The Police Department reported 16 arrests and 106 charges.
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— Brandon Lewis, WM, 07/13/79, xxx N. 17th Ave., forgery, controlled substance
— James Bond, WM, 02/06/72, xxx Highway 590, open container-first offense =====================================
Ok, well as some of you know, I hail from Mississippi. The first thing that came to my mind was what our official state color should be. I've run through it over and over, and I've finally decided Klan White is sufficiently tasteless. I am going to send it in and see what response (if any) I get from Crayola. 
The patient will be asked to lie on an examination table. Electrodes are placed on the skin over the nerve to be studied. These electrodes act as microphones to pick up any electrical signal that goes by them.
An electrical stimulator is then placed on the skin near the electrodes and is used to create an electrical current strong enough to fully stimulate the nerve.
A computer is used to record responses as various nerves are tested. This allows the physician to measure and calculate how fast the nerve is sending the impulses to the muscle and measure the size of the impulse.
The muscles are assessed by inserting a pin electrode into the muscle with the computer then recording the muscle response both at rest and with movement. The sensation is similar to that of being stuck by a pin as the electrode is inserted into the muscle. (That is if sensory awareness is not a problem.)
It is important for the patient to stay as calm as possible to reduce discomfort and to achieve accurate readings. (You may bring a pacifier or bottle to help soothe an infant).
We are going to discuss my vehicular troubles now. It started long before week before last.
*dreamy music and swirling water puddle effects to a time long past*
Sometime over the Christmas holidays 3 years ago, my car tried to overheat while in the middle of the line to cross over the RÃo Bravo back into the
Juan played around with it in his ‘garage’, which was actually something out of stock footage for urban warfare in
Well, to make this long story (somewhat) shorter, Juan and his band of beer swilling dust dwellers couldn’t do anything with it. He told me to go the day-after-next to a place where they work on radiators. Said I’d see a sign by the pharmacy and Oxxo on calle dieciocho. Couldn’t miss it. I couldn’t go the next day because it was ‘nochebuena’, which is Christmas Eve and is actually the day the Mexicans get their so-called Christmas-but-is-actually-a-pagan-Saturnalia-type groove on. Guns. Machine guns, actually. They shoot the things in the air in a raucous orgy-type affair, unaware of the gravitational pull of the earth on lead projectiles and the inevitable consecuences upon re-entry.
I found my mechanics shop 2 days later. It was 4 poles with tin over them in a crude roof, and a hand-painted sign on cardboard that said “radiator work”. Whereas Juan’s goons drank at night, this guy and his friends had quart bottle ‘caguamas’ in the morning and were obviously hung over. They worked on my car, charging me $450 pesos to clean out my radiator and put things back together. Wasn’t too bad, considering that in USD it’s about $45 bucks. They handed me a package wrapped in newspaper when I got back. It was all the rust goop they had extracted from my cooling system.
For literally years after that, the car leaked water little by little and I often blamed it on them, but in actuality it was the goop they had freed. Rust had begun to consume the impeller wheel on my water pump.
*flash to week before last*
I was flying down the road listening to Maiden when I noticed my car wasn’t doing the normal overheat-cha-cha. It was ACTUALLY overheating, pegged in the red zone with a ‘check engine’ light flashing at me murderously. I pulled over, ironically at Exit 69, a favourite of the locals, and listened with sick anticipation as the motor hissed and smoke went everywhere. I waited 45 minutes for a coworker to arrive with water, which we tried to add but noticed it was FULL (wtf). We tried cranking and driving, getting past the highway to the office and getting down to the suburban “Let’s go to Bestbuy and head west into the sunset at 5 PM sharp, toward the golf courses and expensive eateries because we’re white folks and we can do so” exit. It died there, so I called three wrecker services, eventually finding one named Peanut’s that came for my car and took it to a radiator shop. Okaaaay, fine. Carless now. I was disturbed but it was a temporary feeling, like when Empire Strikes Back ended on a bittersweet note, but you knew a third installment was coming out and the good guy would prevail.
The radiator guy called me and said my motor was shooting radiator water three feet in the air on the compression stroke, which means basically the head was warped beyond recognition.
Then I realized my motor’s head is made of aluminum and I began to cringe involuntarily as a sick feeling creeped into me.
Dad and I went with a trailer, got the car on it, and hauled it to a shadetree mechanic’s house 3 counties away. Earl (huhhuhh, Earl) said he could fix it but to give him some time. No problem my dad says as he hands me the keys to his ’97 land yacht. It has dual air, dual stereos, tv, vcr, and a Nintendo all wrapped up in wood grain and a leather interior. It also takes $60 to halfway fill it up. I started using this van to go to work for a week. The last day I use this van, my father calls me in the afternoon to inform me of a slight water leak and to maintain a strict vigil over its water consumption. Sure, fine whatever, I tell him. I was in the middle of a phone argument with my wife who was in another city at the time and had just hung up on me.
I start the long commute home a little late that day, and as I’m going down the road, I’m jamming to the cd’s I had put in the changer, thinking of how I was going to relax when I got home. I passed my work colleague friend who I’ve mentioned previously as being the last bastion of intellectual prowess in his office where stupidity reigns supreme. I tooted the horn in the land yacht and watched him veer off at his exit, with his family in tow. He didn’t recognise me in the brown bomber so didn’t acknowledge me. Hell, I wouldn’t acknowledge me either in that van. I watched him pull off, obviously heading to his home.
Then it happened.
The CHECK ENGINE light on my dad’s land yacht came on and it was overheating! I pulled off immediately, getting out and cringing in the same exact manner from the week before. Same hissing, same smoke. I sat there, desperate. I looked for water in the ditches, under a bridge, and after that proved itself futile, I called my wife. She brought several gallons of water in kitty litter buckets, Dasani bottles, and a milk jug sans top. I ran across the interstate, got the containers, filled it up, and nursed it home. It turned out the van was ok, but the water pump on it is shot as well. I drove it to work like that one more time, nursing it back home with no ill effects as long as I remembered to COMPLETELY refill the radiator and reservoir before departing for any destination.
It has been repaired, but the good news is that it was dropped off at the mechanics. And the blue bomber was driven home for the return journey. Yes friends, my car is back, in a new, improved format. Sure, it cost a couple of grand, but it’s cheaper than a new car. A/C be damned, as long as my car works and gets me from point A to point B, I’ll be forever elated.
Car problems are a thing of the past. For now.
It was sad to watch Mr. [Moron] bloviate at length about a subject which he apparently has utterly no comprehension of this A.M. I love that word. Bloviate. Sounds like something a blow-hard might do. Your replies were well thought out, constructed with an intimate understanding of the issues, and therefore ignored because they do not acknowledge the simplistic world view which he espouses. Everything is not hunky-dory in Estados Unidos! Would that it was. It is hardly the place where I grew up anymore. I blithely informed him today (he was not aware of it of course) that our lifestyle was something like 23rd best in the world. This isn't the 60's, 70's, or even 80's anymore.
As you know there are third-world countries with economies based on bananas, bat guano, and tourism that take better care of their own. As far as immigration goes Ben Franklin feared a wave of German immigrants. He was right The wave happened and the sky didn't fall. Same with the Irish, Italians, Orientals, and every other group that wound up here.
Oh well. It was nice to here him get refuted with such a clarity and I hope I helped.
You can babysit for me, clean my house, and mow my grass, but I want you gone! Hurr hurr...
I have been busy trying to stay sane and to not stay busy. I’ve failed miserably at both.
I haven’t heard from my friend the Whyzeman in a few days - I fear the worst with his current family drama. I remember as kids he’d tell me that his grandma would call him from down the street, he’d come running, and she would tell him to go in the kitchen and bring her a glass of water. I would understandably be upset and can only imagine that frustration of a young man in the 80’s trying to save the world from the Decepticons and C.O.B.R.A. (Or go-bots, if you were Ghetto like me and your mom bought you dollar-store transformers. I had to school her with a quickness.)
That made me remember my own situation with my grandpa that died in 1987. He bought this computer that cost thousands and thousands of dollars back then. It was a TRS-80 Model 4 Microcomputer, from good ol’ Tandy. (Tandicapped? Definitely. By today’s standards it was a 100lb calculator) I would ask could I play with the computer. He would reply, somewhat annoyed, that I could, but only if I asked if I could “Work with the computer.” I would do that, boot the thing up off a 5.25” disk, and enter any pre-1982 date so it would boot up properly. I could run the ‘BASIC’ command and start basic, and somehow magically print out stuff, but only if I included the command line statements, like 10 PRINT and then ended it. Dad could never figure that out. IT DIDN’T HAVE A WORD PROCESSOR PROGRAM, OKAY. NOW I UNDERSTAND, 19 YEARS LATER.
Anyway, I got tired of asking to ‘work with the pc’. I didn’t have extended cable, so I had to watch MTV and Nickelodeon at my grandparents’ house because I only had channels 1-13 like a good cheapskate. So when the MTV top 20 countdown would end, with Bon Jovi’s ‘living on a prayer’ inevitably winning #1 as usual, I would leave their living room and head down the hall toward the computer room. Now at the end of this short hallway, the right turn was into grandpa’s bedroom, with him in it. He was a severe arthritic and was bedridden. Smart as a whip, a professional engineer even. But cripply and withered and deformed. Looking back, maybe it depressed me on some subconscious level to see him like that. So I would belly-crawl to the left, into the computer room, without him seeing me. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes I would hear that “HEYYYYY BABBBYYY” call, which meant I had been discovered. I would go in there and lay with him in his bed and watch tv and then after the obligatory time frame, would ask the inevitable question about working with the computer. To a fat kid who was aspiring to be a hacker, convenience was the more important issue in this case.
And now, to look back on it, I would give my life up to have just an hour or two at my grandpa’s bedside. I would tell him about school, how I didn’t relate well to my parents during my teenage years and how I was depressed for so long. I would tell him how bad I suck at math and could never have been a great engineer like him. I would tell him that after he died that December I sneaked into the cemetery every afternoon after it closed and cried at his grave. I would sneak in and lay by his grave, choking on my tears and snot and sobbing, beating the tomb stone until my knuckles ached for days afterward. Once, I cried myself to sleep and the caretaker woke me up and told me he had been watching me for days and told me it was time to go home.
I would tell him how much I missed him growing up, how much I needed him and how I had become a musician at heart. I would show him how far I’ve come because of his Trash-80 Model 4 computer, and I would show him my wife and three wonderful kids. I would die in peace to have a weak embrace from those deformed, arthritic hands just one more time. To see him in his pj’s, working notes out that were indecipherable because his handwriting and coordination had deteriorated so bad. To see him studying his bible intently, explaining things to me, and to drink ice cold coca cola with him, eating frozen cool whip (his weird favourite treat, which surprisingly tastes great in a cone) and talking about
Enjoy your family while they’re with you, people. The “What if’s” are too frequent in this life.
Our secret signal for meeting outside the chat room was supposed to be like this. I don't know WHY she hasn't found me yet.Last week I had an outing to eat at my one of my favourite digs down the road, Panino’s. It was, uh, interesting to say the least. Mrs. Chulo and myself went in and were eventually seated. I ordered diet coke, and being the gentleman I am, sized up my wife’s PMS demeanor and immediately decided that she needed a double Tom Collins, which the waiter promptly produced. While we were waiting, I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation to my right. There was a group of four people seated at the table. Two couples. The kind of slimy, disgusting couples that scream ‘wife swap’ for some strange reason. Anyway, they hadn’t even gotten their salads yet when I noticed that they were asking for a second bottle of wine. The tubby guy was bragging about having to work in New Orleans for a time, and about the hurricane and God knows what all else. His voice became sloppier and higher in volume with every sip of pre-food wine.
At the outset, he was the only one talking, with everyone else nodding in that fake ‘OH I LOVE YOU’ type of feigned interest in his slurred absurdity. Then after the second bottle was being finished, the woman to his left started up like a gassed up Weedeater. Then the man in front of him. Then his alkie wife who had finished her fourth glass of wine. They got their salads and asked for a third bottle, and then I got my bread and asked for another diet coke. After bottle number three was gone, they were talking about sewer lines, and then Weedeater blurted out something that has accompanied me in all my travels these 7 days since the incident:
SIZE DOESHHH MATTER, AND DON’T LET ANYONE TELL YOU OTHERWISHE.
She thought she was being astoundingly witty, but I stared at her for a minute in disbelief, then proceeded to translate the conversation to Mrs. Chulo, who as a current English learner still has a hard time understanding what I term ‘fringe English’, e.g. drunks, thugz, and inner-county rednecks. She had a completely empty stomach when we got there, so she was getting rather giggly as well. At least she didn’t start up with the ‘size’ comments too.
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A good friend of mine recently quit his job at a store I frequent quite often for want of choice in my little crap town. I used to see him quite frequently, as he was the electronics god. The people that replaced him are sub-par, to say the least. I asked one a question regarding the possible arrival of game consoles, and I got a “We get a truck every day.” I asked a second drone, and she gave me the same answer. How do you explain to someone their uselessness? I eventually looked at the second drone and muttered “mmumblemubmle tits on a boar hog.” She heard it but didn’t say anything. My God, I’d prefer to deal with the other woman that worked with my friend. The woman in question had tattoos on her arm so I dubbed her ‘jail momma’ in my mind. She wasn’t even there. Just these new, unfamiliar people. I went last night to get a hard drive for my 360 (note my subtlety here in proclaiming my purchase. HAHAHAHAHA), and I had a hand put in my face. No explanation, NOTHING. It turned out to be due to a moronic kid wandering off and triggering the OMG FIRE ALARM CODE ADAM DEAR GOD MAN FIND THE KID alarm. I saw the back of a Walmart badge once, and saw the color coded alarm scheme. Was ‘Code Brown’ for like a monster turd attacking the store? I don’t recall. ‘Code Pink’ a gay dude stealing something? Or maybe an assasin ballerina?
Oh well. I’ll miss him. By the way, he reads this blog.
Mind if I link to your own so people can read of your plight? Msg me.
Yesterday, I got in my car with my family in tow and made a journey which I have not undertaken in a good eight months. We all got in the car at a ridiculously early hour (6:50AM) and got on the interstate, heading south for 2 hours. THERE I FIXED IT ARE YOU HAPPY? R.I.D.I.C.U.L.O.U.S.
We got to
One thing that made me stare more than anything else was the total absence of life. Down here in the South, we have a bad problem with fireants. They make these wonderful Eeyore-grey hills on an otherwise-pristine landscape. If left uncontrolled, it becomes ant metropolis and they become sentient, eventually sacrificing your virgin daughter in a secretive midnight ceremony deep within the principal anthill temple/queen complex.
Okay, maybe I exaggerate a little, but the point is that you have to go outside and douse those suckers with anything guaranteed to kill them. In times past, gasoline was the cheapest poison of all, but now economy dictates that we have to actually buy ant poison. You bathe the hill in grains, and come out in three days to see what’s happening. You step on the antbed to see what occurs, and….nothing. Occasionally a sick ant will stagger out and then die, but for the most part the antbed is dead and devoid of life. (I am coming dangerously close to mimmicking the Dead Parrot sketch so I’m going to switch gears).
Well, that’s what
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We wandered down past Dumonde to the flea market. There are still empty stalls, but my God, there is life! There is fruit being sold! Kettle Corn cooking! Spices and hot sauce being pushed out of crates! I smelled shrimp boiling and there were cold beers to be enjoyed, pulled right out of the ice! (Nevermind that it was 34F with a high wind chill factor downtown)
The silver vendors were back, and that was what concerned us most, for my wife and I are constantly haggling with the jewelry folks in the flea market there. We go several times a year and just disappear, not telling anyone. Well, we bought some lapis lazuli pieces, and the vendor noticed my license. He asked how we had fared, and I told him that we were the hardest-hit inland county, no lights for 3 weeks and all that good stuff. He nodded in a pained gesture, biting down on his lip, and reached over to shake my hand. After a few moments of silence, I turned to leave. He stopped me and gave me a warm “Welcome Back, sir.” That set the tone for yesterday. My guitar case now has a “I (heart) NO la” sticker festooned across the front, right by the
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I know people who like to imagine themselves as cultured, but felt no pain when they watched N.O. sink into utter chaos. One of them went so far as to declare that he had “never lost anything in
The same beauty of that city, the magic that makes people flock there like blowflies to excrement…it’s what made me feel saddened. I am ticked off just like the rest of my statesmen due to the media’s moronic decision to completely ignore
MY family and I enjoyed a spectacular trip to
Thursday night I was in the nest of wires behind my entertainment centre. Now, I understand that a lot of people have wires, but let’s take a breakdown of what I’ve got behind there:
Now you can imagine the speaker/telephone/network/electrical/audio/video wires and cables cris-crossing behind here. It’s HORRIBLE. My kids in their childish “La la I’m not thinking, OOH! SOMETHING SHINY!” way of thinking decided it was a wonderful place to hide during bouts of hide and seek, something I wish they wouldn’t do in the house. Well, while back there, one of the kids disconnected several appliances that since then haven’t run right. I was back there and was trying to get the router working again in a hurry, since I wanted to fire off just one email from my work account I had forgotten to send back at the office. Here’s the asterisk leading to a footnote in this story. My wife thinks it doubles as a fantastic storage area. *sigh*
She had stored a mirror she likes a lot back there. The frame had broken so she wanted to fix it later.
Well, to make a long story short, I was barefooted and in a hurry. I stepped on a patch of cables, and felt the satisfying crunch of a piece of mirror. I ignored it, kept going, and tried to get better footing by shifting my weight. Big mistake. Two shards of glass decided to splinter off vertically, and go into my foot. I hopped out from behind there and got into a lotus position on the mat in front of the television. I should not use the term lotus, since I am not in the least bit graceful and hit my head twice in the process. I looked at the sole of my foot, and began to remove the shards. My heart sped up, I got the classic tunnel vision, and began to feel extremely nauseous. The glass came out, I laid back, flying faster than any drug could make possible, and began to hyperventilate. As I did a fat-kid situp to examine my foot again, the spurting started. I yelled for my wife, who had to patch me up. I’m hobbling now. I’ve seen wrecks with fatalities, I’ve seen war casualty photos. I’ve seen the beheading videos from
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I have taken a plunge into the depths of my memory today for things I should remember, but for some reason have trouble recalling. One thing was probably my first trip to
I got out of the car and sat on the trunk to take in the spectacular scenery of garbage in a park and feces-smelling curb drainage from the sprinkle of showers that had just fallen. I use the term ‘park’ loosely since the defining criteria for calling it so was the fact that there was a patch of sparse grass surrounded by a cheap garden fence and concrete. I walked over to admire it, ignoring a man with no legs scooting around begging passersby on a mechanic’s creeper on the way. He smelled of wee.
While in this 50’x50’ park, I found a plastic doll’s head, a roach (ZigZag/Top kind, not the insect), a condom wrapper, and a bare corn on the cob. I happened to notice the mop man cursing out yet another person over by my car, and while looking in that direction, I noticed another person. This was a real winner, a guy with his black pearl-buttoned shirt unbuttoned to maybe the continental divide between man tits and belly with just enough tufts of chest hair flaring out around his gold medallion to thoroughly disgust me. He had a baby pram in his care and was being followed by an obviously South Mexican woman. You see, in my experience, the further south in
Finally my brother in law (whom I had never met in person before) showed up. I asked him what was up with Mr. Coyote over there, and he squinted for a minute and informed me that my suspicions were indeed correct. He also informed me that this was Mr. Backdoor Man in the flesh. This guy would go over to my Brother in Law’s house and bang the wife while Bro in Law was killing himself to eke out a miserable living. The kids got to hear all the adult sound effects too. (And you wonder why my niece had a baby at 13). That was my first urge to use a crowbar on someone in
This recollection I have enjoyed today (fuelled by White Russians and the pain medication I’m taking for my mangled foot) had made me decide to focus on a new theme for a few posts. Being formerly employed as a migrant workers’ rights advocate, I am absolutely full of stories from all the children I helped along the way in my four years working in that field. I made an extra $500 a month, but I enjoyed helping kids out, which is a level of satisfaction I am quite confident I’ll NEVER achieve in my current career.
As I am typing this, it is raining outside. A full gut, bottomed-out blood sugar, and rain on a Friday afternoon are NOT what I had in mind. It is near impossible stay awake in such an environment, much less remain coherent and productive.
I don’t mind the occasional hunting outing, mind you. I do it mainly to placate my father and his band of friends. Personally I’d rather sleep late because I find the idea of freezing my todger off in the woods in the middle of the wee hours…erm…how do I put this… unappealing. To say the least. You can’t wear deodorant. You can’t use a soap that has more than .0000000000001 part/billion of good-smell in it. You can step on a twig. You have to sit there, scared to death in the dark that the Chupacabras is going to come slurp your blood from a tap he puts in your juglar.
Then the noises start. Are they from animals? Are they the “Yo! Doe! I’m horny! Grunt grunt!” sounds that the elusive buck you seek makes when he’s deciding whether to run from you or mount you? See, I don’t get that. Why would you want to purposefully titillate a horny (in both senses of the word) 100lb+ animal into coming and vying for mating privileges with you?
Perhaps it could be a crazed hunter from the plot of land adjacent to you, purposefully straying onto your land in pursuit of a deer that has left his own domain? These beer-fueled nimrods are brandishing the latest in firearm technology and have a hard-on for animal death. They are often fueled by alcohol and the occasional hit of crystal methamphetamine, which makes them a tribe of gibbering, slobbering, lead-flinging lunatics.
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Ever noticed that sometimes, when your self esteem is at a historical low, all that is needed to bring you back to life is a small word of encouragement from someone you hold in exceptionally high esteem? A small word of validation from someone who has noticed your own works that you consider to be inferior, but they find quite good? You know who you are and you don’t know how much it’s goaded me into pursuing my passions of long ago…before bills, work, and all that crap that comes with growing up assaulted my artistic butt and squelched out my need for release in that field. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
As you can see, this is an extremely fine specimen of local population, in the local eating joint. When the Camp Sister Spirit lesbian camp went live and subsequently scandalized the nation, old men met at...where else? A Ward's in Beaumont MS. They even got Oprah down there so she could film some choice 'token' mississippians in overalls. You know, since Oprah's ashamed of her state and all. Notice the stately air the locks give to the sides of his turkey neck. He was proudly proclaiming to the pentecostal love monkey behind the counter that his old job at a big local 'clinic' complex was behind him since they locked the doors and won't let him on the premises anymore.
This guy was to the left of the mulletard. Note his 'can-do' attitude regarding greasy, fat-filled food. He had a book in his back pocket, which he greedily read as he devoured the chili dogs he ordered. Truth be known, I am quite partial to the food at this establishment, but I have oft been known to go home and attend a nice dinner, munching on quiche and brie after work. I am from Mississippi, hear me slurp.Reporting to you live from Gimp’s office, this is Gimp for GimpsWorld News.
Ok, now this is just rediculous. StinkyfartWoman has just microwaved her…..lunch…if you are so-inclined to call it this. It hit me like 200 cubic yards of monkey flatulence as I walked around the cube and out of my office. I waddled over to my coworker, and in our usual banter, asked the following: “Yo, beyotch, where be the lunch up in this piece?” He, as usual, mumbled something noncommittal. The only thing I heard was “mmmm 10 minutes zzzczxcvzxvkljadjadf.” I asked him did it require 10 minutes of his time due to some “personal time”, which I said very derisively and sarcastically, to which he further mumbled. I told him that I would be in my office, touching myself in anticipation of our departure for lunch. Hence, I am here, typing this update to you wonderful young’uns.
I still am being assaulted by Stinkyfart’s cooking. It’s a combination of the worst frozen microwaveable meal, coupled with cheap soda, garlic, rancid anchovy paste and something that’s supposed to be ‘asian cuisine’. It’s about as appetizing as the thought of downing an ice cold glass of clam juice with purple pixie stik powder mixed into it for good measure.
…wait…what’s this? She’s MUMBLING! She just went “Oooohhh, mmmm.” and turned the page to something else. Then she farted and clinked around her plastic fork, which she insists on you giving back to her if you should ever ask to use. She has a wonderful collection of plastic ‘silverware’, which she washes and reuses. Now, the only thing I use them for is when she’s in the bathroom grunting. I go into her office and jimmy the thermostat off 79F Heat and turn it onto 70F Cool, where normal people tend to reside. It’s like the heat makes her flatulence that much more appealing to me.
I am going to go harrass monkey nuts to see if he is ready to go to lunch yet.
Stay moist, people.
Quote of the day!
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."
- Hunter S. Thompson
I received a phone call yesterday evening informing me of the death of an acquaintanice of mine. Death, or the news thereof, while never a happy occasion, sometimes fails to produce in one the choking, tearful sobs of profound loss. At times, news of a death merely brings numbness, or perhaps a dull since of negativity and a bit of sadness. This phone call produced exactly that: a “damn…that’s bad” feeling. I’ve not missed work or cried or dwelled on it extensively. As a matter of fact, I was more than a bit annoyed that the phone call interrupted my viewing of 24. But then, sure as day and night, I felt a pang of guilt at having an intial reaction of such…well…jerkiness.
This person was in his late forties or early fifties. He was a Mexican national who had lived in this country for quite an extensive time (think decades), working on his American citizenship that I am pretty sure he had eventually obtained. He once asked me if the
He was a person that was entertaining in the best of times, clingy in others, and, quite bluntly, downright annoying the rest of the time. This person used to show up at my house uninvited and stay until 3 am despite my less-than-tactful attempts at showing him my keen desire to go to bed. At one point, I left the room and came back in pajamas. I told my wife “Let’s go to bed honey, (so-and-so) probably wants to go to bed and we’ve been so rude keeping him up like this.” He still didn’t get it until I asked him to leave.
Other times, I would resort to going into another room with the nifty gangsta (Gnif on blogspot, Cracka on NME. You know who you are.), listening to heavy metal and opera MP3’s on my old P-1 computer and leaving this guy alone in my living room until he would leave.
He often said God blessed him. He refused to work and was a monumental slacker (much like Cracka *dodges punch*), but yet he told me once the pecan tree in front of his boarding house sustained him with food. I told him he had to eat nuts off the ground because he was lazy and wouldn’t get a job. He floated around like a tumbleweed, wearing out his welcome in whatever town he happened to be in. At one point he married a woman he met in a halfway house. She ended up being crazier than a sackful of ferrets. I once chaperoned them around a couple of months until they got married. She told me her life goal was to get her kids back that the Human Services people in another state had taken from her. It was for good reason they took them. She was CRACKED.
And now, he’s dead. He was in a car accident coming back home to yet another ratty tenement slumhouse which they call La Casa Apestosa (‘the stinky house’) in town. I feel bad he’s dead…ah hell, we’re going to miss you D. I’m a jerk.
Perdóname camerada por haberte hablado asi tantas veces…
