I AM IRONMAN!

I am sitting here wearing to my new cologne from Avon and listening to an old Black Sabbath album from 1970. Its the first of the Heavy Metal Fragrances and forever changed the smell of Rock and Roll.
From the Avon catalog::
“A victorious fusion of energizing Mercury, Lead, Plutonium 239 and exotic Isomers spiked with real Slag. Comes in 2.5 fl. oz. The essence of mind-body excellence. Ironman is the ultimate triathlon race involving three endurance events: a 2.4 mile swim in heavy boots of lead, a 112 mile bike ride through a Magnetic Field and a 26.2 mile run in order to take vengeance by filling you full of dread”

I can’t wait for them to come out with “Paranoid”


Has he lost his mind?, Can he see or is he blind
Can he walk at all? Or if he moves will he fall?
Is he live or dead? I see thoughts within his head.
We'll just pass him there. Why should we even care?

He was turned to steel in the great magnetic field!
When he traveled time for the future of Mankind.
Nobody wants him He just stares at the world.
Planning his vengeance that he will soon unfurl.
Now the time is here for ironman to spread fear.
Vengeance from the grave kills the people he once saved
Nobody wants him they just turn their heads.

Nobody helps him now he has his revenge.

Heavy boots of lead fills his victims full of dread.
running as fast as they can Ironman lives again.
from the album paranoid, balck sabbath, 1970

GOOD CHOICE PAMMY

ME AND PAMMY, PIC TAKEN LAST WEEK

" I don't want to go from being "some man's daughter" to "some man's wife"

pammy, june of 1976, on why we should cancel the wedding planned for two weeks after she graduated high school

BREAKFAST WITH TRESSA

I used to throw these big parties out at the lake. We would have a keg, and there would be folks with guitars, and we would make a big bonfire in the woods and hope that the Texas Rangers didn’t show up. Not the baseball team, but the State Troopers from the Department of Public Safety, the ones that carried big iron six-shooters on their hips.
The first lake party I threw there were only about 12 of us and we called it a "Camp out".
The Tradition grew, and our numbers increased.
We would meet at Bell High School and form up a fifty car caravan out Whites Chapel Road to “The Pit”.
"The Pit" was an earthen geological formation that was shaped like a Greek Amphitheater in the middle of the woods by the lake. It was there that we built our bonfire, smoked our funny stuff and sang ‘Sweet Home Alabama” all night long. I imagined myself a promoter of sorts, somewhere between the likes of a Willie Nelson roadie, Don Kirschner and Bob Geldoff.
I imagined that one day we could get a big name act like Kris Kristofferson or Bob Dylan or REO Speedwagon to come to our Camp-out.
Until then, we would have to settle for a semi-circle of cars, doors and trunks open and stereos on all tuned to KZEW.

I woke up one morning next to the remnants of the fire at “The Pit”. I could hear the music coming from the few cars still left, the aftermath of the party...

'I'lll never dance with another,

oooohhh

When I saw her standin' there"

I rubbed my eyes and found I had been covered in beer cans by my good friend and lover, Tressa.

Tressa was laughing and doing a seductive little dance for me, saying
“Steve, you are SOOO trashed”.
Ah, Tressa, she was so much fun. She helped me drag my tired butt to the car and we went home for breakfast.

To be continued

GAME DAY

On game day at Bedford Jr. High the Athletes would all wear ties, and the girls would collect their Tie-Tacks throughout the day, and pin or clip them to the lapels of their Cheerleader uniform.
Every time I see a Tie-tack I think about Game Day and Patty Cakepan.
She was not necessarily the best looking girl at school, but she was the most aggressive tie-tack collector on campus. Every week she collected the most tie-tacks. Her lapel was always covered in silver and gold, bejeweled with diamond and onyx and rhinestones from the boys, many on loan from their Dad's Jewelry Boxes.
I would see her in the Open-Air Atrium, palling around and flirting with half a dozen guys, all laughing and every now and then she would put her arm around one or two of them and give a big friendly hug.

For a nerdy thick-lensed fellow like myself, this seemed to insinuate that if I could get her to want my Tie-Tack, then maybe Patty Cakepan might want me as well.
You know, want me like a lover or something.
I even went so far as to imagine that the quality of the tie-tack might be directly proportionate to this end, and a cause for my desired effect.

With this in mind, I frowned and put my only tie-clip back into my drawer.
It was the last Game Day of the year, and a full moon too, and in my mind it was time to make a move for Patty Cakepan. I went into Dads room, opened his jewel case and found a winner.

Getting Patty Cakepan to take my Dads Tie-tack was easy.
Getting it back was not.
I think maybe she still has my Dad's Tigers-Eye 24 karat Arabian Gold inlaid with Diamond Deluxe Tie Clip from De-beers.

"NEVER BEEN BETTER"

Birthday Night is a celebration every month for those Narcotics Anonymous members who have stayed clean and sober for a continuous year. There was a guy Friday night that celebrated his 19th birthday.
When its your Birthday, you get to pick up a gold coin.
Someone will introduce you from the podium, usually your sponsor.
Then you go up to the podium and address the group. You can talk about how you stayed clean and sober, or what the program has done for you, or what your struggles may have been and how you got thru them..

Last Friday was my first Birthday Night, having had my first year sober.
One of my good buddies gave me a custom made T-Shirt that reads “Never Been Better” before the meeting. I have been running around the last month telling anyone who will listen that I have never been better.
Then the meeting started….and guess who got to go first?

I’m not sure why I got to go first, but I did.
My sponsor went up to the Podium and said
“When this guy came to me 6 months ago and asked me to be his sponsor I wasn’t too sure what to say. But he has stuck around, and done some stepwork and now he is a part of this group now. And if you haven’t met him, well, you are about to now, and you have to realize that he is really loud, and he laughs so hard, and he has this big heart and he has on this shirt and he will probably tell you all about it.
So come on up here Steve!”

And I went running to the podium like some kind of Heavyweight Champion of the World, hands waving and arms flying, kicked my right leg out as I took a left and went sliding up to the podium.

Quite animated, I said:
“Man , I am so excited to be here, I’m more excited than the first time I rode the Texas Twister at Six Flags, and if you aren’t excited as I am about Narcotics Anonymous like me then you just do like I did and keep coming back.
I got support groups everywhere:
I have ‘em in my Blog world, and I can’t tell you how much support I have gotten from people I have never even met, and likely never will.
And I know every cashier, busboy, buffet attendant in town, and they all know my story and when I go to Blockbuster Video and the girl behind the counter says “How you doin’, Bulletholes?” I do a little dance and say “I’ve never been better Baby, how’ bout you” and everybody in the store can hear me and knows I’m there.
And I got a couple kids….do you think they are excited their daddy don’t do any dope?
And I got an X Wife and a sister and friends and family that have finally seen me stop using drugs….Do you think they are excited?
But what I really have that’s done it for me is all you people here at NA…like the literature says, “the therapeutic value of one addict helping another is without parallel”
I get to come here and hear the things I need to hear from other addicts…
And I get to come here and meet people that I need to meet…
And sometimes I get to come here and say some things I need to hear myself say…
And I am just totally psyched on the idea that I did something I did not know I would want to do, that I COULD do, and thats stay off drugs for a whole year...
So somebody ask me…”How you doin’ Steve?”

And someone in the crowd of 150 people hollered out “How you doin’ Steve?”

And I stood away from the podium so everyone could see my shirt, I even pointed to it and shouted at the top of my lungs
“NEVER BEEN BETTER!”

And the crowd went wild!

TRAILS

Sometimes we get on a trail that seems to have no end, and we feel lost, and at some point we have to turn back. Its hard to say what point that is, but turn back we do.
Sometimes we get on a trail and we see all the signs we are on the right trail; life gets real easy for a time.
Sometimes we come to places that we have to choose between two trails, and some of those times we pick, and never get know that on the trail we did not pick there is a sign that says
"No longer an option".

Part of Learning to Hope may be finding there are few trails thusly marked.

Shrimp

This may be my finest and longest-lasting contribution to the Culinary Arts.
(click here)

SPLITTING THE ATOM

In the fall of my 8th Grade year, they came and took away our Yo-Yo’s.
Over the period of a few weeks, the Yo-Yo craze had spread like a wildfire through the open air atrium at Bedford Jr. High.
By the coke machine Robert Everly and John Mcintire stood, “Shooting the Moon and “Walkin the Dog”.
In the Cafeteria, Suzi and Tracy watched in wide eyed amazement…Julie was a natural and was giving a clinic on how to “Rock the Baby” go “Around the World “ and even the near impossible ‘Two-handed Loops”.
But in the Resource Center…

Ah yes, the fabulous Resource Center, that’s what we called it, it wasn’t a library any more, it was a Resource Center. You could view some kind of Microfiche or something on a personal projector and listen to tapes about Indentured Servants and the Louisiana Purchase and stuff. I actually stole a set of headphones from there to listen to my Black Sabbath with, but mom found them and made me take them back to Mrs McNeese the Librariian, so I started taking Sabbath to the Resource Center, but that’s a whole ‘nother story. Right now I am supposed to be telling you about Yo-Yo’s.

Over in the Resource Center, Gary was demonstrating his version of ‘Split the Atom” which was to douse his Wooden Duncan Spin-master with a little lighter fluid and set it afire just before performing his trick. Gary was working on another trick at home with a Yo-Yo filled with a little black powder that would go off just as he finished the last move of a ‘Double Gerbil”, that’s how Gary rolled, but I seriously doubted that trick would ever take off.

But if anybody could pull something like that off, it would be Gary. His Dad was a Gunsmith and Gary was a Champion Muzzle-loader marksman since befor he could walk. There were kegs of black powder all over Gary's house.

Anyway, after dousing his Duncan with lighter fluid, setting it afire, he went into part one of “Splitting the Atom”. But it was then something went terribly wrong.
Not only did his string break just as he spun the Spinmaster over his head, causing the flaming Yo-Yo to jet straight towards Mrs. Mcneese’s very blue-grey hair, but everybody in the Resourse Center was about to find out that Gary was using the wrong Yo-Yo.
Unknowingly, Gary had brought the one filled with black powder from home!
The only thing that saved McNeese from a face full of flaming Yo-Yo that day was the fact that it exploded into tiny splinters 3 feet in front of her face.
No one was more surprised than Gary himself.
Gary “Split the Atom” alright, and the next day the Principle and entire coaching staff confiscated every Yo-Yo on Campus and forever banned them from the hallowed Open Air Atriums of Bedford Jr. High.

But, you know kids are resilient. They make the best of things. It didn’t take long before we found a replacement for the dangerous Yo-Yo’s.
What was it, you may ask?
Before too long the school was filled with the tap-tap-tapping machine gun like sound of a brand new toy.
Clackers! (click here)

FOR A LISTING OF GREAT YO-YO TRICKS AND VIDEO DEMONSTRATIONS GO HEREhttp://www.yomega.com/tricks/



Gary, receiving his "Order of the Eagle Feather" Award for a perfect score at competition, 1971.

WHEN CAN YOU START?

I have no doubt that if we had not become so inefficient here at work, I would be long gone.
In fact, if we get any more inefficient, I'll need an assistant.

RAGERS CREED

I found something a while back that has really helped me at work.
I susbstitute 'workmates" for 'family members".

THE RAGERS CREED from "ANGER BUSTING 101"
1. I will practice self-restraint as a *top* priority today.
2. I will act *the opposite* of how I feel, when angry.
3. If I feel that my anger is about to erupt, I will *quietly* leave the situation.
4. I will find truth in *all* criticisms directed toward me today, especially from my partner..
5. I will say, "You are right," in a sincere, meaningful way, when I am criticized. (Notice that it does not say, "I will say, 'You are right, but...'")
6. I will give an example of how the person who criticized me is *right*.
7. I will repeat the following sentence to myself today: "I am better off being *wrong* because when I am right, I am dangerous."
8. I will avoid explaining myself in any way by saying, "I have no idea why I did that...it doesn't make any sense to me either."
9. I will listen sympathetically to my partner when she tells me about her day.
10. I will not give unsolicited advice to my wife or children.
11. I will avoid blaming family members for anything today, especially if it was their fault.
12. I will avoid trying to make any family member "understand" anything.
13. I will avoid trying to convince my child or spouse that I am being fair.
14. I will look for an opportunity to sincerely praise everyone I live with, especially the cat I don't like.
15. I will humbly commit myself to removing my angry behaviors today, as my contribution toward a more peaceful world.

THE BLACK CARD

My sister has started a Blog, (click here) and she left a comment on my post from last week.
I don't know where she may take her blog, but she has started by commenting on my Journey, which she has felt deeply and been a part of.
Here is her comment, and I hope soon she has a post up...


She says:
"There is an enormity to this day.
Bullethole’s story from the prospective of his Sister:

I am bummed that I have to submit this in part’s because you can’t understand one part without the others. I skip around (I have ADHD). I couldn’t decide the order in which to tell our story. I think that I am starting with the worst part. I hope that as I go, I can explain how it got this bad. Then I want to talk about now, which is really the best part. Everyone else I have lost has stayed lost. This time though my brother who was lost to me has been refound.

I can tell by the wonderful responses that have been made to my brother’s blog that many of you care for him deeply. I thought that some of you may want to know more about this man, this wordsmith who literally IS Lazarus. To me, he has risen from the dead. As siblings our stories are intertwined. For many years I felt that there was little emotional connection between the two of us. In alcoholic families (yes, our parent’s were very high functioning alcoholics) siblings either grow very close to each other because they need to support each other. Or, they grow distant as one sibling wants to talk about it (me) and one sibling doesn’t (him). Kids from addictive families also get assigned roles. Who gets what role is the luck of the draw. There is the hero, the saint, the comedian, the scapegoat, the lost child. For those of you not familiar http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/alcohol-abuse/toxic-brew explains some of this.

What made our situation a little more insidious is that our parents where unbelievably attractive and gracious people. There wasn’t anybody lying around on the couch with a bottle of liquor in a brown bag. My father was a highly successful and admired man. He was a good friend of John Connelly (yes, the Governor of Texas who was riding in the car with JFK when he was assassinated. I have a great story of when I met the Governor’s sister who figured out that I was the daughter of bullet holes senior and her great admiration for him, but that if for another time.) In his prime, he was hand picked to run for the head of the Texas Railroad Commission. Bullet holes senior told me about, and I have some memories of frequent breakfasts at the Governors’ mansion in Austin. We came through the kitchen door.

So, I didn’t understand until almost 6 or 7 years after they died that there was a drinking problem. I learned about this from my mother’s best friend before she died. It was further verified by Dave Mow’s Grass’s mother, my sister in law. My mother was the primary alcoholic. Her friend Jean, wife of the infamous Bruce we all have come to love and laugh at had no idea that I didn’t know when I finally asked her about it. After I came to understand alcoholism I could recall incidents that spoke to our father’s romance with it as well.

Bullet holes drew the black card, the addict. I spent a lot of years being angry with him about it. A couple of years ago, I realized that I owed him. It could have been me. Oh, God. It could have been me.

It seemed that the endless string of losses sent my brother further into his addictions and me into mine. The fiend of a drug that would eventually suck my brother under and almost take him away forever.

ONE YEAR

One year tomorrow, not so much as a glass of O'Douls psuedo-beer, nor a Wine Sauce with my Pasta, or a Benedryl or Vicks inhaler. No Opiates, Amphetamines, or Barbituates.
No Mexican Fireweed, White Robots, Pink Witches or Strawberry Fields.
If you had told me I would do so a year ago, to stay clean and sober, I would have asked you "What for?".
I'd have told you that I would have to use, eventually and soon, if for no other reason than to settle my ass down a little, make myself a little more quietly bearable.
And to get that sinkfull of dishes done.

I have since found lots of reasons "what for".
I have gotten used to my loud-ass, over-the-top, in-the-center-ring-spotlight self.
I can look my kids, my friends and my past in the eye and spit.

Fuck the dirty dishes, let 'em pile up to Kingdom Come...I ain't usin' no matter what.

I'M NOT BACK

BUT I SHOULD EXPLAIN
Still clean, you bet. 355 Days!

But here is why I am on a long break...Blogging was starting to have a rather obnoxious affect on me. I found myself doing two fairly detestable things...
1) Practicing a yet to be written post on an unsuspecting public (in line at the grocery store, or such)
2) Trying to recite an already written post to someone in lieu of an impromptu story, and pretending like I was making it up as I went along.
Its really hard for me not to do those things, its happened before, and I come off as being quite scripted, especially if I start telling the same "impromptu" story to the same person twice.

After I have written a story down, maybe even one that I have been telling for years, it seems to affect the way I tell it and usually to the detriment of the story.
And as much as I like writing these stories down, I like telling them more, face to face.

But I’ll probably be back to it after a bit, after I recover from this affectation and forget some of what I've written.…

I'M DONE

345 days clean and sober.
330 posts in 345 days.
I'd hoped to hit 365 in 365 with 365 days clean, but I think I'm done.
I might could do 35 posts in the next 20 days, but they would be real crap.
So I just might be done.
Thats what they say down at NA when you are at the end of the road.




LOST IN THE BACKYARD
I said "this is the last time"
A few times ago
But once more it's happened
And that's all in the world I know
I still hear the echo
When you hung up the phone
I feel like I'm lost in the back yard
Just trying to get home.

I woke up in a strange world
I can aptly describe
It's like the streets of a town where I lived
When I was too young to drive
It all looks so Familiar
But I can't find my way
I must have got lost in the back yard
When I went out to play

Don't open my eyes
To nothing like truth
Just leave it all lost in the wind
Let it hide in the blindness of youth
The facts of the matter
Most likely will always remain
And I guess I'll be lost in the back yard
Till I get home again

j. mcmurtry

DON'T STOP TILL YOU GET ENOUGH

"I was a veteran before I was a teenager."

This guy was such a talent. What happened?

ANGEL ON SKATEBOARD

"I became famous almost before I had a craft"

She was sweet...maybe one of the least affected Pop stars ever.

Very sad.

UN-COOL

I went to my very first Rock Concert in 1972.
The band was Foghat.
They had a huge hit with an old Willie Dixon song "I Just Wanna Make Love To You".
The auditorium was filled with smoke and our seats were way up in the rafters, Row ZZ, in the Crows nest.
I was getting very stoned.
There was all that smoke, and all those lights at the stage, and the Foghat dudes were all wearing Rock Star clothes and I wanted to be a rock star too. I didn't have any Rock Star clothes. Mom wouldn't let me. I'd had to do some real manipulating just to be here, because no way would mom and dad let me go anywhere near a Rock concert.

Foghat started to play their big hit "I Just Wanna Make Love to You" and the Bass line was pounding away:
"Buh-boom-boom-boom-boomboom -buh-buh"
and the lead guitar started in with the
'Wah-wah-wawawawa-wah-wah-wuh-wuh"
And then the singer sings

"I just Wanna Make... Love to You"

In my youthful exuberence I was completely overcome.
I stood up and started to rock out.
But then the room began to spin, and I to wobble, and the vertigo kicked in.

Whoa!
The next thing I knew, I was falling into the lap of the cool looking dude in Rock Star clothes sitting in front of me, who looked down into my face and said:
"Very un-cool, dude"

There is no humility that compares to being told you are "un-cool" by a really cool looking dude. Never, ever, stand up if you are in Row ZZ.
Ever.

BIG BAMBU

When I was 16, I went to see Deep Purple
“Smoke on the Water” was a huge hit at the time.
It was my first concert.
In my excitement and youthful exuberance, I had rolled an entire ounce of pot into a single joint using a newspaper.
The house lights began to dim. my understanding was that this was a signal to light up. We had brought one of those giant lighters to light it, haha.
But when I lit it, smoke plumed into the air like there was a California brush fire in the stands, and the cherry at the end glowed the size of a half dollar.
I passed it down to Buckman, and when he tried to hit it, it started to catch fire.
I was starting to get kind of paranoid, all that smoke, and now it was looking like a Roman candle, hissing and popping and belching flames and all, and I began to realize that as great as a 1 ounce joint sounds, its probably pretty un-cool. We had become a spectacle.
Buckman passed it back to me, and I dropped it to the floor and tried to stamp it out.
The smoke coming off it was so thick I could not see the stage, or even breathe!
It took quite a bit of stamping to finally kill it.

The cool looking hippy guy sitting beside me looked at me and just said
“Good choice, Dude”

Never tried that again.

SOUTHERN COMFORT

When I was 17, I went to see 'YES" at a concert.
I knew the girl that sat in front of me from school.
She was drunk on Southern Comfort.
She kept standing up and taking her shirt off.
I always liked Southern Comfort after that.

KING SOLOMON ON ADDICTION

Who has woe?
Who has sorrow?
Who has strife?
Who has complaining?
Who has wounds without cause?
Who has redness of eyes?

Those who tarry long over wine;
those who go to try mixed wine.
Do not look at wine when it is red,
when it sparkles in the cup
and goes down smoothly.

In the end it bites like a serpent
and stings like an adder.
Your eyes will see strange things,
and your heart utter perverse things.
You will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea,
like one who lies on the top of a mast.

“They struck me,” you will say,“but I was not hurt;
they beat me, but I did not feel it.
When shall I awake?
I must have another drink.”

proverbs 23