.... and gimmee a side of Slaw, too.

OK.... just when you think you have seen it all.... you see something that was not included in ALL when you last looked.  (of course, I have heard it ALL, too, but that was before I went partially deaf in dat right ear, so now I just think I have heard it ALL when it truth I have only really heard MOST of ALL, which is OK cause mostly, I don't want to hear about it at ALL)

With me so far?  If so it truly means that you have not yet had enough coffee on a Monday morning.
Anyways.... I open the paper this morning (and being a Gannett Newspaper, there isn't much to open) and I read THIS   
yessirree bob.... I sure have it backwards.... see, these two guys sit oout on a frozen lake for hours, catch 5.44 lbs of fish and win $1500.  Now, Saturday I went to Fat Mama's and ordered a catfish sandwich with a side of fried okra and it set me back $7.50.  Now I know I can't catch okra in Lake Winnebago and I am not stupid enough to try..... but sheeesh, who in there right mind sits on a bucket on a froooooozen lake to catch five lbs of fish......??????

You have to buy a thermal coat, stupid snow pants, bit goddam boots that probably cost $100 from LL Bean and gloves and a Green Bay Packer hat.... and you haven't bought poles and bait and beer yet!!!
But that really kills me... a 'ice fishing' tournament!  And THESE GUYS ARE ORGANIZED 
I mean... there is life in the winter.... things you can do indoors, like SEX, or even things to do outdoors, like Nordic skiing, or gosh, just getting in your car to drive to a bar.... but to spend all that money on gear and then sit on a bucket and freeze your ass off???  Shit&whiskers.... I can buy a whole lotta catfish and Fat Mama's for what those guys spend.... and okra, sweet potato fries and hunks a hush puppies.  Hey, and get this, just when YOU think YOU have heard it all, let me tell you this.... some of those guys build these little houses and drag them out there and sit in them all day....whoa!  I think that is why the divorce rate is so high in Wisconsin in the winter.....gees, you marry one of these dummies and he spends all day spending money at a Sporting goods store for shit to keep him warm while he deliberately  sits on ice..... divorce the dummy!!!

alright, already.... I AM done ranting, cause I have seen it all and have heard it all.... and DONE most things that I wanted to do when I thought of doing them.

In fact, a long time ago my good buddy Tom and I thought it would be a good idea to drive across the frozen 11 miles of the lake, just to get a beer on the other side, but  mostly to say we had done it.
But rather than fish.... we had caught quite a buzz first.

It ain't no never mind, see, but it....

St Mary's Ridge

......was a 64 Chevy Bel air and we took it off the road by St Mary's Ridge back Thanksgiving in 1969.  Schmucked that car up big time. We had pooled money for gas and cheap beer and were just cruising the western hills. It was what we did.
I don't think of it much anymore... it was some time ago, but every once and a bit of something sets off a trigger and I myself standing up  on the top of the road looking down at the wreck below and thinking that  it was raining pretty hard cause my cigarette kept going out when it was really that I was bleeding that much. See, I was sitting in the middle of the back and we rolled that sucker end over end and the roof kind of caved in exactly where I was and I got bounced more than a bit.  My glasses shattered, my nose broke and two teeth got knocked out,separated a shoulder. I have no  memory of getting out of the car and climbing back to the road.  I guess they picked me up a mile away, just walking away.  When the ambulance loaded me I recall seeing Brad, his face a mask of blood, and thinking he was dead.  He wasn't, but I remember thinking he was and how odd that felt.  There still is a small bone chip floating just above my right eye lid.  Sometimes I think of having it removed, but then can't really justify the cost so I leave it be.

Like I said, it ain't no never mind, but it is funny the way one's mind thinks and how quickly you can jump back years and even funnier is the moments that make you jump.

I guess the last time I thought about it was summer past and I was sitting on the patio at Becket's having a couple of fish tacos and Kathy called.  I hadn't seen her in eight years, but something must have tripped her wire and she called.  It was a nice chat.  I was polite.  Good for me.  She was still with her husband, the one she was supposed to leave eight years ago, and I told her a little about the kids.   All over in twenty minutes.  No big deal.  It was probably better that it ended as it did.  But it got me back to thinking of all the stuff that didn't turn out as it should.  And then I thought of Nancy.... and how she came to see me in the hospital the next day after that car wreck, with my face looking like ground round.  Seventy-four stitches, they said, all around my left eye and nose... my lip split like a rip grape... and.....she didn't blink or wink or think... just walked in the room, ran her fingers in my hair and gave me a kiss.  Seventeen is not supposed to be that nonchalantly  breezy, brave, brilliant and I recall thinking, then, that I would love her forever and even a couple of days after forever.

It was all so long ago.  I haven't seen or heard from her in well over thirty-five years now.  Sometimes I think I should try to find her, just to call and say hello.... how are you.  But I won't.  See, it ain't no nevermind.  She gave me a small moment, so pure and simple and clean.  I need to hold that and forget the rest that didn't happen they way I thought it should have.

This morning, a small sand-like fragment of glass worked it's way out of one of the scars, been stuck in there forty years.  Think I'll walk to Becket's and get a couple of fish tacos.

Who's Hungry?

And in other news

A real conservative believes that the government should stay out of people's lives..... but that anyone caught having private sex with what they consider the wrong gender should be punished.

How many conservatives does it take to change a light bulb? None. If the Liberals would just leave it alone it will change itself.


Republicans WILL save the rainforest.... just tell them that is where the 'golf-ball trees' are located.

Some guy told me he was a Republican and that he voted his 'conscience'. I asked him how he could do both.

A good Conservative thinks that 'global warming' is junk science...... but that Creationism should be taught in schools.

A true conservative Republican believes the USA should get out of the UN, but that our highest national priority should be enforcing the UN resolution against Iraq.

Two guys are sitting in a bar talking politics and one asks the other, "Why are you a Democrat?"
"Because my Daddy and Grand Daddy were Democrats."
"Well, what if your Daddy and Grand Daddy were horse thieves?"
" I guess then I would be a Republican," he answered.

A Conservative believes a woman cannot be trusted to make decisions about her own body....... but large multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without any regulation.

A Conservative believes trade with Cuba is wrong, because they are Communists. Trade with China and Vietnam is good market expansion, though.


 Green BAY GOES TO SUPER Bowl

wow... check the Curds out on that Girl!!!!

I guess there is a football game tomorrow.


But you would never know around here.


This is the biggest thing around here since the invention of the cheese wheel.

Word is that Will-Annoys has already raised the toll price for any car with Wisco plates.







But to be honest..... I only watch football for the gratuitous violence & sex...... and the half-time snacks.

Sarah Palin Secret Sex- Sleeps With Chicago Bear!!

......... how many though is still unknown.

For my Brother....John

GIMEEEEEEE SOME FOOTBALL!!!!!!

This is almost too good to be true!!!!   90 years, 181 games...... & more history that you can shake a stick at.     The tribal drums are beating, Highway 41 south will be a ribbon of Green &Gold saturday and sunday..... many are planning on being in Chicago for the game  even if they do not have tickets.  First report I heard is opening price is about $675 for a single.  I could go on.... but for the uninitiated there is some insight HERE

I guess there is another game being played after this one next Sunday, I forget who,..... Mets and the Wheelers..... I forget.

TH

 

Going to the Championship

sometimes you win..... by a little..... and sometimes you win by THIS MUCH

NOT a True Believer & why you can't water ski on Lake Winnegago in Winter

Ok.  I am not having a good time with things.  I'm sitting here waiting for my sister to call with my Mother's  funeral arrangements.  It will be a small affair. But waiting is a bitch and it leaves the mind free to wander.  
The shit that went down in Arizona still bothers me.  It should.  Just like my mother, I will leave this world soon enough, in a appropriate time, but it makes me think of how it will be for my children in a world...... of hurt.  And this world is hurting.  You can smell the fear, the uncertainty, the dread and you see faces looking for a semblance of sanity in blank mirrors.  People are signing up to any movement that will offer them any kind of respite from all the unknown that greets  them with every breathe they take. And they are really not thinking of what they are signing up for.  It made me think back to a book I first read as a freshman in college, Eric Hoffer, "The True Believer".  It still makes sense after almost sixty years.


“All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance.”

Eric Hoffer
  of course, now we can watch as well as read the message


Go ahead... watch this if you want to think...otherwise...go away 


 It reminds me of why, after all these years, that I am still not much of a 'joiner'.  Oh, I participate.... but I never wanted to be grouped.  I still have a deep sense of appreciation for Randal Graves at  L'ennui Melo-some-fucking-thing 
for coining the name to this blog..... I mean.... what's in an Eggroll anyways?  It could be nothing.... or the best of something.  Who knows?  Who cares?  Randal practices the ART of WHATEVER better than anyone I have read on the blogs.  I think he knows it and is proud of it.... and is also rather adamant in not giving a shit about anything as well.


Anyways....I started re-reading Hoffer this morning, mostly cause I was in no mood for Emily Dickinson, though she may come later today, and something else jumped out at me.


“When we lose our individual independence in the incorporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom—freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse.”



Now that makes sense to me.  I don't want a label.... I don't want to join anything....if everyone else is doing it.....I am going the other way. I think what I think, I will vote the way I want to, I will drink plenty of the Tap Beer of Truth, Justice, Kindness........ and maybe have a doughnut or two.

These are troubling times, sisters& Bros.... just remember, there is no half-time in the game of madness

1922-2011 Rest Your Heart, Dear Woman

**** I don't have a new thing to write.  My sister called about an hur ago.... my mother passed away peacefully about an hour ago.  I think I am going to be gone from the pages for awhile.  I've posted this before.... and I will do it one more time.  Love you, Mom.



I have a copy of an old newspaper photograph from 1956 that shows a car wreck that occurred on Easter Sunday 1956 on a remote stretch of highway about two miles west to the intersection of highway 21 and 49.

The caption under the photo said that the wife of the driver of one of the three cars involved is still visible in the wreckage. It said that she was the mother of four children, ages seven, five, three and a baby ten months old who were also in the pictured Chevy station wagon.

A longer article explains that there was also a car with six sailors from the Great Lakes Naval Station and a third vehicle containing a young couple from nearby Berlin, WI and their four young children.

It was raining and the road was muddy and someone lost control, something happened and one car hit another and spun out and hit the station wagon head on. A local farm wife is quoted in the article as as saying that she and her husband heard the crash and went out, "picking up babies in the rain."

The nearest town, Berlin, is 15 miles away. The phones in 1956 were rotary dial and most rural phones shared 'party-line' connections. It took some time for the one ambulance in Berlin to arrive at the scene. The article said that most of the 17 injured that needed hospitalization were transported by private vehicles. It must have taken even longer, on an Easter Sunday afternoon, for the photographer of the local weekly newspaper to be located and for him to get to the site and take a photo of the woman in the Chevy station wagon who was presumed dead. There were breathing people to take care of first. There were babies in the rain.

I often wonder, when I look at that photo, how long she was in that car before someone realized that my mother was indeed alive and breathing.

I'm not sure how long my father was hospitalized but Mom did not leave the hospital until the following Thanksgiving. We were sent to live with various relatives and were not re-united as a family until about a year or so later. I know my father went back to his job in Marshfield on crutches with his wife in a hospital 85 miles away and his children scattered.

The thing of it is, it was never considered a big deal in my family. Really. I mean we knew the story and had heard the lore, but life just went on. My sister and brothers and I never thought of our parents as 'handicapped'........ they just walked 'funny'. They never complained. I know that there was no big buckeroo insurance settlement ....that all Mom's subsequent operations wiped out whatever money they had. But it wasn't a BIG DEAL. It just was what it was and we went on. They didn't TEACH us what family was...... they lived it. They got all four of us through college.... we never took vacations....we didn't do a lot of things. But they were always proud of us. That Dad had seven years where one of his sons was a starter on the football team.....that his daughter was the first in the family to graduate from college and become a TEACHER! Damn! He thought that that was the stuff!

They showed us that life was continuity, love, connection, determination, perseverance,lottsa love........ and even more...... humor.

Dad died nine years ago from complications during surgery to fix his leg. The operation precipitated a heart attack. The last time I saw him he was connected to tubes and machines &shit. Couldn't talk. He scribbled me a note that I should tell him a joke. I did. About a Rabbi and a Priest and a Minister. He liked those.

We are getting together tomorrow to celebrate the 85 birthday of the woman in the photo. Fifty some years of walking 'funny' has left her in a wheel chair. She still lives in her own home ( with a lot of assistance) and still does not complain. We get as many of the grandchildren and great grandchildren together as we can. We barbecue chicken and brats and burgers and corn...... and give her what she wants every year for her birthday................................

all of the 'Rain Babies' in one place.



We also chip in and buy her a six-pack. She thinks it's funny. Breaks her up.

With all the Grandchildren summer 2010

 

We don't need gun control...... maybe Nut Control

Everybody loves a nut.

....see... Nuts don't kill people... Nuts with guns do.

 And infringing on my right to carry a gun where ever I please is my right.  Right.







and saying stupid things is a right too.  Right.

and being offensive and in bad taste is a right, too.  Right.

And free speech means I have the right to incite violence..... as long as I don't say the "Fire" word. Right.

I am so sorry about what happened in Arizona.  I wish I could get mad...... but all I feel is sad.  I really want sensible gun law reform.  Now.  My children go to grocery stores and habitually hang out at institutions of education.

Don't smoke the flowers..... BUT.....

You can legally own a Machine Gun

It is a common mihttp://www.usautoweapons.com/sconception that machine guns cannot be owned by law-abiding citizens. This comes from the creation of a variety of confusing laws that have made purchasing a fully automatic gun more difficult than purchasing a "normal" gun. But, you can comply with the law and own a machine gun. In May of 1986, new laws went into effect that made it illegal for civilians to own fully automatic firearms that were manufactured AFTER THAT DATE. Most fully automatic weapons manufactured and registered BEFORE MAY, 1986, may be owned by and sold to individuals. The full-auto guns that may be owned by individuals are called "transferable". A few states do not allow machine gun ownership at all, no matter when the gun was made, but most states do allow it when complying with federal requirements.   

mahttp://www.usautoweapons.com/chine gun

of course it is easier to buy guns in some places Like AZ 

Arizona

Subject/Law	Long guns	Handguns	Relevant Statutes	Notes
State Permit to Purchase?	No	No	None	no
Firearm registration?	Partial	Partial	ARS 13-3101	State law duplicates the registration requirements of the National Firearms Act.
"Assault weapon" law?	No	No	None	No
Owner license required?	No	No	None	No

They shoot congresswoman, Don't they

 America has done it again.
I heard it first on the blogs.  Christopher at "From the Left has a couple of good posts on the News already.  Check him out on the link.




as reported by Christopher at "from the left"

Don't go away..... I will be right back. Have a seat... have a cookie while you wait

Iam  writing something.... honestly... I just don't know where I put that yellow tablet, the one with all the scribbles & stuff, and when I find it I will post something.  Really Really.  In the lull tune in one of my favorite old songs.  And leave a doughnut.  I have a doughnut hunger.

The shining

"Give that man a cigar and a blow torch to light it with."


Boy Wonder heads back to Oregon tomorrow in the Early AM..... which will be a switch from heading to his Mom's to crash in the Early AM..... when he made it there.    It was good to have him around.  '
we watched some football and ate a few pizzas and I learned more about film & sound design that I care to know.

Next .... I go to visit him in funky Portland.

 

New Year, Old Music......

Somethings are so good...... and when you really don't want to think..... just remember things that are SO good.
Happy New Year & A Good Football Game to All !!