I have no idea what this is. Apparently it's something I typed out on a cold winter night while bored. Alcohol may have been involved.
Or possibly a monkey broke into my house and somehow hit random keys with its balled up, angry, little fists to produced something resembling an abomination of literature. It ends suddenly and unfinished, which is either testament to me growing bored of writing the story and going to bed, or possibly the monkey died just before he wrote some awesome shit.
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So there I was, painting my cows.
Yeah, I understand this isn't a normal thing to do, but I live in the south and we have some odd rituals. Like painting cows.
I wasn't painting them in pastel colors or anything crazy like I hear the granola shitting hippies in California do, I was simply painting the word "Cow" on their sides. It's hunting season in Mississippi and quite honestly I like my cows. Sure they're big, stupid creatures who do little more then moo, eat my grass, and stare at me with a horrifingly blank look in their big, vacant eyes, but I'm kind of protective of my enormous charges. They also cost me a lot of money I could've used to buy booze, ammo, and possibly a darkie in days gone by. I was hoping against hope that any hunter that stumbled across my property was somewhat literate and understood that a huge bovine with the letters" C-O-W" emblazoned on its side was not something to shoot at indiscrimatly.
Anyways, I was standing there in my field with a paint roller and a bucket of whitewash surrounded by huge, lumbering creatures that were indifferent to my efforts to keep them from being turned into leather colinders by hillbillies with unfortunate teeth and frightening 2nd amendment protected firepower.
That's when the flying saucers appeared. Yup, I said it... flying saucers.
My first thought was "What in the holy fuck is that?", followed quickly by my second thought of "Who played second base for the Yankees in the 1952 world series?" The last thought probably wasn't relevent to the situation, but relevent thought is hardly something that's usually attributed to a man painting cows.
I've never been accused of being a smart man, and quite honestly standing in a field painting cows doesn't exactly bring the term "Nobel Prize Winner" to the forefront of one's cerebrial cortexts. Still, there I was witnessing possibly the most incredible thing ever seen by man....huge flying discs of unknown orgin hovering over my field with possibly foul and evil intentions. I wish Stephen Hawking could see this shit. I'm sure he would've said in his metallicly assisted robotic voice "What...the...fuck... is... that?" And then kicked his futuristic wheel chair/voice box into turbo mode to get the hell out of the vicinity, without asking any further questions.
My first instinct was to shoot the bloody hell out of these unholy objects, but all I had handy was a paint roller and that was hardly an acceptable weapon. So I shook my painted stick at the discs in the most menacing way I could muster. Yeah, that did about as much good as you might think...the discs continued to hover over my unsuspecting cows and I stood there in the field shaking a paint laden stick like an idiot. Apparently the occupants of the flying discs had done their homework and I'm sure that's exactly what they expected when they decided to invade Mississippi. A hillbilly standing in mud and cow shit shaking a stick at them in the most angry way possible. Will Smith I'm not. They'll never make movies about me saving the world.
So it seems we had a Mississippi stand off. Me and my stick versus an apparently much more technologically advanced foe. Thinking as quickly as a dimwitted Mississippian can, I came up with an answer...Mickey Mantle played second base for the Yankees in the '52 World Series. It was the correct answer, but to the wrong damn question.
Coming back to the reality that was at the moment my life, I took stock of the situation.
And a cow mooed.
Obviously my cows weren't going to be of much help and neither was my stick, so I did the reasonable thing...I ran like hell.
I ran as swiftly as a person knee deep in cow shit and mud could, not surprisingly that is to say, I didn't move an inch. My boots made a sucking sound as I tried vainly to excavate them from the slop, but that hardly exited my dumb ass from the situation. In fact it only made matters worse as the momentum of my upper body met the laws of physics pertaining to my stationary lower body.
" A body in motion tends to stay in motion, while a body at rests tends to stay at rest."
My upper body was certainly in motion, but my lower body was, well, as at rest as a big fucking rock. Everything I learned in 7th grade science became overwhelmingly clear as I yelled "Newton you murphle murhk batlinger..." the last words were drown out by the shit, mud, and dispair as my face became one with my field, but I'm sure he knew exactly what I meant to say.
Somewhere Sir Issaac laughed at my predicamant.
And a goddamn cow mooed.
Face down with a mouth full of shit I pondered life, because fuck you Buhdda. If there's ever a time to think about the deeper meaning of life this would be it. Buhdda worried about rice and I don't know, maybe ninjas, but I had more pressing matters at hand...namely a mouth full of shit, goddamn flying saucers, and trying to get my ass out of the field before my nether regions were explored in a way best described by the lunatic fringe in 1950's Fate magazine articles.
It brought back horrifying visions of my last trip to Canada when I was subjected to a body cavity search by Mounties. They said they were looking for illicet drugs, but I suspect they had more then that on their mind. It's only a hazy memory of bass driven music, flashing lights, and hairy naked men making me sing "Oh Canada", then getting angry when I couldn't hit the high notes to their liking. Thus began a lifelong fear of Mounties.
Now I was presnted with the flying equivelent of those foul breathed Mounties intent on me being Pamela Anderson to their Tommy Lee and I was in the most vulnerable position possible. I'm sure even Pamela wasn't very pleased to find herself in this position with a dick the size of Norway hovering over her, ready to impale her like a Mountie supposedly looking for drugs in a wayward hillbilly. She's Canadian, and she should be used to this shit.
I, on the other hand, am not.
On the whole I'd rather be wrestling a honey badger with a bad attitude. Like there's such a thing as a honey badger with a good attitude. Those bastards just have a general "Fuck you" attitude towards everything. Needless to say, I was fucked seven ways from Sunday and that's never a pleasant place to be. Like waking from a drunken binge and finding yourself in a herd of Iraqi Shit Camels, what with the spitting, shitting and general unpleasantness of the whole situation.
Then I heard a voice calling my name. It wasn't a soothing voice, it sounded like the wounded cries of an entire village being eaten by bears. I opened my eyes and it was Bethesda, my neighbor who has all the charm and beauty of an extremely large object named after a naval base. That is to say, she's not a pleasing woman, unless you're into battleship gray skin, a voice that can etch glass, the personality of a oozing genital wart, and a face that could haunt a house. It was at this point that I came to the conclusion that God really, really hates me.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire, it was time for me to choose the lesser of two evils.
I frantically threw my arms into the air and surrendered to the flying saucers.
Apparently the flying saucers were as dismayed by this turn of events as I was, because they were gone in a blink of an eye. *Bang!* No more flying saucers and I was alone in the field with Bethesda. I suspect they were afraid of her gravitational pull. Already several of my smaller cows were orbiting her and the larger ones were leaning heavily the opposite direction trying not to be sucked in. What I'm trying to say is that she is a big, unpleasant woman and I was now a unwitting and unfortunately positioned stationary pawn in her game of gravity vs. "Oh please God no." Once again, Fuck you Newton.
"Are you ok baby?" It sounded like a horrible nightmare come to life. Has Hollywood ever made a cartoon of a loveable talking deer that sounds like it's trying to pass a battleship through its bowels? No? There's a reason for that.
"At least she doesn't have antlers", was my only thought. I gained a bizarre sense of peace knowing I wasn't going to be gored to death by this abomination of nature that must have been fortold in the Bible as a harbringer of bad tidings.
On the whole, I'd rather be in Arkansas. (The only state scarier then Mississippi.)
"Uh, Hey Bethesda...Do you know who played 2nd base for the Yankees in the 1952 World Series?"
" I do", I answered myself.
A remarkably coherent thought for someone that had just looked into the face of a biblical apopoclypse and was now in the most vulnerable position known to man.
"Mrrrmpphhh" She replied after removing a turkey leg from under her arm and taking a bite. "Do you need some help sweetcheeks?"
I recoiled in horror as she smacked my ass with enough force to drive my face several inches further into the mud. Damn the God that left me in this vulnerable position.
"Fuck God and all his angels" I replied in my head, but it came out as "Murmble fluff...grumple stumf."
"Do you want a bite baby?" She replied and waved a ravaged turkey appendage in my face.
Sadly, I was in no position to debate this offer. I shook my head vigorously and spit mud out of my mouth. The functionally retarded would've understood this meant no, but Bethesda was sadly lacking in half of this equation. She was functional in that she was probably as bouyent as a beach ball, but she also had the mental facilties of a shit eating badger that knew somewhere in the far recesses of its mind that it was doing something horribly wrong.
She shoved the half eaten turkey leg in my mouth.
"I'll take care of you Baby" She cooed, in a voice remarkably similar to a foghorn signaling ships several miles offshore. Then she burped and sent several orbiting calves spinning off into the trees. It was quite fascinating to see. Or rather it would've been if she hadn't licked her lips, grabbed a stick, stuck it up my ass, and lifted me out of the mud like she was dipping a moose quarter in fondue. I had suddenly become a unwilling human popsickle, about to be devoured by what best could be described as a walking, talking, medium range destroyer.
I waved frantically for the UFO's to rescue me.
I suppose at the very least I should be thankful. I was now unstuck from the mud, but I was facing a fate even worse then death. A large hob-goblin had a stick up my ass and that's never a good thing, and she was hungry. Once again I cursed God and the minions at his disposal. A few minutes earlier all I was doing was innocently painting my cows, now I was fucked seven ways from Sunday and hating life.
Bethesda looked at me like a Hungry, Hungry Hippo.
I gulped a deep breath of air and swatted at her with all the effectivness of an ant kicking at a big fucking cloud with all its might.
"Are you alright baby?"
"Oh Hell," I mumbled. " I'm just fine, This is just a wee bit uncomfortable. Can you put the stick somewhere other then....I dunno...up my ass?."
Bethesda put one hand around my neck and I instantly knew that in a few moments I would be facing an angry, vengeful God and having to answer for all the blasphames that had recently raced through my mind and occasionally escaped from my shit addled lips.
I'd forgotten just one small detail...God doesn't like me that much.
What happen next I thought was only reserved for the lowest circles of Hell. Have you ever heard someone describing ,say, a bayonet attack from a crazed Japaneese kamakazee soldier as "It hurt worse coming out then it hurt going in"? Well that pain is nowhere near comparable to a Mississippi Sweet Gum branch being removed from your your unlubed ass while you're being manhandled by a creature that's a few chromosones removed from the evolutionary chart.
I imagine I screamed like a banshee with a megaphone attatched to a deep cycle battery used to start a scrambling P-51. I don't know, my mind wasn't ready for this horror. I simply blacked the fuck out.
And that's when things got ugly. Or even uglier, if that's even possible.
I awoke in her lair. My vision slowly came into focus on a Bay City Rollers poster tacked to a wall constructed of rough hued lumber. It was afixed to the wall with 16 penny nails that she no doubt had pounded into the wall with her clinched fists. Or possibly her forehead. Either way it was not an act I wished to see reanacted.
Somehow I had landed in a reality that was best described as a cross between the Seventies and the flu. Every which way I turned I saw pretty boys and my ear drums were assaluted by a chorus of "S-a-t-u-r---d-a-y that's the best day" I promptly vomited from the sheer volume of oritory and visual overload.
My head throbbed and I imagine my ass resembled an enraged baboon's. I rolled over and showed my angry red ass to Bethesda in the hopes that part of evolution had imprinted itself on her brain and it might fill her with fear seeing an enourmous, inflamed red ass. No dice. She told me it looked like Shaun Cassidy was offering her chocolate as I emptied my bowels like a horrifying red mouthed clown after a 200 hour marathon of honking horns, little cars, and vacant eyed children clapping and praying for death. Truthfully I'd never seen my ass or clowns as that attractive, but in her pea brain my ass was a teenage idol vomiting yummy goodness.
It was then I understood that somehow I had to reason with this abortion of nature and that was not a pleasant realization.
Reasoning with a crazy woman is akin to masturbating at the moon. You know from the onset that it's a fool's quest and you're a fucking idiot. Even if you do blow your load no one cares, and they don't give a blue fuck about how you get your freak on. It's one of those things best kept to yourself. Even if you outwit the goblin who looks at you like you just drew dicks all over her parent's wedding photos, you still lose.
Plus I was starting at less then ground zero in my reasoning ploy. I'd just shit myself and you automatically lose style points for that, but I had to try...
"Beth, baby, that's an awesome Donny Osmond poster you have"....I began..."Did you know he fucked his sister while she screamed for Maloconi to blow his horn?"
I caught her by surprise, she wasn't expecting depravity and incest. Obviously, she wasn't Mormon. This could work in my favor.
"No" She replied "That's not true. Donny would never do that!"
"Sweetie...you never heard?" I ask feigning ignorance. "Donny was caught fucking feral horses and then he got kicked in the balls by a horse, so he started fucking his sister. It was all over the news. They had children with forked tails that were born screeching "Hail Satan! That's the reason she left her children and family a few years back and ended up on Jenny Craig. She figured if she was only good enough for her brother, life wasn't worth living and she was as ashamed of her hell spawned children as God was ashamed of her for being a fat girl."
"God ahbors a fat girl Bethesda" I told her, "Just like you ahbor excercise like...well...like a fat girl making a frowny face at a moving treadmill. Don't you remember that treadmill that you punched?"
It helps to add a dash of truth into your stories and the Donny and Marie thing seemed to strike a resounding gong in her enormous, overworked, and strained heart.
Bethesda slumped in her bed. "No, I don't believe it."
"Look up the stories Beth.," I answered, "It's true, Donny was a "Little bit rock n' roll"...he rocked his sister and rolled her like she was a Jeep taking a corner to fast at high speed, and Marie was a "Little bit country" like inbred rednecks are supposedly in the south...as in "We get freaky with our relatives because why the fuck not?"
Bethesda's head was ready to explode with this sudden infusion of hillbilly logic, and the horror that Donny and Marie were possibly bumping and grinding in ways that would make a painting of Jesus cry tears of blood.
I pointed at her Leif Garrett poster and screamed "OH MY GOD it's the Anti-Christ!" with all the force my lungs could muster. It wasn't the most brilliant of plans, but you have to go with what comes immediatly to mind, and sadly that's what popped into my head. Shouting about Mickey Mantle fucking a donkey in the '52 World Series probably would've been overkill, even if it was true. If you watch the MLB channel you can occasionally see footage of The Mick as a young man plowing a donkey in between innings.I don't care if it was rookie hazing, it's still quite fucking disturbing. Seriously, what was wrong with that man?
Bethesda wasn't quite ready for all this misinformation....she should've of known that some fucked up shit would come from my mind seeing as she was dealing with a dude painting cows and pondering a long ago forgotten sporting event. But Bethesda wasn't gifted with that kind of mental ability.
That was the last I saw of Bethesda as I went head first through what was possibly a load bearing Brady Bunch poster and raced into the wilderness. She was left wallowing in her own silent hell of Donny and Marie procreating in a world that God Himself wouldn't allow and Mickey Mantle fucking a donkey in view of God and everyone.
So be it.
2
Now I was face to face with a whole new set of problems, number one being that I was butt assed naked in the woods of bum fuck Mississippi. Like Lady Godiva, minus the horse and awesome boobies. And the gawking admirers. I doubt that any raccoon that may have witnessed me in all my glory even thought about grabbing his crotch and proudly bellowing "Hey baby, I got something for you." Somehow that's how I picture things happening if Lady Godiva went parading about nowadays, not with raccoons of course, but with her gawkers.
Now my Grand-daddy was a preacher man and in the far recesses of my memory I recall some of those lessons imparted on my young, impressionable mind. Something about "...and Adam and Eve saw they were naked and felt shame."
I looked down at my naked body. "Hmmm...", I thought to myself, "I'm rather proud of what I have." Like I had something to do with it.
Just to prove a point to myself I swiveled my hips and watched my dick make a full circle like some sort of obscence alarm clock that you would give as a joke gift. I did it again. And once more. Then I giggled pridefully to myself as I imagined the watching raccoons shinking in embarrasment and shame while they shook their furry little paws at an unjust God that created them so woefully inadiquate.
And then I remember another long lost lesson from the Bible, something about pride being a sin. That damn God takes all the fun out of everything. Seriously, if a man can't stand in the woods alone swinging his dick around for his own amusement and the shaming of woodland critters, is life really worth living?
It was about that time that I realized standing there making raccoons feel bad about their own manhood was wasting my precious time. Maybe that's what God meant about pride and this was one of Satan's tricks.
I suddenly felt ashamed of myself...just like Adam. Maybe that's what happened in Genisis...a suddenly self aware Adam was waving his pecker around like some sort of ungodly alarm clock and yelling at critters "What time is it bitch?!". Yeah, I could see where that would piss God off.
Hell, it pisses me off just thinking about it, the downfall of humankind may have been caused because Adam was waving his dick at a rock.
I didn't have any fig leafs to cover myself with so I grabbed a kudzoo leaf. Thank God they're big leaves. You know, because I'm big. "Huge" would probably be a more apt description. No...strike that..."ENORMOUS" would probably be a better word.
Enough of my prideful shennanigans, somewhere in the wake of my confusing antics lay angry aliens and a very large and confused woman. The aliens are a new twist. Sadly the large, befuddled woman is pretty much something I'm used to.
Even worse, being naked in the woods is hardly something new and unusual. Hey, it happens.
I was in the woods with a leaf covering my private parts, feigning humility and then the UFO's showed up again. This also was a new twist to my story.
Apparently they felt the coast was clear with Bethesda safe in her room pounding nails with her huge mishapened, and confused head. I really wish I had a stick to wag at them to show just how I felt about the entire situation.
Why the hell are the UFO's following me? I mean really, aren't there more important targets then some moron standing in a field painting cows? Am I some sort of threat to the safety of the cosmos? Seriously?
My train of thought was interupted when a stump next to me exploded in flames. Motherfucker! They're shooting at me!
Aren't there more stratigically important targets? Like The White House, or Applebees corporate headquarters? Seriously why are they targeting me? I'm just a simple hillbilly, with "Simple" being the operative word.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Flea Markets and Mud Races
Owning a flea market, I crossed paths with all sorts of...ummm..."Interesting"... people. People I never would've encountered in my everyday life, mainly because I try like hell to avoid the lunatic fringe. Some of these folks I could of done without meeting because they left me twitching and blinking my eyes in disbelief. (Twitching and blinking is what I do when I can't grab a firearm and shoot someone for hurting my brain. Besides that, waving a gun around is bad for buisness. I may be a hillbilly, but "Don't shoot your customers" is a pretty rock solid buisness plan.)
Flea market people are a unique breed. They like to pretend they're flying under the radar and are trying to get away with something, and sometimes you get an inkling of what that "Something" might be. Trust me, you don't want to get them to open up and tell you about their own special bat shit insanity.
I already alluded to a couple of these special people in my thread idea, so here's their story:
Like most people I enjoy music, especially live music. And being a musician, I know one of the hardest things to do is find a place to get your band together and play as loud as you desire without your neighbors calling the police about "Excessive noise" and "Disturbing the peace." Fucking neighbors.
Anyways, part of my buisness plan (Aside from not shooting my customers) was that I'd have live music at my flea market. I put out the word in the music community that they could come and play and have a captive audience.
I was as sly as a fox. I would get free entertainment for my roving hordes of flea marketeers looking for bargains, and the musicians would get to play as loud as they wanted without fear of a the po-po knocking on their door.
Win-Win. Right?
One of the bands that played at my place featured a Garth Brooks wannabe as the singer. These guys went all out to perform at the flea market. That should've told me something right there. Who in the bloody fuck dresses up for a (Free) gig at a flea market?
The singer was actually pretty talented, but just talking with him I could tell he was a wee bit removed from being part of functional reality. "Meh, he's a musician", I told myself. Musicians are always just a bit off center from the normal, it's one of the curses that goes with thinking musically instead of like a normal human being, besides that he cost me nothing, so go for it Garth. He wore an American flag shirt and belted out original songs like a poor man's Merle Haggard. He trotted out his wife and kids to sing, trying his best to put on a show that espoused family values. Despite his efforts, I saw through this charade. And I twitched. There was something not quite right with this dude.
One day he showed up with his hand in a cast and I was intrigued. (Never ask a flea market person how they got an injury. Seriously. The answer will make the nuerons in your brain fire off signals that they are not eveloutionally equipped for and you'll end up twitching and blinking like me.)
During a break I pulled him to the side because curiousity got the better of me and I just had to ask:
Me: "Dude...what happened to your hand?"
Garth: "I punched a horse."
Me: *Blink...Blink...Twitch* (My body involuntary does this shit,) "You punched a horse?"
Garth: "He done pissed me off."
Me: "You punched a FUCKING HORSE?" *Twitch, twitch, blink, blink, blink*
Garth: "I taught him a right lesson."
I had no words. I simply turned and walked away twitching and blinking like a fucked up robot with a dying battery while my brain tried in vain to process this new information. "He punched a horse? What the FUCK?" My sense of what is reality wasn't equipped to deal with this shit. I doubt anyone who's a functional member of society has enough room in their brain to process why some sociopath would punch an animal with enough force that it would break their hand.
I never invited him back. Hurt my brain once, shame on you, hurt my brain twice and I'll probably snap. Being a savy buisness owner, I realized that might be a bad thing.
And then there was Kathy...
Kathy was one of my vendors, and like most of my vendors she camped out down at the Flea Market in a motor home over the weekend.
She was actually a very pretty woman. "Stunning" would be the best word to describe her physical appearance, but Kathy held a secret behind the pretty wrapping...she was literally fucking insane. At least she tempered the insanity by being drunk. All. The. Fucking. Time.
It's no secret that I spend a great deal of my waking hours with a blood alcohol level that would get me arrested if I ventured out on a public roadway, but Kathy made me look like an amatuer.
Every weekend morning I would go down to my buisness at 6:30 in the morning and prepare for the day. And every morning there would be bubbly little blonde Kathy waiting to greet me with a huge smile and a big bloody mary. At six fucking thirty in the morning.
By 10 AM she'd give up the pretense of drinking something that might not be full of alcohol and just drink straight vodka. I had to deal with her stupid drunken ass constantly...steering her back to her booth and telling her not to annoy my other customers.
One weekend I had a radio station doing a live remote from my flea market (Did you know you have to pay the frantic announcer on the radio to show up and tell the listening audience what a wonderful place you have? You do, and you have to pay a lot.)
So, the announcer was live and pratling away about how everything was happening down at the flea market and you just had to get down here. He then decided he was going to interview someone.
Oh shit.
He caught my eye and I started blinking and twitching. I shot him a look that said "I will gut you motherfucker." He got the jist of my glare. I have no problem with public speaking, but at 1 in the afternoon after dealing with shit house crazy people all morning I realized it wasn't in my best interest to be interviewed. My mind was frazzled and I'd probably end up babbling away about Elvis stealing my onions or something equally insane. I could be confused for one of those crazy people and heaven forbid that could be bad for buisness.
And then my worst fear that I hadn't even known exsisted at that point in time came to fruition.
He spied Kathy and asked her to talk. Live. On the radio.
"You are so fucked" said my suddenly hurting brain.
"I know", I answered back, probably out loud. ( I know that having conversations with your brain is pretty much frowned upon and is a sign of serious mental illness, but after dealing with idiots constantly I had to have a confidant that wasn't fucking retarded and my brain was a convienant ally.)
Kathy was standing there, actually she was more weaving back and forth like a tree in a high wind, with her glass of vodka and this dumb ass that I'd paid good money to hype my buisness thrust a microphone in her mug and gave her an audience.
I could only stand there in dumbfounded silence as this transpired before my slowly becoming vacant eyes.
75,000 watts of power and heard all over of north Mississippi.
Kathy stared at the microphone for a moment while her alcohol addled brain tried to interput what was happening. I suppose if I were to look at the bright side of the situation, at least she didn't go mouth first all over it like it was a dick being waved in her face.
Then again, that my have been prefrable to what happened.
The first words that escaped her lips were "Hey y'all! I'm on the radio!" She then proceeded to babble, slur, and actually sing into the microphone.
All I could do was stand in the background twitching and wishing I had a gun. If I'd shot her while live on the radio at least folks would've come out to see the crime scene and no jury in the country would've convicted me. Temporary insanity brought about by constant exposure to idiots.
Seriously, in the middle of her drunken diatribe she started hitting on the announcer and then sang "Mama don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys."
Let me repeat this: 75,000 watts of power and heard all over of north Mississippi.
No jury in the world would find fault in me for shooting her. My only problem was I didn't have a gun and throwing rocks at her would've been constrewed as juvenile at best. All I could do was serve witness to this melt down happening at my expense.
I knew when I built my flea market that I'd be dealing with less then intelligent people. I knew I'd be dealing with folks a few chromosones removed from Darwin's theory and I thought I was prepared for it because I didn't set the bar very high. The flea market people then proceeded to limbo right under my low hanging threshold and leave me twitching and blinking while they continued on oblivious and uncaring about the damage they'd done to my poor brain.
Sadly, I'm apparently a glutton for punishment and I decided that I'd also open a mud racing track. As if dealing with flea market people weren't enough, I came to the brilliant conclusion that I needed testosterone fueled hillbillys with 4 wheel drives added to the chaos.
I'm a fucking idiot and even I realize this when I'm making my poor decisions, but for some reason my brain (My supposed ally) whispers to me and tells me "Go for it dude." (Yep, my brain calls me "Dude." I think it's trying to get even with me for all the punishment I put it through in my younger years. It's a few million cells shy of what a brain should have cell-wise and that's probably why it speaks like a 14 year old California surfer.)
So, I built a mud track on a corner of my flea market and was suddenly up to my eyeballs in not only flea market people, but I now also had hundreds of drunk hillbillies milling around my property . If this hadn't been my land I would've fit right in with the drunks, but it was my duty to try and herd them into something resembling socially accepitable.
I ran around putting out little fires of unaccepted behaviour and uttering phrases like "What the fuck?" and "That's a cat! It shouldn't be on fire. What the HELL is wrong with you?"
Then something caught my eye.
It was a jacked up 70's Chevy 4x4 running amuck across my property while flying two flags from the bed...one was a Confererate flag, the other was black flag with very prominant white lettering stating "No Niggers." I told my brain "Would you please just have an anurism and kill me now?" I made a point of asking nicely. My brain just laughed at my predicament and continued to pulse and throb like brains tend to do. Obviousley, I was going to have to deal with this with or without the help of my brain, which sadly is how I end up coping with most of the curveballs life tosses at me,
Fuck me. Does anyone else ever have to deal with shit like this?
I chased this dumb ass down and told him "No. Just no." I was once again out of words to describe my disbelief of outright stupidity. You'd think that after a while I'd have a pat speech down to chastise people with that I could recite from rote, but these fucking idiots kept coming up with new and different ways to surprise me with levels of stupid that just left me flabbergasted.
He started babbling about free speech and how he was just excersising his constitutional rights. My heart started pumping all the spare blood it could into my overworked and occasionally trechorous brain.
I snapped. I was overworked and I'd had a belly full of fucking idiots that made my brain hurt.
"Look son," I yelled, "Either you take down that flag or I'm going to stick it straight up your ass."
He began flapping his mouth about free speech and the const...I cut him off short of finishing his argument. "Look, this is my property and I'm fucking God in this universe. You and your idiot flags are going to go away. Period."
Would you believe this moron decided his best course of action was to try and argue with me? Apparently he lived in an alternative universe where you can espouse your hateful views all over someone else's property without recourse.
"Don't be a dick" he told me defiently.
"Go away" I retorted. It wasn't a brilliant response, but my brain was pretty much shutting down due to stupidity overload and there were very few firing nuerons left at the moment.
He had some little underage cutie scooted over next to him on the bench seat and she was about to open her fucking mouth (As a guy I know that look in a woman's eyes when she's about to start flapping her lips saying something defiant.You can actually see mushroom clouds in their eyes if you look hard enough.)
"Gate. Go away now." I yelled while pointing at the highway.
By this time little Lolita was leaning across her boyfriend and her mouth was attempting to form something that may or may not have resembled the English language, really fucking loud. My brain had already shut the fuck down and I was now twitching and blinking like I had fresh batteries installed. All I heard was "Bastard...murple, gumple, fuck you, gfrgh, funtle."
I have no idea what she'd actually said, but them were fighting words. I grabbed her befuddled grand wizard Klan wannabe boyfriend's hat off his head and stomped it in the mud. (In all honesty I was actually feeling kind of bad for the guy about this time. I know how many unfortunate incidents a loud mouthed woman has gotten me into and Lolita over there was really loud and pissing me the fuck off.)
His hat stomped into a mud hole, I could see this guy was ready to surrender and just go away like I had politely requested he do in the first place. Lolita, on the other hand was still bellowing away like a banshee with a megaphone. "This is why people beat their children" my suddenly functioning brain whispered to me.
Jethro Jr. and I both knew we wished to be exited from all this unpleasantness, but Lolita wanted to keep hollering and was completely impervious to the fact that the situation had already been resolved....Jethro simply takes his stupid flags and goes away and I won't shoot him. Problem solved.
But Lolita kept yelling like it was her God given right, while poor Jethro started twitching and blinking. Welcome to my world motherfucker.
I would say that I'm a patient man, but that would be an outright lie. I'm not. A 16 year old girl calling me every combination of foul words her fragile mind can string together in a feeble attempt to be clever seriously pisses me off.
As calmly as I could I said to Jethro "I think you best take your bitch and go away."
Oh fuck.
That wasn't what Lolita wished to hear. Apparently her calling me every curse word known to man in languages that hadn't yet been invented was ok, but me calling her a bitch was unacceptable.
Screech! went Lolita.
"Ow" replied my brain.
It was about then that I realized I was a grown man trying to reason with a shrieking fucking idiot, Poor Jethro Jr was already a twitching mass of racist Jello warbling in the breeze while this little girl tried to out yell me even though I wasn't yelling.
I placed a hand on Jethro's shoulder and told him "Son,I think you should go now." Jethro nodded his head and took this sage advice and drove off with his flags drooping behind him with his girlfriend still shrieking like a wounded bear caught in a trap.
Thank God that I was never blessed with a daughter, it's bad enough that I have to put up with other folks shrieking bundles of joy. That girl is probably still yelling in some poor befuddled fool's ear.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
OW! My eye!
Well how about that? I found a new and unexpected way to hurt my vital organs last night.
Ok, technically my eyes aren't a vital organ, and I didn't even indirectly cause harm to them.
A little backstory is in order to bring you up to speed: My best friend since I was young and stupid have never grown up, especially when we get together. We both find it hilarious to blindside the other with a flying elbow to the side of the other's unsuspecting head when the mood strikes us. We're both damn near 50 years old and realize this is unacceptable behaviour even for monkeys, let alone for supposed civilizied human beings. But still we do it because...well, because it's really fucking funny to watch someone's jaw become unhinged while he's trying function. It's funny when you're 16, and it's still funny when you get old. When you get old it just becomes a bit more dangerous, you know , broken hips and all.
Our friendship is the reason I've had multiple concussions in my life. When I was 19 he gave me a full force blow to the head with a WW I German army helmet because my head was sitting there looking like a big pumpkin that needed to be hit with a WW I German army helmet. It was about that point that the game was on. What proceeded was 30 years of us surprising the other with random and pointless violence.
We tend to twitch around each other a lot. Go figure.
Which brings me to tonight. His daughter (My Niece) saw something on Youtube about mixing glitter with the stuff from glow sticks. She mixed them together and spun around her bathroom like a sprinkler coating the walls with glowing sparkly shit. She then invited us in to her dark bathroom to inspect her artwork. It was actually pretty awesome and all I could think was "Thank God I don't have to clean this mess up."
While I was admiring her cleverness in the dark, my buddy had foul intentions. He ran his hand down the wall and had a handful of glitter and glowing chemicals. He smacked me in my wide open eye with this foul concoction, I didn't even have time to dodge the blow. I had an eyefull of glitter and glow in the dark.
I'm not one to bitch and complain and as much as my eye hurt I wasn't going to say shit, that would be admitting he got the better of me and that's kind of what the whole game is about...never admit the shit hurts. About half an hour later another guy that was over at the house looked at me and said "What the hell is wrong with your eye?"
I replied as calmly as I could "It's nothing."
He continued to stare at me and said "Your eye looks like a ping pong ball!"
Yeah, my right eye was swelled up and looking rather ping pongy, not to mention veiny as it tried to explel the combination of glitter and quite possibly radioactive glowy shit. Hell, I'm used to questioning stares while people wonder what the hell I might've done to myself, so I paid no heed and then...
My buddy finally looked at me and said "Oh shit! I'm sorry."
This was not good news, we never apologize to one another no matter what kind of bloody mess we may have inflicted on the other. It was about this time I began to worry.
My eyes searched the room like some kind of fucked up chameleon...my normal eye went one way, the other was frantically searching for something tangible to focus on like a London searchlight looking for enemy bombers during the German blitzkrieg.
"Uh, I need to go home," I said as I excused myself , "I think I'm going to bleed to death out my eyes."
That statement probably left my friends as confused as I was, but fuck 'em...they weren't facing the very real fear that they may bleed to death because their eyes might be radioactive.
In the end I got home, flushed my eye out with cool soothing water and things got pretty much back to normal.
Normal, except for the fact that my eye glowed all night like some un-Godly nightlight and kept me awake until the sun rose.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
A story for my cousin
My cousin's birthday is coming up, and I can't think of an appropriate gift for her. I've already given her my ear listening to her troubles, numerous shirts she's cried all over, and my heart went to her long ago, so I don't have much left. The best I could do is write her one of my dumb stories.
It's late at night and the goats are braying in the backyard. Wait a moment... goats don't bray, they bleat. Maybe it's the donkeys making all that noise. Hee hawing and shit while pretending to be goats. Never trust a donkey. They may be donkeys wearing goat's clothing.
Those donkeys are sneaky little fuckers..
But what do I know? I don't keep barnyard animals in my backyard. They would just annoy me until I started shooting at them which would nullify having them in the first place. I can just imagine the scene...dead animals all over the yard and me standing there with a gun looking somewhat dazed trying to figure out what the hell just happened and what the bloody fuck I'm going to do with these carcasses. The garbage man isn't going to haul them away and I can't eat them. Who in their right
mind would eat a donkey? A really sick twisted mother fucker, that's who.
I let these thoughts drift from my head like the forgotten piece of my barn that a donkey just hee-hawed and gleefully dropped kicked into the Nether regions of my yard. Donkeys have no regard for anything.
Jesus.
I have donkeys on my mind. I know they're evil. Apparently they can posses you and force you to write about them instead of just shooting at their annoying asses. No pun intended.
I'm trying to write a story for my baby cousin and I keep babbling about donkeys. Maybe I'm just trying to delay the fact that I have no idea where to begin and not a clue where it's going to end. That's not unusual, I never know how my stories are going to end up...they just kind of happen and end up somewhere that surprises even me.
Anyways...
It's late at night and the goats are braying....I mean bleating. That's just what goats do. They're pretty much useless unless you like goat milk and who the hell likes goat milk?
Baby Girl is lying on her bed wide awake wishing for sleep, but all the previous day's troubles are running through her head making sleep impossible. So much drama and so few hours in the day.
Staring at the ceiling, her mind is a constant whirl of activity. Sleep seems an unobtainable goal.
She spies "Dog" on her dresser. He's just an under stuffed stupid piece of fuzz and fluff with big floppy ears and an unimaginative name that a cousin gave to her. It doesn't matter. She needs someone to talk to and she was told that Dog is a good listener. He doesn't talk back, he just listens and keeps secrets very well.
Unlike donkeys. They don't listen very well and then try to kick your head across the yard like a soccer ball in some sort of perverted Mayan game.
Dog listens to her lamentations, silent as always. It probably doesn't help his vocal skills that he has no mouth. I tore it from his face when I was small. Why? I have no idea. Probably because it was there.
Baby Girl keeps whispering to Dog and slowly the sweet shroud of sleep overcomes her sneaking in like fog crossing a winter's landscape. Baby girl is fast asleep and Dog is keeping a silent vigil.
He can't help it, the poor fucker has no mouth.
Lost in the fog of forgetfulness and fantasy she dreams she's older. Not old, but older then she is now. No one is telling her what to do and she has a handsome prince by her side.
Dog frowns.
He knows that life doesn't work out the way we want it to. Sooner or later a donkey is going to come curiously clomping across the landscape to kick your dreams as hard as he can. It's inevitable.
Suddenly the scene changes and she's surrounded by 3 screaming children and she's all alone. They're all hers and her prince has disappeared. She loves them all dearly, but she wonders "Is this my life?" This is it? What happened?"
Then she sees Dog sitting forlorn and lonely on a dresser. She grabs him, curls up on the bed and once again whispers her secrets in his floppy ear. And Dog listens...
Wake up Baby Girl...it was all just a dream.
Dog listens and he speaks softly. You have to listen very close, but if you try hard enough you can hear him. Deep inside you know the right answers to every question and Dog knows that. Hold him close, talk to him, listen to your instincts and Dog. He will never lead you wrong.
He's a pretty smart little guy and he's there to protect you when I can't.
And he hates donkeys. God, does he hate donkeys.
It's late at night and the goats are braying in the backyard. Wait a moment... goats don't bray, they bleat. Maybe it's the donkeys making all that noise. Hee hawing and shit while pretending to be goats. Never trust a donkey. They may be donkeys wearing goat's clothing.
Those donkeys are sneaky little fuckers..
But what do I know? I don't keep barnyard animals in my backyard. They would just annoy me until I started shooting at them which would nullify having them in the first place. I can just imagine the scene...dead animals all over the yard and me standing there with a gun looking somewhat dazed trying to figure out what the hell just happened and what the bloody fuck I'm going to do with these carcasses. The garbage man isn't going to haul them away and I can't eat them. Who in their right
mind would eat a donkey? A really sick twisted mother fucker, that's who.
I let these thoughts drift from my head like the forgotten piece of my barn that a donkey just hee-hawed and gleefully dropped kicked into the Nether regions of my yard. Donkeys have no regard for anything.
Jesus.
I have donkeys on my mind. I know they're evil. Apparently they can posses you and force you to write about them instead of just shooting at their annoying asses. No pun intended.
I'm trying to write a story for my baby cousin and I keep babbling about donkeys. Maybe I'm just trying to delay the fact that I have no idea where to begin and not a clue where it's going to end. That's not unusual, I never know how my stories are going to end up...they just kind of happen and end up somewhere that surprises even me.
Anyways...
It's late at night and the goats are braying....I mean bleating. That's just what goats do. They're pretty much useless unless you like goat milk and who the hell likes goat milk?
Baby Girl is lying on her bed wide awake wishing for sleep, but all the previous day's troubles are running through her head making sleep impossible. So much drama and so few hours in the day.
Staring at the ceiling, her mind is a constant whirl of activity. Sleep seems an unobtainable goal.
She spies "Dog" on her dresser. He's just an under stuffed stupid piece of fuzz and fluff with big floppy ears and an unimaginative name that a cousin gave to her. It doesn't matter. She needs someone to talk to and she was told that Dog is a good listener. He doesn't talk back, he just listens and keeps secrets very well.
Unlike donkeys. They don't listen very well and then try to kick your head across the yard like a soccer ball in some sort of perverted Mayan game.
Dog listens to her lamentations, silent as always. It probably doesn't help his vocal skills that he has no mouth. I tore it from his face when I was small. Why? I have no idea. Probably because it was there.
Baby Girl keeps whispering to Dog and slowly the sweet shroud of sleep overcomes her sneaking in like fog crossing a winter's landscape. Baby girl is fast asleep and Dog is keeping a silent vigil.
He can't help it, the poor fucker has no mouth.
Lost in the fog of forgetfulness and fantasy she dreams she's older. Not old, but older then she is now. No one is telling her what to do and she has a handsome prince by her side.
Dog frowns.
He knows that life doesn't work out the way we want it to. Sooner or later a donkey is going to come curiously clomping across the landscape to kick your dreams as hard as he can. It's inevitable.
Suddenly the scene changes and she's surrounded by 3 screaming children and she's all alone. They're all hers and her prince has disappeared. She loves them all dearly, but she wonders "Is this my life?" This is it? What happened?"
Then she sees Dog sitting forlorn and lonely on a dresser. She grabs him, curls up on the bed and once again whispers her secrets in his floppy ear. And Dog listens...
Wake up Baby Girl...it was all just a dream.
Dog listens and he speaks softly. You have to listen very close, but if you try hard enough you can hear him. Deep inside you know the right answers to every question and Dog knows that. Hold him close, talk to him, listen to your instincts and Dog. He will never lead you wrong.
He's a pretty smart little guy and he's there to protect you when I can't.
And he hates donkeys. God, does he hate donkeys.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Grandma
This is one of my not funny nor interesting posts, I'm just going to occasionally use this as a place to get things off my chest. If you want to read it, knock yourself out. If not, move on to the next post, because I'm sure I'm rambling on in it about something that makes little to no sense which more fits my writing style.
This is a confession about the worst thing I ever did.
My grandmother and I always had a very special relationship. I never understood why, but I was her favorite. The whole family knew it. She even admitted the fact to me when I was about 9 years old, but she told me not to tell my cousins. I don't know if it was because I was always around or because I was such a charming little guy. Somehow I suspect the former much more then the latter.
I was the only grandchild my grandmother made a quilt for. And a turtle. I wish I knew what happened to that turtle...it was big enough for a 2 year old to sit on. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, gave my turtle to Goodwill when I was 4 years old. It only exists in pictures and my memory now. My quilt, I still have. If I cast my eyes to the side I can see it laying on my bed.
Unfortunately I left it in the care of my mother when I left home as a young man, and she didn't treasure it near as much as I did. For years she put it at the foot of her bed and let her stupid cats sleep on it. They tore it up. I finally rescued it about 15 years ago before it was completely ruined. In a couple of days the quilt will be sent off to my niece who I know will treasure it as much as I do.
Anyways, enough about quilts. My grandmother was more like a mother to me...even as far as her beating me with a 2x4 while screaming "You're an evil, evil child." I have no idea what I did to piss her off so bad, but whatever it was I probably deserved the beating. And it wasn't that bad of a beating, I was laughing the whole time thinking how ludicrous the whole situation was. A 5 foot nothing old lady hitting a 6 foot tall 12 year old with a 2x4. And calling him "Evil."
I have so many wonderful memories of Grandma. She always stood up for me when my overprotective mother wanted to prevent me from doing something dangerous like playing baseball. Grandma never missed one of my baseball games, not a single one. She knew the names of all my teammates and wanted to hear all the stories we told on the bench. Obviously as I grew older discretion became the better part of valor and I wouldn't tell her exactly what we were talking about in the dugout.
Grandma and I also used to plant a garden every year and every summer morning it was my job to weed it with her. I hated it. But, boy did I love the fresh carrots and my never ending supply of raspberries and strawberries. I spoiled many a meal growing up because I was stuffed full of the bounty from Grandma's garden and was to full to eat dinner. And every night without fail Grandma would pull up a chair by my bed and read me a chapter out of the Bible. That got really boring about time she hit Kings.
The years went by and I grew. Grandma got old and arthritis crippled her up. It was now my turn to watch over the woman that had given me so many happy memories. She was fiercely proud and I did my best to respect that when I went to take care of her. She had a wheelchair, but she hated the damn thing. She used it as a walker rather then sit in it and have someone push her around. I like to think that she loved that I was the only one who would give her the dignity of getting around on her own without falling all over myself to keep her from doing something she wanted to do on her own.
Which brings me to the worst thing I ever did in my life...
It was a Friday evening when I stopped by and my mother and her sister asked me to sit with Grandma for a bit while they ran and did something. I figured it would be only be an hour or so, so I readily agreed. I had a date that night.
An hour later my mother and her sister were still trying to figure out just what the hell they were going to do and I angrily said "Y'all know I do have plans tonight?" As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted them. I looked over at Grandma and saw the sorrow in her eyes. I don't think she was as disappointed in me as much as she was in the fact that her own body had abandon her and that her little boy had to keep an eye on her.
The last time I saw Grandma was when she was in the ICU. Others in the family had been to see her and told her how wonderful she looked. I, on the other hand, walked in and said "Grandma, you don't look so good." She smiled and said "I don't feel so good."
A couple of hours later Grandma was gone.
My only regret is her hearing me bitch about the amount of time my mom and aunt were taking. In the end I tried to give her what she treasured most...her independence.
This is a confession about the worst thing I ever did.
My grandmother and I always had a very special relationship. I never understood why, but I was her favorite. The whole family knew it. She even admitted the fact to me when I was about 9 years old, but she told me not to tell my cousins. I don't know if it was because I was always around or because I was such a charming little guy. Somehow I suspect the former much more then the latter.
I was the only grandchild my grandmother made a quilt for. And a turtle. I wish I knew what happened to that turtle...it was big enough for a 2 year old to sit on. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, gave my turtle to Goodwill when I was 4 years old. It only exists in pictures and my memory now. My quilt, I still have. If I cast my eyes to the side I can see it laying on my bed.
Unfortunately I left it in the care of my mother when I left home as a young man, and she didn't treasure it near as much as I did. For years she put it at the foot of her bed and let her stupid cats sleep on it. They tore it up. I finally rescued it about 15 years ago before it was completely ruined. In a couple of days the quilt will be sent off to my niece who I know will treasure it as much as I do.
Anyways, enough about quilts. My grandmother was more like a mother to me...even as far as her beating me with a 2x4 while screaming "You're an evil, evil child." I have no idea what I did to piss her off so bad, but whatever it was I probably deserved the beating. And it wasn't that bad of a beating, I was laughing the whole time thinking how ludicrous the whole situation was. A 5 foot nothing old lady hitting a 6 foot tall 12 year old with a 2x4. And calling him "Evil."
I have so many wonderful memories of Grandma. She always stood up for me when my overprotective mother wanted to prevent me from doing something dangerous like playing baseball. Grandma never missed one of my baseball games, not a single one. She knew the names of all my teammates and wanted to hear all the stories we told on the bench. Obviously as I grew older discretion became the better part of valor and I wouldn't tell her exactly what we were talking about in the dugout.
Grandma and I also used to plant a garden every year and every summer morning it was my job to weed it with her. I hated it. But, boy did I love the fresh carrots and my never ending supply of raspberries and strawberries. I spoiled many a meal growing up because I was stuffed full of the bounty from Grandma's garden and was to full to eat dinner. And every night without fail Grandma would pull up a chair by my bed and read me a chapter out of the Bible. That got really boring about time she hit Kings.
The years went by and I grew. Grandma got old and arthritis crippled her up. It was now my turn to watch over the woman that had given me so many happy memories. She was fiercely proud and I did my best to respect that when I went to take care of her. She had a wheelchair, but she hated the damn thing. She used it as a walker rather then sit in it and have someone push her around. I like to think that she loved that I was the only one who would give her the dignity of getting around on her own without falling all over myself to keep her from doing something she wanted to do on her own.
Which brings me to the worst thing I ever did in my life...
It was a Friday evening when I stopped by and my mother and her sister asked me to sit with Grandma for a bit while they ran and did something. I figured it would be only be an hour or so, so I readily agreed. I had a date that night.
An hour later my mother and her sister were still trying to figure out just what the hell they were going to do and I angrily said "Y'all know I do have plans tonight?" As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted them. I looked over at Grandma and saw the sorrow in her eyes. I don't think she was as disappointed in me as much as she was in the fact that her own body had abandon her and that her little boy had to keep an eye on her.
The last time I saw Grandma was when she was in the ICU. Others in the family had been to see her and told her how wonderful she looked. I, on the other hand, walked in and said "Grandma, you don't look so good." She smiled and said "I don't feel so good."
A couple of hours later Grandma was gone.
My only regret is her hearing me bitch about the amount of time my mom and aunt were taking. In the end I tried to give her what she treasured most...her independence.
Friday, April 2, 2010
My Brother
Heh. Just kidding, I don't have a brother.
But apparently there's one person in this world that didn't know that. I have a feeling he must of been a shut in playing with sock puppets in ways I'd just rather not even think about.
"Hello Mr. Sock. How are you?"
"Oh my! What is that you have for me?" comes back the answer in a falsetto voice.
I told you I'd rather not think about it, because everything degenerates downhill after that dialog and I want to sleep tonight without dreaming about talking, spitting, dick sock puppets. That's just wrong on so many levels.
In my hometown I was pretty well known. My picture was in the paper pretty often because of my involvement in sports and my grandfather was the minister of one of the few churches in town and I was forced to take an active part in church activities. On top of all that I'm 6'7" and I don't blend into a crowd very easily.
So one day, I went into a grocery store and bought a 18 pack of rot gut beer. Mr. Sock Puppet sells it to me even though I thought everyone in town knew I was underage. I'm ecstatic and go bumbling out of the store with my booty.
My buddies and I retreated to....oh hell, nowhere. We were proud and drank our beer in front of everyone.
But all good things must come to an end and since the last ruse went so well, we ("We" meaning my friends. I don't remember agreeing to any of this)decided it was a good idea to head back to the same store and send my dumb ass back in. I was half lit, so when presented to me as "That's the only way we're getting more beer" it even sounded like a good idea to me. I was highly gullible and stupid at 17. I grab another 18 pack and walked a little less surely up to Mr. Sock Guy's check stand. And by "A little less surely", I mean to say I wasn't walking so good. Unless you consider a healthy young man using the aisles and the opposite 50lb bag displays of dog food as pin ball bumpers as walking normally. If you do, I was golden.
Sadly, most people frown on that kind of walking unless you have some sort of disease, which unfortunately I didn't. I was listing hard to the starboard side due to the heavy burden in my right hand and that caused me to flail and use the vegetables and whatever else was handy to steady myself.
He rang me up and then asked suspiciously "Didn't you just buy a bunch of beer?"
I looked at him, the picture of underage teenage drunken innocence, and said "Nah, that must of been my brother. That dude's an alcoholic. I get this all the time."
Then he took my money and I stumbled out the door.
For a dumb assed kid I had a pretty smooth mouth on me.
And I presume that when his shift was over, he went and put socks with drawn faces on all his extremities and had a puppet show. I really don't care to hazard a guess on that last part.
But apparently there's one person in this world that didn't know that. I have a feeling he must of been a shut in playing with sock puppets in ways I'd just rather not even think about.
"Hello Mr. Sock. How are you?"
"Oh my! What is that you have for me?" comes back the answer in a falsetto voice.
I told you I'd rather not think about it, because everything degenerates downhill after that dialog and I want to sleep tonight without dreaming about talking, spitting, dick sock puppets. That's just wrong on so many levels.
In my hometown I was pretty well known. My picture was in the paper pretty often because of my involvement in sports and my grandfather was the minister of one of the few churches in town and I was forced to take an active part in church activities. On top of all that I'm 6'7" and I don't blend into a crowd very easily.
So one day, I went into a grocery store and bought a 18 pack of rot gut beer. Mr. Sock Puppet sells it to me even though I thought everyone in town knew I was underage. I'm ecstatic and go bumbling out of the store with my booty.
My buddies and I retreated to....oh hell, nowhere. We were proud and drank our beer in front of everyone.
But all good things must come to an end and since the last ruse went so well, we ("We" meaning my friends. I don't remember agreeing to any of this)decided it was a good idea to head back to the same store and send my dumb ass back in. I was half lit, so when presented to me as "That's the only way we're getting more beer" it even sounded like a good idea to me. I was highly gullible and stupid at 17. I grab another 18 pack and walked a little less surely up to Mr. Sock Guy's check stand. And by "A little less surely", I mean to say I wasn't walking so good. Unless you consider a healthy young man using the aisles and the opposite 50lb bag displays of dog food as pin ball bumpers as walking normally. If you do, I was golden.
Sadly, most people frown on that kind of walking unless you have some sort of disease, which unfortunately I didn't. I was listing hard to the starboard side due to the heavy burden in my right hand and that caused me to flail and use the vegetables and whatever else was handy to steady myself.
He rang me up and then asked suspiciously "Didn't you just buy a bunch of beer?"
I looked at him, the picture of underage teenage drunken innocence, and said "Nah, that must of been my brother. That dude's an alcoholic. I get this all the time."
Then he took my money and I stumbled out the door.
For a dumb assed kid I had a pretty smooth mouth on me.
And I presume that when his shift was over, he went and put socks with drawn faces on all his extremities and had a puppet show. I really don't care to hazard a guess on that last part.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Serenity
This is something I wrote when I found myself with a lot of time on my hands. I tried to write something interesting and describe the quiet place I retreat to in my head when life gets to me. It quickly degenerated into me thinking about a girl I hadn't thought of in years and then me trying to make the story funny. I failed.
I'll never finish this, but it does have it's good points:
Like an old photograph, yellowed, faded by time and dog eared from so many years of staring at it longingly, I find myself looking at the familiar path home. It seems a lifetime since I gazed at this scene and at the same time it feels I was here just yesterday, but maybe that's just forgotten fragments of a melted dream.
The mind can play tricks on a person and I'm not one to fall easily prey,no matter how enticing the illusion might be, so I check myself before I go any further.
It's an early mid May morning by the feel of it. The sky is blue and welcoming the promise of a beautiful day filled with joy and wonder. I'm sure somewhere close by young boys are planning grand adventures as I did as a child. First they'll do their chores and then they'll head off to the sweet freedom of childhood...rowing their boats, fishing, jumping in the now warming water of the lake, skipping stones and dreaming a thousand dreams before they're called home for dinner much to their chagrin.
I take a deep breath of the morning air and smell the faint scent of the familiar pine trees mixed with the smell of my beloved lake. Maybe I really am home. Finally.
I take in the scene before me and soak it all in. On either side of the drive is a red brick wall standing 10 feet tall and maybe 20 feet long off in either direction. In front of the brick are red roses reaching out to greet the morning sun which is now just beginning to bathe them in warm light like a mother casting a loving smile on her newborn child.
There is a brass plaque on the left hand brickwork that reads "Serenity Oaks" and between the stone walls lies an asphalt drive. It all seems so real, maybe I really have come home after all this time. The drive is lined on either side by majestic
Oak trees, probably 20 or 30 on either side, reaching high to catch the warming life giving rays of mother sun and then stretching across the drive to touch the arms of their brethren forming a protective tunnel. Silent sentinels that have watched over and protected this place for years untold.
I start a slow walk down the drive taking it all in...the smells, the textures, the light that slowly filters in from the tree tops and the faint sound of a breeze passing over the tops of the furthest reaches of the guardians of the drive. It's all so familiar.
Much like the age old tales of passing through a dark tunnel drawn towards a brilliant light I notice a bright light ahead. A light full of love and promise but much more solid and identifiable : Home. My home.
The house that graces Serenity Oaks doesn't belong in the wilds of north Idaho,
it more resembles a small southern plantation. It's nothing grandiose, but it's still spectacular after passing through a dark tunnel of ancient oaks and not what you would expect to see on the banks of the Pend O'Reille river. (To call it a river at this point of its journey is a huge understatement...it's 3/4 of a mile to the opposite shore, but that pales in comparison to what is called the lake... 30 miles in length and depths that plummet to over 1000 feet.)
My wide eyed wonderment is interrupted by the barking of the charging dogs.They are raising a horrible din that an intruder has made his way upon their domain and I stop in my tracks. As they come into view I recognize the lead dog...it's my beloved Banshee, my childhood friend. Oh, she and I went on so many grand adventures together. She's a small little thing, but she was always my protector, my confidant, and dare I say it, my closest friend.
I yell at the top of my lungs "Ban-shee" and pat my thighs wondering if she'll recognize me after all this time. I have little to worry about. She quits barking to conserve her energy and doubles her speed to come charging into the arms of her boy. She always thought I was her boy instead of her being my dog and who knows, maybe she was right.
Banshee, the little dog with a heart bigger then the tall oaks that line the path. She took it as her solemn duty to protect the entire family and she never wavered in her sacred oath. Lord, I've missed her something fierce.
She was followed quickly by the others: Beau, Mouse, and Nancy.
Sweet little Nancy.
The last time I saw her she had a horrible growth on her eye that caused us all great concern, but the red growth was now gone and she'd grown into a beautiful girl. She was now bigger then the others, but she held back quiet as a mother's prayer while I greeted my other puppies.
I looked to her and called her over. She cautiously made her way to me as the others slowly backed away somehow sensing there was a penance to be paid. As soon as she was near I grabbed her in my arms and as a tear fell down my cheek I whispered
"I'm sorry baby girl, I am so sorry" She whimpered softly, shuddered, licked my cheek and let out a couple of happy barks, then went prancing off with the others with her tail wagging as if it had fresh batteries installed to lubricate the mechanism. A huge weight has been lifted from both our shoulders and she bounced around joyfully with the other pups happily joining in their frolicking. They ran in circles around me nipping at one another's heels barking with Nancy stopping every now and then to look up at me with a smile in her eyes knowing finally that she was wanted and remembered.
Like the pied piper of canines I slowly make my way towards the house while the joyous menagerie continued to circle around my legs.
I go on and climb the front steps of the house, slowly the French doors open, and she appears.
Tonya.
My little Pisces girl. Yeah, that's an inside joke between her and I, and no I'm not going to make you privy to that information. There's certain things that should remain between two people and this is one of them. However I will share this: If God created a girl in his dreams, he would've waved his magic "I am God" wand and made Tonya.
Or Diane.
(Ah, Di...did I ever tell you that I loved you? If I did I meant it. You know that already, but it's still nice to hear it once in a while isn't it?.)
Sorry, I get a little confused about the women I'm canonizing sometimes, let me continue...
I'd almost forgotten how beautiful she was. Almost, but not quite, I could never forget.
A thousand poets writing in a thousand languages for a thousand years could never come close to describing her beauty. Her curly hair as black as midnight holds all the stars in the sky captive, the sunlight reflects off her loose curls that shimmer down to her breasts. Her dark eyes twinkle with the intensity God intended only for the sun and as she smiles the flowers wilt in shame for they know they could never posses such powerful beauty themselves.
Tonya.
I've only had brief glimpses of her on my long journey and most of those in long forgotten dreams leaving me in waking hours to only recall fragments of her porcelin white skin that's as smooth and cool to the touch as fresh dew on the ground. The tears of the moon touched her gentle skin and recalled a forgotten memory painting a picture of long lost dreams. She was kissed by the gentle lips of the one true God and every pagan God that man has ever sworn an oath to. No one else could of granted her such beauty, nor could any other woman have ever worn it so gracefully or naturally. It was part of her being.
I loved her long before I was born, she is the embodiment and meaning of the words beauty and grace and she wears them like a crown. How could I have ever been so fortunate to not only meet this displaced angel whom God had so clearly smiled upon, let alone make her mine?
Oh well, it wasn't a time for asking questions. I run to her and bury my head between her breasts. We hold one another tight for what seems an eternity and then she whispers in my ear "Welcome home."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maybe I really am home. Or is this just a dream? There's only one way to find out...
I chomp down on her breast like a prize winning trout striking at a Lucky Lewey lure that's baited with stink bait.
"OUCH", I scream as she hits me in the head hard enough to make me see a remarkable replica of Hailey's comet behind my closed eyes. It's a good thing she's wearing a bra because there's a fair to middlin chance I could've done some real damage the way I went after the bait. Unfortunately, I wasn't so lucky and make a mental note to wear protective head gear before I go striking at a random boobie again. Astronomy is interesting, but I prefer to witness it with my eyes open and without my ear swelling to thrice its normal size.
I think to myself "OK, maybe this isn't a far flung fantasy". If it were a simple dream her breasts would be spouting high octane vodka and her lady parts would shoot out chicken fried steaks on demand, kind of like a duck laying an egg. Except there would be far less feathers involved and only a minimal of quacking.
Pity.
I'd already imagined taking her on the county fair circuit, lighting her tits on fire like gas lights so she looked like an avenging arch angel and having customers place a plate between her legs to receive a chicken fried steak. A living, breathing, flaming vending machine that expelled vittles from it's cooter. A man could make a fortune with a gimmick like that as long as he didn't get arrested for lighting a naked woman on fire at a county fair. Something tells me deep inside that might be frowned upon in most places.
Unless it's in the deep south and the woman is black. I hear tell that's actually the highlight of some fairs....they give a Bic lighter to the wee ones and for a quarter each they play a rousing game of "Light the Nigger on Fire."
Anyways, we each have our own individual ideals about the perfect mate, mine just happens to have vodka filled boobies and expels chicken fried steaks. Don't judge me.
But I digress...
I'll never finish this, but it does have it's good points:
Like an old photograph, yellowed, faded by time and dog eared from so many years of staring at it longingly, I find myself looking at the familiar path home. It seems a lifetime since I gazed at this scene and at the same time it feels I was here just yesterday, but maybe that's just forgotten fragments of a melted dream.
The mind can play tricks on a person and I'm not one to fall easily prey,no matter how enticing the illusion might be, so I check myself before I go any further.
It's an early mid May morning by the feel of it. The sky is blue and welcoming the promise of a beautiful day filled with joy and wonder. I'm sure somewhere close by young boys are planning grand adventures as I did as a child. First they'll do their chores and then they'll head off to the sweet freedom of childhood...rowing their boats, fishing, jumping in the now warming water of the lake, skipping stones and dreaming a thousand dreams before they're called home for dinner much to their chagrin.
I take a deep breath of the morning air and smell the faint scent of the familiar pine trees mixed with the smell of my beloved lake. Maybe I really am home. Finally.
I take in the scene before me and soak it all in. On either side of the drive is a red brick wall standing 10 feet tall and maybe 20 feet long off in either direction. In front of the brick are red roses reaching out to greet the morning sun which is now just beginning to bathe them in warm light like a mother casting a loving smile on her newborn child.
There is a brass plaque on the left hand brickwork that reads "Serenity Oaks" and between the stone walls lies an asphalt drive. It all seems so real, maybe I really have come home after all this time. The drive is lined on either side by majestic
Oak trees, probably 20 or 30 on either side, reaching high to catch the warming life giving rays of mother sun and then stretching across the drive to touch the arms of their brethren forming a protective tunnel. Silent sentinels that have watched over and protected this place for years untold.
I start a slow walk down the drive taking it all in...the smells, the textures, the light that slowly filters in from the tree tops and the faint sound of a breeze passing over the tops of the furthest reaches of the guardians of the drive. It's all so familiar.
Much like the age old tales of passing through a dark tunnel drawn towards a brilliant light I notice a bright light ahead. A light full of love and promise but much more solid and identifiable : Home. My home.
The house that graces Serenity Oaks doesn't belong in the wilds of north Idaho,
it more resembles a small southern plantation. It's nothing grandiose, but it's still spectacular after passing through a dark tunnel of ancient oaks and not what you would expect to see on the banks of the Pend O'Reille river. (To call it a river at this point of its journey is a huge understatement...it's 3/4 of a mile to the opposite shore, but that pales in comparison to what is called the lake... 30 miles in length and depths that plummet to over 1000 feet.)
My wide eyed wonderment is interrupted by the barking of the charging dogs.They are raising a horrible din that an intruder has made his way upon their domain and I stop in my tracks. As they come into view I recognize the lead dog...it's my beloved Banshee, my childhood friend. Oh, she and I went on so many grand adventures together. She's a small little thing, but she was always my protector, my confidant, and dare I say it, my closest friend.
I yell at the top of my lungs "Ban-shee" and pat my thighs wondering if she'll recognize me after all this time. I have little to worry about. She quits barking to conserve her energy and doubles her speed to come charging into the arms of her boy. She always thought I was her boy instead of her being my dog and who knows, maybe she was right.
Banshee, the little dog with a heart bigger then the tall oaks that line the path. She took it as her solemn duty to protect the entire family and she never wavered in her sacred oath. Lord, I've missed her something fierce.
She was followed quickly by the others: Beau, Mouse, and Nancy.
Sweet little Nancy.
The last time I saw her she had a horrible growth on her eye that caused us all great concern, but the red growth was now gone and she'd grown into a beautiful girl. She was now bigger then the others, but she held back quiet as a mother's prayer while I greeted my other puppies.
I looked to her and called her over. She cautiously made her way to me as the others slowly backed away somehow sensing there was a penance to be paid. As soon as she was near I grabbed her in my arms and as a tear fell down my cheek I whispered
"I'm sorry baby girl, I am so sorry" She whimpered softly, shuddered, licked my cheek and let out a couple of happy barks, then went prancing off with the others with her tail wagging as if it had fresh batteries installed to lubricate the mechanism. A huge weight has been lifted from both our shoulders and she bounced around joyfully with the other pups happily joining in their frolicking. They ran in circles around me nipping at one another's heels barking with Nancy stopping every now and then to look up at me with a smile in her eyes knowing finally that she was wanted and remembered.
Like the pied piper of canines I slowly make my way towards the house while the joyous menagerie continued to circle around my legs.
I go on and climb the front steps of the house, slowly the French doors open, and she appears.
Tonya.
My little Pisces girl. Yeah, that's an inside joke between her and I, and no I'm not going to make you privy to that information. There's certain things that should remain between two people and this is one of them. However I will share this: If God created a girl in his dreams, he would've waved his magic "I am God" wand and made Tonya.
Or Diane.
(Ah, Di...did I ever tell you that I loved you? If I did I meant it. You know that already, but it's still nice to hear it once in a while isn't it?.)
Sorry, I get a little confused about the women I'm canonizing sometimes, let me continue...
I'd almost forgotten how beautiful she was. Almost, but not quite, I could never forget.
A thousand poets writing in a thousand languages for a thousand years could never come close to describing her beauty. Her curly hair as black as midnight holds all the stars in the sky captive, the sunlight reflects off her loose curls that shimmer down to her breasts. Her dark eyes twinkle with the intensity God intended only for the sun and as she smiles the flowers wilt in shame for they know they could never posses such powerful beauty themselves.
Tonya.
I've only had brief glimpses of her on my long journey and most of those in long forgotten dreams leaving me in waking hours to only recall fragments of her porcelin white skin that's as smooth and cool to the touch as fresh dew on the ground. The tears of the moon touched her gentle skin and recalled a forgotten memory painting a picture of long lost dreams. She was kissed by the gentle lips of the one true God and every pagan God that man has ever sworn an oath to. No one else could of granted her such beauty, nor could any other woman have ever worn it so gracefully or naturally. It was part of her being.
I loved her long before I was born, she is the embodiment and meaning of the words beauty and grace and she wears them like a crown. How could I have ever been so fortunate to not only meet this displaced angel whom God had so clearly smiled upon, let alone make her mine?
Oh well, it wasn't a time for asking questions. I run to her and bury my head between her breasts. We hold one another tight for what seems an eternity and then she whispers in my ear "Welcome home."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maybe I really am home. Or is this just a dream? There's only one way to find out...
I chomp down on her breast like a prize winning trout striking at a Lucky Lewey lure that's baited with stink bait.
"OUCH", I scream as she hits me in the head hard enough to make me see a remarkable replica of Hailey's comet behind my closed eyes. It's a good thing she's wearing a bra because there's a fair to middlin chance I could've done some real damage the way I went after the bait. Unfortunately, I wasn't so lucky and make a mental note to wear protective head gear before I go striking at a random boobie again. Astronomy is interesting, but I prefer to witness it with my eyes open and without my ear swelling to thrice its normal size.
I think to myself "OK, maybe this isn't a far flung fantasy". If it were a simple dream her breasts would be spouting high octane vodka and her lady parts would shoot out chicken fried steaks on demand, kind of like a duck laying an egg. Except there would be far less feathers involved and only a minimal of quacking.
Pity.
I'd already imagined taking her on the county fair circuit, lighting her tits on fire like gas lights so she looked like an avenging arch angel and having customers place a plate between her legs to receive a chicken fried steak. A living, breathing, flaming vending machine that expelled vittles from it's cooter. A man could make a fortune with a gimmick like that as long as he didn't get arrested for lighting a naked woman on fire at a county fair. Something tells me deep inside that might be frowned upon in most places.
Unless it's in the deep south and the woman is black. I hear tell that's actually the highlight of some fairs....they give a Bic lighter to the wee ones and for a quarter each they play a rousing game of "Light the Nigger on Fire."
Anyways, we each have our own individual ideals about the perfect mate, mine just happens to have vodka filled boobies and expels chicken fried steaks. Don't judge me.
But I digress...
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