hombre horible.

I was moved to tears twice this weekend. Well once Friday morning and once Sunday afternoon.
I'll stat with the pleasant one. I held a baby that was less than 24 hours old. A squashed up hideous thing. She belongs to one of my crew. Over the years I been the first non-family member to hold 12 newborns. It always gets me.
I will do the Family Leave paperwork and send the woman on her way and usually within the week I get an excited phone call in rapid Spanish about the new baby. I'll swing by Target and get a couple of ones-es and a stuffed animal and then swing by Publix for a fruit tray the next day and head over to the Hospital at lunch. Then I'm holding a squashed up red new person and crying.
It's the complete innocent look on the babies face and knowing what's coming that bothers me. The horror of potty training just snowballs into school, dating, jobs and on and on.
Then it's back to work!
Friday's boo hoo session was a horse of a different color. Another woman on my crew to see me alone. As soon as the office door closed she started crying and begging for 2 days off to take her daughter to the hospital for some tests. I said "No problem, sweety, you can have all the time you need. Get the test done so you can figure out what is wrong." Then she started in on how wonderful I am and she was so sorry that her daughter's illness was keeping her out of work so much lately. She apologized for taking the poor thing to the Doctor.
I had to stop her and tell her the truth. "I am the worst son of a bitch you will ever meet." After she left I shed a tear or two with the door locked. How bad can life be when you look up to some one because he did not fire you for getting a 3 year old medical care? How horrible must it be when the person who gave you a 3% raise takes on a paternalistic roll?

I'm Back again.

Technology and my lifestyle aren't a good match.

I made up a name for an old friend who died in the early '90's. Ed King. I was driving and saw two stores that had the two names and voile' Ed King has an assumed name.

Ed was a very careful man. He was also the only person I've ever met who died under mysterious circumstances.

Ed was missing three months before he was found in the Talladega National Forrest that he loved so well. He was an outdoors-men's outdoors-men. He was the same generation as my Grandfather and I never saw either one out of Khaki's. Ed was very careful because as a kid he had lost most of his left ear to a water moccasin. In the Navy in WWII he lost two fingers to frost bite and a big chunk of calve muscle to another snake bite.

He always carried a sawed-off 410 shotgun. It was a single shot breach loader with a home made pistol grip and a mini flash light duct taped to the fore-stock. When I say he carried it, I mean in his hand everywhere. He lived in a little town outside of Monroe and everybody knew him, and nobody noticed the shotgun anymore. I saw him go in a Bank and a Liquor store with a sawed off shotgun in his hand and nobody batted an eye.

Once Ed, My Grandfather and Me were in a John-boat fishing. Ed was working the little electric motor in back, My Grandfather was working about 15 poles in the middle and I was taking fish off the lines and re-baiting and the most important job of passing back beer from the cooler. I was an over worked preteen.

We were pulling in a ton of crappie and they were drinking a ton of beer and I was thinking I would get to drive home. As they say in all the books, SUDDENLY the afternoon was ripped apart by Ed's .410. Having lost big parts of his body to snake's Ed had a shoot first and ask questions later outlook on life. But right after the shot something fell out of a nearby tree and sank. I pissed myself almost simultaneously to the little guns blast. I was 11 after all.

Ed reloaded in the blink of an eye and asked for another beer.

I jumped in the lake and washed myself off and spent the rest of the afternoon naked with my clothes laid out drying, taking fish off the hook and passing beer back from the cooler. Once my Grandfather caught the seventy five crappie that was our boat limit and a couple of big catfish we turned the boat toward the dock and I got dressed.

Ed explained that you saw off a shot gun so you get a bigger shot spread real fast from the end of the barrel. The power is lost after a few yards. He used a .410 so he could sit in one end of his aluminum John-boat and not blow a hole in the other end. He said he carried to church and check under his pew until they asked him to leave it at home. He decided that God was everywhere and easier to find on the end of a fishing pole.I get very melancholy when I think that no one talks to kids that way any more.

I was 11 and did drive home. I was always driving my Grandfather and his friends home.

Oh, Ed's death. It wasn't strange to me he died in the woods. He was closing in on 80 and drank and smoked like a Sailor on leave. Come to think of it, he pretty much lived his life like a Sailor on leave after he survived destroyer duty in the Pacific during WWII.

Vampires Again

There are more and more Vampires roaming around. I really don't understand the attraction. The things kill us or screw us and then go off somewhere and hide. It's really strange the attraction.
I do like the fact that Vampires are always Royalty or Aristocracy. If anything describes the relationship between the Manor born (Plantation Class around here) and the rest of us, it's Vampire/Prey. Look at Prince Charles and the little Princelings. They have little affairs with models and Army Platoons but then they grow weary of contact with the commoners and run back into their Castles and look down on us.
It's the same way here. Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie can have a show about life with the simple people who don't have money. Then when the show losses some ratings they can run back to whatever place they feel best and hide out until someone gets a better scheme that allows people with no talent other than being born into the right family can get more of our money.
The New Moon Twilight whatever teeny bopper movie has Werewolves that fight the Vampires. I like this. I hope the Werewolves kill them off and then head over to True Blood and rid us of that piece of crap too.
Werewolves are a good proletariat animal. Some guy is walking out on the moors one night and gets infected by a big dog bite. He's not part of some upper class, he's just some guy who worked late or his car broke down and now he can't help himself when the moon is full.

Angry Blog

I'm not really angry, just a little fussy today. I'm tired of crap.
Like who decided to make John Lennon music into ads for shit we don't need.
We still don't have an effective Tsunami early warning system for most of the world
but we have phones we can watch television and buy the shit they are using John
to advertise.
The people who wrecked the economy are giving themselves bonuses for talking us into
bailing them out. Then the same people tell us that a public health care system is Socialist
and will ruin the economy.
We are destroying Blue fin Tuna for Sushi, Black Rhino's for boners, Manatee's for boat rides
and all of the flowing water for green grass.
We have cancer of most body parts, diabetes, canine distemper and HIV and in return they
give us Viagra, Cialysis and sleeping pills that make us eat every thing in the house and drive
around town in a black out.
It takes 2 minutes to order a pizza online, but 15 to get to a human representative at Fed Ex.
Customer Service is a fossilized concept in the sub-basement of the Smithsonian.
But like I've said many times. Screw it.

Luck

I am a firm believer in Luck and I've never had much. When I was a kid my Aunt in Ohio sent us boxes of buckeyes. I gave to all my friends and we carried them everywhere. For Luck. As I grew older I found more things that are lucky. Rabbit Foot, buttons, pennies you find laying on heads are lucky if you put them in your shoe. If you find a penny on tails, you can change your luck by turning it over and leaving it for the next person. Four leaf clovers are not lucky. After I asked my Ex Wife to marry me she refused to answer until she found a 4 leaf clover. When you spill salt you have to throw a pinch over your left shoulder to ward off bad luck.
Break a mirror and you are screwed for the next seven years. Now there are lots of things that produce bad luck. Bringing banana's on a small boat is death. You will not catch fish, dive well and probably never make it back to dry land. How banana's get around the world, I don't know, but it's not by small boat. Black Cats can't cross your path or you have to wait for it to cross back, or you turn around. Whistling when passing a graveyard is bad. Blowing out a candle insults fire and is bad luck.
My Great Grandmother was from Ireland and was a very influential adult in my childhood. We were separated by 80 or so years, but relegated to the useless section of the family together. She was too old to do much and I was too little. She is why I know that if a person sneezes three times without a God Bless you, the little people can legally take them and keep them for years. But you don't talk much about the little people after dark, or they will take you and keep you for years.
Now after three decades of on again off again work, I've narrowed my Lucky things down to a fossilized whale inner ear bone I found diving off Venice beach Florida and a new tattoo. When I turned 21, I got a tattoo and was happy with that until I hit 40 and got another.
Then I found out that an even number of tattoos are unlucky. Now I've had a big run of bad luck this last year, so I decided that made sense.
So tonight I have a Bull Shark on my forearm and an extra lottery ticket.

Frankenstein

So, I'm having this pain in my side that turns out to be gall bladder, liver, gastrointestinal related.
The Doctor says that we can always remove the Gall bladder if it gets worse and by the way it may explode. The surgery isn't as complicated as an appendectomy. So I am wondering. Why do we have all these extra parts? These extra parts that can go bad an d kill us?
If you've never had a gall bladder flare up, it will make curl up in a ball and doubt the existence of God and the rationality of Natural Selection.
Not in the usual, "Why do men have nipples?" funny fooling around questioning that all those '80's comics loved to dwell on. This is a breach birth in during the hiking trip kind of doubt.
If there is a God, why would he lay these traps?
If Natural selection is at work, why hasn't this crap been bred out of us?
The Nurse I talked with said it was the American Diet that is killing us all off. But if you think about it, we've always had the American Diet. Remember the Mammoth feasts? Did Og eat too much of the fatty trunk meat and collapse in a sweaty heap cursing the Lake God for all he was worth? I know Og did not go out and find a nice big salad.
So, I think it was some Alien Frankenstein who has done this to us. Some Sadistic, big eyed Grey Bastard with a scalpel and a twisted sense of humor.
It also explains the seem down there.

Why do our bodies hate us?

When I was 21, I could take anything. One time I was working on a bridge crew and really screwed up. I held onto a guide rope too long and was launched over the river and slammed into a piling. I let go of the rope and landed in the river and swam to shore. I jogged back to the bridge and finished the day. I have thousands of these stories.
Last week I started to feel a pain in my side. I shrugged and ignored it. By Thursday I was walking around pressing my hand against my ribs and wincing. So Friday I went to my Doctor. Did you know that your gall bladder can become inflamed? I did not.
I also did not know that the test for this was an ultrasound. And did you know that Ultrasound guys have no sense of humor? When I asked "How's it look Doc?" the Tech explained he was not a Doctor and was just taking pictures for the Doctor.
"So I guess you can't tell m if it's a girl or a boy huh?"
"No sir I could not."