HARD TO PUT DOWN

A RETROSPECTIVE, PUBLISHED BY YOURS TRULY ON DECEMBER 1ST, 2009 ON FACEBOOK. I NEVER DID IMPORT IT TO BULLETHOLES. HERE IT IS FOR YOU RED...

It is easy to pick up the rifle, it is much harder to put it down”
Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce

I can imagine him saying this trying to avoid fighting with the United States Calvary. 
In 1877, 700 of his Nez Perce (mostly women and children) led the U.S. Army on a 1,400-mile, 4 month long running battle, hoping to escape to Canada to continue their way of life, only to be caught 40 miles from the Canadian border.
General Sherman said of Josephs attempt to escpape to freedom "one of the most remarkable feats in military history". It was there that Chief Joseph gave this fairly famous speech: 

“I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are dead. Looking Glass is dead. Toohoolzote is dead. The old men are dead. It is young men who say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are…perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired, my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”

They were marched to a Reservation in Oklahoma, where Joseph died years later. His doctor said he died of “a broken heart”.

Somewhere on that Reservation there is a grave that contains the half-Indian Grandson of Merriweather Lewis, whom the Nez Perce had befriended in 1805 when the explorer reached Oregon on his famous expedition.

Anyway, its this kind of thing I think about when I think about what Obama will be having to do tonight in his speech, after having campaigned on stopping the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and also shutting down the US torture chamber at Gitmo.

“It is easy to pick up the rifle, it is much harder to put it down.”
Indeed.

 Chief Joseph ~ Hien~mot~Too~ya~la~kekt (Thunder Rolling from the Mountain)

"TALK LOUD..."

"Talk loud and sit close to the house."

Teddy Roosevelt

I'LL SUE THE FUCK OUT OF THEM

Here is a picture of the Dr. Pepper can that came out in November of 2001 in commemoration of the 9/11 attacks.

This Special Edition can was designed to reflect national pride and unity. An image of the Statue of liberty and 3 words from the Pledge of Allegiance appeared on the can:
“One Nation…Indivisible”

Instead of inspiring unity and antional pride, it started a firestorm of dissent from folks that were offended by the omission of the words “Under God”. In 2001.
The reason I write about this now is that I note that lately a story to repost on Facebook has been appearing that claims Pepsi is attempting to market a can of similar design. I would suggest that this is a bogus story, regurgitated from the Dr. Pepper campaign, designed to fan the flames of the “Under God “ controversy.

Me? I am neither offended in a religious sense by the inclusion or omission of these words on a can of soda pop, or in the Pledge itself.


However, I am offended mildly as a writer at the inclusion of the words “Under God” in the text of the pledge as we know it, because "Under God" DID NOT appear in the original pledge as written by Frank Bellamy in 1892. Those words were added by Congress in 1954.

If anybody ever tries to add the words “Under God” to anything I write, I’ll sue the fuck out of them.


TIME MAGAZINE DID THE SAME THING...NO ONE NOTICED

THE FALKLANDS

I used to work with this British guy, Hugh Martyr. We were chefs at the Fort Worth Hyatt. He smoked Dunhills, and drank Earl Grey tea. He lived out at Eagle Mountain Lake, and drove his little Triumph Spitfire down 10 mile Bridge Road for his commute. He had gloves, goggles, a scarf, and one of those little caps the Brits like to wear when they are “touring”. That’s what they call ‘driving”.


He was really a classy kind of guy, and we made quite a pair I suppose. We used to get into a lot of banter back and forth about systems of government, and Presidents and Kings, and the idea that we are a people separated by a common language. It was always good natured, and Hugh’s dry sense of humor was delightful to me.

In 1982, Margaret Thatcher sent the British fleet to capture back for the Empire the Falkland Islands, which had been invaded by the Argentinian army. Argentina claimed the Falklands, which they called the Malvinas, belonged to them.
 It was a real crisis.  The whole British task force eventually comprised 127 ships. Thatcher sent three Aircraft carriers, four Destroyers, a dozen battleships, no telling how many subs, and all the Auxilliary Navy to support the armada. Also deployed were ocean liners--including the Queen Elizabeth II-- loaded with tens of thousands of tough British marines ready to slog it out with the Argentinean rebels. 
The Falkland Islands are about 100 yards off the coast of Argentina, but 10,000 miles from sunny England. It took the British fleet eleven  days to get there. It is so far away that they lost ships and men just trying to hazard the journey.

Of course, when they got there, they kicked ass, and took their Island back. After all, the Argentineans only had a dozen planes and 4,000 troops in the entire army anyway.

All of this made Margaret Thatcher a hero. But I never quite understood it. During the crisis, I used to come to work and ask Hugh:
“Tell me again why you want this Island? There is nothing there but some sheep, a few stray penguins, and the occasional Magellinic Snipe.. It sits right off the coast of Argentina, its not much bigger than Tarrant County. What in the world does the Empire need with this Island? Why not just give it back? Why not just let them have it?”

The thing is, of all the banter that Hugh and I exchanged while we worked together, this is the one that pissed him off. He didn’t like it one bit, and it created a bit of a rift between us for a while.. He tried to explain it to me, but I never quite understood. Maybe I still don’t.

The reason I write this story is because I went to see the movie "Obama 2016", and in the movie it basically says that because I thought in 1982  that maybe Argentina had a claim to the Falklands, that makes me Anti-American.

LOYAL BRITISH SUBJECTS

BACK TO WORK!

WALKIN' THE MILE

"I'm tired, boss. Tired of bein' on the road, lonely as a sparrow in the rain. I'm tired of never having me a buddy to be with, to tell me where we's going to or coming from, or why. Mostly, I'm tired of people being ugly to each other. I'm tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world every day. There's too much of it. It's like pieces of glass in my head all the time. Can you understand?"
from The Green Mile by Stephen King

Rest easy John Coffee, you big soft gentle man.

Michael Clarke Duncan (December 10, 1957 – September 3, 2012)

OFF TO NEVER-NEVER LAND

I'm good! No pain this morning. 

Yesterday in Pre-op, I started getting pretty grouchy. I hadn't been able to eat breakfast, no coffee even. I had a headache, and everybody was poking me and asking the same questions over and over.
I don't like questions when I'm grumpy. 
Then they did a nerve block on my shoulder, and it was hard to breathe. They rolled me into the operating room and I was miserable and I looked up at the anesthesiologist and said:
"You better do something PDQ, Slick, or I am out of here!"
He looked down and said "You got ten seconds, Hot Rod?" and that's the last thing I remember.

They knocked me out with Propanolol. 
Thats the stuff what that killed young Michael.
I woke up in post-op doing the moonwalk and singing "I'm a Thriller".

DOCTORS

They are so serious all the time. I guess that's how they got to be doctors.
I have been having to see an orthopedic surgeon about my shoulder. After five visits, he still won't budge a smile. I like to think I'm a funny guy, but this guy is made of rubber. Humor just bounces off him.
He asked me "When does it hurt?"
I showed him my range of motion.
"It hurts here, and here and....sometimes here. But I tell you doc, the most consistent time, the thing I do that it always hurts, is when I scratch my nuts."
He didn't smile. He didn't look up. He didn't even flinch.
Just scribbled on his chart "Duly noted" I suppose.

I go in for surgery tomorrow. Rotator cuff; out of work for a couple weeks.
Wish me luck.

THE MOTHER OF ALL FISHING TRIPS

Back about 1991, it rained so much around here that the lakes got so full you couldn’t launch a boat. All the ramps were underwater for about 6 months. You had to drive a long ways away to find a lake with a ramp open.


My daughter Aubree was just about two. She was sweet and small, had just learned to walk, because she just has one of those spirits that was happy to be a crawler for a long time. She was always happy and smiling and laughing, and she had a pretty good little vocabulary for a kid that preferred crawling to walking.

Back then I used to go to Grapevine just about every week before they shut down the ramps. Then one day I heard that there was a ramp open at Grapevine. After dinner that evening, I leaned back in my chair and said to Shila (my wife back then) “Honey, what do you think if Aubree and I take the boat up to Grapevine, and see if we can get on the lake?”

I knew there was no way Shila could refuse me this. My son Lee was only about 6 months old and too young for a trip like that, but I could see in Shila’s eyes how pleased she was that I would take my daughter to the lake on a Monday evening for an hour of fishing.
“Sure” she says real sweet like “You guys have fun!”

So I load up the boat, which I hadn’t had in the water for some time, and put Aubree’ in the car seat, and away we go. Sure as heck, the ramp at Silver lake Park is open, and the engine starts right up, and Aubree and I are sailing, sailing over the bounding main. She has her little pole, and is happy as a clam, and I manage to catch a fish, and she is delighted, especially when I let the poor little thing go.
“Bye-bye” she says to the little fishy.

All we have is an hour, and it’s time now to go, but we are happy for having gone, and I crank up the motor and head for the ramp before the sun goes all the way down.

We had been the only boat on the lake, at least till now, because a big ass 40 foot Chris Craft just passed right in front of me. It had kicked up a pretty good wake, about 4 feet maybe, and with Aubree in my lap we hit it full speed…

*BAM!!!* and the water sprays, and we laugh and then we get to the second monster wave and *BAM!!!* and oh what fun this is as water sprays out and over and all upon us and then we got to the third wave and the engine is screaming and we hit it *BAM!!!* and the water sprays and then…

NOTHING…

By that I mean the engine is no longer screaming, the throttle is missing from my hand, the boat has suddenly stopped its forward motion, and Aubree and I turn to look at where the screaming motor had been and guess what?
It was gone.
Gone, as in not attached to the back of the boat anymore. It takes a moment to process that your motor just flew off the back of the boat, but its disappearance was confirmed by little Aubree, sitting on my lap.
She gives a little wave and says “Bye-bye”
The most amazing thing that sticks out in my mind is just how quiet it gets when the motor flies off your boat.

Aubree and I paddled our way to a deserted shoreline. There was a road about 100 yards up from the lake. I carried her up to the road to see if we could find some help. In 1991 nobody had cell phones, but we managed to wave a car down, and wouldn’t you know, they happened to have one of those WWII looking 5 pound portable phones.

I called Shila. I didn’t want to tell her what happened.
“Hello?” she answered.
“Hi honey”
“Hi. What’s the matter?”
“Wellll…wellll… we have had a little problem with the boat. We are OK, but stranded on shore, and someone will have to come get us”

Now I have to give Shila some credit here. She did not freak out at all. She was cool calm and collected, but for some reason, I just couldn’t see fit to tell her the whole truth.

“What happened to the boat?” she asks.
“Just a little problem with the motor” (True)
“Where are you at?” she asks.
“Do you know where Meadowmere Park and Sandy Beach is?”
“No”
“Well, you call Kem Keeton. He knows where it is. Send him to come get us”

So Aubree and I wait to be rescued. I bring all my tackle up from the boat. It is pitch dark now.
After a bit here comes a car. It’s Kem. We load all my tackle in his car.
I’ll have to come back tomorrow with my other motor (yes, I have two) and get the boat.

We go to the ramp, way down the lake, move all my gear into my van and Aubree and I drive home. Shila meets us in the driveway as I’m unloading the van.
“I’m glad you two are OK “ she says.
“Yeah me too”
She surveys my gear.
“Where is your motor?”
That’s the question I’ve been hoping to avoid. Without looking up I say:
“Oh, I left it at the lake.” (True)
“Left it at the lake? You’re kidding. It probably won’t be there tomorrow.”
“Yep. Probably not.” (True again)

She fixes me and Aubree a little snack, and asks again:
“Steve, what exactly happened to your motor?”
“Well honey, it just kinda stopped running all of a sudden” (True)
“Do you know what’s wrong with it?”
“Welll…well… maybe it’s just flooded real bad or something, I don’t know” (true, in a sense)

But Shila’s bullshit meters are on high alert by now, and as I’m just about to crawl into bed she asks me one more time, real softly.
“Steve, tell me, what really happened to your motor?”
I hung my head. I hung it low. She had asked it with all the kindness in the world, and that much kindness deserves an honest answer.

“My motor flew off the back of the boat, Shila. It’s gone. Just gone, somewhere in 25 feet of water at the bottom of Grapevine Lake. That’s what happened to my motor”

And that is the story of me and Aubree's first fishing trip!

HERE SHE IS WITH HER LUCKY FISHING FEATHERS ON!

ROMA TOMATOES

My roommate Angela actually ate something good this week and liked it. She is hard to cook for. Its like cooking for a 6 year old.


I’ll say “We are having chicken with pesto and sliced tomato’s tonight” and she’ll stick out her lower lip and say “I don’t like tomatoes”.
“Angela, when is the last time you ate a tomato?”
“I don’t know”
“Maybe 20 years? Have you had a tomato the last 20 years?”
“No, probably not.  I think I was 6, and it made me sick. I don't like tomatoes” again with the lip.
“Tell you what, I’m going to make this shit, and you just close your eyes, hold your nose, try to be honest, open-minded, and willing. Put your big girl panties on and see if maybe we don’t like tomatoes the way I do them. Its delicious, so clean and summery, and you won’t find a lower calorie, more nutritious meal out there”

So I sliced some Roma tomatoes, spread them out on a plate with a little olive oil, salt and pepper while the chicken sautee’d with the pesto, grilled a little Asiago bread, and when the chicken was done I set it on the bed of sliced tomatoes and drizzled the juice over the whole thing.

Well, guess what? It made her knees buckle she liked it so good.

I THOUGHT HE WAS A BUM UNTIL HE REPLACED MY LIQUOR CABINET"

Helen Gurley Brown and Lessons in Love:
One- "Take time to court her."
Two- "Make her talk to you, and you listen!"
Three- "Admire her character, even if she doesn’t have any."
Four- "Forget your success stories"

Five- "Don’t be a Caveman. How many times do you have to be told?"

EIGH

T- "NEVER DRINK ALL HER BOOZE WITHOUT REPLACING IT. I THOUGHT HE WAS A BUM UNTIL HE REPLACED MY LIQUOR CABINET"

For a real treat, listen to Side One Here...

She is a dynamo! Check out at least the first 3 minutes!

"PRETTY SWANKY"

I wrote and posted this up a couple years ago, but my son happened to see it, got a little paranoid, and wanted me to take it down. So I did.
But here it is, and I'm able to post it again because his life is much different now.
I'm very proud of him, and what he has done to get his act together. Like i said last week, he took five ckllases, and he passed five classes.

October 2009
I went to one of these fancy, high fallutin' North Dallas parties over the weekend.
They had Shrimp, and Smoked Salmon; Calamata Olives and Roasted Red peppers; even had Swedish meatballs and Spanokopita.
It was what my father would have called “pretty swanky”.
And they even had a very cute little blond catering girl with a ferocious ass serving it all up.

There was the usual assortment of Power Hitters, Corporate Gurus, and High Fashionista types.
I got cornered by a plain looking fellow with a cherubic face, dimpled chin, and bad acne. The only thing cool about him was his Stevie Ray Vaughn hat, but even that would not save him from the fact that he had shown up to this party with three mechanical pencils in his shirt pocket. We discussed his job as a software engineer and the failings of Excel Spreadsheets, and I was just about to make my break when we were approached by a very aggressive man that stood 6’6” and could not have weighed more than 140 pounds. Within 45 seconds I had his life story.

He said he had a degree in chemistry, and had retired a millionaire the first time after selling his business in Magnetic Imaging. Then he went to Law School and had spent the last several years suing the asses off of corrupted Doctors. Then he retired again, because its too "hard to sue a Doctor" anymore, but he is working now on a Metabolic Elixir, sure to be a success and save people from the heartbreak of needless bariatric surgery.
Then he started in with the questions….I thought I was on a speed date.
“Kids?” He asked.
“Two” I said.
‘Ages?”
“19 and 20”
‘Boys?”
“Girl and Boy”
‘Working or school?”
“Boy works, Girl in school”
“Major?”
“Marine Biology”
“What job?”
‘Are you asking me what my son does for a living?”
‘Yes”
“Oh, he deals Pot.”
His jaw drops and theres something stuck in his throat.
‘Really?” he gasps.
“Yes, he does quite well. Takes after me.”

So the three of us guys stood there and chewed the fat for…well…for as long as I could take it. I finally found a break in the rapid fire conversation and said
“Well listen fellas, its been fascinating talking with ya’ll, but if you don’t mind, I’m going to go find some chicks to talk to.”
When I left an hour later with the little catering girl, those two were still jabberin’ away.

STRUMMIN" THE OL' BANJO

"A woman just walked by wiggling it...and we are not dead yet"

Charles Bukowski

My buddy Martjin points out that one of the gentlemen ogling the lady happens to be Roscoe Holcomb. If you are like me, you are wondering who the hell Roscoe Holcomb is, and after watching this video, you will wonder how a guy in Amsterdam could pick Roscoe Holcomb out of this picture...

PARTICLES

"You can live as a particle crashing about and colliding in a welter of materials with god, or you can live as a particle crashing about and colliding in a welter of materials without god. But you cannot live outside the welter of colliding materials."

- Annie Dillard

stolen from my friend kissyface

Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules

Rule #1~“Find a place that you can trust, and then try trusting it for a while”

 image ~ Tippi Hedron and Neil

"I haven't slept with anyone all day"

I mentioned my son in yesterday's post.
He's 22,  just finished his first semester of college.
He took 5 classes, and he passed 5 classes. I can't begin to tell you what a miracle that is, because he was never much of a student.

He runs some kind of cathouse right off Campus. Rents rooms to other students. I think at any one time about six people live there, mostly chicks.
I got a text from him two weeks ago:
"Dad, I haven't slept with anyone all day"
I replied;
 "Good for you son, but its only 8pm."

He is quite a little character.

HIS FRIENDS

HIS HOUSE

BIRTHDAY NIGHT AT THE LAST CHANCE

“What we have here is the most stubborn person in the world. He taught me a lot of stuff,  mostly bad. I watched him dig himself into a hole, stop caring about himself, and turn away from the people he loved. Turn away from the people who loved him. But when it came time that I had dig my way out of my own hole, and learn to smile again, my dad showed me the way. My dad showed me that we do recover. What we have here is the last of the Individualists. C'mon up Pop!”

My son, the Rip, introducing me at last week’s birthday night at Another Chance Chapter of NA.

Birthday night is a monthly event where those celebrating a year or more of continuous clean time are introduced, usually by their sponsor, and invited to speak to the group. It is a more formal setting than your usual recovery meeting.

I was very pleased to have my son introduce me. It’s hard for me to tell all of his story here, but maybe someday I will.
What did I share that night?
Something like this…HERE

EVERYTHING

from "fullyclothedwomen"

When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn’t know.

“Oh, sure you know,” the photographer said.

“She wants,” said Jay Cee wittily, “to be everything.”

— Sylvia Plath

GUITARMAN

Click image to enlarge.
Key located here

THE HUMEROUS HEAD

Remember back at my birthday, when I joined a gym, all pumped up to get my ass in shape? CLICK HERE

And then a month later when I hadn't missed hardly any days? CLICK HERE

Want to know how that’s going for me? I haven’t been in a month, thats how its going, and so far it has cost me about 500 dollars and earned me a date with an anesthesiologist and a surgeon on August 23rd.
Seems I got a gimpy left shoulder. Its likely been injured for years; bad rotator cuff, torn bicep, and calcification of the humerous head. I guess going to the gym and lifting something heavier than a diet coke and a spoonful of Cap’n Crunch aggravated it.

So I walk into the gym yesterday to pay my bill.
Biff is there behind the counter. When I saw him last month, and he asked me how it was going I told him I HATED coming here.
He had laughed and said “Yeah, everybody does, but at least you keep showing up”

But now, he’s grinnin’ at me like a butchers dog.
“Where have you been, slacker?” he says.
I point to my shoulder. “I’m on injured reserve. I’ve blown my shoulder out. Gonna have to have surgery. Then I'll be bionic”
“I’m sorry to hear that” he says. “But you could come up and do cardio.”
“No, the doctor, he told me to stay away from this place” and I laugh.
“That doctor didn’t tell you that!"he says. “You can do cardio!”
“Yeah, you’re right, my doctor didn’t tell me that. But he did say to stay away from the weights, and frankly I don’t trust myself. If I come here to do cardio, and I see all those weights just laying around in there, I’m afraid I will lose control and have to go try to pick some of them up. And that wouldn't be good!”

And Biff and I just crack up! I sure do like Biff! He’s alright!

THIS GERBIL COULD PROBABLY KICK MY ASS

WATCH SOMEBODY LOVE SOMETHING

"I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.
After that I liked jazz music.
Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.
I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened."

- Donald Miller

"Fishing can make a real idiot out of you"

I have been checking out a site called Lone Star Chronicles recently. Great photography, and good outdoors stories and info. This is a recent image from Lake Tawakoni, just east of Dallas.
I've been to Tawakoni.

One of the dumbest things I ever did was on Lake Tawakoni. I had an old Lone Star ski boat, the 1959 model with the fins on it like a Cadillac, that had caught fire and destroyed the seats and canopy, everything inside, even the windshield. It was gutted, no motor, and I bought it on the trailer for 100 bucks. I had a 15 horse for it sitting in my garage. I loaded this piece of shit boat up with all sorts of amenities, seats, depth finder, trolling motor, about 1000 dollars worth.


It leaked a little; after a few hours there would be a couple inches of water in the bottom. I would have to pull the plug and run full speed across the lake to get the water out.
One day at Tawakoni I was doing just that when I came across a school of sand bass. I cut the engine, hopped up onto the hood, and started fishing away. I couldn’t get anything to hit, changed lures, and tried some more. Changed lures again, and about that time I noticed the boat was tilted to starboard a bit unnaturally, and I looked down and I had about two feet of water in the boat. It was almost to the gunwales.
Crap! The Plug! In alI the excitement, I had forgot the plug
Another minute or two, and I’d have lost her.
Fishing can make a real idiot out of you.

And the best part? This isn’t even the story I was going to tell you.
Apparently, given time to recollect, I’ve done TWO really dumb things on Tawakoni.
What I was going to tell you was the first time I went to Tawakoni I had a brand new 15 horse motor, but no boat. My girl and I went to Tawakoni and rented a john boat at a little campground, and fished up by the dam. In a little cove up there, I lost my prop on a stump. We floated to shore, found a 10 foot length of 2X8 to use as a rudder, and a big branch to fashion a sail with from our ponchos. The wind was with us, out of the Southeast; we could sail two miles across the body of the lake, and with the rudder and a little luck, just might make it back to the campground.

But the thing is, it was a stormy day. No one was on the lake, and it was misting rain. That’s why we had the ponchos. Out there on the body of the lake, a squall somewhat (a lot) larger than the one picture above kicked up, and the next thing I knew we were trying to sail a john boat with about a four foot following sea.
I felt pretty stupid, and a little scared, but the gods were with us that day. We made it across, and landed right smack dab in the middle of our campground

HARM TO HEALTH

Poster found in ladies restroom of local bar.
Do you use cocaine or meth? Great!
Want to quit smoking cigarettes?

Are you kidding me?
Back in the day, I'd have put MY number on there!
Call now!

GUN CONTROL

OR, HOW TWO WRONGS MAKE A RIGHT

First, we relax right to carry laws and get as many good guys as we can carrying guns and as many guns as possible, to as many places as can be. We flood the streets with guns. Concealed, on the hip in plain sight; Thirty-Eights, Forty-Fives, sawed off bubble-gauge, anything goes; at the Piggly-Wiggly grocery store, Putt-Putt golf, Pottery Barn, down at the Pussycat Doll or the Captains Den, wherever people gather, there needs to be guns. If they want the wild west, I say give it to them. It beats the shit out of the weird characters and ineffectual Police Departments of Gotham City, which is what we got now.

Second, and all the folks carrying guns aren’t going to like this, second, we got to get control of just who ought to have Assault Rifles and 50 caliber Weaponry. Those guns go too far beyond varmint control and Sunday afternoon "plinking".  You can have just as much fun with your grandfathers bolt action .22.  For the sake of argument, lets issue permits for 3 (three only) of these weapons per year. Applicants required to pass through multiple layers of personality testing. Winners determined by lottery.

So there.
Problem solved.
After that, I will take on immigration reform, which includes making Mexico a state.

"Mom, can you bring my Glock 9"

Jolie Blonde

Bastille Day marked the 15th Anniversary of my divorce.

When it comes right down to it, getting divorced is really easier and cheaper than getting married, but I got to admit, it stays with you a long time.

I have been in the middle of a steady rash of divorce dreams lately.
Like last night’s version of the move-out. The ex is packing up, the truck is being loaded, there is nothing I can do to talk her out of it.
It is not traumatic like it used to be, I don't plead with her stay, or wake up crying uncontrollably. Hell, I even jump in and help her pack at some point.
And any misery associated with the move-out is tempered by the entrance of a blonde Angelina Jolie, who I manage to get to third base with in the dream.
What do you suppose all that could mean?

I don’t really see what the attraction is with Angelina Jolie in real life. Take away those long long legs, the almond shaped eyes, the bee-stung lips, that beautiful thick and wavy brown hair, the slender neck, awesome breasts and dynamite ass, what do you got?
Nothin’ but a lot of money, that’s what you got.

BUT I MIGHT DIE TONIGHT

GOT A MINUTE FIFTY-FIVE?

I GOT TO RUN TO KEEP FROM HIDIN', AND I'M BOUND TO KEEP ON RIDIN'

It was four years ago last night that a cop pulled me over, dragged me out of the car, bent me over the hood and asked “Do you have anything on you we need to know about?”

The whole scene din't go quite like I had expected it would when the time came.

I thought about it for a second or two as he felt my pockets and I said “Yes sir, there is some dope in my pocket.”
I know you are not supposed to do that, but I've never been slick, I've never been tough, I've never been cool.
As he was putting me handcuffed into the back of the car, there was this still and quiet voice that came to me, as I asked myself this question:
"What if I hadn’t told him? Would he have found it?"


Over the last 4 years of staying clean and sober, no dope, and not so much as a sip of white wine, I sometimes ask myself that question, and always I hear that same still and quiet voice that I heard in the back of that cop car that night.

I think about how much better my life is now. I recall how powerless over my addiction I had been, and how unmanageable my life had become. And I didn’t even recognize it.
I think about the way coming to believe that a power greater than myself might restore me to some semblance of sanity has had such a beneficial effect on my life, no matter what higher power or what belief in it I may have.
I think about the way turning my will over to a power greater than myself has actually prompted me to participate in my own life again.
I think about the first recovery dream I had, and how good it made me feel.
I think about the 40 or 50 or 100 people in recovery I became friends with, and all the fun we have had over the last 4 years.

But sometimes as I’m falling asleep, or when I first wake up, I still wonder:
“Would they have found that shit had I kept my mouth shut?
Would they have caught the Midnight Rider?"”

And always, the same still and quiet voice comes to me, the same voice with the same answer as that night they handcuffed me and helped me into the backseat of the squad car.

The voice just says three words:
“Oh, thank God!”

I could stop now.






I know that if I hadn't gotten busted I would still be using.
And people think I'm smart.  Shit.

ALL MAN

When I was 12, I used to find these magazines at construction sites as I walked home from school. They had pictures of naked women and ads for X-ray vision glasses and for how to grow a creepy looking VanDyke mustache in the back.
I collected them and took them home, hidden in my toy box.
I came home one day and they were gone.
When my dad got home, he sat me down and asked what I was doing with these magazines.
I told him I was thinking about growing a moustache.
He whupped me pretty good.

I'm glad UF Mike is back to posting.
 My most fun posts come out of his comments section.

DON'T SNEEZE MICK...

YOU'LL LOSE IT ALL

Congrats to the Stones on 50 years of doin' it. I wonder if I am the only one to ever change the station when a Stones tune comes on?

I asked this question over on Facebook, and was amazed at how many people really don't care for the Stones.
They are, arguably, the greatest Rock and Roll band ever.

Deserving honorable mention might be The Who, based as much on the offstage persona of drummer Keith Moon as anthing.
I read a great story about him a few days ago. He was famous for smashing up hotel rooms.
On the way to the airport from a hotel after a gig, Moon indicates he forgot something at the hotel. The driver turns around, goes back to the hotel and Moon goes to the Frontdesk.
"I forgot something upstairs mate" he says, and they give him the key.
He goes back upstairs and throws the TV out the window.
All done now!

Its stuff like that that can make you immortal, but the problem with immortality is you have to live through it.
The Stones have somehow done that.

Now can someone, please, blow Jaggers nose?

NOT MY BROCCOLI

Back when was just a baby chef and just started working for Hyatt, I went through a bit of a rough patch.


I started out in the Crystal Cactus, the fine dining restaurant at the hotel. But after hosing down a gay waiter with a fire extinguisher on New Years Eve, and spending a 3 day suspension at home, I was recast as a banquet cook.
I had a few problems there too, though not connected with fire extinguishers or gay waiters.

I had problems with counts on occasion. The counts are important.  We would be plating a party of 500 with Prime Ribs and Yorkshire pudding, and somehow we would come up short about 10 Yorkshire Puddings. Chef Felenczak would look at me, and I would tell him I was sure that I had made enough.

But you cant argue with the fact that you are 10 short, all you can do is stand there holding your dick, and start scrambling around for more Yorkshire pudding, which can be prepared on the fly all right, but you can’t just pull it out of your ass either.

In the meantime, you look like completely incompetent.

Finally, one night when we were short again, and I was almost in tears maintaining I had prepared the proper amount, the Chef looked at me and said:
“I’d like to believe you Bulletholes, but your record ain’t that great”
He said it in all kindness, and from that point on I never came up short again.


But I had a bad spell for a couple months on something else as well.
Broccoli.
I just couldn’t seem to keep from overcooking the broccoli for these big parties.
I would take 100 bunches of Broccoli, portion it into 750 portions, put it in the steamer to blanch, and proceed to overcook the crap out of it. It would be mush, without a trace of green. It was the color of a WWII Tank and looked as though it had melted into the pan.. Ugly, flavorless, and beyond repair, I would have to go to the storeroom and hope they had 5 more cases down there for me to fuck up again.

It had gotten to the point where I would have to stand next to the steamer and constantly check it, and even then the odds were I would botch it. In the kitchen they call a guy like that a "shoemaker".

Then one night, as we were plating up some broccoli that was just barely edible, I made a passing comment to the chef.
“Chef, I’m sorry that your broccoli is a little overcooked again tonight.”
The chef looked at me, took a handful of broccoli and threw it in the trash can and said:
“This isn’t MY broccoli, Bulletholes”
It worked. I never destroyed the broccoli again.

I did a post a while back about the Four Good Words I‘ve learned to say that help me through times when I used to get otherwise unwound:
“OK”
“Youre right”
“I’m sorry”
And “So What?”

The broccoli story comes in handy for me too.
It’s amazing how much broccoli people will try to bring you that is not your broccoli.
And likewise, how often I try to take on something that has nothing to do with me.
Not my broccoli.

ME TARZAN YOU JANE

At the Hyatt we had a guy from the Ivory Coast, a Banquet Waiter. We called him "TOP GUN" because he was here in the states to train for flying F-16's out at Carswell Air Force Base. 
He had a real thick accent, part British, part French, but with a heavy dose of Zulu.
Top Gun didn’t know the names of a lot of stuff he had to work with at the hotel.


One day, here he comes running into the kitchen, wild eyed…
“I NEED…CAN OF FIRE” he says.
“A what?” I ask.
“CAN OF FIRE!” and he cups his hands in front of him. "I NEED THE CANS OF FIRE!'
“Oh, Sterno, you need Sterno for the buffet.”

It was hilarious, and reminded me of Tarzan when he said:
“Big bird come….take man away”

MY LITTLE PROBLEM

I did a post 4 years ago that is getting a lot of attention lately.
It was just a silly little thing, poking fun at Sarah Palin, being a little bawdy, just one of those throwaway posts inspired by a picure someone sent me.
All of a sudden, the last 6 weeks, it has received about a thousand hits.
When people Google “Beef”, or “Beefalo” they are directed to this stupid post, and while it is a typical Bulletholes offering, it doesn’t really speak well for me.
I’ve looked at it over and over and there is really no edit or rewrite to keep it from being 6th grade potty-mouth style humor.

Its called "What is a Muffalo". Click the link to see the post.
But if you want to read something better than that, check out Mike's post about whether animals want to be eaten.


Does anyone have any suggestions?
I’m getting 20 -30 visits a day to this post. In about 2 months it will be the most visited post ever at Bulletholes in the Mailbox..
Maybe add a disclaimer at the top?
Or just remove it entirely?
Is it as bad as I think it is?

GOT CRAYONS?

I went to Half Price books last week. Books intimidate me these days. I walked up and down the aisles, trembling at all the pages, all the words, the musty smell of the classics. Up and down I went, shivering past Dean Koontz and all his counted sorrows.
I stopped briefly at Scott Turow, where there was book I dreamed about once upon a time. I had dreamed I wrote a book called “Innocent Blood” and it was hugely popular and had made me famous, and when I woke up I thought what a great name for a book. I was out in the garage a few weeks later and there on a shelf was my book, Innocent Blood, already written by Scott Turow.


See, that’s how it is with books, Its all subliminal and shit.

Books scare me these days. Too much commitment. Blogging has ruined me for books. If it has more than 20 lines, I’ve already lost interest. Unless its UF Mike writing about Brain Salad Surgery.
What could be more ridiculous than spending 30 hours wading through a book (Moby Dick) you have already read 4 or 14 (Atlas Shrugged) times? Because I have a real tendency to buy books I’ve already read.

Anyway, up and down the aisles I went, growing more and more uneasy at the prospect that I might BUY a book, and bring it home, and the worst thing that could happen is that I might like it, and sit up all night unable to put it down. It might be a real Pageturner.

Undaunted, I came home with 4 blank VHS tapes, Tarkus, and a coloring book.

In a dream...

In a dream I meet

my dead friend. He has,

I know, gone long and far,

and yet he is the same

for the dead are changeless.

... They grow no older.

It is I who have changed,

grown strange to what I was.

Yet I, the changed one,

ask: "How you been?"

He grins and looks at me.

"I been eating peaches

off some mighty fine trees."

- Wendell Berry

 

AS BAD A PLACE AS ANY

Dad had this swim trunk outfit he wore.
It was red, with Tongatoan writing and Easter Island statues printed on the fabric.
There were the trunks, and then a matching top, which amounted to a loose fitting shirt with no buttons. Dad was an apple, and his big belly stuck out, but the whole outfit looked right on him.
Of course he always had that cigar.

He wears that when I see him on the shoreline of Grapevine Lake, launching the boat, and we are about to go fishing.

“Do you think I can drive the boat today dad?” I always ask.
“Umm-hmm” will come his absent minded reply. But I know that I will not drive the boat today. I never did. Instead, we will cruise across the lake, and he will pull up to a spot, and say “Do you want to try it here?” and I will grin, and grab my pole.
As we lower our lines into the water, dad will look at me and grin, and with the cigar still chomped between his teeth he will say:
“This looks like as bad a place as any”

Sometimes we caught fish, and sometimes we didn’t, and I never did get to drive the boat.

If I count the years back, I haven’t seen dad for 25 years now. I count all the years that he had Alzheimers, and couldn’t do all the things I remember him doing, locked away in that VA hospital. That would make almost 40 years without dad.

But I imagine heaven, and seeing him in that funny red outfit, and we are fishing again.
In heaven you get to do stuff over you know, and I’d like a do-over on our fishing trip.
You might think my do-over would be where I get to drive the boat.
But that’s not it.

In my do-over, when we stop to fish and dad says “Do you want to try it here?”, I beat dad to the punch, and it is me who says:
“Looks like as bad a place as any, Pop!”

I have to remember to do that when I get to heaven.
I think he will like that a lot.

"MICHIGAN SEEMS LIKE A DREAM TO ME NOW"

"It took me four hours to hitchhike from Saginaw

I've gone to look for America"

Since I went through grade school in Detroit, this Simon and Garfunkle tune from 1968 song always resonates with me, especially on the Fourth of July.

Thanks thisisnthappiness for the sweet hitchhiker.

"LAY ON GROUND"

"LIGHT FUSE. GET AWAY."

YEAH, RIGHT!
Have a safe and happy Fourth.

WE MUST BE GETTING OLD

Writing a blog is funny haha.

Just a week ago I has so many posts in my head I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to do.
Now today, I’m sitting here and thinking where did they go?
Because it just seems like I haven’t had an original thought in ages.
Probably because I’m not talking on the phone enough to my friend SL at Assorted. We talk all the time. She flat cracks me up, always has, ever since we went through puberty together.

I have a fantasy about her you know.

In my fantasy, we take some of her money and we get us a big travel trailer and we go all over the United States and visit all the National Parks. They have a little book with all the Parks listed, and everytime you get to one, they stamp your book. We will fish for trout’s in cold mountain streams, we’ll have bacon and eggs over a fire in the morning, pick pine bark out of each other’s hair, stop for souvenirs at gift shops, buying stuff like rubber tomahawks and wooden planks with latrine jokes wood-burned into them. We each have hiking sticks, highly decorated, that we carved ourselves from birch limbs gathered at Yellowstone. We use them as we hike up Denali (which means “The Ancient One” in native Assinibone), and then we skinny dip in Crater Lake. We never fight the whole way (even when the Park Rangers kick us out of Crater Lake), because we are too busy laughing. Later, as we take the same route as Powell did through the white water of the wild Colorado and the Grand Canyon by boat, we’ll move on to Dinosaur Valley, where we discover fossils of an entirely new species they will name after us, maybe Assortedadon Bulletholemus Rex.

But that is my fantasy. I don’t know if she has enough money, or where I’ll get the energy to do all that, or if sightseeing will be enough.
Shit, we must be getting old.

But now what to write?
Writing a blog is funny haha.

Just a week ago I has so many posts in my head I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to do.
This wan't any of them.

WANNA GET YOUR BOOK STAMPED?

 

HOLIDAY

BEHAVIOUR GUIDE

#7. For girls: all boys are more or less the same. For boys: all girls are different.

text gathered at yimmysyayo

ROSES AND FROZEN PIZZA

Ladies, the god-awful truth is, you might find a guy that will open the door for you, he might bring you flowers, or better yet, work in the garden with you. He might even know which fork is for salad, and which is for dinner, and what a sorbet is. He might even be able to chew his food with his mouth shut, and keep his elbows off the table.
But in the end you will find out that deep inside he’s just a big ol’ pervert.
That’s the truth.

PRIVILEGES

There was a segment on NPR this morning. A man talking about his mother and how happy and caring she always was. And then it came time for her to die, and the man was sad and his mother looked him in the eye and asked him “Do you not know what a privilege it is to die?”

And those were the last words he heard her speak.

I buried my mom and dad all inside a year. It was a long time ago, and it still affects me in ways I’m probably not even aware of. But I am aware of what a beautiful year that was, and what a privilege it was to their son that year.
There was a lot of treasure there.

"How perilous, our infancy"

“We were hunters and foragers. The frontier was everywhere. We were bounded only by the Earth, and the ocean, and the sky. The open road still softly calls. Our little terraquious globe as the madhouse of those hundred thousand millions of worlds. We, who cannot even put our own planetary home in order, riven with rivalries and hatreds; Are we to venture out into space? By the time we’re ready to settle even the nearest of other planetary systems, we will have changed. The simple passage of so many generations will have changed us. Necessity will have changed us. We’re… an adaptable species. It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very like us, but with more of our strengths, and fewer of our weaknesses. More confident, farseeing, capable, and prudent. For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness. What new wonders, undreamed of in our time, will we have wrought in another generation? And another? How far will our nomadic species have wandered by the end of the next century? And the next millennium? Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds through the solar system and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that whatever other life there may be, the only humans in all the universe come from Earth. They will gaze up, and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of raw potential once was. How perilous, our infancy. How humble, our beginnings. How many rivers we had to cross before we found our way.”
Carl Sagan

"I'LL HAVE THE LOBSTER"

I believe it is often in the simplest of gestures, in the unexpected action, the ordinary becomes extraordinary.  In love we often look for the grand moment.  We wait to hear the words we want to hear.  We plan how love should be, should look, should act.  We miss the signs completely.  Love happens to us every day.  Do you see it?  Can you feel it?    ~ rdg

from throughthegardengate

My Wicked Wicked Ways

by Sandra Cisneros


This is my father.
See? He is young.
He looks like Errol Flynn.
He is wearing a hat
that tips over one eye,
a suit that fits him good,
and baggy pants.
He is also wearing
those awful shoes,
the two-toned ones
my mother hates.
Here is my mother.
She is not crying.
She cannot look into the lens
because the sun is bright.
The woman,
the one my father knows,
is not here.
She does not come till later.
My mother will get very mad.
Her face will turn red
and she will throw one shoe.
My father will say nothing.
After a while everyone
will forget it.
Years and years will pass.
My mother will stop mentioning it.

This is me she is carrying.
I am a baby.
She does not know
I will turn out bad.



Kristi after 40 provided the name of the poet, and I dug this one out of her collection.

NEVER

"... never contradict anyone or seek to prove anything to anyone unless one gets paid for it in cold, hard coin."
george jean nathan

from thisisnthappiness

THE INVALIDS

Coaches, man, they always talked so rough.
Deep-voiced and rough.


“Coach, I hurt my big toe. I can’t practice football today.”
“Bullshit. You need a doctors excuse to miss practice”
“Yes Coach, I got one right here.”
“When did you go to the doctor?”
“Yesterday when I got home. My toe hurt. Mom took me.”

Coach examines excuse for a minute.

“So your mommy took you to the doctor. Okay Phantom, get your sorry ass over there with the rest of the invalids”
‘Sorry coach”
“You are all about sorry, aren’t you?’
“Yessir, thank you sir”

Frick’n coaches man, they were brutal.
My nickname used to be "The Phantom".

A LITTLE NIGHT MADNESS

"In dreams the origami of the brain
opens like a fist, a pomegranate,
an expensive geometry."

-from "Night Madness Poem" by Sandra Cisneros

gathered from kristi at lifeat40

CUTTING LOOSE

FROM THE CONTINUING CHRONICLES OF FIGHTING JOE, v. 2.5


When he was 4 years old, Buck Boopman cried all the way to and from the all-girl tap dancing lessons his mother made him go to. But he did not cry during the classes. No, that would have been too humiliating. It was bad enough to have to wear that leotard and those shiny black shoes with the little ribbon as a shoelace without bawling like a big baby about the whole thing. The real reason Buck kept it together was simply out of respect for the little girls in that class, especially Teddy, the daughter of the Minister at the church he went to. Buck always looked forward to seeing Teddy there. Teddy was Buck's first love. Tap-dancing lessons may not have made him a dancer, but they taught him that sometimes love is just hoping to see someone, and keeping it together for them when you do.

A few years later, in the second Grade, Buck would walk home from school with Donna for lunch everyday. And everyday he would split the baby Snickers bar his mother had given him with Donna when they met on the corner for the walk back to school. One day when his mother gave him his usual Snickers bar, Buck asked if he might have TWO Snickers bars today.
"Why do you need two today?" his mother asked.
And Buck explained to his mother that everyday he split his candy bar with Donna, and that today he thought maybe Donna might like one of her own.
"Oh yes!" his mother beamed as she wiped her hands on her Watermelon Apron and reached into the pantry for another Snickers "You most certainly may!"

These two events would form Bucks attitude towards women that he kept for the rest of his life.
It was also why he felt a bit nervous and uneasy about the effect that his step-sister Betsye had on him, all the while hoping something might happen between the two of them.

******

Betsye was 16 years old. She had a father somewhere that sent a birthday card to her on her birthday for the last 14 years. She loved her daddy like all little girls do, but stayed confused as to why he chose to stay away. She had had to suffer the looks and jeers of quite a number of her mother's
boyfriends over the years. She had grown up 'fast" as the old folks say, having started her period at the age of 10 and having her breasts come in when she was only 11.
And oh my, did they come in!
The flat chested girls could not imagine what a curse it could be. Boys never looked you in the eye. Some of them even would just come up and grab at them.
Old men gawked and didn't even try to hide their lust

She didn't quite know it, but she was more than breasts. She was also very pretty and sweet, its just nobody had ever really told her that. She had never  had a boyfriend, she stayed too busy just trying to defend herself at school, and on the walks home, and when she and her girlfriends would get cornered by some boys down at the Bellaire.

So when Fightin' Joe Jarmack, the toughest guy at school, showed an interest in her and asked her out, it made sense to her to say yes. Nobody messed with Joe, and nobody would dare mess with Joe's girl. She was scared and vulnerable, and she did whatever Joe asked, but she wasn't really afraid of Joe. Joe liked her too much to ever hurt her; she sensed that. In fact, it seemed to her that Joe was even afraid of her.
But for her, he represented protection, and it seemed like a good trade, her affection for his protection.
Recently, since her mom had married Bum Boopman, she had taken a liking to her step-brother Buck. He was kind and gentle, and had always showed her a great deal of respect. He smiled to see her in the mornings, and lately she found herself daydreaming about him during class, and at night before she fell asleep.

*******

No one was home when Betsye got there. She took a shower, wrapped herself in a towel, and painted her toenails while she sat on the edge of the bathroom countertop. She didn't hear when Buck came home until she heard him gasp "Sorry" as he rounded the corner and into the bathroom..
"That's OK!" she said as she hopped down from the counter to face him head on.
Buck fought the urge to look at his boot tops.  He held his ground and stood there, looking straight
into Betsye's eyes.
Betsye knew it was up to her.
She was tired of the affliction, tired of playing the role of Fightin' Joe's girl.
She  smiled her best smile, took a deep breath, and let the towel drop.
Buck, in a rare moment of dash,  stepped into the bathroom and pulled the door shut.

Sometimes love is not about keeping it together.
Sometimes love is all about cutting loose.

************

LinkS to the other parts of this story....click here.
This part should follow Part 2, "The Scariest House on the Block" and come before Part 3, which was renamed at some point to  'The View From The Smoking Area"

If you actually go read all this crap, you may note that the names changed somewhat between Part Two and Part 3. Thats because there were some Baumgardeners that lived in this area, and they had nothing to do with the story, and when I posted the story to FB, I had to clean up the names to protect the innocent.

WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?

You may recall that my 1975 Chevy truck burned to the ground last month.


I’ve been going to the Dallas Can Charity Auto Auction the last month looking for a new car. I’ve been going with my pal Jeff, who has bought several cars there, and had pretty good luck. The last car he bought was a 2000 Mustang. He bought it for my daughter.
See, in addition to being one of my High School pals, he is also stepfather to my daughter, by virtue of being the husband of the Ex-mrs Bulletholes.
But all that is a whole ‘nother story.

Jeff has bought several cars at the auction. You get them pretty cheap, but there is no way of knowing what all may be wrong with them until you drive them off the lot.
The first week, Jeff stopped me from bidding on a cute little British 1977 model MGB-GT. It ran, and it sold for only $800, but as cute as it was it would have been the wrong car for me. I barely fit in it.
The next week, there was a nice Accura, but the bidding took off, and it went for 3000. I don’t want to spend that much on a car, only to find I need to put another 1500 into it just to get it roadworthy, because like I said, you don’t really know what they may need until you drive them off the lot. And the assumption is that most will need something.

Last week, I bought a car. It is an Isuzu Rodeo, in good shape, and I thought it might go for 2000 or more, but the bidding got stuck at 1500, and I won!

But when I drove it off the lot, the transmission was slipping. So I had to take it to the shop. I had hoped that 1500 might get the transmission fixed, and that would seem to me to still be a pretty good deal, but these transmission are apparently harder to fix.
The price is 2500 for a rebuild on the transmission!

So I called the Ex Mrs Bulletholes and told her how much it was going to cost.
“Twenty –Five hundred dollars for A Joe Isuzu Japanese Transmission!” I told her.
She gasped, and asked “What are you going to do?”

"What am I going to do? I tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to NOT GO GET ANY DOPE, that’s what I’m going to do!!!”

There was about 8 seconds of silence over the line, and then she says real softly, real relieved:
“I am so glad for that”

People not in the program probably don’t really know what that means, how positive an action it is to actively stay clean, and while she has watched me for all these years do what it is I do, I think for the first time she really understood what that meant.

The miracle is that it wasn’t long ago that every last thin dime I had went right up my nose.
The mathematics of it is I actually have the money to do this.

And its still not a bad deal for 4000. Not for Dallas Can Auction, not for me, and certainly not for the transmission guy.

AWWWW...

thanks westexasinsomniac