I overslept yesterday

When the younger boy came home from school, I was still on my second cup of coffee. It was ludicrous. The whole day was shot. Then Toney’s car wouldn’t start… I had to bust out some jumper cables… we took it to a garage, and found out the battery was deader than David Crosby’s factory liver… It was fantastic. And $122 later, we were back to where we’d been a few hours before.

Today I ran some errands, and got a haircut. At the hair place they have a couple of tanning booths, and I saw an old codger emerge from one. He was probably in his mid-70s, and had skin like beef jerky. Clearly, he’s developed a tanning bed addiction, and is taking things too far. They need to cut him off, before he’s zapped of all his moisture, and they just find a pile of dust in there, and a set of super-white dentures.

A flamboyant gay man cut my hair, and did a good job. The dude was gliding around my chair. The cut cost $17.00, and I tipped him $5.00. How much do you tip those haircut folk? Is five bucks a reasonable amount, or am I way off in some direction? Please help me out. I don’t know anything about anything.

Also, I’ve turned the corner on my eyebrows. It used to irritate me when they’d ask if I want my brows trimmed, but I’ve now embraced it. Sure, it’s an old man procedure, but it needs done. Wild, wiry hairs grow there now, in every direction. The shit needs beaten back every month or so. Ya know?

Speaking of old man… I find myself at a crossroads. I don’t like it when young whippersnappers call me “sir,” and I also don’t like it when they call me “man,” or “dude.” The first one makes me feel old, and the other two don’t seem respectful enough, considering how old I am. Yeah, I know it might be somewhat hypocritical, but tough shit. What’s your feelings on this one? Do you care how the younglings address you? Tell us about it.

And when I typed the word ‘crossroads’ in the previous paragraph, it reminded me… The novel is free in the Kindle Store, today and tomorrow. If you have any immature friends who you think might enjoy it, please let them know. They have until 3 a.m. Sunday morning, EST. Then the price shoots all the way up to $5.

Not too long ago I saw 1981 Bob Seger driving a forklift at Home Depot, and today I saw 1972 Neil Young hitchhiking near the entrance ramp of the interstate. I often see “celebrities” (I spot the Video Professor three or four times a day), but usually they’re in their current incarnation. This is a new development, seeing celebs from previous eras.

What close approximations of famous people have you seen lately? Besides the Video Professor, I mean. Everybody sees him.

Today I reclaimed the old suggestaholic domain name. I let it go, several years ago, and almost instantly regretted it. To make matters worse, GoDaddy was holding it hostage, calling it a “premium” domain, and asking something like $200 for it. Funk dat. I waited them out, though, and they finally returned it to the open market this week. And I was all over it, like a spider monkey on a paperboy. I don’t know if I’ll do anything with it, but it’s there if I need it.

Next on my domain wish list: mockable dotcom. It’s parked by someone, and not being used. It’s gonna be a tough nut to crack. Also: wvsr dotcom. It’s been registered to the same people, since 1997. But I’m watching… always watching.

I currently own nine domains, and only use the one we’re on now. Mockable is still up, and the CrossroadsRoad landing page is active, but nothing is being added to either of them. Most of the others just redirect to the Surf Report. I’ve had one for many years, and a really good idea to go along with it. But it will require a lot of coding, which I can’t do, and so it remains in the “someday” category.

I think I’m starting to grow a wart on my nose. And what’s the story with that? I remember having warts on my hands when I was a kid, and my mother putting medicine on them, until they fell off.

But I haven’t had anything like that happen since the Johnson Administration. Do you have any history with warts? Yeah, I know… it’s probably herpes, right? Nose herpes. I’ll beat you guys to the punch.

But how do I get rid of this thing, before it goes out of control, and I’m walking around with a full-blown biscuit of flesh attached to my face? I need to tap into your wart know-how. For some reason, I’m sensing a lot of wart knowledge out there.

Before I call it a day here, I’d like to alert you to another of Jason Headley’s short films. This one is really short – less than two minutes – but it’s very funny, and well-done. He scoffed when I recently told him he’s becoming a good actor, but it’s true. Check it out.

He’s getting a lot of attention with this one, and it’s deserved. I think it was featured on Funny Or Die, and also mentioned on the USA Today website. Congrats, Jason! You’re doing great work, dude (or sir).

And that’s going to do it, boys and girls. I asked several Questions throughout this update, so please take it from here. Of course, you don’t have to answer the Questions, if you don’t want. Talk about anything you’d like. There are (almost) no rules at TheWVSR.

Have yourselves a great weekend.

I’ll see ya soon.

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It’s exceedingly muggy

It’s ballsy in here. And I’m talking about humidity, not courage.

Soon, we’ll have to drag the clickety-clack Soviet humboxes up from the basement, and “install” them in the windows. We have five at this point, and I wouldn’t mind adding a couple more. Sure, it’s sometimes like watching TV inside a jet engine laboratory around here, but it saves me from being oily, like an otter. …Otters are oily, right? Somehow I believe this to be true.

Also, there are some annoying things going on at work, which I can’t talk about, on account of the spying. And the traffic situation on I-81 is always a treat. Ever since winter ended there’s been so-called construction everywhere, and it’ll continue until it snows again. However, there will be no discernible improvements to the roads… Sometimes it requires more than an hour to travel 36 miles to work. Luckily, I take it all with good cheer, and a twinkle in my eye. Ha!

On June 1 our health insurance changes, and you probably wouldn’t believe how our new coverage works. I’ve never even HEARD of such a thing. I told my parents about it, and they thought I was lying, or mistaken. I don’t want to go into it, for obvious reasons, but I’m feeling a bit… vulnerable.

Our younger kid, for instance, has an ear infection, and went to the doctor today. I feel like hugging him, for getting sick in May. “Thank you!!” I repeated, again and again. I told Toney and the other boy: You’ve got a week and a half… if you’re going to get sick or break a bone in 2013, it needs to be now. Shit.

Tomorrow I’m going to set aside three hours, for yard work. Unless it rains, of course. I have to get my arms around it, before it goes full-Vietnam out there. The bushes need some tending-to, and the grass is getting shaggy. If it’s still this humid tomorrow, I’ll probably lose 10 pounds. But that’s the only positive.

I know, I know. I have two teenage boys… Why aren’t they doing it? They do, sometimes. However, they’re half-assed, like I was at their age. I learned, early on, that if I did a less-than-stellar job with it, my dad would just say “screw it” and do it himself. Clearly, they’ve adopted the same strategy. I need to whip it into shape, and turn them loose on the maintenance phase of the game, over the next few weeks.

Also, I’m waiting on a few important emails, and I’m the world’s most impatient man. It’s driving me insane, but I have to pretend it isn’t. That’s “professionalism,” right? Creating various illusions, and whatnot? Grrr…

So, there you go. That pretty much covers it. It’s a dynamic situation, though: always changing. In an hour I might have a baker’s dozen new things to add. We’ll just have to see how it goes.

And now it’s your turn. In the comments section feel free to unburden yourself. Make full use of the Surf Report Portal o’ Complaints.

And I’ll be back tomorrow, at some point. If there’s no rain, it might be late in the day. ‘Nam awaits.

Have a great day, my friends!

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At this point in my life

But when I was young, dumb, and easily intimidated, I was occasionally asked to perform functions that were even more dangerous than that. Thinking back on it now, I have a feeling those businesses weren’t exactly following the OSHA code to the letter. Ya know?

Of course, I was a 19 year old dumbass, which isn’t exactly an exotic and irreplaceable creature. There was a fresh herd of us stampeding out of Dunbar High School every year. So, what did it matter if a few were killed along the way? They could just snap in a replacement dipshit, and never miss a beat.

Below, I’m going to describe the most dangerous tasks I remember performing at work. Some of my stuff is probably pretty tame, compared to folks who worked in coal mines, and that sort of thing. But, you’ll have a chance to set me straight, in the comments. Let’s get started, shall we?

The Fas-Chek ledge of death

After I graduated high school, and lost my lucrative position as a toll collector, I started working full-time at a grocery store in Dunbar. On mornings when “the truck” was scheduled, I started at 6:30 a.m., and was in charge of unloading and sorting that day’s delivery. It sucked ass.

There was no real loading dock, just a wide door in the side of the building. At some point there was a platform out there that could be raised and lowered, so you were able to easily take freight off the truck with a pallet jack, and on into the storage room. But that platform stopped working – probably during the Johnson Administration – and was never repaired. Because, you see, that would require money.

So, they always sent a truck with a so-called liftgate. It was a small platform attached to the truck itself, which was hydraulically operated. The driver would lift me and a jack up there, I’d pull a pallet of freight onto the platform, and he’d lower me down.

Sounds easy, huh? Well, it wasn’t. The platform was small: almost exactly the same depth as a pallet. So, I’d have one rolling along, and needed to stop it right before it went over the edge. If I stopped it too soon, it would be halfway inside the truck, and halfway out. And if I stopped it too late… I’d be dead beneath a half-ton of potted meat, or whatever.

There were two ways of braking those bastards: dropping the pallet, or quickly turning the wheel. I used the latter method, because the first one was unpredictable and also caused a lot of shaking of the platform. I didn’t care for the shaking.

So, I’d have a heavy pallet rolling through the truck, out onto that tiny platform, and would have to whip the wheel to one side at the last second. There was literally no room for error. It was scary, and the driver sometimes said things like, “Shit, man. I hope they’re paying you a lot of money to do this. Somebody’s going to get killed!” Yeah, I was pulling down minimum wage: $134 per week, before taxes. It always made me feel pretty good when they said things like that.

For the record, pallets of water were the scariest. They were impossibly heavy, and didn’t like to stop rolling. In fact, any kind of liquid put the fear of God in me. Even now, Hi-C gives me the heebie-jeebies. But, at least it doesn’t come in those big iron cans anymore. Shit!

The Skating Rink in the Sky

At the same grocery store there was a sign on the roof, above the front door. On it, they listed the week’s specials, and guess who got to climb up there and change it every Sunday morning? Yep, the kid with the Jiffy-Pop hair, who’s deathly afraid of heights.

They liked the way I did it, though. It always looked great when I was finished, and I knew how to spell “broccoli,” and challenging things like that. They’d give me the handwritten list (generally full of misspellings), and I’d take it and the box of letters to the back room, and get everything organized and proofread. Then, when I got to the roof, I’d just rip down the previous specials, and slap the new ones into place.

I was quick, and did a good job with it. Other people would have backward Ns, S instead of $, and an upside-down 7 in place of an L. Their efforts always looked like hell, but mine were a thing of beauty.

I hated climbing up there, though. The sign was only about 12 inches from the edge of the roof, so I had to stand in a very narrow area, with massive head trauma directly behind me. If I’d stepped too far back, or stumbled in some way, I could’ve very easily fallen off the roof. I didn’t like heights anyway, and felt extremely vulnerable up there.

And one morning my worst fear almost came to fruition. I climbed up, and the roof was covered in a thick layer of ice. I didn’t realize it, until my feet nearly flew out from under me — while I was putting the finishing touches on OREO or whatever. I don’t know how I didn’t fall off there, backwards. It was soooo close. I was down on one knee, contorted and panicked, and about to power-shit my Towncrafts.

I quickly finished the sign, climbed back down, and told the manager I wasn’t doing it anymore. My face was probably the color of Jack White’s, and my chin was likely trembling. He just chuckled, said OK, and that was the end of my sign-changing career. And the return of the upside-down 7 at the beginning of LYSOL.

The World’s Most Inconvenient Light Bulb

When I worked at the Dunbar Toll Bridge, a guy was supposed to show me how to change the big light bulbs that hung from the bottom of the bridge. They were there so boats wouldn’t crash into it, I assumed. And I didn’t like the sound of that nonsense, not one tiny bit.

But he and I walked up the sidewalk until we were directly over the river. He’d brought along a broomstick with a metal hook embedded in the end of it, and several replacement bulbs. We finally stopped walking, and he lifted a trap door. Inside was a spindly metal ladder, which led down to a small platform that was suspended high above the water.

“Just climb down there, hook the chain that’s hanging underneath the platform with this broomstick, and pull it up to you. Then I’ll hand you down a new bulb,” he said.

What?! Climb down there? Was he serious?! What am I, a circus performer?? I didn’t even like looking down the hole, there was no way in hell I was going to willingly navigate those thin wet steps. Were these people insane?!

“Fuck that,” I said. And he just sighed, like he’d been through this many times before, and did it himself.

The Day I Saw a Guy Almost Get Split in Two

At another grocery store, in North Carolina, they had an industrial cardboard baler. Whenever we emptied a box we were supposed to break it down, and throw it inside. And when the thing got full… we’d have to make a bale and start over.

The way you made a bale, was to push a red button on the behemoth, and a big mashing apparatus came down and squeezed the cardboard to about half its previous height. Then you’d have to feed three wires into it, and around the cardboard, before tying it off in the front. Once the wires were in place, you’d release the pressure, and the cardboard would try to go back to its original height. But the wires restricted it. Then you’d put a pallet in front of it, and roll the newly-created bale onto it.

However, if you half-assed the tying off of the wires, you were putting yourself at risk. Those things would sometimes snap, and could split a person in two. It was like the whip of the devil.

Indeed, I witnessed an obese gentleman (with significant body odor issues), almost lose the bottom third of his right arm, because of that baler. He released the pressure on it, took a step back, and one of the wires SNAPPED at the speed of light. Before he realized what had happened, blood was gushing from his forearm. There was a long gash, which looked mighty, mighty deep. I went running for help, and they took him away in an ambulance.

I never trusted that thing, and people would laugh at me for backpedaling like a maniac whenever I released the pressure on a new bale. But I’d seen what it could it do, with my own two eyes. Poor, Pits… He got something like 25 stitches in his arm.

And now it’s your turn. In the comments section, please tell us about all the dangerous shit you’ve been asked to do at work.

And I’ll see you guys again tomorrow.

Have a great day!

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When

It was amazing to me, for several reasons. For one, I’d never been to a place of business – outside of Myrtle Beach, SC – where such a garment could be purchased. This was mid-1970s West Virginia. It certainly didn’t look like a shirt the Montgomery Ward in Charleston would carry. And I assumed he bought it himself, because no parent would ever sign-off on such a thing. Right? But what about the laundry? His mother had to know about it. Was it possible that he wore it around the house, in front of his parents and grandparents, etc.? Incredible. I didn’t live in such a world.

Plus, he wore it to class, and never got into trouble! As far as I know, nobody said a word to him about it. He wore it all the time, for years. Hell, he’s probably got it on, right now.

Similarly, during high school there was a cigarette-smoking, drug-taking, intimidating-on-every-level Future Inmates of America chairman, who regularly showed up in a shirt with the words SUCK A ROD on the front.

It was just a white t-shirt, with red iron-on letters. Needless to say, there wasn’t much attention to detail. The letters were not lined-up right, and the spaces weren’t consistent. It bugged me, on an aesthetic level. But what do you expect from a guy who probably set hospice fires?

I assumed the school administration decided to pick their battles, and not hassle this guy over his choice of attire. It was probably far down the list of grievances. But it still blew my mind whenever I saw him terrifying his way down the hall, with SUCK A ROD on his chest, inside a public school building.

When I lived in Greensboro, I returned to Dunbar once or twice a month, and drove through some rural-ass mountain communities in Virginia. I mean, this was the land that time forgot.

One time I stopped at a charming-looking general store, to buy a soda or whatever. And I was surprised to see they carried a sizable selection of racist t-shirts, belt-buckles, bottle openers, etc. One shirt had Klansmen on it(!?), with the words “The original Boyz n the Hood.” WTF??

There was another one, featuring Martin Luther King, that I don’t even want to talk about… Wow!

I bought a Coke, because it suddenly felt like I was the subject of scrutiny, and got the hell out of there. The guy behind the counter looked like something out of The Hills Have Eyes, and I couldn’t believe I’d somehow stumbled into a living, breathing Ugly Stereotypes of the South museum. Everything was on display right there, inside a small Mom ‘n’ Pop grocery in rural Virginia.

As I drove away, I wondered if they had a vendor who came by once a week, in a panel truck with Racist Souvenirs by Delbert painted on the side. In my mind, the driver always tipped his Confederate cap to the bread guy, in a show of route-man solidarity, restocked the “Rap is Short for Crap” back-scratchers, and asked the protruding-forehead owner if he’d thought anymore about maybe offering something from his new anti-Semitic line. But, he was always shot-down: “We just ain’t got no Jews up here to hate, Delbert. Sorry.”

Anyway… I’m calling it a day, my friends.  In the comments section, please tell us about the inappropriate clothing you’ve encountered during your travels. What have you seen that made you think, “Good god! Who would buy such an item?!”  Or maybe you remember someone from your schooldays, like good ol’ SUCK A ROD, who somehow got away with pushing the envelope, again and again? Please tell us about it below.

And I’ll see you guys again next time.

Have a great day!

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