I GOT RAID AND SCONES TODAY

Checking out at Meijers today I wanted to text my bro to let him know I had just purchased bread and buns so he didn't buy them too.

I had thrown our half a loaf of moldy bread and a full pack of moldy buns the day before. Seems like we never get through a whole loaf anymore before it goes bad.

Since I had my hands full and I was on the move I thought I would try Talk To Text, on my Samsung Galaxy S4 so I hit the Google mic button and said "text Mike I got bread and buns today". 

I looked down at the phone and it was waiting for me to hit the send button, but when I looked at what Google thought I said I saw:

"I got raid and scones today"

Ok talk to text fail number 1:

I repeat into the Google mic once more, this time enunciating more clearly this time.

"I got bread and buns today" Galaxy S4 awaiting my approval I look down at the screen and saw, 

"I got brakes and gnomes today"

Aww shit! Now it's a quest and a pissing contest between me Samsung and Google.

I have a love hate relationship with modern technology, on one hand I spend a lot of time at the lake in a Ted Kaczynski sized fishing shed. 

I Like getting into the whole nature scene and living a scaled back and off the grid life down there with my 12 volt battery and gravity fed water systems.

On the flip side, this year I have added insulation, gas heater, solar panels and I now have my own Wifi hotspot through my new Verizon powered Samsung Galaxy S4 so I can use my IPad.

Kaczynski's rambling manifesto excoriated society's dependence on technology and he went on a long mail order terrorist tirade to make his "point".

Unabomber not-withstanding I have no digital ax to grind. I do see us all losing some of our human interaction to the 1's and 0's, or the 5 volts, 0 volts that make up our new form of communication however.

I mean not just the kids, I'm talking about us oldsters, my brother and sisters and even moms!

We will travel the dozens or hundred plus miles from all parts of Indiana and come together and sit there in a room with all of us peering into the warm glow of our collective IPads for crying out loud!

Oh well, I guess that's what we call progress isn't it?

Back to my story and the somewhat rambling point of all this, I tried one last time to "talk to text" even though I knew it would have been time saving to just call my brother or unleash my nimble thumbs and hand type the message that I clearly spoke, using my best mid-western accent, emphasizing the b's of bread and buns.

"I got bread and buns today!"

I looked down at the Googles interpretation and read:

"I got breast implants today"

Awwwww fuck it !

ABCESS OF MALICE

I know the literary world has been waiting with baited breath for my return. Well with a little prodding from baby sis here it is.

Alert the Pulitzer Committee!

Actually the need to vent has never been greater. I have been dealing abcess teeth for the last 4 or 5 months and this latest diet aid is one of the worst. I've had 4 root canals on two teeth and now I need another one, as soon as the swelling in the roof of my mouth goes away.

On the plus side I have never been in better shape in my life, other than the throbbing golf ball in my mouth.

In the past year I have lost and kept off over 55 lbs. I started eating healthy (most of the time) and I have had to buy some new clothes. 

In other news, I read somewhere today that those things that Obama is using to try and stop 90 plus year old WW2 vets from visiting open air monuments are no longer called barricades.

They are now known as "Barrycades".

Blocking off roadside vistas, closing down oceans. Something tells me this asshole spent a lot of time holding his breath and throwing hissy fits when he was a kid and didn't get his way.

His tactic of raining down the pain as much as possible should garner him plenty of negative press, if we had press instead of propaganda machines in this country.

The causation of the government shutdown being some Republicans trying to delay if not kill this debacle know derisively as Obamacare. Oh, and the Dems wanting to spend money we don't have to buy more votes.

It's very telling to me to hear Obama himself referring to the so called Affordable Care Act as Obamacare. The ego of this tool is mind boggling to me.  

I have been running options over in my mind about options I have for healthcare and had been toying with the idea that at some point maybe it is just not worth it and just say the hell with it, just go without insurance and see what happens.

Laying in bed last night with the tiny lump that has been on the roof of my mouth swelling to the size of a big fat grape (I took editorial license calling it a golf ball), I self diagnosed it to be some rare form of tooth cancer. I could just imagine going through something so horrible sans insurance card.

Imagine my relief when the X-ray showed I just had another little abcess.

I know that in the near future there will be a rationing of healthcare, there will be protocols to determine who gets what care, that is unless you are a member of the House, Senate or White House.

The rest of us Animal Farm residents will have to take a number.

He's hoping for a new position.

We were attempting to get a pose in front of his namesake. However CnC was a bit distracted by other tourists. 

If only we had gotten the picture when Mark got the next pony ride. 

Is ANYONE going to alert my brother his blog has been hijacked?

Great thinkers.

Hijacking a blog

If you, my dear brother do not stop ignoring your blog, I will begin posting really embarrassing pictures of you. 

In the meantime, here is one of my favorites of us in Italy. 

THE WORLD I KNOW

So I walk up on high and I step to the edge

To see my world below

And I laugh at myself while the tears roll down

'Cause it's the world I know, it's the world I know

(Collective Soul)

Coming up on the one year mark here in a few weeks.

A year ago when I felt the rails came off the tracks, again.

A year ago when I began the process of reinventing myself, again.

Seems like that's something I have to do every decade or two.

The good news is, I have done just that. During the last year I have lost and kept off 55 lbs. I go to the gym regularly and eat like a person who wants to stick around long enough to piss off some xwifes.

I'm spending lots time at my place at the lake and hiking at the nearby State park. 

I went on a vacation in Italy that will never be eclipsed.

I met a great girl who has really made me appreciate the fairer sex, again.

The bad news???

There really isn't any. Well at least not on a personal level, but the truth is, the world seems to be coming off the tracks. 

We have an administration that has continually used the Constitution to supplement the White houses supply of toilet paper.

KBG's Putin has made Obama his bitch. Several Republicans don't know what side of the tracks they should be on. The nation is drowning in red ink and at such a frightening rate that it seems like the intent is malicious.

I mean free cell phones? Really? Forget about the healthcare fiasco, that boondoggle is so idiotic that even the tools that voted it in don't want any part of it, add to that crew the leftist union thugs who are jumping the sinking Obamacare ship.

In world affairs, the planet has come off the tracks on the trestle and the train is hurtling down to the bottom of the abyss.

The only thing is this world not in short supply is reasons for killing each other.

In the bigger picture lets look at the Universe.

According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics the Universe is in a constant state of deterioration.

So there's that.

I began this post with a chorus from Collective Souls, The World I Know.

I like that song, couldn't tell you what the writer was trying to say, or if he was trying to say anything at all.

But the song is on my phone, in a playlist I created of just a bunch of singles that I like.

I had that playlist going as I was walking in the park today. Usually I only have the music playing on my walk to and from the park just to drown out the traffic noise, I like to pause the music when I hit the park and just listen to the ambient noise of the woods and stream that seem to be the only sounds available when walking the parks paths.

For some reason I just let the music play on while I walked the shaded paths alone.

That song played when I was about halfway through. And the chorus plays and I always think about the the third planet from the Sun, I think about what an incredible terrestrial machine it is and the complexity and the beauty of the whole thing and what an incomprehensible being to have breathed it and us into existence.

Then I think about that being, lets call him God and what it must be like to have created all this and us and what he must think of our stewardship of this gift.

So I walk up on high and I step to the edge

To see my world below

And I laugh at myself while the tears roll down

'Cause it's the world I know, it's the world I know

(Collective Soul)

Ehhh just food for thought.

SEMI-TRUE STORIES

HE SAID SHE SAID

The 4 aged gentlemen stood by the creek that formed the boundary between the backyard and the woods. They chose a spot on the creek known as The Black Hole, that was back in the day. 

The day was 30 years and some change ago. 

Maddog looked looked down at the creek bank and strained his aging eyes to see the unmistakable ruts carved by wildly churning Mudder Tires of his modified Jeep. The only vehicle to make it through the Black Hole. 

The 4 elders stood for maybe 2 hours reliving the glory days, recounting events with crystal clarity, well history is in the eye and the lips of the story teller. 

One such story teller had a penchant for embellishing if not outright fabricating an event from the ancient past.

This was not something new like an excusable old age malady. This was a quirk that was deeply ingrained and readily accepted by his buddies. We learned to "trust but verify" everything Amos said.

The fact was all 4 story tellers trying to recollect stories from 40 years ago could not bear up under the weight of an outside fact checker, this had less to do with outright history revision and more to do with trying to recount events muddled by the fog of war and alcohol.  

The 4 old friends talked the afternoon away with few pauses and only 2 beers consumed. It's said some things never change, but this was akin to alcohol heresy. 

I am having an out of body experience, floating above The Black Hole and the 4 old geezers, one of which is me. We alternate the conversation from our Semi-true Stories to more serious and heartbreaking realizations. 

Two hours ago we 4 stood around a hospital bed trying to make conversation with an old buddy that was plagued with a disease that bores holes in the brain and turns it into mush. It is called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, also know as the human version of Mad Cow Desease. 

I looked at the dry marker board that nurses write pertinent information on that hangs in the patients room. 

It's usually got things like the day, month and nurses name so the patient can remained oriented and sometimes has notes for doctors written on it. 

When we got to our old buddies room I looked at the board and noticed a note that I have never seen before. 

At the bottom it read "responds to Wormy". 

Despite the dire circumstances,  that brought a brief smile. 

I also thought it was amusing to have my old runnin buddies calling me Maddog all morning. 

I haven't been called Maddog in a long long time. That nickname came not so much from my behavior back in the day. It was more because of the initials of my first and middle name. M. D. With translates MD 20/20 or Maddog 20/20 a favorite cheap get drunk quick malt liquor. 

I walked  up to the hospital bed and looked down at my old buddy. He was sound asleep snoring looking straight ip with his eyes wide open. 

He is totally blind now so I figured it didn't make much difference. 

I hollered at him "HEY WORMY IT'S MADDOD!"

That brought him around with a "huh?"

YEAH IT'S MADDOD, and Amos (Randy) and (A O) Joe and Kevin (Kevin). 

I was surprised to hear him repeat all our names back to me. He had been totally out of it the day before. 

He couldn't speak very well but we were able to understand him very well as we recounted old memories with him and he was lucid enough to bring back a few of his own. 

I thought to myself this is a guy who life has kick around his whole time on Earth and it looks like he was going to finish up the same way. 

Wormy never had much of a chance, his worthless lunatic mother walked out on the family when he was very young and his father really didn't have much to do with him growing up. 

It's no wonder he grew up with a drinking problem and he had his buddies to assist with that habit. 

Our saying about Wormy was, he would get drunk on 3 beers but he could drink a case after that. 

He lived with me for a good while and we would all hit the bars pretty regular. Wormy was not a big guy but a few beers and he would fight a buzz saw. Or me on a few occasions. 

But Wormy could be one of the most entertaining and witty guys to be around and could keep us all laughing. 

I have to kick myself for not keeping in contact with him. 

He still lived in The Valley where I grew up and since I moved back to Greenwood I kept saying I was going to go by and see him, I did go by there 10 days earlier, but he wasn't home. He was already here. 

He had been living alone since his divorce some 30 plus years. His life was working, drinking beer and fishing, best fisherman I ever knew. 

After we left the hospital we went back to our meeting place at Joe's house. We stood around and told old stories shaken loose from the cobwebs of our minds. Some of the stories told by the 4 old men refreshed my memory and brought back a nugget of crazy history that had lay dormant for many years. 

In the case of one of the story tellers his was usually complete fabrications. . 

Some of the events retold that day were in fact accurate. 

But most were just semi-true stories. 

Go read She Said here