Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Crazy Dan Tutorials
When I returned from work the next day, I was not disappointed. After a few chuckles, I called her into the living room and pointed out a few sentences that might need a little editing and asked her how much help Crazy Dan had given her. She said that her two pages of handwritten material had shrunk to about a quarter of a page when typed out and Crazy Dan had only suggested certain areas to expand upon and did not actually coin any of her phrases.
Her assignment was on Respect and was handed out by her band teacher to the class due to their lack of this commidity. I will now quote a few lines which I suggested she might edit.
1) 'All those people that quit band and are in the Music History Class with Mr. Shipley are all gay. They are quitters and losers.' I told her that it is not correct to offer up such broad generalizations as they might not be all gay but only partially so and while the band instructor might agree with this statement, I doubt that she would like to see it on the paper.
2) ' It is our duty to keep the band hall clean. But everyone knows most of the mess comes from the trumpet and percussion sections. They are just nasty.' While this statement might be correct it is never the less devisive and might make her even more enemies in these sections.
On a better note, I believe a couple of her phrases were catchy. Her quote of, 'Band Geeks Rock', might earn her points from the head band geek and her quote of, 'If we come to class with Band Spirit, everything will come out alright.', I believe showed some ingenuity.
On her closing statement, I hope that she does not have to read the selection aloud for I do not believe that she is a good enough actress to pull it off with a straight face. 'See look at me. I do nothing wrong. Here I am standing up straight with my flute level.' And then her pic from a halftime show. That is her on the left.
Maybe they will let her tutor visit her in the dungeon where they hold in school suspension if she doesn't take my advice and edit it before turning the paper in.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Blowin' In The Wind
As Christopher Robin would say, 'It's a blustery day Pooh'. The West Texas Wind is blowing out of the west today with gusts over 50 mph. Although the brown air makes it hard to breath and a pain in the ass for doing anything outside, I was expecting the November winds to show up and am thankful for them. How can I be thankful for them you might ask? The answer is simple. The West Texas wind is natures own leaf blower.
I have two fruitless mulberry trees in my front yard that are over 30 feet tall and these trees put out a tremendous amount of leaves. This year I haven't gotten around to raking them up yet(pure laziness). I was waiting until all the leaves fell because otherwise as in years past, it is a day a week pain in the ass job. But this wind is successfully blowing all these leaves to parts unknown. It looks like the few that will be left will be easy to clean up.
People that have moved here from other parts of the country consider these winds to be hell on earth but being born and raised here I consider it only a mild annoyance. My sister-in-law is from up north but has lived in West Texas for many years. My wifes family loves to tell the story of how she does not beleive in wearing panties with panty hose as it is her belief that they are built in. She works in a law office and wears dresses to work everyday so when the wind whistles through downtown Midland on a skirt alert day, she gives the folks on the street a little show. When the wind blows the bush shows.
Friday, November 25, 2005
Another Bonehead Story
Wednesday night as a prelude to Thanksgiving, I went over and hoisted a few beers with my neighbor of the mullet militia. The conversation at one point turned to work and people that we have worked with. We found out that we had both worked with the bonehead. This is the same guy that I have previously discussed that walked off the roof twice while working as a roofer.
My neighbors experience with the bonehead came while both of them were working as guards at the prison on the outskirts of town. My neighbor was a sargeant and the bonehead was a new guard. The prison is no different than any other job in the fact that it is the duty of old hands to break in the new employees by putting them through their paces.
A short time after the 9/11 attacks the supervisor on the shift called the hapless bonehead into his office. The supervisor was holding the phone and told the young guard that he had a Major Johnson on the phone and the major was requesting that the bonehead load up immediately as they were calling all ex-army personel to meet at the National Guard to fly to Afghanistan. The Bonehead stated that he had never served in the army. The supervisor then talked into the dead phone and pretended to talk to the fake Major. He hung up the phone and said that they were also calling up all ex-boy scouts and that is why his name was on the list.
Boneheads jaw hit the floor. With an expression of sheer terror,he stammered and stuttered that he had to go home. The supervisor then broke down and told him that it was all a joke. Some people are just so gullible that it is almost a cruelty to pull their leg. Almost.
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Blugstuff Thanksgiving Part 2
I will not get into the debate of white meat v. dark or dressing to the side v. stuffing up the birds ass, but I will take a firm stand on the issue of cranberries; fresh v. the colorful and succulent goo in a can known as cranberry jelly. I believe that the Thanksgiving meal is all about the comfort foods and nothing says comfort to me like the molded can of cranberry jelly jiggling with pride, the indentions of the can gleaming like Montezuma's gold upon the table.
When I was a child in school, most every friday was sandwich day in the lunchroom. For the first round, you had to pick either pimiento cheese or tuna. Neither of these I found to my liking at all but if I could not find someone to pawn them off on, I would wolf them down like they were good in order to go back for seconds. Seconds on sandwich day consisted of the most delectable pb&j sandwiches served on the heels of the loaf of bread. Countless others and myself raced through our first servings in order to secure this delight.
Years later, I discovered that these sandwiches were not filled with grape jelly as I had thought but with that oh so delicious commidity from Uncle Sam, the superecono-size vat of cranberry jelly. I was also told that when a new head lunchlady came in and tried to introduce grape jelly, there was a revolt from students and teachers alike and so cranberry jelly on these sandwiches were reinstituted to their rightful place.
That was the long sought after secret to the incredible pb&j sandwiches of my youth. So now I buy two cans every Thanksgiving, one for the traditional meal and one for pb&j sandwiches the day after(beats the hell out of leftover turkey).
Be safe on the road and Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Blugstuff Thanksgiving Part One
Legend has the first Thanksgiving in the New World as a coming together of Native Americans and the new settlers. If the Native Americans had any clue what the coming years would hold in store for them then maybe they wouldn't have been so keen on the festivities.
I find it strange that upon meeting the white man for the first time the Native Americans thought that the guns of the white man were penises slung over their shoulder. When the white men were angry, they would point their penis at the offending party. Smoke and fire would come out the end and a projectile would spew forth and either kill or injure the offending party.
If some alien lands in my vicinity who has the ability to shoot death lasars out of it's penis, I can guarentee that I will do everything in my power to get it the fuck out so that none of its fellows will want to come back or die in this attempt. I will not be going to any damned feast with them. If you don't learn from history, then you are doomed to repeat it.
Happy Thanksgiving to All!
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Tagged I'm It
I am not ordinarily enthused about these tagged posts, it seems to me that it forces the blogger to do something goofy or out of their norm. But when I went back to the archives to look for my 23rd post, I discovered that my first posts sucked sewage. I generally only posted a pin-up and a short tag line. Sometimes I would write a very short story or summerize an odd news story of the day but by and large I had nothing to say and said it that way.
My 23rd post was a pin-up of a gothic nurse holding a needle. At the time I did not mention the reason why this particular pin-up struck a chord with me and realize now that this was an oversight on my part. As I have said before, I am at most times a private person and was using my blog as a way to have a few laughs and did not use it as a reason to relate things of a personal nature.
When I was sixteen, I was injured in a weight lifting accident. In the middle of the clean in the clean and jerk, I fell over backwards and my spotters failed to spot me. I fell in the floor with the weights on top of me. My wrists were dislocated and broken. I spent a few days in the hospital with my arms in traction.
I have always been a night owl and one of the night nurses spent time talking to me. She had light blonde hair; the shade of blonde that was almost silver in the moonlight streaming from the window. She wore dark lipstick and the pale makeup of the goth of the era. She wore a thin sheer uniform and a black bra that peeked through.
So I will now dedicate that post to her now with my thanks to the gothic nurse with the kind voice and the soft touch, who gave a sixteen year old boy something better to think about than the pain and humiliation of being stuck in a hospital bed with his broken limbs jacked up over his head.
To all of those naughty nurses who combat the fear of needles one poke at a time.
My thanks to whoami at http://couldntstayaway.blogspot.com/ for making me go back and search for meaning in my ramblings. I will not tag anyone else but I urge everyone to go back in their archives and see just how their blog has changed. Hopefully you will not discover the things that I was forced to but it should at least give you pause to see where you started and where you are now.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Back To The Sickness
Drunken Phrases for the Weekend:
From the Old Sages Favorite Song, 'Rye Whiskey': If the ocean were whiskey and I were a duck, I'd dive to the bottom and drink it all up. But the ocean's just water and I ain't no duck so I'll stay on dry land and just fuck...
Anonymous Saying from a Barstool: 'The drunker I sit here, the longer I get.'
Old Irish Toast: Not drunk is he who from the floor can rise again and still drink more. But drunk is he, who prostrate lies without the power to drink or rise.
There are just as many sayings about drinking as there are drinkers so go ahead and post a fav of your own if you want, I am always looking for a good adage, but just remember this weekend to not drink and drive. You wouldn't want to spill anything.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Farewells
I feel like a must give a short prologue to the following post. I rarely write things here in my blog of a deeply personal nature. In the first place my life is a generally mundane thing and secondly I am a very private person by nature. But as I am attempting to use this as a journal of my thoughts, I felt that I owed it to myself to jot this down. I was going to post this last month when the incident happened but every time that I sat behind the keyboard to write, I erased it. But this time I will post it although I might delete it when I post again. Until then I am sorry to all readers if I seem self-pandering and long winded for I know it is not what anyone came here to read. Don't say that I didn't warn you and give you a chance to click away now.
Over a year and a half ago, an old and at one time very close friend of mine passed away. She fought with her internal demons and finally lost to them finally succumbing to complications from anorexia.
I knew her my whole life. We started to Kindergarten together. In Junior High, I went on my first real date, when I took her to see Jaws at the local movie theater. As young adults we helped each other through first her divorce and then an engagement of mine that went sour.Then time, distance, and circumstance drew us apart and I had not talked to her in a few years.
When I got the call that she had passed, I spent a good deal of time in a stupor; shocked that it had come to this. The last time that I had seen her she seemed thin but I did not think that it was a life threatening thing. My mind was momentarily crippled by the what-ifs:what if I would have realized her problem and what if I had done something about it. But as the weeks passed by a realized that even if I had been able to see her problem and tryed to help her, It would most likely have been for nothing. If she or those close to her at the time could stop this from happening then nothing that I could have done would have helped.
The week preceeding my high school reunion, I kept having a recurring dream. My friend would come to me in my sleep and warn me of something. I could feel her frustration at my inability to understand her. When I woke up in the morning, I could never understand or remember just what she said or tryed to say. Then a day before homecoming the dream stopped and has not returned.
I am by nature a cynic so I do not beleive this was her actual spirit coming to warn me of any approaching doom or danger, also I am very leery of Freudian mumbo-jumbo so I really do not think that it was feelings of guilt resurfacing. No, I feel that sometimes the mind gets so full of memories that we must put some of them in a zip drive in the back of our consciousness to make room for more. Though I will never completely purge myself of these feelings of guilt and remorse, it is time to shove them back to the far corner of my mind and seal them away.
I will always remember the good times and bad times that my friend and I shared but I no longer have room for regrets and what-ifs. Vaya con Dio's my friend , I hope that you have found peace.
Monday, November 14, 2005
Toys, Stalkers, and Moving
This past week in Rochester N.Y., a new toy was inducted to the Toy Hall of Fame. Joining such luminaries as Lincoln Logs, Lego's, marbles, and Barbie is the newest inductee, (drum roll please) The Cardboard Box. At first you might say WTF but when you think about it how many times as a kid did you spend more time playing with the box than with the actual present. With a little imagination a cardboard box can be anything from a fort to a pirate ship to a space ship to anything else your heart desires. When the fourteen year old here was younger, she was partial to Kleenex Boxes. She would stick them on her feet and skate across the carpets. So my hat is off to the newest inductee, Long live the simple cardboard box. Now that it is officially a toy, my christmas shopping list just got much cheaper.
This weekend, I read an article regarding blogger Julia Langbein. It seems that Julia's blog mocks NY food critic, Frank Bruni. The article goes on to explain that she is drawing a large following and gave an example of her work calling it sassy and witty. The last paragragh was a quote from a former NY Times reviewer William Grimes regarding the differences between blogs and review sites that review all food critics, " In the past it was random pot shots. Now it seems that you are in grave danger of being stalked on the internet by a philosophical assasin." I don't know but this seems harsh to me. I take occasional pot shots regarding my mullet headed neighbor on one side and my snake charming neighbor on the other but I certainly wouldn't consider it stalking and I occasionally take pot shots at the crazy goings on of certain celebs but I wouldn't call it philosopical assasination. Maybe some people just need to grow a tougher hide. If you are in the public eye or have your work published, like it or not, you are putting yourself in a position to face either adulation or ridicule from the public at large; so you might as well suck it up and not be a wuss.
On a personal note, my thinks to Big D for coming over and helping with the big room move. Angry Joyce finished with her latest home improvement misadventure and all the rooms were sorted out this weekend. Not only did he lend a hand in the heavy lifting, he was forced to put up with the good hearted banter (yeah right) between Angry Joyce and myself.
Friday, November 11, 2005
Another Black Mark
I knew then that I should not just leave but run as far and as fast as my legs could carry me. Things that most others find mildly amusing or even distasteful, I find hilarious. But it was if demons themselves were pinning me to my seat forcing me to bear witness to some strange ritual. Then she started singing with a voice cracked from old age.
When she started singing I was reminded of the John Mellencamp Album 'Scarecrow', where his grandmother sang a song about a baby crying on a train and a small giggle escaped me. Then my mind wandered to a thought that this sweet little shrunken old woman looked like Maxine of the Twisted Hallmark cards with her wild shock of white hair and owl glasses peering over the podium and a small giggle escaped me. Then I recalled the stand up routine of Kathy Griffin, where she talks of having the church giggles, and although when I heard her routine I thought that I knew what she was talking about but I did not have a clue as to the depth that this condition can overcome one's senses. I experienced sheer physical pain from the conflicting emotions. On one hand, this was just too funny to keep from laughing and on the other hand a funeral is not the place to break out in hysterical laughter and must be avoided at all costs. After I snorted while trying to suppress my laughter, it caused Angry Joyce to laugh. When she started laughing, I could no longer contain myself so I faked a coughing fit and fled from the church.
I was able to suppress myself for the most part until I reached a respectable distance from the church; about a half block away. Then I was able to bust out laughing; a thigh-slapping, gut-busting, tears rolling down my eyes, relief of hysteria. For this I know that another black mark will be entered in the book of life by my name. If there were any doubts about my destination after death, these questions are now answered.
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Campfire Cookin'
Living in Redneck, America, the fine art of the barbeque is not only a prerequisite but an intuitive thing ingrained in the womb. I consider myself a fair hand at cooking anything that doesn't dodge bullet or bumper but I generally do not do much in the area of cooking in a dutch oven except for a cobbler or chili, but once I had a hand in producing one of the most dangerous pot of beans known to man.
A group of friends and myself decided to have a kegger/cookout about 20 miles from civilazation out in BFE. After the meal had been devoured and buckets of beer had been drank, the only two left standing were Charlie and myself. We were both night owls with a renowned prowess in the drinking arena. When the first light of false dawn arrived, we felt the inevitable hunger pangs associated with any all night drinking binge. Upon searching the campsite, we discovered that the only foodstuffs were some dried out tortillas and about two pounds of beans left out by the fire.
The crusted over beans more closely resembled a dried out creekbed than anything edible. Therefore we doctored it up by pouring in a generous amount of Budweiser from the keg and put the pot back on the fire. We also figured that anything that crusty had to have lost much of it's taste so we added a copious amount of salt. As the sun peaked over the horizon, the pot was bubbling with an eery intensity.
These beans were fantastacal. Not only were they crazy tasty but they produced intestinal gas that is legendary to all the other campers/victims that arose to the stench wafting through the West Texas Plains. I have not ate any dish since that created in my digestive system such a lethal and toxic flatulance. The lasting power, volume, and stench of the maloderous eminations were an incredible once in a lifetime acheivement.
Beans anyone?
Monday, November 07, 2005
Crack, Caskets, and Other Assorted Crap
Last week in Gloversville, NY, there was a drug raid at the Hollenback Funeral Home. As the forty-five police officers converged on the scene, several of the alleged perps were found tossing crack into caskets. As the cops led the suspects to a bus in cuffs, a group of neighbors gathered and were singing the refrain from 'Cops', "Bad Boys, Bad Boys, what cha gonna do." The officials had gotten wind of the operation when neighbors had called in reporting naked corpses in plain view of the neighborhood. Although the crack was the illegal operation, it is hard for me to decide which was the more immoral of the two, the dealers or the way funeral homes gouge people these days. Thanks to Laurie over at Stranded in Suburbia, I recently saw that Costco now sells caskets but except for natural disasters and war there is (thankfully) not much call for burying in bulk.
This weekend a high school basketball team in Oklahoma has the distinction of being the recipients of one of the biggest ass whuppings ever. The team was beat 112-2. If a boxer is getting pummeled that badly the guy in the corner throws the towel. Why didn't this coach? I might can see trying to teach a never say die attitude but this is taking it a little far.
According to Peggy Post, an expert in manners, the tradition of pulling off your hat indoors started in the Old West. Cowboys would pull off their hats to prove that they were not hiding a weapon under them.
Friday, November 04, 2005
Phone-A-Friend
The last time my brother-in-law and I got together, we hoisted a few cold ones and swapped the shit. Our conversation eventually came to old stories of stupid things that we had done while drunk. It seemed to us that of all the stupid things that we had done could have been averted if we had a friend, that would have told us that this was stupid and guided us through the situation. Whenever we committed a stupid act, either there was no friend to be found or our friends encouraged us in our drunken stupidity.
My brother-in-law told the story of one Super Bowl viewing at a local bar. He won the first quarter of the squares game and proceeded to celebrate by getting drunk and buying rounds for the house. A young vixen that he was now drinking with won the second quarter and the party kept on a-rollin'. The next morning in the dark he heard a sexy voice greet him good morning. She explained to him that he had left his vehicle at the bar and he then asked if she could give him a ride to his vehicle so that he could get back to work. That is when he was hit by the tsunami waves as she arose from the bed. The next day he called in to work to take a mental health day and went to the bar, where his friends who had witnessed the event bought him drinks to commiserate his misfortune.
I then related the story of one night of drinking heavily in a bar during my college days. I can distinctly remember the tequila shot drinking contest but the rest of that night are a god given blur. The next morning, I arose with the sun nude laying in the bed of my truck with the mother of all hangovers. My clothes thankfully were beside me so I dressed and went back to my dorm room. I then proceeded to ask my friends just what the hell had happened. They said that close to closing time they came to me and explained that they were ready to leave and told me so but I was having fun dancing with two rather robust women and they were going to give me a ride home. That is where my knowledge of what happened thankfully ends as I never saw the Rubinesque young ladies again (to the best of my knowledge).
We decided that most friends will go ahead and let you do something stupid just so they will have the opportunity to laugh at you and so they will have something to hold over your head when they do something stupid themselves. There should be a service for people when they are drunk and their thinking processes are askew. There should be someone who will help you when you are thinking of getting back with an ex-spouse or ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend, when you are hooking up with someone that you shouldn't, or any other of the hundreds of stupid things you can do when you are drunk.
We decided to start a new venture; a business with unlimited growth potential:Phone-A-Friend. For a nominal fee, we will enter you in a data base and issue you a pin number and our 24 hour a day hotline number. If you find yourself drunk and about to do something stupid, give us a call. We will drive to where you are and with a specially designed tool we will knock you the fuck out and drag your drunk ass home. The next morning we will call you making sure you were able to wake up and allow you to heap your gratitude, and a nominal surcharge, upon us for being a true friend and not allowing you to do something that will embarass you for the rest of your natural born life.
We are currently producing a marketing campaign with a tv ad as the centerpiece. The commercial will feature an Average Joe with a black eye and a gash on his noggin, who says,"I could have ended up with her if it wasn't for Phone-A-Friend." Fade to a shot of a green toothed woman with a tube top on and a body that looks like a can of biscuits that has blown up in the sun. Then fade back to Average Joe saying, "Thanks Phone-A-Friend."
To sign up for this much needed service, all you need to do is dial 1-800-RUF-UKED. Operators are standing by so that we can be ready to rescue your drunk ass.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Twisted Vocabulary
While doing the usual blog surfing, I came across the latest post of Dear Jane. She posted about the Washington Post Mensa Invitational, a contest where you had to alter a word by changing, adding or subtracting one letter, and then give a definition of the new word. Although the examples of their work was good, I couldn't help but think that these eggheads just were not down with the sickness. Here is my twisted spin on a few words.
Auwhority - An expert in prostitution.
Egopistic - The pride in writing one's name in the snow.
Insomenia - A sleep disorder akin to sleep walking but it is sleep phucking. A man wakes up and he is in some.
Misterbate - When during the act of self-gratification, the man loses track of where the semen went, as illustrated in 'Something About Mary'.
Miscalcumate - An error in judgement when using the rhythm method.
Premanstrual syndrome - The protective reflex of a male when his mate is suffering from premenstrual syndrome.
Priccalo - A musical dildo that whistles while it works.
Pulemia - The compulsion to masterbate after eating a meal.
Returded - When the shit hits the fan and flings back in your face.
Transfuguration - The hideous metamorphysis that occurs, when after drinking heavily in a bar, one goes to bed with someone of beauty and wakes up with someone who is fugly.
Feel free to share your own twisted words. Remember vocabulary is a living breathing thing who knows one of your words may be the new shizzle. If Snoop can do it, why not you?
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Vacation Lowlights
Before I moved into the office, my job on the night shift allowed me plenty of time to catch daytime boob tube. So on one of my days of vacation, I decided to catch 'The Tyra Banks Show'. I had heard about it and decided to see if it was as bad as I had heard. Oh yeah it was that bad and a rotten bag of chips.
I would say that it was Jerry Springer lite but that would be giving it too much credit. The show had all the sleaze of Jerry Springer but none of the self-effacing humor of the master of trash tv. The show actually tries to take itself seriously.
The particular episode that I caught was a story of love gone wrong. First they trotted out the wronged young man . Tyra explained that he had caught his girlfriend cheating on him by finding Poloroids of the momentous occasion. He went on to say that the two of them were trying to work things out but it was hard to regain trust. He further said that she was the first person that he had a strong connection with. Tyra went on to grill him and he admitted that wasn't the only first, as she had busted his cherry.
Next they brought on the skank that had wronged him. When questioned on how it had happened, she explained in as much detail as network smellovision allows. The details were as follows. She was meeting up with a girlfriend for a girls only campout at the lake. Her friend then got sick and she went with the other girls that she hardly knew. When dark was falling the other girls got scared and called over a group of guys. Most all of the other girls and guys partnered up and left her alone with one other girl and four guys sitting around the campfire drinking. She got a little drunk and when the other girl started kissing her, she just went with the flow. Someone broke out the camera and snapped a few shots of her performing oral sex with the other girl and some of the guys.
This is the time on Jerry Springer where the shit starts happening but this is the time on Tyra Banks where the shit starts getting boring. There was no cursing, no one got bitch slapped, no chairs were thrown, and no one even flashed their boobs. Instead Dr. Drew, the biggest spewer of pop-culture psycho-babble out there today, enlightened all with his steaming pile of drivel. He surmised that she had been involved in a relationship where things were chaotic, either being cheated on or abused. By doing this deed and leaving the poloroids for the boyfriend, she was trying to bring instability into a type of relationship that scared her.
Bullshit. They don't need Dr. Drew. What they need advice from a redneck with common sense. I don't know about the common sense part but most everyone that I know will attest to the redneck part, so here is my piece of advice on the situation.
Number One to the wronged geek, grow a set dumbass. She didn't just cheat on you, she munched a rug and blew four drunk sleazebags and left Poloroids for you to find. Leave the skank.
Number Two to the skank maybe it's time to give up your amateur status and go pro.
Number Three to Dr. Drew. Blow it out your ass, you condescending blowhard. A gutless weinee is a gutless weinie and a drunken ho is a drunken ho.
Number Four to Tyra. You are a model not a social worker get over it.
And Lastly Number Five does any of you bungholes on this show have any copies of those Poloroids.