apply jumper cables to frank J's testicles and turn the hand-crank generator myself until Frank screams like a monkey. If elected President, I will declare a cease-fire in the War on Drugs and just drop really good shit from helicopters over poor neighborhoods. I'll keep the thugs too stoned to commit crime. If elected President, I will BAN the word "gender" when people really mean "sex." If elected President, I also will BAN Black Studies, Wimmen's studies, Pederast Studies, Gay Studies, Barking Moonbat Studies and any other off the wall bullshit colleges are teaching today when they should be educating youngsters, not brainwashing them. If I am elected President and you steal a car, you die by firing squad. If elected, I won't rent out the Lincoln Bedroom to Hollywood celebrities and rich campaign donors. I'll stock it with hookers. I'll ALSO admit that I DID have sex in the Oval Office. I want to be President because I could throw one hell of a party in the White House at taxpayers expense. I want wake up hung-over on the lawn the next morning with a nekkid woman asleep next to me. I want to wake up with a headache and look at her pretty, round ass and wonder whether I laid her or not. If I can't recall, I'll lay her right then. Secret Service be damned. If I am elected, we're gonna bomb everybody, just because we can. Starting with France, just because France deserves it. UN be damned. As part of my education agenda, guitar lessons will be mandatory in any school that receives federal funds, and that's pretty much ALL OF THEM. BWHAHAHAHAH!!! Uncle Sam got you idiots there!!! If I am elected, I will be THE PEOPLE'S PRESIDENT. You will do what I say when I tell you to do it, or you will be executed by firing squad. My motto is "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Got-damn. It's about time this country had a leader like me.
ScarsOriginally published June 2, 2004 When I was young, I had very few scars on my body but I was proud of every one I did have. I called them "war wounds" and I showed them off to my friends. I took a shower this morning and surveyed the scars I wear today. Bejus. I look as if someone cut me with a chainsaw, and those are just the OUTSIDE scars. I have a lot of others that you can't see, because they are on the inside. I'm not sporting "war wounds" anymore. I'm just wearing a worn-out body. I remember every scar that I have and I know exactly where each one came from, but they are almost too numerous to count anymore, and I don't want to think about them in the first place. I've beat myself half to death in this life and the marks show that fact today. My scars are ugly and they testify to 52 years of hard living. That's one reason I like giving Quinton a bath. His body is scar-free, except for one little character mark on his face from where he fell into the trampoline springs at a neighbor's house one day. Everything else about him is unblemished, unworn and pristine. I wish I still had a body like that today. But I don't. I resemble Frankenstein's monster.
my fame lives onOriginally published June 3, 2004 I'm not exactly proud of this, but I still believe in my central point. I just shouldn't have been so "vicious" when I posted it.
People who can't run their own lives either turn to government to run it for them, or else they behave so outrageously that government FEELS OBLIGATED to step in and run it for them. Either way, these people are doing NO ONE, including themselves, any favors. And if you're black, female or a coal-dusted hillbilly from Harlan County, Kentucky, you need to know that the bar is set just a little bit higher for you than it is for the rich white boy down the street whose daddy owns a bank and two car dealerships. It may not be "fair," but that's the way it is. You have to try harder and be BETTER than that rich kid. (In the long run, you WILL BE, if you try.) You don't accomplish anything but self-destruction when you show your ass in a riot at a got-dam basketball game. That's not how ALL of my family, who grew up poor in the armpit of the Appalatchan Mountains, got out of those hills and made something of themselves. They all carried wherewithall on that trip to better things. They worked hard, learned anything that they could and NEVER stopped trying. I'm sorry, and you can call me a racist if you want, but blacks, by and large, do not have that kind of attitude. They listen to assholes such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who have nothing more on their agenda than to KEEP the downtrodden right where they are, and they vote 95% Democrat, which has never done a fucking thing except keep them right where they are. If you think of yourself as a victim, guess what? You will ALWAYS be a victim. You can be a victim or you can be free. That's a personal choice, and it's up to YOU to make it. Who ever told you life was "fair," anyway? (UPDATE: Okay, let's just put it this way: "Freedom isnt always supposed to be pretty; it can be messy and at times ugly if it does not conform to what you would rather see...but it is supposed to be real....a true expression of what we are in all of it's forms. It requires discipline above all else, tho, which sounds contrary to those who do not understand it. Werbinox
Two-ferOriginally published June 3, 2004 Bejus! I have GOT to go to the dentist today. That sensitive tooth that's been bothering me for almost a year now has gone into a full-blown abcess, and the entire left side of my face is swollen and sore. I can barely open my mouth this morning (which some people might think is a GOOD thing). But just imagine a visit to a divorce lawyer followed by a fucking root canal. That's an ultimate two-fer.
May 01, 2008I wanna run for governorOriginally published August 23, 2003  I don't live in California (thank Bejus), but I figure that I am ALMOST a citizen of that state because California nutcakes pollute my life every day. Dianne Feinstein is a weapons expert and tells me what kind of guns I can own. Henry Waxman is a malignant anti-smoking dwarf that keeps me from smoking in many restaurants. Barbra Boxer needs to be put in a sturdy box and hermetically sealed because she is a dangerous asswit. Besides, I live close to the Atlantic Ocean, which eventually blends with the Pacific Ocean, so I may as well be in California as Jawja. I am certain that a federal judge could see the connection clearly. Federal judges see such insane clear connections all the time. I want to be the next governor of Cally-forication. I promise to do diddly-squat about anything. I won't raise taxes and I won't work long hours. I'm going to live in the Governor's Mansion and parade prostitutes through there like a marching band. I'll let problems solve themselves while I break in my bionic Roscoe. But I'll pay for the hookers with my own money, unlike typical politicians. Who gives a shit about Cally-for-numbia? I damn sure don't. But I STILL would make a better governor than Gray Davis.
I love itOriginally published June 1, 2004 Nothing brings more joy to my heart than the fact that I occasionally inspire someone. That's not a bad list, either. Eddie Arnold had a voice almost as sweet as Jim Reeves did. Did you know that "The Dance" was written by a guy who lives at Tybee Island, Georgia? I love that song. I play it often because it's a good finger-picking number on the guitar. I had to leave two of my favorites, Marty Robbins and Roger Miller, off my list because I ran out of room. Just damn! "El Paso" and "King of the Road" should have been in there somewhere.
TomorrowOriginally published June 2, 2004 I have an appointment to see a new lawyer tomorrow morning. I fired that incompetent prick I had in Effingham County and hired a land-shark to take his place. Hell, if you're going to war, bring the right equipment with you. I see this entire affair as totally unneccessary and beyond the realm of my comprehension. It makes no sense. It is a painful and disgusting experience to live through. It's going to cost me a lot, but I didn't start this fight. Once I was in it, however, I couldn't just cave in and walk away. There's too much at stake. Besides... I've never walked away from a fight in my life, and I ain't starting now. Wish me luck tomorrow.
Peanut butter and ritz crackersOriginally published August 23, 2003 If there's a better quick snack in the world, I don't know what it is. The boys like it, too, with a glass of milk. I use Peter Pan peanut butter. I remember reading in Consumer Reports years ago that Peter Pan scored really high in insect parts and rodent dung when it was tested against other brands. Maybe that's what makes it taste so good. The boys don't mind the bug-parts and rat-shit. Neither do I. It tastes damn good on a Ritz.
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