Who is here so far?

[waldopaper]

more gizmos (above) to put in your post. don't know yet if editing is an option. i may just end up being the maytag repairman out here in Fort Apache.

[pan]

I like IKE - or at least his final speech. The military-industrial complex.... Finally saw Sicko. Moore pretty much nails it. The old labour guy was brilliant about capitalism keeping democracy at bay by maintaining fear and desperation.

[waldopaper]

Bo... somehow knowing that someone is reading these lines in a foogin Tropical Paradise just tickles the hell out of me. And there's Curt... on the other side of the world in Hesse.. cross that big Splatlantic and almost over the Specific... the marigold of modern sinus!

As fun as the fantasy of soldiers putting this criminal cabal in irons is... I kinda file it in the "careful what you wish for" box. Soon I may be spending some time in fundie-military land... where I hope to get a better fix on the mindset. But getting really tired of the "heroes defending our freedom" line of crap... and always wary of any noun in the textplex that comes with a mandatory prefix... like "our brave" troops... kinda like all the prefixes slapped before "9-11" to show how oh-so-fucking torn-up the writer was... remember when "the beleaguered" always preceded "Apple Computer?" A memetic disease we may have caught from advertising...

I'm tired of twinks who signed up for three-hots-and-a-cot and a $15k mercenary bonus thinking they deserve a kiss on the foot from us oh-so-grateful "civilians." These days, it's just a fucking J.O.B., ok? You never hear shit about "our brave electricians" or bus drivers or nurses or plumbers or accountants or graphic artists or retail clerks or food servers. At least the mils got "job security" in the land o' War-Mart. I would never degrade a soldier any more than I would a plumber... except it's enough for the plumber to just get paid for unstopping my toilet... which is more immediate than any fictional "freedoms" being "defended" by some twerp in a Mess kit Repair Battalion.

And if that makes me "un-american," well- fuck it. I don't use THAT term any more either. I think it's a very nice land mass and all... but a lot of people living on it really piss me off with their kartoon kountry and Superman-comic-book Jeezuz with x-ray vision. They really need some adult supervision.

We lost something when the Old Man's brown-shoe conscript citizen soldiers gave way to the jackboot mercs of today. Those guys just wanted to get it the hell over with and get the hell out. Best believe if there were a draft and rationing this phony fucking "war on terra" would be over wid a quickness. Dig it... I had KIDS confront me with that fucking Hanoi Jane meme... to which I would usually respond that all went down at least 20 years BEFORE THEY WERE BORN. Just WHO is filling their heads with that fucking tripe?

Grrr... my baby girl wants to "study" on this computer... and i gotta fill out some more dole paperwork. Keep the faith... and Bo- have a pineapple for me!

[BO]

Yep, blogging knows no boundries. Thank God. 'Cause, when you're on vacation surrounded by fatties (almost came to blows with one yesterday), it's nice to have a reality-based-community to bitch on.

Wife says, "I gotta go." How we gonna hold a revolution with all these damn interruptions.

[Mouse]

I'm speechless again. I have been staggering about the place laughing my head off, while trying to hide under the covers of my mind.
In fact I am now disguised as a dust mote disguised as the ghost of my friend.
It's the absence of political correctness, a cool draught for the panting hart as it were.

[waldopaper]

mercy sakes, Em. It's gonna take me forever to pick thru the dust motes wrapped in friendly ghosts and apply it to the spiritual drought and the tongue-out. Sure, i aint got narthin better to do!

[BO]

EM, I thought your icon was a zygote. Now you tell us it's a piece of lint?

Kidding.

Now that I know there's a girl in class that we can make giggle...look out. There's a new clown in town.

There's so much truth in humor...er, humour. The best designers I knew were also the funniest people I knew. Although, I think it rings true in any profession.

Keep laughing. It's the best therapy in a loony world.

[waldopaper]

hey- i wanna hear about how you almost smacked a fattie. now- THAT'S funny!

[BO]

edIt's called the incident at the barb-e-que grill.

We're staying in a complex that's made up of condos which are privately owned--mainly by folk who bought in years ago when prices were reasonable. Now, of course, they're outrageous--at least by our standards. The owners turn them over to management companies to rent them out when not in use. But, there are a few older retired people who live here for a good portion of the year. Most of them are second homes--it's not your typical timeshare resort.

Well, as you can imagine, this is a rule-based community where covenants and owner committees hold sway over the going-ons. The tourists that show up for their vacations are the second-class citizenry, definately under ground restrictions. No hanging towels from the balconies, that sort of bullshit.

I'm good at picking up vibes, and I can attest to the undercurrent of snobbery that emits from this place. It's a very status oriented culture. The money is dripping off these aged nazies as they share stories of business conquests and their luxurious lifestyles. And just like everywhere else I've been, there's an obvious class stratification with the indigeonus species existing on the bottom rung.

Anyway, being the po' folk my family is, we decided to grill up some dogs and save a few bucks by not eating out. 'Round 6 p.m. I went out looking for an open grill (There's about 8 propane grills surrounding the pool). All were occupied except for one. Score! So, I open the lid and a tiny piece of fish occupied about 1 percent of the grill in the uper right corner. BTW, we're talkng about a huge grill. Like 4 feet by 2 feet.

So, I thinks someone musta abandoned their little piece of fish, and decided to share the energy being wasted powering up the beomoth grill, and throw my four dogs on with the fish.

Well within two minutes, a little old man comes screaming up, throws open the grill top and starts yelling at me about not being done cooking his fucking fish. Then he takes my prongs and removes my dogs from the grill. At that point, I had gone into full-tilt agression mode (which is rare for me, I can count my lifetime physical encounters on one hand) and told him he was a raving lunatic, an asshole, and assorted other stuff, and I just about pushed him over, but came to my senses before it went that far. The guy was in his seventies. Imagine the law suit I'd face trashing some old guy's bones.

So, I grabbed my dogs and found another grill about to open up with a young family who were totally freaked out by what they had just seen. I'm not sure who they thought was the biggest ogre--me or the cranky old man. It was quite a yelling match.

So, there ya go. I assure you there's a parable in that story. I can guarantee that old codger did some damage in his time. And I'm sure he deserved to get clocked. But having seen the inside of a failed justice system, there's no way I'm getting involved in another legal fiasco. Just walk away BO. And that's what I did.

So there you go. Probably doesn't sound like a big deal in retrospect. But it represents everything we discuss here. It only takes one evil fuck to ruin the stew. One person out of a hundred can throw an entire community into havoc. And there isn't really shit that anyone can do to stop those individuals short of doing something that might totally fuck up your own life.

As much as I love this place, it's so infested with assholes, you'd never want to live here.

On the flipside, we had the greatest time swimming in the ocean today. My son is now a full-tilt boogie-boardin', wave-shredin' ho-daddy. And that's all that matters right now. Tomorrow maybe I'll break some bones.

[curt]

Fish suck !

...quit enjoying fish way back in Oz as a kid when the fish in the creek all got sick after lightening hit bedrock in the middle of the creek, releasing crude oil into the stream...upstream from where our weekend hideout was located.The catfish all ended up having worms. I lost my apetite for fish that year and haven't really regained it at all. The best fish & chips I ever had was way up north on this island where they say my name comes from. It was in a place called Whitby. The fish was not just fish. It was a mixture of crab, lobster, crawfish, fish, who knows what all else. The chips were potatoe wedges. All of the above were cut to the same size, dipped in the same batter and deepfried in the same grease. You couldn't tell what was what by looking. The vinegar (who said I can spell?) made it all taste the same too. Abso fucking lutely out of this world, not like the soggy frapping fish and undernurished "french fries" wrapped in a newspaper the way ya get it down south in Coventry and London. Fish. Me and my boss (wife) went out to eat last night. Went to a nearby Italian place that has a new cook (Paki?) and a new waiter (Sri Lankian?). So my wife takes the word "fish" in her mouth and I say, "belong in the water". As good as this new waiter is, he comes out with a platter with three dead fish on it and holds it under my nose. I say, "nice fish, man!" "You forgot the water!" "Are they dead?" He failed to understand so wife kindly told him that I quit eating fish back in 1969. Fish. Stanky old dead fish. I'm afraid I never would have put a piece of real meat on a barb that had fish on it. No way ! Unless of course, it were lobster or prawns.....like the stuff our friends down under throw on the barbie on a regular basis, ey, Em ? Dem peopo have taste ! Or so they say.

Speaking of Thin (pronounced Tin) Lizzy.....saw em at a medium sized venue while still in uniform. Was there with a bunch of trippin uniformed friends. We dropped some acid outside the place and I was sent in to secure the parameter. Got the best seats in the house, just a few feet from the mixer. The light show was okay but when Phil grabbed the spotlight with the shiny metal plate on his bass guitar and reflected it all over the place while playing a solo...........

I peaked.

The light hit my eyes and I realized the fucker was deliberately putting the spotlight which was intended for him, back on us ! He died some months later. Never got a chance to see him again. That black Irishman. I think he was instrumental in helping me discover the bass guitar. As a drummer, you tend to look and listen for the drums, at concerts. The lead and rythm guitar sing the song. But a real good bass like that Phil played, makes it all much better.


The cat tells me she's hungry. Fucking cat. What about me !?

Needless to say, I survived the big 25. Thanks.

[waldopaper]

Seems that Gatto's tent-sulk was very short lived. Back again on Soaking Chunk with more pom-pom shaking about "...saving this nation" with the usual "write your congressman get 'involved' and demonstrate" twaddle. Oh Timbo, some of us have been doing that for forty fucking years. I WAS waiting until Timbo figured out that it was absolutely pissing up a rope... and that you can't "save" something that is either a) GONE or b) never existed in the first place. I thought I was patient... thought I could wait. But nooooo...

Tim Gatto has gone completely around the table with his latest waste of bandwidth, "...from a patriot." Now, if I had the energy or thought it would do any good, I would log into one of his venues and take that boy back behind the writers' woodshed and lay on that textual lickin stick wid a quickness.

First of all, Timbo... the greatest unprofessional wet fart of all: it isn't even original. It's cut, pasted and forwarded like grandma used to do with newspaper clippings years ago, and now your spamming brain-dead acquaintances do it with multiple forwarded emails of urban myths with multiple exclamation points. Not original, got that? Not even very good. In fact, really bad. Not just cliche-ridden kitsch crappola style... but acid-reflux creepy spoiled-meat content.

We get it. You're macho macho military. Slather it on heavy with all that "blood of your warrior ancestors" schmeeze that has been filling graveyards with apple-cheeked kids for centuries. Take away the bombast, and you know what's there? Another goddam pep talk, just like Coach before the high-school regional playoffs. Tell you what, Coach. How about YOU get out on that field? And I'm not talking about "speaking out" or "organizing." No, you're the warrior-blood macho guys. Enough "let's you and him fight," you pompous assholes. Let's see you put down the flags and pom-poms and throw some fucking hands.

You know exactly who the usurpers of our "Sovereignty" are... not faceless hordes... not hidden plotters. You know who they are and where they are, and I say with each minute your "foe" is above ground, you aint got a hair on your ass, got that? Oh what- now you want to punch me because I read you your polly-pocket beads? Well, go for it girl. At least I won't have to listen to any more bombastic horse shit. Two years ago you were calling for "victory" in Iraq, Timbo. "Now that we are there, we HAVE to win." Who's "WE," Timbo? Pretty tough talk from somebody who gets their panties in a wad because a reader "attacked" something "personal."

Honest-to-god, I don't know how anybody with a brain cell can read that "patriot" sic-sack Timbo copied and pasted without filling one with lunch-chunks. It's the most bombastic bullshit come-lately armchair warrior crap I've ever read. I got that very choice offered to me by one of the old voices before the US launched Gulf War I. That's over fifteen years ago, bub... and I said, "...not this time." And not just because I realized I was too old and feeble to be playing with explosives, either. It's because if you want to "breathe free air," you have to quit poisoning it with this kind of shit.

You want to be a "writer," Timbo? Get a SOUL. Check out how Pizzo-like PROS do it in "Darwin Recapture."
"It's all about the data. Listen to the damn data." It takes a pro to breathe life into numbers, fire into information. If you use another's text, do it like Partridge did in Privatized Hell, and pick a real text from a real writer like Amy Goodman, not fourth-hand fromage from Lieutenant Fuzz.

It's WAY past time to go all Scots Wha Hae on anybody's as

[BO]

Waldo, you ought to post your response on Gatto's site.

Frankly, I don't know who that letter witer is proposing we fight. I hope he isn't talking 'bout the evil hoards in the middle east. But the evil hoards rulling out own country.

And yeah, the warrior romanticism thing is a little over the top. But if military folk are beginning to turn against their own leaders, I'll take it. Let 'em psych-up if need be.

As our economy continues to tank, and our military continues to get the short end, maybe some of this blowback will catch fire.

[waldopaper]

posted a long answer. lost it. yadda yadda bllah.