Buffalo's Ruminations

It's Early Morning Somewhere

2009-12-21T15:57:00.001-06:00

Somewhere in the world, it is early morning. Here in Friendly, Not-Quite-So-Frozen, Manitoba, it is mid afternoon. It is mid afternoon by the way I calculate such things. The sun is shining just like it had half a brain. I’m not sure what that means, but it sounds good to me. Shadows are lying heavy on the thin veneer of new fallen snow.

If it had been in me to do it, I’d have sprung out of bed with a song in my heart and a twinkle in my eyes. The problem is, my spring has done sprung and any gleam in my eye is likely due to a light reflecting off my glasses. The way it was, I sort of heaved myself out of bed, stood up an inch at a time, then Frankensteined it to the coffeepot and on toward a scalding shower.

I suppose you’re wondering what momentous occurrence inspired such joy in my gleefully sin-soiled heart and soul. I reckon we could go with your first guess – and it would also be true. At least, it would be true to a point.

The truth is, the big truth, it is December 21st and that, my friends, is indeed something to rejoice. The sun has retreated as far as it is going to retreat. Tomorrow it begins its' relentless, and oh so welcome, return to its rightful place in the order of Buffalo’s Universe.

I did consider celebrating. Considering the importance and significance of the occasion, I considered doffing my duds, running outside, throwing myself on the ground and making snow angels. Briefly, it seemed totally appropriate. The problem is, the RCMP seems partial to shooting bears if they wander into town. I’m not at all certain if they know the difference between hairy bear and hairy bare. I’m even less certain they would care if they did know the difference.

And I’m fair to middlin’ sure that is all I have to say.

Life is sweet – because it is December 21st! (Duh.)

Portal

2009-12-18T16:19:00.001-06:00

My portal to the world is a narrow, but long pane of glass set in the front door. If I’m sitting at my desk, I can see the green branches of the spruce trees that stand usually-silent sentinel a few feet from the house, and a glimpse of pavement that is more gray than black. This morning, the branches were swathed with a golden glow. Now it is about an hour from darkness and the branches look almost black. Soon they will be swallowed by the night and my portal onto the world will be nothing more than a reflection of what is contained within.

That was yesterday and, as the song says, “yesterday is gone.” I don’t know where in the hell I was going with it. It would probably have made a fair to middlin’ good ladder to put me atop that tall soapbox I often find so appealing. To tell the truth, I wasn’t in a mood to speechify. Right now, I’m in an “it is what it is” type of mood. There isn’t any profit in flogging a dead horse. These days, the landscape seems to be littered with horse corpses and my flogging arm is plumb worn down to a nub. For those of you with a penchant for directing your eyes toward the gutter – don’t go there.

This afternoon, before I set out to write, I checked my compass to make sure I knew where I was headed. Compass reading isn’t exactly my forte. I made do with the general direction and was glad for it. I was buzzing along just like I had a brain in my head when I tripped and fell into a bush full of Christmas carols. They grabbed hold of me, wrapped their thorny vines around my neck, and started choking me.

It scared the crap out of me. I wanted to scream like a little girly-boy. That wouldn’t have done my macho image a nickel's worth of good. A big, ol’ jolt of adrenalin damned near took the top of my head clean off before it ricocheted through my chest and used my heart for a pin ball.

I don’t have any music on my computer that trips my trigger other than once every year or decade or something like that. All my good music is sitting inside our external hard drive. After Kat did her magic act on my laptop, I never got around to reloading the good stuff. Truth is, I don’t listen to music often. I hate wearing a headset. Listening without a headset on would be plumb rude. It’s six of one and a half dozen of the other. Life is like that.

Fortunately, a friend created a number of play lists. It just so happens that I had the good sense to put the link on my tool bar. Now I’m listening to some kick-ass blues. I kind of like the way they sneak into my left ear, roll through the gray stuff, and then jump out the right ear – except for the ones that have drilled their way through the back.

And that is all I have to say about that.

Life is sweet – and Muddy Waters made it a whole lot sweeter.

Sun

2009-12-16T18:38:00.001-06:00

I don’t know what I was thinking when I was born. Given that I was two weeks overdue when I made my appearance in this world, I am guessing that I was too pissed off at being evicted from my relatively comfortable abode to take notes. If it wasn’t the eviction that pissed me off, it was likely the slap on the ass. I am grateful my Dad wasn’t a believer in a certain surgery that often followed the birth of a male child. Seems to me that is a horrendous indignity to inflict on an innocent little baby boy.

It is obvious that I was a bright child. If I wasn’t, why would my folks call me sun? I mean, the sun is bright – at least it is bright except in Friendly, Frigid Manitoba. Hell, it might be bright in Manitoba too. No one will ever know for sure. It seems to be perpetually hidden behind a bank of clouds. If anyone wants to call me on that particular observation, I will gladly confess to a certain amount of bias.

Being bright doesn’t necessarily exempt one from acting on ill-advised thoughts. There was the time I hit Dad in the head with the corner of one of those black box Kodak cameras. Mom saved my young ass on that one. Then there was the time I laid open his head with a 12 inch crescent wrench. It took a bunch of stitches to sew him up. In case you’re wondering, I was three years old at the time.

Then there was the time I sat down on a red ant hill. That was ill-advised and demonstrated a remarkable ignorance of consequences. Dad was laughing too hard to do anything for me. The depot station manager ripped off my clothes and turned a hose on me. I was ate up pretty good.

There was the time in kindergarten when my teacher pissed me off. She wanted me to take a nap when I wasn’t in the mood. We argued. She grabbed me to take me to my mat. I kicked the crap out of her. That was another one of those consequence times.

Life is all about learning. I can say that I haven’t sat on a red ant hill since then. I can honestly say that I never hit my Dad again either. That doesn’t mean I didn’t try him on for size. I did that twice. The first time, I was mad. The second time, a couple of years later, was to prove that him knocking me out was a matter of luck. It wasn’t.

If I had something in mind when I started pecking away at the keyboard, I’ve long since forgotten what it was. That might be one of life’s lessons too. That might be why they invented post it notes. If you find any particular moral or bit of wisdom in any of this – let me know.

And that’s all I have to say.

Life is sweet – because dinner is ready and I’m feeling a mite peckish.

Afternoon

2009-12-15T16:25:00.001-06:00

The afternoon is wearing on and I’m sitting on my dead lead whilst I read a book. The truth be known, it is a mediocre read at the best. I’m not having much luck with my favorite writers of late. I should have said “good luck” since I’m having luck, albeit bad.

It wouldn’t take much for me to crawl into a corner, wrap myself in a warm blanket and sleep for an hour or two. Last night was three nights long and none of them were friendly. With the barometer going up and down more often than a soiled dove’s knickers on railroad payday, good sleep comes at a premium and I’m broke. If you don’t know what all of that means, you will when you get some more years on you.

Saturday just past was the 40th anniversary of my mother’s death. I reckon it was natural that my thoughts turned to her. She was a strange woman, my mother was. Although mom dressed like June Cleaver, though not as expensively, she certainly didn’t run a “Leave it to Beaver” home. Run it she did. Dad was able to say that he was the head of the house – as long as he didn’t believe it. I can’t say that my sister and I were afraid of her. We certainly respected her and had absolutely no desire to cross her.

She died of a massive heart attack while watching TV and eating a bowl of popcorn. Mom was a dyed in the wool hypochondriac. Hell, she had a bedside medical encyclopedia that she read as religiously as she did the worn family bible so she would know what symptoms to present. It turned out she had been having heart problems for quite a while, but those she kept between her and her doctor. My sister claimed she knew, but the girl wasn’t real well acquainted with the truth.

To tell you the truth, I never grieved for my mother even though we had more or less mended our relationship. She was worn out and tired of life. Death, for her, was a blessing. I’ve never fully understood as, for possibly the first time in her life, she had many of the things for which she had yearned; material things, anyway. The ol’ boy she was married to worshipped her and catered to her whims. I guess it was all the years that came before that killed that joy of life.

Yeah. I know. I’ve talked about this before and most likely will again. Remembering people, that isn’t a bad thing. It is because of her, the bad in her as well as the good, that I am who, what, where, and why I am. You be the judge of the goodness of that.

Life is sweet – because of some of the things she gave me.

Coffee and Cookies

2009-12-14T18:22:00.001-06:00

The afternoon sun is a pale, frozen orb hanging in the southwestern sky behind a wisp of smoke-gray cloud. It provides a modicum of illumination and almost no warmth on this mid-December day. Shoppers, at least the younger ones, scurry quickly across the parking lot and into the welcoming warmth of the store. The older shoppers, their bodies ensconced in long, gray, woolen coats, cling desperately to empty shopping carts as they laboriously make the frigid trek six inches at a time. I wonder if the fleet of foot ever pauses momentarily during their head-long rush through life to realize there is a shopping cart in their future.

Back at the house, Kat’s mom is baking a batch of gumdrop cookies. A mixture of hymns and Christmas music is playing less than softly on the small, brown, clock radio that sits on the counter. I don’t mind the hymns. They make me a little nostalgic for a time and place that was wonderful only by comparison. The carols make me glad my ears need trimming. You did know the hair growing in older men’s ears are bullshit baffles, didn’t you?

Kat brewed me a cup of stout, black coffee and a plate of cookies. It is a good thing I take it black rather than with milk and sugar. The spoon would have melted when I stirred it.

Although I hate blowing my image, I have to confess that I like watching the Waltons. The writing was deadly saccharine sweet. Most, but not all, of the acting rarely rose to the lofty heights of mediocrity. John Boy was a sensitive little punk-assed bitch that needed a 12 wide up his keister. The rest of the kids were generally annoying.

So why did I watch it?

My kid liked it. It portrayed some values it doesn’t hurt anyone to learn. Then there is the fact that Olivia Walton was smoking hot in her pseudo hillbilly way.

On the program they ran this afternoon, the writers gave John Boy this line to deliver. “Love isn’t like money. You can’t put it in the bank and draw interest on it.”

I liked it.

Life is sweet – because some people don’t bank their love.

A Strange Day

2009-12-10T18:41:00.000-06:00

It’s been a strange sort of day. Calling it a dismal day wouldn’t take a stretch of the imagination. The sky wasn’t exactly blue, but neither was it exactly gray. It wasn’t light enough to be dark, yet it wasn’t dark enough to be light.

The day has been quiet; unnaturally quiet if you ask me. Occasionally, there is the diesel rattle of a truck, or the throaty hum of a car muffler in need of repair, passing up or down the street. Since the land is flatter than one of Kat’s crepes, I’m not at all sure which way is up. Around here, I think they call a mole hill a mountain.

There is the slow-paced and low thud of the keys being pressed as I type. The thudding coming from behind me, Kat’s typing, is louder and much quicker. The hum of the fan circulating blessedly warm air is a welcome sound. The almost-shrill ringing in my ears is an ever present, and unwelcome, companion.

Kat’s mom had an appointment with her hairdresser this afternoon. The thermometer on the back porch has marking for both Celsius and Fahrenheit. It was six below, American. As I plodded my way to the garage, it occurred to me that, not too long ago, I’d leave the house about 0200 to do some legal car stealing. Maybe three or four times a year, it would be zero or a few degrees below. That was the freakin’ low, not the high for the day. I’m just saying.

Yeah. I do talk a lot about the weather, especially during the winter. That we always talk about the weather when we don’t have much of anything else to say has something to do with it. The first year I was up here, I think all the talk was more from a sense of shock and amazement at how freakin’ cold cold can be.

Well, I still don’t have a hell of a lot to say, but the amazement has disappeared. Now it is more about pride in survival. I hate the damned cold, but I am able to survive it. Considering the fact that all the clothes I wear, save a hoodie Kat gifted me with, came up here in Sweet Thing’s saddlebags – saddlebags I shared with Kat - saddlebags that were packed for a three month ride during the summer, I’m thinkin’ it is a good thing I’m not a skinny little bugger.

Over the years, I have been accused of being an emotionless son of a bitch. Not totally without emotion; most allowed I was pretty good with expressing anger. Truth be known, some of the accusers, but by no means all, were my exes. Far be it from me to protest their judgment. I wasn’t always easy on the women in my life. I suppose if I regretted it, I would apologize.

I think part of it has to do with my age. When I popped into the world this time, society promoted a certain image for men to follow. We were expected to be strong, stalwart, and stoic. Those expectations came along with that little bit of flesh we men were issued.

It also has something to do with the way I was reared. My Dad was a tough, old coot. In my eyes anyway, he was all a man should be and then some. He kept his emotions to himself. Life was a big poker game and he didn’t have any tells. I don’t know how in the hell he managed to convey his love for my sister and I, but he did. There was never any doubt. I haven’t done exactly a sterling job, but I have tried hard to live up to his image.

Age, or Kat, has mellowed me a considerable bit. The emotions were always there. I just wasn’t letting them show. If people know how you’re feeling, and what you’re feeling, they had you at a disadvantage.

There is a reason for me to be talking about all this touchy-feely crap. I was watching the news this morning. This segment hit me right twixt my eyes and through my heart. If you’re interested, click on the link.

Yeah, it is one of those feel-good pieces the media likes to throw at us during the holidays. I think they are intended to be examples of the inherent goodness of mankind – which is a horseshit concept based on wishful thinking rather than facts in evidence.

It is a sad freakin’ statement that the situation exists in a country such as mine. We have the money to wage wars, support regimes that pretend to be our friends as long as they can suck at the money teat, and spend countless billions of dollars into companies such as Blackwater, Halliburton and others of their ilk. Hell, the list is endless.

That’s all I have to say.

Life is sweet – maybe because I am capable of emotion.

Hey

2009-12-09T16:57:00.000-06:00

Every one together on the count of three: One, Two, THREE!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Denise!

I appreciate it, folks. In case you’re wondering, Denise is my niece. She’s an intelligent, tough, good looking all-day-long-and-well-past-the-night, full-growed, woman. She will surely do to ride the river with.

For the last few days, Kat’s been asking me if I want her to zip the liner onto my leather. I keep telling her no. Today I guess she was tired of being cold. She didn’t ask; she just did it. Funny how that works. Her feet get cold. I need to put on socks and shoes. She gets a sniffle and she hands me a tissue.

Yesterday, I couldn’t figure out if my allergies are acting up or if some sort of nasty-assed Canadian bug was nibbling on me. She wanted to run for the Buckleys. I told her it wouldn’t do any good. My lungs weren’t congested. I didn’t have a cough. I think, most of all, I didn’t want a shot of Buckleys. It is sort of like a fermented mixture of pine tar, tobacco spit, Brussels sprouts, limburger cheese, and a whole bunch of really nasty stuff. She persisted. I was adamant.

I tossed it down when she brought it to me. It didn’t do me a damn bit of good, but it made her feel a whole lot better.

Before venturing out this afternoon, I put on my hoodie and then zippered myself into my now-lined leather. At the door, I slipped my sock-covered feet into my winter boots and donned my black felt fedora. After being in Canada a tad over three years, I still can’t get used to taking my shoes off when I go into a house. I guess it is one of those “when in Rome” things.

The sky was a pale, washed-out, watercolor blue with thin splotches of grayish white. Snow crunched loudly under my feet as I walked to the garage. At 23 below, you expect some crunch. You might be amazed how loud crunching snow is when you’re sneaking up on a car, parked by a bedroom window, in the middle of the night with repossession in your heart. It seems only a few decibels less than an exploding mortar.

I brought the truck up the driveway to the house. I left it running when I went in to see if Kat was ready to go. That meant I had to take my shoes off again. I sat down and smoked a cigarette while I waited. She was ready a tick or two before I butted the smoke in the green, tin ashtray.

Castigating, pillorying, and crucifying Tiger Woods seemed to be the subject du jour on local talk radio. How could Tiger do that to his fans? What am I going to tell my 12 year old son? He is a sleaze ball. Why doesn’t he stand up and beg the world to forgive him? How could he have sex with 11 women? How dare an icon disappoint his fans?

Oh, (insert your own politically incorrect expression), please! Get over your sanctimonious selves. So he put a little tiger in some tanks. What freakin’ business is it of yours? Why does he owe you an apology? You elevated him to the level of an icon and you’re surprised when he doesn’t live up to your “elevated” standards?

The man is a professional golfer and makes a fortune because of his ability to chase a little ball around huge, manicured lawns. If he owes anyone anything, it is his family. He sure as hell doesn’t owe it to me, you, or anyone else.

When it comes to anything with a sexual tinge to it, the Western World goes wild with righteous rage. Get a freakin’ life and worry about your own morals; about what example you are setting for those close to you.

And that is all I have to say.

Life is sweet – Kat told me it had to be.

Snowmobiles, Flags, and Taxes

2009-12-08T14:48:00.001-06:00

A wave of brilliant luminance cascades across the fields, through stands of trees, and into the windows, warming the soul, although not the body. The radiance of the noonday sun belies the -2 (f) temperatures. A lone raven flies over the sparse copse of now barren poplar trees that live across the street. The tires of passing vehicles crunch the thin layer of snow, in reality almost ice, which covers that same street. Winter has finally arrived in this corner of Friendly, Frigid Manitoba.

Even though the temperature in the house is a very comfortable 71 degrees, I huddle under the cocooning warmth of two blankets. Last night during the early morning hours, not long after yesterday became today and as I was sliding down the pleasant slope that ends in sleep, the absolute quiet of the night exploded with the roar of two snowmobiles racing down the street.

Ponder that for a moment, if you will. It is after one in the morning. The temperature outside is minus 20 degrees and change without adding any wind chill factor to the mix. Two snowmobiles are racing down the quiet streets. Scratch the “quiet” part of that. It isn’t relevant.

What kind of sick mind would find that either entertaining or fun? I’m thinkin’ there are some serious mental health issues in this neck of the woods.

When I read this, my blood pressure jumped like someone goosed me with a red-hot poker. Rather than going off on a tirade, I’m suggesting you give it a read and form your own conclusions.

This link will take you to an article about Col. Van Barfoot, U.S. Army retired. He is 90 years old and served with honor in three wars. Among his medals and ribbons is the Congressional Medal of Honor. For a whole lot of years, he has been proudly flying the colors wherever he lived.

Every morning he runs the flag up the pole. Every night he hauls it down. I don’t see that as a bad thing.

Unfortunately, Col. Barfoot moved into a community with a homeowner’s association. They tell him it is against the rules to have a flag pole. They say it violates the area’s aesthetics. It has to come down or they will have to go to court.

Shame! Shame! Sussex Square Home Owner’s Association. Everyone knows your name.

By the way, their phone number is 804-740-8795.

Life is sweet – and it is mine.

A Day That Will Live in Infamy

2009-12-07T12:33:00.004-06:00

This day, December 7, 1941.

Honor their sacrifice.

More Different Stuff

2009-12-04T13:34:00.002-06:00

In yesterday’s post, “Different Stuff,” I called the Salvation Army to task for checking immigration status before parceling out Christmas goodies to under-privileged children. Apparently, I do not respect, admire, and support the Salvation Army to the extent that I have long thought and claimed. If I did, I would have fact-checked the story before opening my big mouth.

The Salvation Army is, and has been, distributing Christmas goodies without regard to immigration status. According to their website, they do ask for identification not to determine immigration status, but rather to insure less-than-honest recipients do not sign up at multiple Salvation Army locations.

I owe Sally Ann an apology. I owe myself a kick in the ass for not fact-checking. And, last but not least, I owe a thank you to Ms. Wendy Harman, of the American Red Cross, for bringing the misinformation to my attention.

You’ve probably heard about the woman down in Arkansas that called the police mid last month because her 10 year old daughter wouldn’t take a shower. When the officer arrived on scene, the girl was allegedly in the midst of a full-blown hissy fit. The mother and the officer then carried the child to the shower. The kid kept resisting their attempts to get her in the shower, so the officer decided to arrest her. That’s when the girl allegedly kicked him in the groin.

And that’s when he tasered her. She stopped struggling; he cuffed her and carried her to the police car.

The officer was eventually fired, but not for tasing her. The Chief stood behind him on that. He was fired for failing to have the camera hooked up to the weapon as dictated by policy.

Let’s jump over to Pueblo, Colorado. Two sheriff’s deputies responded to a “juvenile out of control” call. According to the account in the Pueblo Chieftain, the boy was tossing a pretty fair hissy fit himself. He was destroying property, (the property wasn’t named), and throwing wood at his foster-father. When the cops showed up, the kid ran.

The deputies cornered him. The boy threatened them with a pipe. They tasered him and took him into custody. According to the department, the tasing was justified.

The taser is a hell of a weapon; one that police should have in their personal arsenal. If their life or safety is in jeopardy, it gives them a (usually) non-lethal alternative to their sidearm. That is a good thing.

I’m not naïve or inexperienced enough to believe that a 10 year old with a pipe in their angry or frightened hand can’t hurt you. I am naïve enough to wonder why two trained, adult, male, law enforcement officers couldn’t deal with the kid without resorting to a weapon that is just shy of being lethal.

As long as I’m wondering, I wonder why in the hell is a police officer, a male police officer, trying to put a 10 year old girl in a shower. It sounds like a really bad idea to me.

I’m outta here. It’s time for me to put on my chauffeur hat. Folks have places to go and things to do.

Life is sweet – especially if you can avoid a law dawg with an itchy taser finger.

Different Stuff

2009-12-03T13:22:00.003-06:00

I’ve been an advocate and supporter of the Salvation Army nigh onto longer than I can remember. I suppose my Dad had a lot to do with it; at least, at first. As a cop, when he ran across folk that needed help, he didn’t bother calling the Red Cross. A lifetime of experience told him the Red Cross wouldn’t help, not unless there was something in it for them – like publicity. Every time he called the Salvation Army, they immediately stepped up to the plate. My experience, while not as extensive as my Dad’s, has been quite similar.

This article out of the Houston Chronicle took me aback. To tell you the truth, I’m a little disappointed in Sally Ann. The idea that you check immigration status before you parcel out gifts to underprivileged kids sort of flies in the face of Christmas and charitable endeavor.

No, I’m not an advocate of illegal immigrants or illegal immigration. I’ve written about it often enough. I also deplore the reasons honest, hard-working folk come into the country illegally. Take note that I said “honest, hard-working folk.” I also deplore the rules in our immigration laws that make it almost impossible for the folks to enter the country legally in any sort of a timely fashion. If all of that makes me a bleeding heart, I’ll own the label proudly.

It seems to me that bringing a little happiness into a kid’s life is a whole lot more important than a piece of paper. The acts of the parents should not be visited on the children.

That’s what I think. What I think, plus a buck and change, will get you a cup of coffee at Tim Hortons almost any day of the week. Hell, I’m betting it would any day of the week.

Did you hear about what happened to George Sanchez?

George enlisted in the United States Air Force. All the blanks on the enlistment papers were filled in and the bottom line signed. On the day before he was to report to boot camp, the Air Force decided they didn’t want him. It wasn’t that they discovered some hither-to-then, egregious offense that would disqualify him from serving. That is unless you consider having a tattoo an egregious offense.

Yep. That’s the long and short of it. Above the elbow on his right arm, his family name is spelled out in Japanese characters. That is his saluting arm. The Air Force has some short sleeved uniforms. Heaven knows, an officer seeing a tattoo on an enlisted man’s, (or woman’s), arm would be shocking to say the least. Hell, that tattoo could keep him from doing whatever job the USAF assigned to him – and it ain’t in the least bit professional.

Give me a freakin’ break. We have fighting on two fronts. We have troops stationed hither and yon around the world. We have folks serving back to back to back tours in places that intend them no good. And this guy can’t serve because of a freakin’ tattoo?

It’s a damned shame they didn’t have the same attitude when the Nam thing was going on. It would have saved some men the price of a ticket to Canada.

I wish I could tell you that this article surprised me. It didn’t. I do have to admit that it pissed me off a bit.

Lincoln University, a school of higher learning in Pennsylvania, has decided that fat folk need to take a physical fitness course if they want to graduate. Your grade point average counts for naught if you’re obese and don’t pass fat class.

I’m not going to sit here with my mouth open and my hairy face hanging out for all to see and tell you that obese is good. It isn’t. I’m fat. Luckily, I haven’t manifested any of the ills of obesity yet. Pervasive though they are, the fat cells haven’t destroyed my cognitive abilities. I know my reasonably good health is about luck and genetics rather than the good care I’ve taken.

I don’t have a problem with a college offering, even requiring, students to successfully navigate a course that deals with healthy living and physical fitness. That is, I don’t have a problem if that course is required of everyone. Thinness or a normal body mass index can just as easily be the luck of the draw and doesn’t necessarily equate good health or a positive lifestyle.

Is it possible we, as a society or as a species, need someone to look down upon to make us feel superior? Reason, enlightenment, education, and maybe a touch or two of political correctness, have rightfully hung a “hands off” sign on “classic” targets of societal contempt. That leaves smokers, fat folk and …?

It sort of reminds me of Jane Elliott’s “Blue eye –Brown eye” experiment. Or maybe it reminds me of a flock of chickens designating one of their numbers for a group pecking.

Life is sweet – but maybe not so sweet for the chicken being pecked to death.

Left Wrist

2009-12-01T13:33:00.001-06:00

Kat, already coated and gloved, asked me if I was going to wear my leather or my hoodie. I allowed that it was apt to be a bit breezy so I would wear the leather. She pulled it out of the closet and held it for me. Kat started doing that when the right rotator cup decided to betray me a couple of years ago. The motions required to get my right arm into the sleeve, and the jacket up on my shoulders, came just shy of excruciating. There isn’t much I hate more than the sound of Buffalo in agony. Screaming like a little girly-boy just ain’t macho. Frankly, after the embarrassment and pain fade a dab, it pisses me off big time.

The crisp, but not cold, night air ruffled my beard. It was full and recent dark. Had it not been for the bright, full moon, shaped like a hard-boiled egg with the little end pointing up and sort of toward the north, I’d probably have hung myself on the clothes line. As it was, I ducked. Kat didn’t have to duck.

We were headed to A and W. In case you don’t know, A and W stands for ‘amburgers and woot beer; at least, that is what one of Kat’s classmates announced when they were third or fourth graders. Every three or four months, we splurge on some greasy, fried chicken. There is only so much healthy eating the soul can survive without having a breakdown.

Trekking to A and W doesn’t exactly require a map and advance planning. Get the truck out of the garage and pointed south on the street. Hang an east at the stop sign for about three miles, turn right, turn left and turn into the parking lot – or the go through lot if you’d druther.

It isn’t a particularly exciting trip as a rule. Every now and again, some moron not willing to share the road properly will earn you a little shot of adrenalin. About the only excitement along the way, especially at night, comes from reading the gasoline price on the co-op sign. The price dropped a whole Canadian penny to 96.9 cents a liter the other day. There’s almost 4 liters to the gallon. You do the math.

I followed a dark colored Honda Civic into the drive-thru lane. They must have known what they wanted as, a minute later, it was our turn. When they squawked at me, I told them we wanted a 10 piece bucket of chicken and that was it. They wanted to know if that was the dinner or just the bucket. I told them just the chicken. The female voice figured we needed some side dishes. We didn’t. “That will be 22 bucks and change, come and get it.”

At the window, a young man took our ATM card, swiped it, and handed it back with the “enter your PIN” machine thingy. Kat made the proper incantation and I handed the thingy back to the Rhodes-Scholar-In-Training.

“Pull forward and park,” he told me.

“Why?” I wanted to know. To tell you the truth, which I’m wont to do, there may have been a bit of an edge to my voice. I hate waiting like the devil hates the truth. If I had back even half of the time I’ve spent waiting for one thing or another, I’d be one helluva lot younger than I am. I especially hate waiting if I’m not expecting a wait.

“We’ll bring your order out to you.”

“And how long will that be?”

“A little while.”

I looked at him for a moment and then looked down at my left wrist. That’s where I wore my wrist watch all of those decades; right up until the day I plopped my butt on Sweet Thing and headed out of KC in the drizzling March rain.

“Hmm,” said I. “All I see on my watch is a bunch of numbers. I don’t seem to see ‘a little while.’ How long is that?”

“In less than five minutes, sir.” I liked the “sir” bit even though it was a replacement for something less polite and socially acceptable. He didn’t lie though. The order was at the truck in less than five.

That was yesterday and yesterday is gone. The chicken is gone, the grease sort of enjoyed but not as much as I hoped. The full moon has given way to a bright but snowy day and, in spite of our best efforts, our little rock keeps spinning around the sun.

Life is sweet – because there isn’t a watch on my left wrist.

Kat, already coated and gloved, asked me if I was going to wear my leather or my hoodie. I allowed that it was apt to be a bit breezy so I would wear the leather. She pulled it out of the closet and held it for me. Kat started doing that when the right rotator cup decided to betray me a couple of years ago. The motions required to get my right arm into the sleeve, and the jacket up on my shoulders, came just shy of excruciating. There isn’t much I hate more than the sound of Buffalo in agony. Screaming like a little girly-boy just ain’t macho. Frankly, after the embarrassment and pain fade a dab, it pisses me off big time.

The crisp, but not cold, night air ruffled my beard. It was full and recent dark. Had it not been for the bright, full moon, shaped like a hard-boiled egg with the little end pointing up and sort of toward the north, I’d probably have hung myself on the clothes line. As it was, I ducked. Kat didn’t have to duck.

We were headed to A and W. In case you don’t know, A and W stands for ‘amburgers and woot beer; at least, that is what one of Kat’s classmates announced when they were third or fourth graders. Every three or four months, we splurge on some greasy, fried chicken. There is only so much healthy eating the soul can survive without having a breakdown.

Trekking to A and W doesn’t exactly require a map and advance planning. Get the truck out of the garage and pointed south on the street. Hang an east at the stop sign for about three miles, turn right, turn left and turn into the parking lot – or the go through lot if you’d druther.

It isn’t a particularly exciting trip as a rule. Every now and again, some moron not willing to share the road properly will earn you a little shot of adrenalin. About the only excitement along the way, especially at night, comes from reading the gasoline price on the co-op sign. The price dropped a whole Canadian penny to 96.9 cents a liter the other day. There’s almost 4 liters to the gallon. You do the math.

I followed a dark colored Honda Civic into the drive-thru lane. They must have known what they wanted as, a minute later, it was our turn. When they squawked at me, I told them we wanted a 10 piece bucket of chicken and that was it. They wanted to know if that was the dinner or just the bucket. I told them just the chicken. The female voice figured we needed some side dishes. We didn’t. “That will be 22 bucks and change, come and get it.”

At the window, a young man took our ATM card, swiped it, and handed it back with the “enter your PIN” machine thingy. Kat made the proper incantation and I handed the thingy back to the Rhodes-Scholar-In-Training.

“Pull forward and park,” he told me.

“Why?” I wanted to know. To tell you the truth, which I’m wont to do, there may have been a bit of an edge to my voice. I hate waiting like the devil hates the truth. If I had back even half of the time I’ve spent waiting for one thing or another, I’d be one helluva lot younger than I am. I especially hate waiting if I’m not expecting a wait.

“We’ll bring your order out to you.”

“And how long will that be?”

“A little while.”

I looked at him for a moment and then looked down at my left wrist. That’s where I wore my wrist watch all of those decades; right up until the day I plopped my butt on Sweet Thing and headed out of KC in the drizzling March rain.

“Hmm,” said I. “All I see on my watch is a bunch of numbers. I don’t seem to see ‘a little while.’ How long is that?”

“In less than five minutes, sir.” I liked the “sir” bit even though it was a replacement for something less polite and socially acceptable. He didn’t lie though. The order was at the truck in less than five.

That was yesterday and yesterday is gone. The chicken is gone, the grease sort of enjoyed but not as much as I hoped. The full moon has given way to a bright but snowy day and, in spite of our best efforts, our little rock keeps spinning around the sun.

Life is sweet – because there isn’t a watch on my left wrist.

Patience

2009-11-30T12:06:00.000-06:00

If you should happen to have someone tell you that Buffalo lacks patience, you should immediately call bullshit on them. I’m here to tell you, right here and right now, Buffalo is an extremely patient person. In fact, he has the patience of a freakin’ saint. That is a fact.

That I have been imbued with an incredible, stupendous, amount of patience doesn’t mean that I’m not afflicted with extremely high frustration levels. I can go from a state of absolute calm and tranquility to being a stand-in for the Tasmanian Devil of cartoon fame. That isn’t a pretty thing.

Kat cured one of my frustration levels the other day. (Amazing how quickly your mind took that leap.) When she reformatted my computer, she downloaded an office program that works well for her. It didn’t work so well for me. It took 16 hours, 33 minutes and 16 seconds to open. Waiting is not my strong suite. Something not working properly isn’t my strong suite. She removed the program, downloaded another one and, voila, problem solved.

Right now, my problem is with Blogger. For some reason, the damned thing won’t allow me to answer comments from either my or Kat’s computer. Posting isn’t a problem. Editing isn’t a problem. Posting a comment is a problem.

It is driving me up the freakin’ wall.

Whilst we are on the subject, which we weren’t, I’m reading Jonathan Kellerman’s latest offering, “Evidence.” I’ve been reading Kellerman for years and years. In my less than humble and unbiased opinion, he tells a good tale. At least, he used to tell a good tale.

I’m about halfway through the book. It is horrible. Thus far, he hasn’t introduced any characters that aren’t ludicrous nut cases – and not in a good way. The dialogue is contrived, the story line is as flat as a tortilla, and his main characters are either terminally ill or well past their fresh date.

Logic would dictate I pull the bookmark and quit bitching.

Life is sweet - because I am a paragon of patience.

Friday

2009-11-27T19:13:00.001-06:00

I'm not going to insult your credulity by claiming Friday snuck up on me. Before I was halfway finished with my first cup of coffee, there were enough cognitive brain cells working to facilitate a complete awareness of location and time of day, as well as day and month. The year is often a bit of a problem, which may be caused by the extreme possibility I'm not entirely happy with it being 2009 already. It shouldn't be any later than, say, 1987. Yeah. 1987. That wasn't a half-bad year.

Neither am I going to bore you with minutia of the weather in Friendly Manitoba. I haven't stuck my nose outside the house today or peered through any of the windows available for peering. Since I have heard no mention of it from either Kat or her mom, I'm going to assume it isn't snowing.

Last night, I had my mouth all set for soup and sandwiches for dinner. It didn't exactly make me mad when Kat called me to dinner and I found Thanksgiving dinner on the table. The whole magilla, only with ham instead of turkey. Ham, sweet taters, cranberry sauce, mashed taters, Cajun corn – like I said, the whole magilla. The woman can cook! Even though I knew better, I went back for seconds. A couple of hours later, I was ready for desert.

That Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday, is followed closely by a freakin' month of happy ho-ho crap doesn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to endless hours of not-so-cleverly written commercials ballyhooing a cesspool full of toys and tapes and games that do nothing for anyone other than assuaging an advertising-created need. Scrooge should have bitch-slapped the ghosts and sent them packing.

That Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday, is followed by the advent of winter doesn't make me mad. In case you're wondering, it ain't because I like winter. I hate winter. I do like the idea that the sun will remain a little longer each day.

It is time.

Life is sweet – because it is Friday, November 27, 2009.

Miserable

2009-11-25T18:26:00.001-06:00

Sleep bitched-slapped me upside the head, then stomped out the door, making sure to slam it, on its' way elsewhere. After I heaved myself out of bed, my autopilot directed me toward the kitchen and the already-armed coffee pot. I felt around long enough to find the switch and push it. I pried open one eye, the left one in case you're wondering, to take a gander out the kitchen window, past the moisture on the window panes, to see what I could say. Assessing the tiny part of the world visible through that portal is a ritual.

I have to tell you, I couldn't have possibly designed a day that coordinated more closely with my mood.

Allow me to tell you that it was one, miserable, nasty freakin' day out there. The spotlight that is the sun, the bringer of joy and radiance, burned out somewhere on its travels back to Friendly Freakin' Manitoba. Some jerk wad, undoubtedly a scab rather than a union worker, had replaced the spotlight bulb with a damned refrigerator bulb. How bright it that?

The tip top branches of the spruce and oak trees had scratched a hole in the soft underbelly of the clouds allowing a spritz of white stuff to coat the one time tender shoots of grass. Hell, the white stuff didn't discriminate. It covered the flowerbeds, the roofs, and the bare ground.

A howling wind would have made for a perfect trifecta except it wasn't howling. It was more of a moan or maybe a whimper. That's when I noticed the branches weren't moving. I guess the moaning, whimpering sound I was hearing was emanating from the deepest recesses of my tortured soul.

Don't take me wrong. As I've said before ,and will undoubtedly say again and again, I don't have any weather complaints. As Manitoba almost-winters go, this one hasn't been even half bad yet. What I am saying is that the day was designed to fit my mood.

Kat noticed I wasn't exactly the poster old man for the stupidly pleasant. She suggested it was because tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the States and I'm up here where the holiday comes during early October. It took me all of two seconds to tell her that it wasn't a thing. The reason it took that long was because I was taking a sip of coffee. I haven't mastered the ability to talk and drink at the same time. Never found much demand for that talent.

Kat's mom noticed I wasn't my usual perky, effervescent self. When I say “she noticed,” it would have been more accurate to say that she mentioned it. I think I told her I was in a pensive mood and had nothing to say worth the energy expended saying it.

Yes, world. I'm in a lousy mood. No one has pissed on my Post Toasties. No, I'm not sick, mad at anyone, or in pain beyond the normal crap that is part of life. Yes, there is something you can do to help.

Leave me the hell alone to enjoy my misery in silence. When I'm finished enjoying it, I will go back to regularly scheduled programming.

Life is sweet – even when I'm in a 'shit happens' mood.

A Day

2009-11-24T20:08:00.001-06:00

After making sure my cigarette case was full and stuffing it in my T shirt pocket, I shrugged into my hoodie. I walked to the back door, pausing long enough to stuff my bare feet into the clodhoppers hiding under the bench. If I live to be a hundred, I doubt I will become accustomed to the quaint Canadian custom of removing your shoes when you come into a house. It doesn't seem natural. Before walking out the door, I zipped up my hoodie.

The air was crisp. That wasn't surprising, since it is on toward the end of November. What was surprising is the afternoon temperature tickling at the 40 degree mark and all the green grass doing the shimmy in the brisk wind out of the southwest. Naturally, being trained by my mother, I pulled the door closed behind me.

I remember my mom yelling at me, “Close the door, boy. Were you born in a barn?” I answered back, “Yeah, and every time I see a horse's ass, I get homesick.”

Okay. That's a lie. I never had the guts to say anything like that to my mom. She was a scary woman and her hands were faster than Muhammad Ali. My Dad is the one that said it – to a school teacher when he was growing up. The teacher whupped his ass until times got better - and they were in the middle of some hard times.

I was standing on the back porch watching all the grass shimmy in the breeze as I waited for Kat. I could hear her and her mom talking in the hallway. When they talk, time seems to phase out of existence. From my perspective, it slows to a crippled-up crawl. If I had a key to the garage, I'd have backed the truck out. Since I don't, and I had no desire to stand like an orphan child by the garage door when there were perfectly good chairs on the porch, I waited until I figured I had waited long enough. That's when I told Kat to shake a leg – or words to that effect.

I followed Kat to the garage. Now, there are some men that feel all macho and manly when their woman walks a pace or two behind them. Maybe it makes them feel like the leader of the pack or some such bullshit. Me, I like following. I could cloud it up with a bunch more bullshit, but the simple fact is that I surely do like the way Kat walks. It is kind of inspiring and I'm always looking for inspiration.

If you think I opened the truck door for her, you are sadly mistaken. It isn't often that I claim I am either romantic or polite. Some of the times, I do lay claim to so being but I'm most likely exaggerating the situation to the point of … something or the other.

In case you're wondering, we were on a mission. The truck insurance and tags needed renewing and there was a pile of meds for Kat's mom waiting at the pharmacy. Kat probably needed to pick up some produce and milk too. I didn't ask.

I pulled into a parking space at the insurance company. Kat promised she'd be just a minute. From long experience, I knew that her idea of a minute was considerably longer than my idea. I turned off the ignition and moved the key into the accessory position so I could lower the window a tad and listen to the radio. It wasn't that I was overly warm. When you're smoking, it seems fitting that you vent the smoke a dab.

Yesterday, maybe it was the day before, two teenagers boys got into it at a party. From what I gather, the fight was over a girl. One of them pulled a knife. The other one died. I don't to mean to sound blasé about it. Such things are a tragedy. In a fit of anger, one life ends and the lives of many others are forever changed.

The talk show host was filled with righteous indignation. He claimed that baby boomers, which he is, couldn't understand how such things happened. That sort of violence was alien to him and his contemporaries. He wanted young folk, between 18 and 24, to call in to explain it to him – and us other baby boomers.

I'm thinking folk have a tendency to forget how they felt, and what they did, when they were young. I'm also thinking they tend to rearrange history into something that makes them feel a little more comfortable with their lives. Maybe sanctimonious is a better word than comfortable.

Violence has always been with us and, most likely, always will be with us. I'm of the notion that we are hard wired that way. It is also true the blood of youth runs lava hot. It might be because of all the hormones fighting it out in their inexperienced bodies and minds. It might be because they are card-carrying members of a savage species. I don't know. It doesn't matter, the whys of it all. It is what it is and it is a fact.

We, meaning society, spend a lot of time and money trying to stomp out violence. Laws are passed. Programs are launched. Zero tolerance is instituted. Anti-bullying hot lines are connected.

Yet, violence continues unabated. Predators still hunt the prey. Bullies still brutalize the weak. Tempers still clash. Guns, knives, and bludgeons enter the fray. People die. Lives are forever changed.

In this weird world in which I live, violence would be treated like a wild fire. Once a fire takes hold, all you can do is try to lessen the damage. If you catch it early enough to set a back fire, it is soon extinguished.

It used to be that two people could settle a mad by duking it out. As long as they took it outside, and weapons weren't involved, no one was charged. No one went to jail. If two boys got into it, the coach would take them to the gym, put gloves on them, and let them fight it out. No one was kicked out of school, sent to juvenile, etc, etc.

Yeah. People still died from being shot, cut, or bludgeoned – just not as many.

Some would say that was because we were a gentler and more decent people then. I think it was because there were viable and workable alternatives before bad blood became deadly blood.

Life is sweet – because I am free to voice my opinion.

Silver Cross Pen

2009-11-23T17:49:00.000-06:00

The sweet blue of the morning sky has been smothered into oblivion under the frontal assault launched by a regiment of winter-gray clouds. It is eerily silent, as if the world is suddenly holding its breath in morbid fascination of what is to come; what might come. The air is still and damp. It is a day for thinking grand and noble thoughts. I hope, somewhere and somehow, someone is thinking them. Today, my mind is like a computer that has been wiped and not reformatted.

I'm not sure why it occurred to me, maybe because I was incapable of grand and noble thought, I realized it had been a spell since I'd last laid eyes on my pen. Back before the cursed blessing of computers kicked in my front door, I would have noticed my pen's absence a whole lot sooner than in a spell, but that was then and now is now.

It isn't a fancy pen or one that is particularly valuable. It is merely a humble Cross that is silver in color and loaded with a fine nibbed, black ink cartridge. I'm partial to black ink and fine nibs. My mom was partial to red ink. In fact, she made a point of using red ink exclusively. Her bank knew that if one of her checks crossed their desk that wasn't written in red ink it was a forgery, regardless of how well the signature was written.

Her signature was surely difficult to forge. At least, it was difficult for me to forge. I finally gave up trying and switched over to Dad's signature. It was a whole lot easier to do and worked just as well on report cards, notes to the teacher, and absence excuses to the principal. It worked just as well until Mom realized it had been a lot longer than six weeks since she had last seen my report card. Life became a little more difficult after that.

To make a short story a whole lot longer, I started looking for the Cross. I was fair to middlin sure it was clipped to a notebook the last time I saw it. The logical place to start looking was in my desk. A flock of notebooks, big and small, live in those drawers. It wasn't clipped to any of the notebooks. Neither was it in any of the tins, bins, boxes, and baskets that coexist with the notebooks.

It wouldn't be inaccurate to say that I suffer from L.F.L. - Low Frustration Levels. I can go from a state of Zen-like calm to raging, irrational ogre quicker than a speed talker can say, “Jumping Jackrabbits, Jerkoff.” Admitting to that genetic flaw doesn't give me pride, but it is what it is. Depending on the circumstance, it could work its way into being a thing.

The only logical thing for me to do was to shout, “Kat, where's my pen?” Kat is the repository of all information. In case you're wondering, that isn't code for “Kat is a know-it-all.” One of her long suits is the acquisition and retention of information. When you couple that with her penchant for organization, my sweetly asked question makes more sense. The gods know I am all about making sense.

“Have you looked in you pen holder?” she asked in that tone of voice. You know what tone of voice I'm talking about, don't you?

I gritted what teeth I have left as I made mention that I had, indeed, looked in the damned pen holder. I may not have said “damn.” Feel free to furnish your favorite expletive.

Kat started looking for that silver Cross pen with the black top. She commenced her search by duplicating my efforts – all of the efforts except me hollering for her. If she had found it there, I'd be too embarrassed to be telling this tale.

She headed for another part of the house. I'm not sure where she went. I know, from listening to the noises, it was in a room with doors, cabinets, and boxes. That could have been almost any room. I had more important things to do than follow her. It was easier to be frustrated whilst playing Free Cell.

Kat walks in with a receipt of some sort in her hand. “Do you need this?” she asked as she handed it to me.

“Where in the hell did you find this?” I wanted to know. It was a Visa receipt for a tank of gas I had pumped into Sweet Thing in August of 1989 in Abilene.

“It was in your leather jacket.”

In case you're wondering, I didn't need the receipt. I did wish that Sweet Thing and I were in as good of shape as when we bought that gas. We both had a whole lot less mileage on our … odometer.

The woman isn't gone five minutes before she is back with a handful of receipts and brochures. They were from the same jacket, but only a tad over 3 years old. No wonder my leather is so heavy. I use it for a combination trash can/file cabinet.

It's late afternoon or early evening, depending on how you measure such things, now. The gray clouds are hiding behind all of the dark. Kat's mom is listening to country music. Kat is doing something or another on her computer.

My silver Cross pen with the fine nib and black ink is napping in the cup holder on my desk. My Zen-like state is now being disturbed by a nicotine fit.

Life is sweet – life beats the hell out of the alternatives.

Dirty Little Secret

2009-11-19T15:30:00.004-06:00

Boredom. Stark, bleak, mind-numbing boredom. We are out of reading material - unless I count the label on a can of water chestnuts. Since I've already read it, and doubt the story has changed, I'm not going to count it as viable reading material. I suppose Kat's mom would lend me a bible or her “Daily Bread.” I can't say that I'm in the mood for … leave that one layin' where it is, Buffalo.

On the tube, “Die Hard With A Vengeance” is playing for the trillionth time. There is a hockey game playing on the other tube; the tube nearest our desks. The desks on which rests our respective computers. That's why I donned a set of headphones. Because of the hockey game, not the desks. Well, because the desks were close to the hockey game. Close to the television that was televising the hockey game. I don't know where it was being played.

Yes, I know. Sacrilege. You do realize that I'm not Canadian, don't you? That means I don't have to pretend liking or understanding the game. It does mean I best keep my opinions to myself; at least, in some loonies. Yeah, loonie. I would have said in some “quarters” if it weren't for inflation.

There are only so many games of Spider and Free Cell that I can play without beginning to make music by strumming my lower lip with my index finger. Besides, I don't have a sense of rhythm and am tone deaf.

The Internet seemed to have rolled up the sidewalks somewhere around 2200 hours. I couldn't find anything of interest. Hell, I even forced myself to peruse some porn sites. You know I would never do anything like that voluntarily, not without extreme provocation.

There I sat. All dressed up and no where to go. If not dressed up, at least covered up. That included covering my ears with headphones. My forearms resting on the glass that protected the sanded, stained integrity of the desktop. The desktop that was littered with lighter fluid, eyeglass cleaner, speakers, read books, notebooks, toilet paper, American and Canadian flags, calendar, mouse, computer, mouse pad, nose spray, emery board, pencil holder, back scratcher, and an ankh on a simulated gold chain. I almost forgot. A basket with a sharpening stone, three Dianna Krall CDs, and a tiny calculator that I don't know if it works.

That's when it hit me like a big turd falling from a tall ox – only not as messy and smelly. Computer + headphones + bored out of my skull = YouTube. I typed in the address without looking a the keyboard. I can do that, you know. I learned to type during my freshman year of high school. Typing was one of two subjects that have actually served me well throughout my life. The other subject was Latin, but that is another story.

Back at the dawn of civilization, we used to go camping in Phantom Canyon every now and then. We'd get a roaring bonfire going. Mom would drag out her old flat top guitar and sing to us. Our favorite song from her fairly limited play list was Cowboy Jack. In the real world, she couldn't sing for Jack Squat. In that tiny world of innocence, my sis and I thought she sang like an angel.

Well, I found the song and clicked it to life. The old boy what was singing it was just shy of unbearable. I would have clicked him to silence were it not for the nostalgia value. Unfortunately, it took only a few moments for him to add some sort of imitation Bob Wills yee ahs. It sounded more like a jackass braying that it did Bob Wills. There is only so far nostalgia will go and we had done gone the distance. The road was closed and barricaded.

I'm particularly fond of the Blues and Rockabilly. I never got around to Rockabilly, but I surely found some kick ass Blues. Howling Wolf is damn nigh onto being my favorite Blues singer. That might change when I'm listening to Muddy Waters or Johnny Lee Hooker.

I haven't made mention of my dirty little secret, have I?

There is another singer I like. As a matter of fact, I like him a whole lot. He isn't a Blues or Rockabilly artist. He isn't a rock artist. He damn sure isn't a Hip Hop … I was going to say “artist,” but I can't go there.

Yep. I do like Slim Whitman.

Do me a favor and don't spread it around. A secret is a secret.

Life is sweet – because even boredom has to end.

Several Thousand Words

2009-11-18T12:58:00.002-06:00

And that, friends and neighbors, is all I have to say about that.

Well, that and Happy Birthday, Kat!

Not Breaking News

2009-11-17T08:46:00.003-06:00

No, it isn't breaking news.

No, compared to all of the evil, corruption, greed, and stupidity in the world, it wasn't much of a story even when it was news.

Yet it had a certain rancidness that screams for fresh air and a strong breeze.

The parent advisory board of a middle school in Goldsboro, North Carolina decided that selling 20 test points for 20 bucks was a mighty fine fund raiser. The principal pondered on it for a while, couldn't see that there was anything much wrong with it, so she gave it her approval.

You're not going to believe it, but there were some folks that thought selling grades wasn't teaching the kids what they should be taught. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, their opinion won the day.

Rush Limbaugh had an interesting take on the matter. You might want to take a couple of minutes to read what he had to say.

Voyeur

2009-11-16T10:01:00.001-06:00

Sitting under a pale blue sky watching as the world hovers in that magical, impossibly-possible, infinitely tiny, blink-in-the-eye-of-eternity moment where the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously in perfect harmony. A whispered breath of air stirs the lower branches of a spruce tree growing from a well-mulched bed of cedar. To the northeast, an old, single engine airplane flies lazy circles over what is often a jump zone for parachutists. A miles-long formation of Canadian geese are all but imperceptible black dots on the western sky. Snow white seagulls flutter about as they search for an afternoon snack.

Nostrils assailed by the acrid aroma of vehicle exhaust and burning leaves. It is too cool to be warm and too warm to be chilly. Sans jackets was for the hot-blooded young. A slightly pudgy, middle-aged brunette walks by, wearing a white ski jacket and polyester slacks that have escaped from the not-distant-enough past. A pair of flip-flops cling to her bare feet.

He sat with back against the beige bricks, legs crossed in what once was called “Indian style,” strumming his beat-up, black, flat top guitar as he sang folk ballads. A shock of jet-black hair struggled to escape from the confines of a gray watch cap. An open black guitar case, plastered with decals, sat at his feet. He seemed to have been rendered invisible and mute as a steady stream of cart-pushing shoppers rushed past him without seeing or hearing.

A cigarette lit and a cigarette smoked while a conservative talk show pushed to have a law passed that would require new immigrants to settle according to their job skills. He also thought it a good idea if immigrants were encouraged to leave Canada if they did not apply for citizenship as soon as they were legally able to do so.

A trio of females, too old to be called girls and too young to be called young women, strolled saucily down the sidewalk. Their hair was immaculately coiffed, their makeup as perfect as the skill levels of that age can manage, clothing carefully chosen, and attitudes in place. There was an intensity in their eyes that claimed they were hunting, not shopping.

There is a genuine smile on her face as she walks briskly down the tree and flower-lined, mulch-covered island. Her hair is gloriously gray; a testament to a person comfortable with their maturity, not the symbol of someone surrendering to the sometime-indignities of age. Her face is smooth, glowing, but not bereft of the lines that tell of a life lived. The ring finger of her left hand is barren of the shield of matrimony.

Dark, floral print dresses. Stout walking shoes and white socks. Purposeful stride. A black scarf carefully affixed to a tightly coiled bun. Brown winter coat zipped almost to the top. Face permanently set in a stern, serious expression. Life is for work and worship, not fun and frivolity. Some lives are celebrated and other lives are to be endured while awaiting a better day on the other side of the river.

A rail thin, old but not stooped, man stops by the singer, fumbles in his pocket and throws some coins in the case. The seat of his khaki slacks are droopy. The young man smiles at something said and offers the guitar to the older man. The fellow takes it, strums a few cords and hands it back to him before leaving. Suddenly, everyone passing by begins to feed the hungry, black case.

A door opens and shuts. A seat belt closes with a snap. The starter turns, the engine catches and the truck backs out of the parking place. The journey continues.

Random Thoughts

2009-11-13T12:14:00.000-06:00

It was on toward 0830 when I was awakened by the silence of a flood of dismal gray through the partially opened blind slats. I grabbed hold of my ears and heaved myself out of bed. If a coroner had examined me about then, he (or she) would have determined I was in full rigor. My head hurt bad enough to make me wish I could lay it off to Captain Morgan putting the boots to me. Unfortunately, Captain Morgan jumped ship and was last seen having hot monkey sex with a couple of nubile, tropical island girls. There is probably an island or two in Manitoba, but I'm doubting they are tropical.

I showered most of the rigor out of my poor,old, well-used body. Damn near had a heart attack while I was brushing the snarls out of my too-long hair. I made the mistake of taking a peek into the mirror. It was glaringly obvious I hadn't gotten my beauty sleep.

Sitting on the red couch that Satan uses to torture the unrepentant (guess that would be me), I began the almost painless process of transfusing my system with liters of Kat's spoon-melting caffeine concoction. When the unsweetened, undiluted, acidic rich blend of foul water and Columbia's finest legal export hit my stomach, it was like the kiss of an atomic angel.

It was a tad, maybe a couple of tads, past 0910 when my brain started to function. Perhaps “function” isn't exactly the right word. It would be more accurate to say it jump started a couple of the synapses. Can't say with any truthfulness that that is a good thing so early in the day; especially with all that gray filling the room. It sort of allowed a barrage of random thoughts to assail the door to the room where my sanity is stored. That isn't a good thing. A person is only issued so much sanity and when it's gone, well, it's gone. Who knows what will happen once it's depleted. Hell, you might turn out to be a Republican; or even worse, a Republican politician.

Have you ever wondered how companies that claim they can't afford to pay their rank and file employees a livable wage while, at the same time, paying their executives millions of dollars in salary, benefits, and stock options is a good thing?

I heard from a reliable source that by the time my Dad died, he was begging for death. In one way, I'm glad that I was in Nam when it happened. I'd rather remember him the way he was, rather than the pain filled, 100 pound skeleton he became. A terminal person shouldn't be forced to endure untold agony that can't be relieved. They shouldn't be cursed with a death completely without dignity. Opponents often say that the suffering is part of man's lot and to end it ahead of god's time is a sin. If suffering is man's lot, I wonder if they reach for a pain reliever when they hurt.

Do you think it would be possible, even with a library full of proof, for President Obama to prove to his rabid detractors' satisfaction that he is indeed an American citizen and that he is not a Muslim or a socialist bent on destroying the country?

Isn't sending the same troops on multiple deployments to the same war zone a bizarre way for our leaders to show they support and care for the troops?

I've heard certain quarters criticizing President Obama for taking five days to appear at Ft. Hood while former President and Mrs. Bush made a more immediate visit. I'm thinking back to Hurricane Katrina as I try to remember when the former president put his feet on the ground of Big Easy. Hmmm.

Did you ever wonder why women, other than exes, are such gorgeous, delightful life forms? As far as that goes, how does a gorgeous, delightful woman morph into a harridan from hell when she becomes an ex.

Why, in a '96 Plymouth Grand Voyager, did they put the access panel to the turn signals in the freakin' wheel well?

I need an Aleve. Those darned synapses have my head hurting.

Life is sweet – maybe because there is an end to everything.

Chow Dogs and Hedges

2009-11-12T10:18:00.001-06:00

It was on toward the end of summer. Summer would be summer last year, not the summer just ended. This year, instead of summer, the Season Gods rendered an inadequate apology and a governmental-type promise of a real one next year. Kat and I were sitting on the back porch absorbing the the visual and olfactory pleasures of a freshly and well-mowed yard. I suspect I was sipping on a cup of acid rich, black coffee whilst I sucked on a coffin nail. I don't rightly remember what either Kat or I were doing. I've been to the bathroom a few times since then.

“That damned hedge is aggravating the hell out of me, baby girl,” I might have said. It is entirely likely I didn't phrase it as politely and expletive-free as all of that. Remember all the trips to the bathroom since then?

It is entirely possible my love of Chow dogs is rooted in traits that I share with them. For example, once something pops in my head, it is damned hard to get it to pop out again. That's why a lot of folk think Chows are hard-headed. They aren't. They do have strong focus, though. I admit there are times when it is more than a little difficult to penetrate that intense focus to advise them of the potential folly of whatever in the hell they're pondering on.
In point of fact, the hedge was aggravating me. The branches were snarling around the power lines and the telephone line. When I mowed the lawn, the lower branches leaped out and beat me around the head and shoulders. Sometimes they would draw blood. I surely do hate the idea of leaving my DNA scattered hither and yon.

“It is too late in the season to do anything with them. If we cut them back now, they likely won't survive the winter,” she told me. Since she has been hanging out with me, she has lost a lot of her Canadian speech patterns. On a good day, she could pass as an American from the Southern part of the Mid West.

“Down home, we cut them when the spirit moves us and I feel my spirit moving,” I remarked.

“But baby,” (She calls me baby. What do you think of that crappola?) “You're not down home. Down home, it doesn't get down to 50 below without the windchill.

What can I say? She speaks the truth.

“Dad,” she continued, “always cut them back just before spring.

I wasn't ready to put the thought out of my mind. Since it was actually almost warm that day, since I hate to sweat, and since I believe that one shouldn't do anything today that can be put off until tomorrow, I went back to sipping to my coffee. I may well have lit another cigarette, just for good measure.

Put the remote on fast forward. That lets you skip the commercials and keeps me from having to fill the space with even more trivial balderdash. Stop when you get to late winter or early spring.
For those of you that have never had the, uh, privilege of spending a winter in Friendly, Frigid Manitoba, when I speak of any of the four seasons I am referring to the seasons delineated by the man-made calendar. It has nothing to do with the reality of weather. Remember the words from that old Johnny Horton song, “When it's springtime in Alaska, it is 40 below.” While you're remembering, do me a favor and don't ask “Who is Johnny Horton?”

The yard was buried deeply in a blanket of almost-white, very frozen snow. Every now and then, the mercury, or whatever they use instead of mercury now days, would soar all the way up to almost zero. The blue jays were so hoarse from the cold, they couldn't scream. A flock of robins flogged one of their brethren to death when he foolishly suggested it was time for them to head out for their Canadian summer home.

I believe it was Kat's mom that said, “This is the time of year that Dad trimmed the hedges.”

“There's snow on the ground. I'm not going to stand in the snow whilst I trim a hedge.” That was me talking.

“He shoveled it.”

“No disrespect intended, but I'm not about to do that. He was a hale and hearty Canuck. I'm a wussy American.”

So we waited. The snow finally melted. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the melt turned the hard into a shin-deep morass. Then it rained. And then it rained some more. You know how it ends. At some point everything, good, bad, or neutral, has to end.

We have neither a chain saw nor an electric hedge trimmer. We do have a bow saw, a limb lopper, and a pair of very old manual hedge trimmers. It would have been simpler, and probably made a whole lot more sense, if I'd asked Dave, (Dave being the brother-in-law that I sometimes call a punk-assed bitch even though he isn't), to borrow his chain saw. I'm not in favor of borrowing tools. Whenever I lend out a tool, it immediately goes into foster care. I never see it again. Neither do I want to be responsible for someone else's tool. If it would break, I would feel responsible for fixing it or replacing it.

A few snips with the hedge trimmers told me the branches had grown too large for it to handle. That sort of things happens when it is seven years between trims. The limb lopper made relatively short work of the majority of branches in the first section of hedge. The majority doesn't mean all of them, though. Some of the branches were six to eight inches in circumference.

Poor, ol', Buffalo began sawing. Up and down the ladder went his fat ass - and the rest of him went with it. The spirit was willing as all get-out. The flesh was a tad on the weak side. Two years ago, I think it was, the doctor told me I needed to have surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff. Instead of putting my faith in a surgeon to repair the tear, I decided to trust in my body's mythical recuperative ability. I say “mythical” because those recuperative powers might not have been as great as I thought.

The sawing made my shoulder hurt like 15 hundred muthas. I'd saw for a spell and then rest long enough to let the the pain ebb a dab. By the end of two or three hours, I was ready to quit for the day. As much as Kat frets about me like an old mother hen, I'm thinkin' she was ready for me to quit long before I called it.

I might have failed to mention that we have one hell of a hedge. I'm guessing it runs over 100 yards. That makes for a fair amount of branches. All the time I was sawing, Kat was toting the brush to the garden plot. Five times, count them, we piled the garden high with branches. Five times, count them, Kat exercised her pyromaniac skills. The flames shot high in the air. The smoke set off a sneezing fit when it wafted into the nostrils of the gods.

Done is done. Eventually that is exactly what we were. All that was left was to set on the porch and fret about whether or not the damn thing would leaf out and start looking like a hedge instead of a forest of dead trees. The worry seemed legitimate to me. If there is a way to screw something up, you can be assured I will find that particular path. Kat kept telling me it would be fine. For once ,it didn't piss me off for her to be right.

During the summer that wasn't a summer, the hedge managed to grow a good four or five feet. Those long branches waving at me are a siren's song; a song that I positively refuse to hear.

Life is sweet – because done is done.

Veteran's Day 2009

2009-11-11T12:26:00.001-06:00

I've been thinkin'. Thinking isn't necessarily the most calming and restful of projects; at least, not for me. Some of the thoughts I chase after seem to run along paths that are snarled up with vines, mire, and thorns, as well as other natural and unnatural impediments. Every now and then - more now than then - there will be other thoughts hanging from one of those vines. As easily as I am distracted, that is just as likely to send me down an entirely different path, likely to never get back to where I left off.

It's Veteran's Day, don'cha know. I'm partial to Veteran's Day. I'm a veteran. Three out of my four half brothers were vets; two Marines and one Army Medic. My Dad fought in World War I. That was the Great War, the War To End All Wars. I'm not sure why they called it the Great War. From what I've read, it was a lot of things, but “Great” wasn't amongst them. It probably would have been more fitting to have called it the Horrible War, but then that pretty much describes any and all wars. There is something about war that isn't overly pleasant, kind, mannerly, or good for living things; living things like people. Hell, the Civil War was anything other than civil. Bullets, artillery, mustard gas, grenades, and land mines have a tendency to render bodies to less than factory condition.

I'm not sure there is such a thing as a truly necessary war. The more I read about World War I, the more I believe that one could have been skipped entirely. Korea, the forgotten war, doesn't appear particularly necessary. Vietnam, the war that would like to be forgotten, was an adventure in the absurd. If you ask me, and even if you don't, Iraq was so unjustified as to fall under the heading of “Cluster Fuck.” If the President had pursued the justified mission in Afghanistan, our troops would be home instead of debarking on their third and fourth rotation to the Mid East.

You may have noticed I didn't mention WWII in the above paragraph. There is a reason for that omission. As near as I can tell, it was truly justified. The generation that fought that war, at home as well as abroad, exemplify the very best of what America is supposed to stand for.
The sad thing is, until someone figures out how to alter human nature, a standing military is necessary. No matter how much we work for peace, no matter how much we yearn for peace, no matter how many prayers are sent soaring to wherever they go, the probability of war looms just down the street and maybe around the corner.

Those that serve in the military, be they volunteer, conscript, man or woman, make a sacrifice. The sacrifice may be as relatively minor as having their lives put on hold for a couple of years while they are order-taking, uniform-wearing, sometimes-reluctant, guardians of their country. The sacrifice can be as great as the destruction of their body, their mind, their very life. That doesn't begin to account for the sacrifices of those that love and wait.

I never thought much about respect back when I was in the service. Most of the time, I was busy doing what I did, which was mostly taking orders from some college boy that thought he knew everything there was to know. When I had some thinking time, my thoughts were most likely directed down the path that was lined with cold rum and coke, hot and willing women, primo weed, and motorcycles. Hey! What can I say? I lived a life rife with fantasy.

There surely wasn't much respect for the Vietnam Veteran. We were an embarrassment. We were a lot of things, none of the particularly positive. You know how it was. We came home and got busy doing what we had to do, what we could do, and tried to live our lives. Letting anyone know that you were a Nam vet was a sure way to run into condescending attitudes or a lot of questions that should never have been asked and that you surely didn't have any intention of answering.

Twenty years down the road, it suddenly became popular to be a Nam Vet. Maybe folk had watched enough Chuck Norris movies to believe it had all been one grand adventure and “damn, I sure wish I had gone to Vietnam instead of burning the flag and running off to Canada.” Maybe it was all the collective guilt kicking in. Who knows? It was what it was.

Yeah, all of a sudden it was “Welcome home.” That felt good. That hurt. But you take what you can get and make do with it. I finally reached a point where I didn't want to hear it any longer. I'm grateful that my contemporaries finally allowed me to come home. I never wanted to be thanked for my service. I served, not for thanks, but because it was my obligation and now that obligation is paid. I just wanted to come home. Quite honestly, and no disrespect intended, being thanked has come to embarrass me.

Odd thing, that. Over the years I have thanked many a WWII vet for making it possible for me to speak American as a first language. I've acknowledged the service of Korean vets. I've not been remiss in telling our current warriors that I appreciate what they're doing for the country. But when it comes to me, I'm embarrassed.

We do owe our vets, current and past, a debt of gratitude and support. They stand, and have stood, between our country and whatever, whomever, posed a threat. That is a shinin' thing. I'm not sure buying a magnetic sign to slap on a vehicle actually demonstrates support, though.
The last letter I received from my Dad, as he lay dying in the Leavenworth VA Hospital, was written by a Gray Lady. Gray Ladies were volunteers that went into the VA hospitals to tend to the patients. They wrote letters, visited, played cards, provided hygienic products to the patients; basically they did whatever they could to help the patients. If it hadn't been for one lady that cared, I wouldn't have even known my Dad was ill until I received the Red Cross notification after his death.

I wonder how a letter or card would cheer one of our warriors on duty in Iraq or Afghanistan – or any foreign soil. Actually, I know how it makes them feel as I received responses to letters I have written.

The holidays are rapidly approaching. Budgets strained to the breaking, I'm betting there are military dependents who are going to find mighty slim pickings under the Christmas tree this year. Local reserve units can point toward need.

How about the spouses left to tend to hearth, home and children while the husband or wife is off standing watch between us and peril? Is it possible they need a sanity hour every now and then, or help with something around the house or yard? It doesn't take much to give an hour or two.
Then there are the aging vets that are lonely, unable to drive, perhaps physically challenged. What can each of us do to make their life a little easier?

The first time I went to Nam, a retired school teacher from down home wrote me a letter. Even though we had never met, she felt it important to write each and every one of the home town boys that were serving in harm's way. Yeah, the letters were boring, but damn if I didn't appreciate that touch of home.

Seems to me that finding needs within our community, and then giving a little of ourselves to help meet those needs, is a shinin' way to say, “Thank you for your service.”

Life is sweet – because there are a lot of folk that care and back up that caring with action.

Happy Birthday, Marines!

2009-11-10T14:52:00.005-06:00

It was back in November of 1775, the 10th of November to be precise, that Captain Samuel Nichols, by an act of Congress, formed the Continental Marines. The two battalions of men were to serve as security aboard ships and to target the officers of ships with whom they were engaged in battle.

Although the Continental Marines were disbanded not long after the War for Independence and not reformed until 1798, November 10th is recognized and celebrated as the birthday of the United States Marine Corps. Today, a shade over 200,000 men and women serve as active duty Marines, and another 40,000 reserves, by far the smallest branch of the armed forces.

Semper Fi, jarheads!