Friday, December 31, 2010

Happy Un-New Year

Boy&Howdy....... it sure has been a fun year!!!! Yesirree Bob!  I like 2010 so much that I would like to recycle it, maybe turn it into kitty litter, or new plastic bottles or reform it as a new playground  or pave roads with it.... Hey, I had so much goddam fun in 2010... Shit&Whiskers!!!!  I LOVED IT!!!!
The news was really really cool.......
of course most of it was just made up..... except for every goddam little thing that Sarah Palin said.... all that shit was the honest to gosh truth.  No shit.... I went and fact checked every fucking thing she has said since she lost the election for the Repubs..... and it is ALL ttruthy..... you CAN see Russia from her backyard..... with a good satellite dish.
.... and everything Glenn Beck told he is true....abso-fucking -lutely....... Why would that guy lie?  Gees.... you just have to look him in the eye and realize that there is not a hint of dishonesty in his heart.  Really Really Riley!  Hey.... it was a Great year for Jesus, too, not that he really gives a shit...... Seriously...... I just saw him last night.... yea, I DID!  I mean, the really really real Jesus.....Hey, it was really cool in a really cool way.... see, it was just me and Jesus and Jerry Garcia & the Devil playing Monopoly last night...oh, and let me tell you... whatever they say about Satan&stuff...the dude has some really kick ass smoke!....but anyways... there we were and Jesus told me, .... straight up... he doesn't give a shit about Earth....Nope....he's planning a whole new Galaxy, he said, and is gonnas make it look just like Disney World.  That Jesus, whatta card! And he cheats at Monopoly, too!  I called the sucker on it and you know what he said?  Really Really!  He goes, "Fuck you jimm, I'm God, see.. & I can do whatever I Goddam well please!" Well he had me there.
Anyways.......Where was I?  Oh... talking news.....aw, shit
I doan wanna talk about the news anymore..... It's just all so fair and balance, see, Fox tells me so,  that I wanna puke.  & you betcha Betty after what I ate last nigh, OHHH....nobody wants to see that.  I started with just some popcorn.... and moved right on to some very good chick&garlic pizza.... and then Jesus, remember him?... has these really rreally good brownies and we scarfed a bunch of those and the Devil brought cake....wowsers.... really really good,,,,, they don't call it Devil's food for nothing.... Damn.... and then Jerry Garcia had some ice cream, said someone named some after him, go figure, and then we had some Oreos and cold milk, that was strictly my idea, c,mon I do have a few good ones once in awhile....really I do.  But anyways, where was I?  Oh, News




....oh yea.... right before I fell asleep I thought I saw a headline about Peace and the Worl.  Now I doan know where in the World Worl is........ but hot Shit&stuff...... in 2011 I am moving to the Worl.. iffen I can find it.  Maybe Jesus will tell me when he wakes up from his nap... boy was that guy stoned.





 Anyways.... I'm gonna go to Oblio's this afternoon and have a couple of beer with Joe, and Billy and Carl........  Billy is buying the free popcorn..... and tomorrow is a big old brand new WORL. peace&stuff







Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Quit making sense

 

 

"The Single Worst Wisconsin Supreme Court Decision I can Remember "


 There is a Sheriff in my neck of the woods  who, though he writes on mostly Wisconsington/local issues, makes a tremendous amount of sense and has been  increasingly a source for new and interesting thoughts and comments.  His latest post provides a strange and chilling link .... about the criminalization of youth....
Checki it out
The Chief

....it';s worth the read.

Monday, December 27, 2010

Bacon and fruitcakes

Hey.... I don't do recipes.... mostly.  I mean, if I make something totally awesome.... I keep it to myself. However, this past Christmas eve my nephew celebrated the birth of Baby Bacon Jesus by whipping up a slew of bacon-themed appetizers...  This one was awesome.....and I say awesome in a totally awesome way....... So just a little post-yule treat for everyone....  I would have sent some, but I ate 'em.... you have to make your own.

  • 12 slices Bacon, cut in half
  • 24 dried apricot halves
  • 1/2 cup plum jam
  • Heat oven to 350 degrees farenheit.
  • Wrap 1/2 slice of Bacon around an apricot half, secure with a toothpick.
  • Place on ungreased cookie sheet and bake 20–25 minutes or until the Bacon is brown & crisp.
  • Turn once during baking.
  • While the Bacon is cooking mix the jam & soy sauce in a saucepan and cook over low heat until the jam has melted and mixed with the soy sauce.
  • Remove from oven and place on paper towels to remove excess grease.
  • Serve dipping sauce with the bacon-apricot appetizer
But I would like to send a gift 
Happy Happy...Merry Merry....  for all my Internet-bloggy friends .... I have fruitcake
  


Tuesday, December 21, 2010

If all things are relative......

When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, you think it's only a minute. But when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, you think it's two hours. That's relativity

Einstein
......... how come I get the minute on the stove all the time?

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Starry Starry night.... deux

Ok.  I need to get this up, get this on and get this over.
It has been bothering me all these years, see, so this year I am taking this story, wrapping it in the nicest goddam Christmas paper I can find and walk out in the woods and leave it there.  At least figuratively. Leave it.
See, the thing of it is my older brother and I have never been close.  He picked on me when we were kids, but not to an extent greater than what big brothers do, and I used to pick on my little brother, too, until he grew much taller than I did and that made teasing him somewhat dangerous.  There never was a bit of malice or hatred between my older brother and I ..... we just didn't communicate well.  We still see each other at some family gatherings, and he is generous with his family and nephews and nieces... and he is extremely kindly.  Really.  It was just him and I didn't... talk.  In the 27 years since his son died I don't think we have exchanged more than ten, twenty sentences.  When our father died I did a eulogy at the church, and it was a great one even if I say so, and he came to me afterward and said, "Nice speech."  That was it.  When his daughter and my son graduated together at UW-Oshkosh I hosted a small event for all the out of town folks.  He told me, " Nice party." That was it.  He also went and paid the bar bill without asking.  It was just the way things settled in.  All in all, no big deal.

Nicholas' funeral was no big deal back in 1983 either.  Small.  The family was small  back then.  I think there were only ten of us at the cemetery. But then Nick was small, too, just three months short of his second birthday.  The box that held his ashes was small too.  I think there was a priest there who said something, but I don't remember.  It was probably small as well.

He had started getting sick just a few months after his first birthday. No big deal, kids get sick alot.  It's what they do.  And you take them to the doctor and then back to the doctor and then to a specialist that the Doctor recommends and the to a different specialist that that specialist recommends and none of this aided by a little boy who cannot talk or tell you what hurts where, whose whole world has spun into days and nights of hurt and all he really has is the love his parents can give him.  One day the Love and the Hurt arrive together at the Mayo clinic and the parents are told their son has a brain tumor.

Now, I know there are other stories like this.  I know it has happened in different ways to different  folks..... it has.  But not to anyone close to me and I hope it never does again and I have nothing but heart for those folks who may have to go through it.  The deal here is that they were told that, in the miracle year of 1983 there was an operation they could perform that maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe could do the trick. That in the un-miracle year of 1982  there would have been no maybes.  So this is GOOD NEWS.  There is pain and there is love and there is HOPE!

The bad news that came three days later is that the operation was a success but the patient was just too small and too weak.  The cure killed him.  And then there were ten of us standing with a small box of ashes in a small cemetery on a small hill in Western Wisconsin. It's a big wide old world and it is amazing how small it can be sometimes.
I don't know what was said between the Hunter and his wife back then.  I'm guessing there was a lot of the 'blame' game about who should have done something sooner or whatever.

 But he made the drive down from Minneapolis that night alone. And now he sat in the middle of the Christmas that his father had made.  The lights, ribbons, presents, bows candles.......with just me and Cheryl, Mom and Dad. He congratulated us on our engagement.  I think there was small talk of how the drive was and he casually said his wife was not well, but mostly it was about a half hour of such silence that you could smell the heart ache in the room.  I could see my father's eyes trying to wrap around the grief of his son.... and could tell that the Old Man knew that all the Christmas he had made was only making the hurt worse, and I could sense that the Man wished he could just put it all away.  That was all there was for a good half hour and then the Hunter said,"I'll be right back," and left the room and was up the stairs.  We thought he had gone out for a smoke.  No smoking in my mother's house, but when he didn't come back in another half hour Dad said, "go find him."
There was a clean easy snowfall that night.  When I got outside there was maybe and inch of new snow, no wind and a very starry night. The flakes we light and downy.  His footsteps were easy to follow.  I thought at first that he was headed the three blocks towards my sister's house, but they veered off.  I then speculated he was headed toward Gus's house to find our younger brother, but when I got there the house was empty.  And then I knew.
I back tracked to our parent's house and his car was gone.  I got in mine and drove the miles south to the cemetery where I found one set of tire tracks heading in...... and another headed out.  The only tracks in the fresh snow.  I wasn't going to find him, but I drove in to the grave anyway.  I could see where he had stood and I stood there too.  The snow had stopped and the night sky in the country was a world of starry lights covering a land of pure white. "I love you," I whispered.  And then said it out loud.  Then shouted it.
Now,  maybe you are what you eat and  maybe what you breathe and maybe you should write about what you know......and then sometimes all there is .... is a starry night on fresh fallen snow.  And some pain...... and maybe.... some love. Maybe.

Nicholas Orion
2-17-1982
11-28-1983

Hunt with the Angels, kiddo.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

in media res...Christmas 1983

In 1983 I owned a ’66 Rambler Ambassador 990 Sedan. Light green with a huge steering wheel, white wall tires and more chrome that you will find on any five cars today. That sucker was in mint condition and I loved it more than I ever thought I could love a car. There was a style and a panache to it that I really can't describe fully.  I knew no one else that owned a Rambler or for that matter, no one who owned a car without a substantial amount of rust and dents. I had lots of rust and dents coming in my future but on Christmas eve 27 years ago…… it was all clean and fresh and neat and tidy and I am driving that machine straight west on Highway 21 across the state and beside me,the woman who had just agreed to marry me.  She was smooth, young and as pretty as a whistled tune breezed  through the woods. We were going to tell the folks on Christmas Eve about the engagement.  If I could ever put a feeling in a can to save it, would have been that three hour drive. How’s that for polished chrome? My only concern was for the Hunter, if he would come home and how he would be, but it was a thought I kept to myself in my back pocket.  I was more concerned about the Old Man and how he would be this Christmas.

The real deal, if there ever was a real deal about telling the truth and there isn't one that I know of, but my father invented Christmas. Straight up stuff, he did.  Two trees would be decorated, one in the front window and a second in the family room in the basement.  A wreath on the front door, ribbons and bough would be festooned on  the mantle, plates of cookies, and candies and nuts& chocolates would be decked  on the dining table and a pot of cider laced with cinnamon and orange peel simmering on the stove. Orchestral Christmas music on the stereo.  He would always wait in the front room for everyone to arrive. His sister, Aunt Helen, was already there when we pulled up.  So was my sister and her husband and their two young boys.  I guess it will be hard to see that house this year after remembering how all the arrivals then were treated then, how the house looked then.   Mom is in a nursing home now, the house mostly empty, the dishes are gone, the closets are bare and all the Christmas ornaments sit like bones in a pile of boxes in the old family room but back then all those bones were fresh, promises and love, and Dad, if he truly did not invent Christmas, was one of it's foremost practitioners, adherents, and the family room with the adjoining kitchenette was where he strategized it, directed it and admired it. Dad, I believe, thought of Christmas as one big nest of family and he would decorate as a way of welcoming all back, his only real wish for Christmas.


The afternoon was creeping easily into darkness when my young brother, all six foot eight of him, the rumble of his deep canyon voice of him, the sack full of unwrapped presents of him, arrived.  John eschewed wrapping presents, or would wrap them in old newspaper---"don't waste trees".  John's presents were always things like jars of honey and herbal teas or hand carved walking sticks, wild bird seed, home made beer or mead or wine.... it was a goodness he never learned to knit or there would have been wild hats and scarves, too. He would bring himself into a room and immediately the room would become small and then he would laugh and smile and like the magic only a giant heart can produce, the room would expand three times it's walls.   The Hunter, though, my older brother, and his wife had still not arrived from the Cities and, with a dread, I began to wonder if they would.
Dad's eyes showed the pain he felt when he finally said we would save some diner, but the rest of us should eat.  Even as he spoke I could see him look to the front window for that last set of headlights, that last piece of his nest. We all knew his heart was sinking, the old man's, and that he couldn't really shake off what had taken place three weeks earlier, that this year would not be Christmas as usual no matter how much he tried to make it so.
Dinner ended, the dishes cleaned and still no headlights in the drive and the old man's eyes, with a last glance out the window, looked at me for help.  "He'll be here," I said, " Let's go open some presents before the little guys get tired."  We opened family presents on Christmas Eve, Santa brings more in the morning. And we went to Christmas in the family room.
My older brother had always been my father's favorite despite all his efforts not to have favorites.  Chuck tramped the woods that my father, with his polio afflicted leg, never could.  Who fished, canoed, camped, traveled.  Older brother got married young, at twenty, and provided most of his and his wife's food by hunting and fishing.  I remember the stories.... how he would take to the woods after his college classes for white bass or deer or rabbit.  It was a passion that never left the Hunter.  Even when he turned into a Big Biz executive,,, the hunting and fishing were still a big part of his life.  Dad thought that was the stuff and that Christmas he eyes kept looking toward the window in the basement that looked out to the drive. for the headlights that should have been there long ago.
Now, all these years later, I have never been able to produce a Christmas  with all the trimmings like my father did.  I tried and I guess when my kids were young I pulled it off pretty good, but what happened that year has always rather prevented me from really getting into the 'Spirit' as it were, and even as I write this now, that year still chills me.
Here is how it went.

We opened the presents. And waited.  Cheryl and I announce our engagement and it was good.  Despite my brother not being there we brought in a little cheer.  My sister and her husband took their boys home as the hour grew later.  Aunt Helen retired. John went off to see his old HS buddy Gus. Cheryl and I kept vigil for the headlights which, finally, at about 10pm did arrive.  The Hunter had come home.  But without his wife.  His son was not with him either, but we knew Nicholas would not be along this year.... we had buried him in the cemetery south of town just three weeks previous.

I have to break this off.  I need to take a walk.

Friday, December 17, 2010

KT Tunstall | 2000 Miles (live)




They say you are what you eat in which case I am a bizarre combination of potatoes, peanut butter, chicken cordon bleu, hamburger helper, Cajun meatloaf, Oreos, smoked oysters, extra sharp Cheddar, ham hocks and beans, cornflakes, eggs benedict, bouillabaisse, brie, bratwurst, and whatever else is expedient at any moment I am hungry and have neither the ambition to cook nor time and enthusiasm. I truly do not want to be what I eat. And I have always been suspicious of that whimsical designation of ‘they’. I have met enough of them. I could say that I am what I breathe, but that would be Marlboro’s and whatever pot I can find.. Again, just like eating, breathing is an expediency that I tolerate merely because, when you think about it, it is more a reflex than a choice..

Ralph, when I could still afford to see him and before he retired, would ask me about my dreams. I would never talk about them and that was the cool thing about Ralph that when I would just shake my head and snicker a bit, and call him an asshole, is that he would just smile and never push the issue. I guess he was satisfied that he made me think about them, even if I would not talk about them, but the truth is that I remembered the nightmares more than I remembered any dreams, which I always separated, you know, A dream being where you want to be and a nightmare is where you have been or a place you do not want to go to. Sometimes those sessions with Ralph would piss me off so much that I would immediately head to the store and get a couple of cans of sardines in mustard sauce and a couple of packs of cigarettes, some Ritz crackers and some cheap beer, thus ensuring nightmares. Ralph would piss me off… but he would also stock me up with free Prozac from samples he would get, he knew I was on a tight budget. I think he also knew that Prozac and sardines produce great nightmares and that wrestling with nightmares beats titling at windmills. I miss Ralph

So I cannot be what I eat, that is mostly crap, and I cannot be what I breathe, that being mostly toxic,, and what I dream is nonexistent and the nightmares have become merely friends I drink with, chumps that never buy a round, so I am stuck with what I write and they, there they are again, say that you should write what you know

Lately… that is nothing. No, that is incorrect. It is a bunch of scrawls in tablets and notepads. Sentence fragments…mostly, but occasionally whole paragraphs. But I do have something. That I haven't written.... that slaps me in the face every Christmas. Maybe I will get to it this year. It is a story 27 years old. I've breathed it, ate it, dreamt it.... it is what I know. Maybe tomorrow.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

all I want for Christmas

Only four days till film-maker/boy genius/  comes home from Portland.
He's already told me how "little" time he will have to spend with me and the family...... there are all his adoring friends he must must must hang out with.
On a positive note.... and remembering what his college apartment looked like.... I am rather relieved that he be staying at his moms.


Wednesday, December 15, 2010

What I saw while in search of my feet

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you -- Nobody -- Too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise -- you know!

How dreary -- to be -- Somebody!
How public -- like a Frog --
To tell one's name -- the livelong June --
To an admiring Bog! 


Emily Dickinson

just feeling oblique.  I need a haircut and a beer.... and while it is too early for the later... and overdue for the former,.............

Monday, December 13, 2010

About the Ex & stuff

OK.... so here and there I have said small disparaging remarks about my ex-wife...... and gees I think that is perfectly normal... I mean, we are divorced, something did not work out, right?  It wasn't about sex, drugs or violence or taking out the garbage or snoring.  It just wasn't working. And just about everyone who is DIVORCED has something not so nice to say about  their ex, like gees..... but mostly I say it tongue in cheek.

But the real deal is, Her&I, have a great divorce.
Really.
We had been 'together a long time....I am six years older and I met her when she was 17.  Sounds funny, huh?  She had graduated from HS a semester early and I met her in my taxi when she would get late night rides home from her waitress job and I would see her in the college bars...gees how was I to know?  After awhile she would call for my cab specifically and bring me onion rings and hamburgers for the ride.  Now that is love.  So we dated for a few years and when she was in need of a room mate for her last year of college I just told her to move in with me. I paid the rent and bills and she bought groceries. And three years after that we were married.  And then we had two children.  It was good stuff.  Nice even.  I mean, there is more to all of that, but who wants to hear?

The whole thing fell apart a few years after children.  By then she had a Masters Degree in what I call "Teaching Highly Fucked-Up People" and was working in a Wisconsin DOC facility.  Working with sex offenders.  Really really nasty people.  Maybe beyond nasty.  "Really-Truly-Extremely-Fucked-Up-People. Enough that you just can't leave all your emotions at work and bringing those emotions home wasn't working out with me.  Well... again, who wants to hear all that shit.

So it wasn't working.  And seeing as I had better health insurance and no one was "seeing" anyone else...we didn't get a divorce until about five years after the separation.  The real deal, though, is that after a bad initial six months.... we reconciled just enough to decide, collectively, that we would raise two children not ripped apart by adults.  And it WORKED!

 Well.... mostly worked.  He still hasn't a clue about getting a decent haircut..... and she runs on her own clock.....MT...Miriam Time...which can be irritating, but we have never had problems with them.  Or never anything beyond the "Ward&June" kind of problems.  Like yesterday.

See, Miriam had already called me saturday nigh to say she was snowed in just off campus at a friend's house, car was stuck. "Stay there, " I said, "we'll worry about it in the morning.  It was already 9pm and there was no way to deal with it at night, it was a blizzard.
Her Mom calls me sunday morning.  "Miriam is stuck."  Well, I told her I already knew and we arranged to go pull her out.  Three is better than two when pulling cars out of snow.  I found the tow rope, grabbed a shovel and the Ex and I went off to digg the Kid out.
Well, by the time we got there the Kid's car is plowed in under about four feet of snow.  The Ex starts shoveling the front, and I am working on the side and the Kid is sweeping off the windows and crawling in to start the thing.  It really wasn't that bad; in about an hour, we are out.  For about 5 minutes.  See, I told the Kid I would drive her car, cause I am really really good about driving in snow, so it only took me 5 minutes to slip across the street and plow into a snow bank.  Well, by pre-arrangement, I told the Ex we would meet her at this Fast Food joint that I had noticed DID have a plowed drive.  So the EX is gone, the Kid and I start digging out again... with the help of some really cool passers-by.  Twenty minutes later... out again.  Five minutes later, on the way to the Fast Food joint, the Kid and I notice a college girl stuck on a side street, spinning tires, totally mired.  The Kid looks at me and I knew we were going to push THAT car out, too.  And we did.  I can't begin to tell you how happy I am by this time.... especially since the Ex does not have a cell and we really don't know where she is.  And where SHE is... is stuck about a block away from the Fast Food joint.... but we don't know and are sitting at said grease trap place wondering what we are going to do now.  Which thankfully took only ten minutes until the EX pulled in... having some passer-bys ( is it Passers-by or Passer-bys?)  push her out.

Well.... by now I am in a crabby mood, very cold, very wet, and feeling ugly (on top of just LOOKING ugly)..... and am in no way mood enhanced when the EX starts laughing at me.  But she buys the coffe and the three of us just sit a bit and talk.  About the Holidays.  Her brother is coming home in ten days and all four of us are getting together for the Un-Family Christmas.

See.... the deal is, The Ex and I worked very hard not making the kids victims, too.  Through the last 15 years we always made sure that the kids came first.... PTA, football, soccer games, violin recitals, plays, it didn't matter, we could still go to such events together. We reached a mutual decision that we could still be civil, maybe even friendly....especially when it came to whatever the kids needed....whether it was pulling them out of snow banks........ or letting them know that they both had two parents that loved them very much, and even if the marriage didn't work.....the divorce did.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

this is stupid....and dumb too

 this is goddam ridickulus.... rickulaous ..... riddukulus..... pretty goddam stupid.... I'm migrating south..... anyone got a cheap sub=let condo in Floridqa?

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Love at first Byte

Love in Wisconsin!

A Sheboygan woman accused of biting off her husband’s tongue while kissing him was charged this morning with felony mayhem and ordered to undergo a mental evaluation.

Karen Lueders, 57, of 2833 Windepoint Court, allegedly severed half of Willard Lueders’ tongue about 11 p.m. Monday, police said.


She now faces a rarely used felony – related to intentional disfigurement or mutilation – that carries a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.

Karen Lueders made an initial appearance this morning before Judge L. Edward Stengel, but that was adjourned when Stengel ordered that she undergo a mental evaluation.
“There is certainly a basis for the court to question her ability to understand the nature of these proceedings and assist in her defense,” Stengel said.
Assistant District Attorney Jim Haasch had requested the evaluation, calling the behavior “very bizarre to say the least.” He said Karen Lueders had experienced “very manic episodes” of late.
Stengel ordered her held on a $5,000 cash bond.
Karen Lueders did not speak during the court appearance, but she leaned over to a reporter as she was escorted out in handcuffs, saying, “I love you, it’s too bad you don’t listen.” While leaving the courtroom she continued in the same sing-song voice, saying, “I love you. Karen Lueders.”

The complaint filed this morning said Karen Lueders was “still carrying a New Year’s horn in her hand and singing Christmas carols” outside her house as the first police officers arrived on scene.

As officers asked what kind of help was needed, she blew the horn in the officer’s ear. She also threw a coffee cup at police.

Police found Willard Lueders, 79, in a bedroom holding gauze to his mouth.

Emergency responders told police his tongue had been bitten off, and he confirmed by nodding to officers’ questions that his wife bit off his tongue.

Lueders also told officers she had bitten off her husband's tongue.

Police had come to the home in response to a 911 call from William Lueders.
In a later written statement, he said the incident began when he went into the bathroom while his wife was on the toilet.

When he leaned over to kiss her, she went into a “manic state,” grabbing his genitals and biting off his tongue.

Willard Lueders said his wife had been behaving oddly in the preceding days, speaking very fast and talking about spiritual things.

Willard Lueders was taken to Aurora Sheboygan Memorial Medical Center and then transferred to Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital in Wauwatosa, where doctors were working to reattach the tongue.

About half of his tongue was bitten off.

Online court records list no prior convictions for Karen Lueders.

... and they didn't say what kind of trailer they lived in!!

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Traditional Traditions

Without our traditions, life would be as shaky as...as...as a fiddler on the roof!
-Tevye

Yupperz!  Tradition.  See, The Easter Bunny hides the goodies and Santa leaves them under the tree in plain sight.  Tradition.  Chicago dyes the river green on St Patrick's Day and you eat Corned Beef.  You have fireworks on the 4th of July... you have a beer and a bratwurst at a baseball game.... the bride tosses the Bridal bouquet ... the Tooth Fairy leaves a quarter under your pillow....you don't get to screw until at least the third date.....all of the MOST important things in life have traditions.  I am not making that up!!!!  And most importantly......


Begining with the 1947 Rose Bowl game, the game's participants were established as the champions of what are now the Big Ten Conference and the Pac-10 s!

 It was the Grand Daddy....until the asshole crackers weren't happy with Tradition.  

NO, uh-uh..nowz we gotta BCS.....Bull-Crap&Shit!! Bowl Championship Series my ass!!!  Oh, it WAS  going to, once and for all, figure out who the National College football champion was.... right.  And HOW were THEY gonna to do this?  Well, the best I can figure, they had three criteria......

I. Harris Interactive Poll (1/3rd)
Replaces the AP Poll. The first poll will be released October 10, then weekly through December 5. A team's score in the Harris poll will be divided by 2,825, which is the maximum number of points any team can receive if all 113 voting members rank the same team as Number 1. Example: 2,825 / 2,825 = 1.0. If a team receives a total of 113 voting points, an average of 25th place, their BCS quotient of this component would be .04. (1.0 / 25 = 0.04).

ya, add two divide by 8 add three eggs, beat well and bake at 350! And they were not done!!!

II. Coaches Poll (1/3rd)
A team's score in the USA Today poll will be divided by 1,475, which is the maximum number of points any team can receive if all 59 voting members rank the same team as Number 1. Example: 1,475 / 1,475 = 1.0. If a team receives a total of 59 voting points, an average of 25th place, their BCS quotient of this component would be .04. (1.0 / 25 = 0.04).

Now what does that mean?  C'mon  you expect the average beer soaked  football fan will figure that out after reading pt 1?????  No goddam way.... and THEY are still not done!!!  Nope...


III. Computer rankings (1/3rd)
The computer rankings percentage is calculated by dropping the highest and lowest ranking for each team and then dividing the remaining total by 100, the maximum possible points. (Example: the 6 rankers have Team A ranked 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, and 4. Take away the 2 and 4 which leaves an average of 3rd place.
1/3...1/3....1/3  gees, Shit&whiskers!  And that is sane and rational!!!????

OK... Wisco is in the Rose Bowl.  11-1 and they kicked major ass all year....but TCU???? Shit, sounds like an illegal drug that they hand out at those Rave parties in New York or some shit you give cattle so they won't get Mad Cow disease.  I want Oregon or Stanford.... or anyone from the Pac 10.

I want some tradition in football as well as in life.  It's only fair and just. And really, when you think about it, more fun.  Next thing you know THEY  are going to move New Year's eve to the second Saturday of January following the first quarter   moon after Woody Hayes rises from the dead.


Sunday, December 5, 2010

It's chilly outside.... I gotz a little sunshine hereeee & Elvis

 ...Bubba just posted a video he made as a wedding gift for a couple of his friends.  Now it is what it is... but on a chilly dark day.... it kind of warmed me up and besides, I have nothing elese.  check it out
 here

gees... iffen I ever get married again I think I will hire him to make me a video.  I wonder if he will give me a good rate.


oh.... and here's Elvis

Friday, December 3, 2010

It's Snow Joke

gone south

Michelle Bachman gets lost in her car in a snow storm. She remembered what her dad had once told her. "If you ever get stuck in a snow storm, wait for a snow plow and follow it".Pretty soon a snow plow came by, and she started to follow it. She followed the plow for about forty-five minutes.Finally the driver of the truck got out and asked her what she was doing.She explained that her dad had told her if she ever got stuck in a snow storm, to follow a plow.The driver nodded and said, "Well, I'm done with Wal-Mart; now you can follow me over to K-Mart."

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

from here to there and back again...maybe

Sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way to come back a short distance correctly.
Edward Albee 
 ....I think I am still walking on my way out. But then....


If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
Henry Miller


...which makes a whole bunch of sense, but then Miller also said...


Why do we not give in all directions? Is it fear of losing ourselves? Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves.

So Miller somehow is saying the same thing as Albee... maybe we should all  just get lost...of which I can proudly say I am an aficionado of the experience.. .. but at the same time I think it is not where we are, or where we have been or what we come back to.... or where it is we wish to be,  but who we travel with.....

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) 

ee cummings 


...... and sometimes I feel like someone drove away while I was inside the station getting coffee and cigarettes.

Trust your friends, love your Lovely....... just make sure you keep the keys in your pocket.

Monday, November 29, 2010

almost five o'clock somewhere



  A statesman is an easy man, he tells his lies by rote.
A journalist invents his lies, and rams them down your throat.
So stay at home and drink your beer and let the neighbors vote.
William Butler Yeats

Some Guinness was spilt on the barroom floor
When the pub was shut for the night.
When out of his hole crept a wee brown mouse
And stood in the pale moonlight.

He lapped up the frothy foam from the floor
Then back on his haunches he sat.
And all night long, you could hear the mouse roar,
“Bring on the goddamn cat!”
unknown


Fill with mingled cream and amber,
I will drain that glass again.
Such hilarious visions clamber
Through the chamber of my brain.
Quaintest thoughts, queerest fancies
Come to life and fade away.
What care I how time advances;
I am drinking ale today.
Poe

Friday, November 26, 2010

hodge podge

Not much of much..... the Thanksgimme holiday is over.... ate drank slept.  All is good. 
So I just have stupid random bits...... Lee, from Oshkosh Beer posted a great history on the history of Oblio's..... actually did a two part article on a great location that has been a tavern since 1874.  check it out.  He was also real kind to me and scanned a cartoon for me.

See, like I mentioned a few posts ago, I used to write small articles for the old college newspaper.  Mostly just short stuff.  I wrote one in which I was distressed about the price of coffee at the Student Union going from, get this,  a dime to twelve cents.  I rather ranted that we should just grind up students and brew them.  Well, it was sorta funny...... but the funny part was the illustration they ran with the article...... me looking into a coffee cup.....
.....  the guy in the cup was our editor at the college paper, dude named Scott Hassett, who just recently lost in his bid to be Attorney Generral of Wisconsin.  I knew him just a bit....and really would have thought him better suited to be a writer for National Lampoon than an attorney.

The Illustrator was a bit more interesting.  He was a great artist, loved comic books and lived just down the street from me one year.  He was a good friend of one of my roommates who was also a comic book junkie.  His name was Mark Gruenwald.... and he is now in the comic book hall of fame after being an editor for Marvel Comics. You can read more (here) from wikipedia.

He died from a heart ailment he didn't know he had.  Now, I didn't know Mark all that well..... but he was well thought of at the newspaper as a sweet guy.  He drew a comic strip for the paper that was extremely first rate.

The real deal, as far as I am concerned, is that when he died in 1996 they followed his last wishes....... his ashes were mixed with ink and used to illustrate a comic book.

I want to be mixed in hops and brewed.  I think it would be a funny, bitter beer.  There ar worse things.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Pornography & Turkey!!! A winning combination!

Yupperz...... in just a couple of days America is gonna descend in to an orgy of Porn!  Food Porn!
Yessirree, Bob!  We are gonna get a big one, and stuff it and shove it in our mouths until we cannot stand.  Then, maybe, have a cigarette and ask, "Was it good for you too, Dear?"
Now some may have duck, or ham or chicken, or venison or goose porn.....replete with taters, and cranberries, and squash, and wild rice and that stupid green bean casserole thingee, and pumpkin pie and apple pie or mince meat pie &jello salads& rolls& breads&&&&.....now, I am not disparaging a good meal, far from it, but it does bring to mind that there are starving folks out there and iffen you don't at least drop off a can of cramed corn at your local food pantry, well, gosh. shame on you!
Moi will just stumble down to the  Roxy and purchase my feast at a reasonable $10.95.  I get together with my family on Satzurdae  The Kid goes with her Mom to her family for the Holiday.  All in all it suits me fine.
Of course I do have my special dessert that I will indulge in while watching the hapless Detroit Lions lose to whom-ever.


.... and that works for me.  I have kinda fallen off the 'Holiday Wagon'  Expectations are way to high and I tend to be a little low key on events that involve spending shitloads of money I do not have
but at the same time hope everyone enjoys whatever event is planned. Really. Truly.


Just take some time to think about what you are really grateful for, what you are thankful for, and pick up the p;hone and call someone you love. If you are a churchy-person, say a prayer for peace& make a special plea to whatever God you worship for more kindness and understanding in the world.  If you have had a great meal... make sure you say thank to whoever made it.  Smile a little bit for someone, whistle a tune as you walk the street, wave to someone. Give creepy Aunt Agnes a hug.  Don't tell Uncle Bud he's an asshole when he farts in the middle of dinner. Tell someone there baby is cute even when it looks like Winston Churchill. Forgive your brother for being a jerk for the last thirty years  Aw, shucks  just be nice, OK?


Otherwise.. it's just food porn.


Don't get me wrong....... I like porn...check out my favorite magazine below

... and I will indulge! 
have a good Thanksgiving!!!!!!!

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Something Fishy


I have to be an honest person, and perhaps a bad son, but the truth of the matter is my mother was a bad cook.  Not BAD as in she burned the food or under-cooked it or did anything despicable with the family meals, it was just that all-in-all, our food  was never very interesting or exciting or original.  Her idea of seasoning was pepper and salt.  Exotic spice was a dash of paprika.  Hold it..... I mean she did make a GREAT Thanksgiving turkey &dressing, actually fabulous, and I will miss it this year, but that is just one day out of the year, see....  and her apple pie was to kill for!  &&& the Chocolate cookies were fantastic.....but again, as much as I would like it, a steady diet of cookies and pie is not really sustainable. Nope....she serve up just boiled potatoes and butter ... a salad was just a bit of shredded  lettuce, dump some bottled dressing on it.... and it's hard to screw up oatmeal or french toast. Breakfast was safe.

Ok... I got a point to make, and it isn't about bad mouthing my mother's cooking.  I'll get to it.
 MAYBE.
See, of all the bland  dishes my mother made, my favorite one to eat and hate was Tuna Casserole. Yupperz, and being a good Catholic family, we ate it every friday. (well, I must admit she would surprise us once in awhile with fish sticks and boxed macaroni&cheese, served with only the best bottled tartar sauce!)  Now, there are a lot of things you can do with a tuna casserole; add peas, cheese, beans, different noodles, onions, but none of that ever entered my mother's imagination.  Here's the recipe.  I have it memorized.  Two cans of cream of mushroom soup, a couple cans of tuna, elbow macaroni and a potato chip crust.  That 's it.  Oh, a little pepper, too.  Just boil the noodles, mix the soup with milk, combine with noodles top with chips and bake until reasonably firm. Serve with a side of applesauce.  98% OF ALL FRIDAYS!!!!!  I mean there were the fish sticks and occasionally Dad would pity us and take us out for fish at the VFW, but there never was grilled Halibut or baked Salmon or fried panfish....nope.....Tuna Casserole.
Now.... the thing of it was I played football on Friday's all through High School so Mom, being considerate, would make it early on football game days so I could have a healthy meal before the game.  I really didn't mind.  Like I said, I both liked it and hated it at the same time and some of our 'away' games were over an hour bus ride, so I usually scarfed up a bunch of it at four in the afternoon...with applesauce and then!!!!!! invariably puke it up sometime during the third quarter of the game.  By the time I was a Junior the manager would see me hacking with dry mouth and bring a bucket.  Sometimes I never made it off the field.  Once the other team was looking at third and long and I puked right before the snap. Mouth-guard out, right on my helmet bars. down my jersey.... their left guard wouldn't even block me and I sacked the quarter back for an eight yard loss. By the time I was a Senior that Tuna Casserole was legendary.  I came to look at it as a good luck charm, seeing as we only lost three games in three years.
It was honest, unlike this email I got from Sarah Palin's PAC

Dear Friends, (fuck off bitch)


Time is running out on SarahPAC's exclusive offering of Sarah Palin's soon to be released America by Heart. We are very happy to be able to extend our wonderful supporters this chance to get a signed copy of Gov. Palin's America by Heart for each gift of $100 or more.

Sarah's new book makes a great gift for the Christmas Season. With a signed copy of America by Heart, .......(yadda yadda bull shit bullshit)....
so please seize this opportunity while you can.

As with all donations these funds will be used .....( ya gimmee a break)  to support individual candidates around the country who passionately and consistently support...... (my daughter's TV career)  ......and those core principles.

We want to thank all of you for the wonderful support .......( ya, blow me!)
The conservative resurgence we witnessed earlier this month ....( is enough to gaqg a maggot)

Happy Thanksgiving and God Bless America!


At least My Mom and her Tuna Casserole were honest. 
Sarah Palin stinks like oil-money drenched fish.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Just thinking

I thought I would leave the pine trees in the forest this Holiday season....... and....maybe......









just make my own.













j

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Morose

OK.  I'm really not as morose as I think I am.  And after a couple of beers I can no longer spell morose...and after four, think it a strange flower with thorns.  So anyways.... while shifting through the book I found these lyrics to a song I liked a lot, a Leo Kottke.song.  When I was on the forensic circuit I would often read lyrics to rock songs rather than real 'poems'.  Didn't help me win anything, but I wasn't doing it for a prize in the first place.










Morning is the Long Way Home
I heard your voice at midnight
By the river shore
I saw your child sleeping
Behind an open door
The moon was in the river
Shining up from the floor
And the fish swam like moonlight
Through your child's closing door
And morning is the long way home
The fisherman was drowning
By his broken heel
His screams were tiny bubbles
And his tongue made of steel
When he died his teeth made stones
For your lonely child to feel
And his eyes like prayers were quiet
When you heard his tongues of steel
And morning is the long way home
The ghost of ghosts was passing
And the grasses waved like hair
I Knew I'd die forgotten
I'm the whisper of your care
The water would surround me
And my body would despair
But my heart would understand
The door that's closing there
And morning is the long way home
     Leo Kottke


The deal was... I dug our some old Kottke albums that were stashed and sat around for a few hours.....the guy is one of the most eclectic acoustic guitar player EVER.  I have seen him about four or five times, the most memorable being twenty-one years ago when my daughter was six weeks old and we took her to the show because she was still being breast feed.  Fifth row.  To this day I believe it is why the Kid is mellow, talented and totally in love with her Dad.  Last year her and I went and saw him again at the Grand Opera House.  Valentines day.  I think we need to go to a show together again, soon.

Check out the video...... you have to click on the the word "rings" cause I am too stupid to do it any other way!!!...& it frustrates me...I am going back to a yellow tablet and a #2 pencil &sending out posts via pigeon!!!!

* there is another very cool version of " Rings"that Leo did a few years ago with Mike Gordon of Phish and the album "Sixty Six Steps".  The same album has a killer version of "Oh Well" the old  Fleetwood Mac written by Peter Green.  I do mean killer.  I am too lazy to find a link.  Knock yourself out.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Yesterday


 Somebody spoke and I went into a dream.......


It's all in the book.  A ticket to a movie at the Downer Theater in Milwaukke, $2.25. A lower box seat at County Stadium for a Brewer game, $5.00. A polo match at Uihlien Field, $1.75. "The Who" at Dane County Coliseum, &6.00. A Badger Game at Camp Randall $5.00.  And at the time I was taking home about $60 a week pushing a hack, plus tips and whatever i could make on the side selling imports from Mexico. ($90 per lb in lots of ten... retail at $15 an oz...do the math)  My share of the rent was $67.50, utilities included.  Cable was an extra $3.00 apiece,  We opted not to have a phone.  It's in the book.  Even the warning tickets, cause, see, I liked to push the taxi 35-40 in 25 zones.  Got a ticket once for running a stop.  Took that one to court, full trial, and got away with only a $10 fine.  That's in the book too.
And the little poems I used to like so well.

Stars
the human wars are not 
over
so I am riding this train 
north


My legs are long and hang
     over the sides

Little black music notes

stream
out of the smoke stack
and  spread
over the land


the people in the fields
straighten their backs 
for a moment
and wave


I am hanging on tight
     Gerald Lange

Poem
this love making is cloisters-fishing shacks
on the North Sea


the cold wind drives us 
together;
we spread its little teeth.
     William Rosenberg

There's a lot of them. Even some of mine which, to be honest, I didn't much care for thinking, like a parent of a grown child, that they could have done much better in life.  But that is just stuff&such and they are in the book too.
See, I scribbled while I was in college.  In between pushing that cab and selling imports and occasionally going to class.  Mostly on desks and toilet walls.  The shitter on the third floor of the library by the Government Docs dept and the faculty crapper in Radford Hall were some of the best reading rooms I ever visited.  But then I got caught.  My first 'published' poem was lifted off a desk in one of my journalism classes; someone had seen me write it, and the next thing I knew it was in the school newspaper and I was writing satire and color stories for them.
That's how the book started.  Clippings.  And then any old thing I liked.  Ticket stubs, menus, articles, cartoons, drawings..... just about anything I liked at that moment got pasted into the book.  Anything.  Well, someone said something and I dug it out ... after at least twenty-five years.  Such stuff!!!

"....in an atmosphere of blue snow, dim light, and extreme cold."
I didn't write that.  Wish I had.
"... sometimes when we are entertained by each other, we are bold about it, but just as frequently, it seems embarrassing, and we turn our faces aside."
Again, I wish.
There is an article I wrote about Transcendental Meditation.  Not a bad article, but then I remember that I came to think of TM as a crock of shit and that tequila and a good joint worked much better anyways.
Ronald Boeing, 22, was the last of 1,174 Wisconsin boys killed in Vietnam.  A 7 day unlimited travel Greyhound bus pass cost $76 during the Bicentennial. A photo of me from the Milwaukee Journal protesting out side of a Ronald Reagan campaign stop on campus in 1976.... all that is in the book, too.  Cards and drawings from Nancy.... who had legs that went on forever and  who took my heart and went fishing with it in a different lake.  Notes from Bonnie and Maureen and Suzanne..... folks who didn't fish.
I didn't really study in college....but, boy&howdy, did I get an education.

So I wrote a bit for the school newspaper but I also was in a bunch of drama productions, did some minor work for student government and joined the Varsity Debate team. All that while working and maintaining a  solid 2.4 grade point average.  I certainly wasn't a zealous activist .... this was all pragmatic.  The newspaper kept beer in the fridge that stored the film....the only place on campus you could drink at 11 am... being an actor assured you of possibilities for getting laid in odd places and in unique ways.  The debate thing was just something that enabled me to travel to strange and foreign places like Mankato, MN, Mt. Pleasant, MI, Eau Claire, WI, plus... the University gave a very generous per Diem food allowance and you got to stay in really really fancy Holiday Inns. Hey, I was living on $60 bucks a week or so and you could not count on the import business especially if you smoked a lot.  A guy has got to eat.

Looking at the book again really brought back memories.... articles that I had clipped about Nam and Nixon resigning and Agnew bullshit (least we think of the current crop of politicians as having invented bullshit) plus there were music reviews and all sorts of neato keen stuff.  And then I came across the kicker.... Tom's obituary.
He was the sweetest guy who ever put a shotgun in his mouth.  He had been President of the University Student Government and a pretty good friend.  He was the one who got me the gig booking guest speakers at the University... no pay, but free tuition for a  semester. A slim,clean, grinny guy with a wave and a smile for everyone.  Everyone liked Tom. Everyone.
I saw him the morning he pulled the trigger, at the laundro-mat. It was a combination laundry and liquor store, which really made wash day bearable.  So we were sitting there drinking a six pack and getting clean.  He was bumming..... he had graduated and couldn't find a job.... he was breaking up with his girl... he was sick of Oshkosh...the regular complaints.  I remember telling him I would keep an ear about for work and that everything would be ok. Later that night someone said that he had left a note explaining that he had bounced a check for the shotgun and would someone please take it back.  He left a neat stack of folded laundry in his room and had taken the sheets off the bed before he laid down for the last time.  He was a neat person. And only 22.
It's in the book.  Maybe I could have said something more, but probably not.  Word was he saw a lot of people that day... and no one really could tell he was that low.
See it is good to remember, it's good to have a book....... even if you are the only one who reads it.

There are places I remember all my life,
Though some have changed 

Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain.


All these places have their moments
Of lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I loved them all.

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