Just Chalk It Up To Yet Another "Farming Accident".

Nothing brings a cringe to our faces or makes the hair on the back of our necks stand up quite like hearing the term "farming accident" does to us Outlanders.  This is 'sconsin after all and we are up to our missing extremities in these things.  Trust me, I watch the news...

In between harvesters, back hoes, Bob-Cats, tractors, grain belts, combines, silos, planters, block and tackles, barbed wire, electric fences, fan belts, pulleys, chain drives, barn doors, loaders, chain saws, stupidity and milking machines (don't ask what you lose with a milking machine, it's kind of "personal") a few missing digits, a hand (hands), a foot (feet), an arm or two, a leg or two, a lower body or a head is not at all unusual in this neck of the woods.  Add a limp into the equation and you have a Royal Flush to say the very least.  Basically, the more of you that is missing the longer you have been farming.  Missing teeth don't count.  Those are usually attributable to getting kicked in the face by one of the herd and that's just the nature of the profession.  Especially if your hands are cold...  Think about it.

In 'sconsin a farmer with his body completely intact says one of two things:  he's either way to careful to get any appreciable amount of actual work done or he has a shit load of hired help to do his dirty work for him.  Both situations, by the way, lead to local rural scorn and getting your mail box smashed with a baseball bat in the middle of the night.  Farmers can be so cruel...

Around here we have wonderfully inventive types of farming accidents to say the least.  OK, truly weird shit when you get right down to it.  My favorites are the farmer who fell into his half full silo and suffocated from the fumes.  When they found him a day later is was partially dissolved  from the acidic  build up in the silo.   Pretty.   And the guy who was trampled to death by his herd of Holstein's for no other reason than that he was half an hour late to milk them and he had the stupidity to turn his back on them.  These were Holstein's for chris' sake, the nice cows that we get milk from.  Go figure.  And most recently the idiot who decided to go do a bit of tweeking on the engine of the John Deere before he went  to church.  Of course, his tie gets caught in the fan belt which pulled him down into the fan blades basically turning his head into something akin to a spiral-cut Easter ham.  A donation was taken in his honor later that day...

Farming is actually considered the 4th most dangerous job in America.  Right after astronaut, test pilot and process server.  Why anyone in their right minds would want to be a farmer is beyond my comprehension.  Personally, I value my thumbs.  I have found a myriad of uses for them that I have become quite fond of.  Don't ask, don't tell...

"Farming accident" falls right up there with "grease fire",  "smoking in bed" and "alcohol may have played a factor" kind of incidents.  All of which I have some experience with to some degree or another.  Yes, I have done some really stupid ass shit in my life.  I have fed my arm into a wringer style washing machine (I was 5),  I have slammed my hand in a car door (I was 6),  I have gotten my arm caught in a revolving door (I was 16 and VERY high),  I have grabbed unto an electric fence (I was 21 and ditto on the VERY high thing)  and I have even temporarily lost a couple of finger prints to a meat slicer (I was 30 and just not paying attention...)  but to this day I am still symmetrical for the most part.  2-2-10-2 & 10 as it were.  I'm going to try to keep it that way.  Unlike Oliver Wendall Douglas from "Green Acres",  farm living is NOT the life for me.  I'd probably end up having to teach the pig how to drive because what was left of my good leg would be too short to reach the pedals.  Which is just as well because with the eye patch I'd probably just keep driving around in circles in the front yard anyway...

This Is Going On Your "Permanent Record Folder"!!!

Does anyone else out there remember these things???   Or the threat they represented???   These things were presented to follow you to the grave.  And beyond.  My first grade teacher, Sister Mary Josef Mengele smacked me up against the back of my head with this concept one day, along with that rosary/belt/cat-o-nine-tails thing that she wore around her waist.  Christ on a crutch, she had incredibly good aim with both of those things!!!

Yes, the PERMANENT  RECORD FOLDER!!!  Everything I did was in that thing.  Nothing good, just the bad shit.  And Sister MJM made damned sure of that.  I hated that bitch!!!  I would later learn that she left the order,  turned totally dike and hooked up with a lesbian truck driver from Louisiana named "Gus".  I should have known...

As a product of 12 years of private Catholic boys schools I can tell you that the permanent record folder is a device of the most unholy torture that is unimaginable to the thinking world.  Trust me, been there, got the scars.  I still have vivid nightmares and wake up with the sheets soaking wet.  NO, I am not a bed wetter!!!  I just wake up with the sheets soaking wet and babbling about large penguins with rosaries.  Strange but true...

I am damaged goods, a broken toy if you will.  I have stolen cars, I have blown at least one up as I remember, I have done more drugs than Timothy Leary  (a feat not easy to accomplish),  I have written bad checks and been homeless on a couple of occasions.  But yet, my saggy little Jew ass is still here.  Happy, fat and still functioning.  Full blown bat shit crazy, nowhere near holding down a productive job but still holding a valid passport.  Apparently my government doesn't give a rats ass about my PERMANENT RECORD FOLDER!!!   Either that or they are just glad to see me leave the country on a regular basis...  If they had any sense at all they would just cancel my citizenship the next time I board a plane and just be rid of me for good.  I would love to be a citizen without a country on a black sand beach somewhere dodging the falling coconuts in my flip flops.  Yes, I do have some goals.  They're just not sane...  Which is so me that it just hurts.

My permanent record folder starts out with parchment, moves onto carbon paper, has a few layers of Xerox copies and then ends with a police blotter.  It's actually more of a rap sheet than anything else.  And I'm kind of proud of that actually.  How else do you evolve into the loony that I am today without some "life experience" under your belt???

To borrow a line from "Steel Magnolias" ,  "Those things that do not kill us only make us stronger.".   And a hell of a lot more cunning.   Don't ever forget that I am a primate after all (a Great Ape to be exact) and I know what to do with these thumbs!!!

I was raised (indoctrinated???) to believe that the Permanent Record Folder was a couple of rungs higher up the ladder than a credit report in terms of importance.  And a lot more damaging in the long run.  I was convinced that thing was going to shadow me for all eternity like a KGB agent on Black Beauties.  Not a comforting thought...   But then something strange happened.  The Fates got dealt a hand of Ace's & Eights while I was holding a Royal Flush.  In the middle of my Senior year of high school we moved from California to Wisconsin and I found myself in public school for the first time in my life.  Talk about culture shock.  My former school had to mail all of my records to the new school because they were filled with "double secret-secret" information that even my parents weren't allowed access to.  Yes, apparently you actually need some sort of security clearance to have access to school records.  Who knew???  Guess what?  They NEVER arrived.  EVER.  Somewhere between the nuns and the United States Post Office ALL of my school transcripts had managed to go AWOL.  Panic set in.  Was I going to have to start all over again?  Was I going to be the only student in kindergarten with a drivers license?  How was I going to squeeze into those little bitty desks?   Let alone use those teeny tiny toilets???   And just how big of a rug was I going to have to buy to make nap time bearable???

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and after a couple of phone calls to the penguins back at Divine Savor-Holy Angles Academy for Aspiring Young Homosexuals later an additional copy of my transcripts was finally pieced together.  But alas, the Permanent Record Folder that disappeared into the ethers was the only hard copy in existence.  HAPPY DANCE!!!  I felt vindicated, freed, paroled and pardoned.  Expunged as it were.  I was suddenly a man without a past.  So, THIS is what witness protection must feel like, I said to myself.   Fuckin' sweet!!!

In 1995 President Clinton greatly expanded the scope of the Federal Freedom of Information Act and allowed private individuals to access "sensitive" government information that was more than 25 years old.  I was all over that like white on rice.  I was dying to see what the FBI had on me in their files.  Yes, I have an FBI file.  Don't forget, I am a child of the 60's and between  1968 and 1970 was arrested 4 times for shit like unlawful assembly, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and inciting  public mayhem (actually, the last one was all about tossing a tear gas canister back at the cops).  Hey, what can I say, there was a war going on at the time.

So, I sent in my request and dutifully wait for their reply.  A month later a business sized envelope arrives with a total of 4 photocopied pages detailing my transgressions as a teen aged anti-war protester.  Not a single word blocked out at all.  Apparently nothing on my record was still too sensitive to need hiding.  I was impressed with myself.  Then the second mailing arrived a week later.  It was in an over sized manila envelope and appeared to contain something similar in size to the New York City Yellow Pages.  Ah, I thought to myself,  NOW the game is afoot.  This is where my real dirt comes to light.  I gleefully ripped into the envelope.  Inside was a document totaling 872 pages with every single word on every page blocked out save for three words at the top of the very first page: "Permanent Record Folder".  What in the name of toasted cheese sandwiches had those penguins put in this thing???  Yes, I'm Jewish but that doesn't mean I knew the Rosenberg's personally.  I was only kidding when I said that I'd sell secrets to the Soviets for dark chocolate.  And that whole thing about me and Daniel Ellsberg was taken way out of context.  I mean, really, he was like 40 and I was only 17.  I was a minor.  I can not be held responsible for what I did to him at the Yogi Bear Campground that weekend.  Enough said.

Yes, apparently my Permanent Record Folder is indeed permanent.  As permanent as the permanent Magic Marker that is hiding it from me.  Permanently.  I know it would make a good read, too.  I can only imagine what Tennessee Williams could have done with it...

July 27th.

Lord, I love this day.  It's one of my favorite Mexican holidays.  The Day of The Clowns.  Yes indeed, the Day of The Clowns.  Every year thousands of Mexican clowns converge at the Cathedral of Guadalupe in Mexico City for  their annual official blessing.  Now that is a church service you just GOTTA love!!!  Imagine a cathedral full of polka dots, weird hair, suspenders, seltzer bottles, big foam noses, really small cars and midgets dressed up as baby pigs.  I am SO there!!!

As you all know, I am a clown down to my marrow.  I could have actually been one.  Officially.  Refer to an earlier post.  But then my mother intervened.  Life is so unfair...

To this day I still have several clown wigs that I am known to wear to Madison street festivals on a regular basis.  How can I not?  This is Madison, after all.  And no one really notices anyway.  Again,  Madison...  It really is just 72 square miles surronded my reality.

Coulrophopia.  Ah, yes, the term that describes the condition of an unnatural fear of clowns.  How the bloody fuck can you be afraid of clowns???  They're clowns!!!  NOT nuns!!!  But yet I still know a few individuals who suffer from this condition.  Psychologically I prey on them like flies are attracted to something dead on the side of the road.  I will not name any names but you all know who you are.  I happily relate stories of "Zu-Zu" the vampire clown, "Choppy" the cannibal  clown and   "RUN!!!"  the REALLY creepy clown.  What can I say, when I see a bulls eye on anyones forehead I just have to go for it.  I love watching people wet themselves in public.  "Zu-Zu", "Choppy" and "RUN!!!" have all been incorporated into bedtime stories for my faux niece.   We giggle and then we swap boogers.  Why those two gave me their only child to babysit is unimaginable  to me.  Yet, I am the little ones baby sitter of choice.  Go figure...  Apparently it takes a village full of clowns to raise a child in the style that I see befitting of humanity.

Bottom line:  duck and cover, find the access code to the bunker and grab lots of bottled water.  The clowns are at the gates!!!  WE WANT SELTZER!!  WE WANT SELTZER!!!  WE WANT SELTZER!!!

I Remember A Place Called The Malecon...

The Malecon was wonderful.  It means Boardwalk in Spanish.  It spanned about 4 blocks in El Centro in Vallarta.  It ran parallel to the ocean and was the main drag of Hwy 200 running through the business and tourista district.  It was busy, loud, clogged with taxis and filled with wonderful sculptures.  It was a meeting place for Vallarta, locals and gringos filled it day and night, eating street tacos and dodging time-share vampires.  About 150 feet west of it waves were crashing ashore.  Across the street to the east music was blaring and people were partying.  It was the typical Mexican dichotomy.  Beautiful and weird.  Calming and scary.  All at the same time.  I loved it.

Several months ago the "restoration" started.   That is SO not a word you want to hear in Mexico.  In English it loosely translates as "cluster fuck".  In my years in Vallarta I have seen them level parks and green spaces for "improvement", build parking garages that make no fucking sense and build high rises that are destined to come sliding down off of hill sides.  But this one just takes the cake in my  opinion.  The malecon had a broad stretch of beach, a 6 foot high sea wall, a wide sidewalk and a counter sunk three lane highway that was impossible to cross by foot unless you were either drunk or suicidal.

What do they do to this thing???  They demolish it.  Completely.  The sea wall is gone.  The sculptures are either damaged beyond repair or "lost".  LOST???  How the fuck do you lose sculptures the size of my apartment???  OK, Mexico...  The counter sunk street has disappeared and has been replaced by a pedestrian mall, all of which is at beach level.  I don't know where the next storm surge is supposed to go.  Less than a decade ago Hurricane Kenna brought a storm surge up to 300 meters inland in this area and devastated everything in site.  It was nothing but mud, goo and dead shit everywhere.  It was like Vulcan's Hammer come to life!!!  On a good day that part of the bay can have waves we call "beach busters" that can be 20 feet high when they hit the shore.  You don't just hear them, you actually feel them!!!

This is a disaster just waiting to happen.  Yeah, it may be pretty and tourista friendly but it is a nightmare in the making.  I can only imagine Calle de Juarez becoming something akin to the canals of Venice and the Cathedral de Guadalupe washing out to the Isla de Morietas with the cross becoming a nesting grounds for the frigate birds.  What is the current mayor of Vallarta thinking???  Stop listening to the local gringos!!!  We're dumber than shit and we are fucking up your city!!!

Give me back the Mexico I love and stop Miami-ing your lovely city because we tell you that we want it more "user friendly"!!!

We Are All Just A Single Phone Call Away From Our Knees...

Trust me on this one.  Those phone calls suck ass.  Big time.  I've been there.  I've done that.  I've got WAY too fucking many t-shirts!!!  Those calls are the Exit to Hell...   And they all end in a cul-de-sac.   You're trapped.

If my phone rings before 7 AM or after 10 PM somebody better be dead.  And they usually are.  I'm 58.  You think I would have learned not to pick up the phone at this point.  But I haven't.

"Mr. Colee, this is Doctor Headupmyass.  Did I wake you?  I just wanted to give you your HIV test results.  You are positive.  Please call my nurse if you have any questions.  Click."   I called in sick, drove to the coast and spent the day getting puking drunk on champaign and throwing rocks at the seagulls.

"Hi, honey, this is your Aunt Jeanne.   Please sit down, I don't know how to say this.  Your dad is dead."   I kind of remember dropping the phone.

"Donn!!!  OMg!!!  Turn on your TV!!!   The Trade Towers have been hit!!!"   I will never, EVER forget that wake-up call as long as I live.   What I watched unfold that morning is burnt into my memory.

"Donn???  (Long pause...)  Grab a chair.   I have bad news.  John Geske just died in Mexico."  I dropped the phone.   Again.

Then there was the dead body in the basement in the middle of the night.  Oh, yeah, that was a delicious roller coaster ride.  2 AM.  Dead body.  Basement.  SO not a pretty adventure.  I spent over an hour "sanitizing" that house before I called 911.  There where drugs everywhere.  And fingerprints.  Mostly mine.  And a dead body in the basement.  With dildos, a tank of nitrous oxide and  duct tape.   A suicide is never pretty.  Crunch the freaking numbers....  I was totally fucking boned.   And not in that good way that I usually like.  I chained smoked and drank bourbon out of the bottle for the next 10 hours while I was being interrogated in the dining room.  Can you say "homo-cide"???

We have all been gob-smacked by these things.   They are like a bowling ball to the back of the head with enough force to leave a crater on the surface of the moon that is visible from Earth.   Cold cocked is an understatement.  Uncomfortably numb doesn't even come close.   It's like being fucked up the ass, raw and dry, in an alley in the middle of the night next to a dumpster.   It's "short, sharp and shock" in the worst way imaginable.   And there you are.  On your knees.  Thinking about what the next chapter may hold.  And finding yourself afraid to turn the page...  You just don't want to know what the next intersection may hold...  Perhaps a train wreck.  Which, considering the cesspool you find yourself in at the moment, just might be a welcome relief of sorts...

There is an ancient Chinese curse.  It goes "May you lead an interesting life.".   It is SO not Zen it just hurts.   It's all about living your life like water.  Don't try to overcome obstacles, go around them.  Again, a closet full of t-shirts.

Yet, I keep going down that highway.  In the middle of the night.  Over driving my headlights.  And nervously giggling behind the steering wheel.  Just waiting to see that deer in the headlights that I am about to smash into that just stands there stupidly.  Somehow, ready for the impact that is about to happen.  That is a reality that I know all too well.   I hate it with all of my heart.

I have lost too much, too many and too soon.   And always with a phone call.   And usually in the middle of the night.  My knees are damned near 6 freaking decades old and have been knocked down to the concrete more times than I care to count.  If I see one more casket I swear to god I'm taking out an McDonald's with my bare teeth and a plastic butter knife!!!

I could write a book...

If This Doesn't Put You Off Your Food I Don't Know What Will...

Just Google "Warren Jeffs Wiki" and see what you get.  Then hit on some of the other links to this monster.

Enough said...

EWWWW!!!!!   Yeah, this bastard gets 4 exclamation points...

I Swear, Texas Just Gets Stranger By The Minute!!!

OMg, it's the End of Days!!!  This could only happen in west Texas.  Just how loony are those cow pokers???

Have you heard about this?  It's stupifyingly frightening to say the least.  First, they build a man made lake with no real fresh water feeding into it.  STEE-RIKE ONE!  They are now in one of the worst droughts since the Dust Bowl and the lake is about 10-percent of it's original size.  STEE-RIKE TWO!!  It full of dead, rotting fish, smells like a sewer and has turned blood red.  STEE-RIKE THREE!!!  Of course, none of these things has anything to do with science, reason or reality.  IT IS THE END OF DAYS!!!  Yes, this is the Nile River of west Texas.  They're all shaking in their c'boy boots down there, waving hands full of snakes at the sky and stocking up at the local Wal-Mart.  News reports say that there is not a single tube of Pringle's, a 12-pack of Barq's rootbeer, a Moon Pie or any  Kodiak "chew" left on the shelves.  May they all lock themselves into their single-wides and await the outcome.  With the windows closed.  In the heat.  Good riddance!!!

You idiots, it's an algae bloom on a dead lake that should have never been  built in the first place!!!  This thing must smell just lovely in early August.  I have one question though...  Some reports call this a lake.  Other reports call it a reservoir.   You swam and fished in this nightmare???  This cluster fuck was your water supply???  You actually drank, bathed and cooked from this  thing???   No wonder the Wal-Mart pharmacy is doing such a land office business.  And that most of you have one eye and three thumbs!!!

This is not, I repeat, NOT a portent from god!!!  If it were she would have smote y'all several generations ago just to get you off of her desert and clear out all of those cars on cement blocks you seem to love so much.
Personally, as you all know, I am not a big fan of water.  I never have been.  I really do shower with a life preserver on.  I hate water.  It's just my nature.  Y'know why?  FISH FUCK IN IT!!!

Lasagna! Lasagna! Lasagna!

Did you know that in Polish it means "I love you"?   Oh hell, don't believe that, I lie like a cheap suit!!!  Trust me, it's true...

In  1980 I was living in Minneapolis with my first partner David, (he called himself Dave but I called him David.  Pissed him off so badly he blew smoke out of his ass).   More on that later...

So, I'm in the kitchen cooking up some soup one day and David comes home from work.  Keep in mind that this was my day off so naturally I had a few martini's in me.  As did the soup.  We were both feeling wonderful...  god only knows what got into me but from out of nowhere I grabbed him and forced him into a polka thru the living room all the while singing "Lasagna, lasagna, lasagna!  In Polish it means I love you!"  Repeatedly.  As we did the polka.  And I have to tell you, he was  damned good at the polka.  After all, he was from Pittsburgh and of heavy Polish descent.  He bit on this one hook, line and sinker so I reeled him in.  In less than two minutes I had him believing that lasagna really was Polish for I love you!!!  He actually thanked me for teaching him a new word in Polish.  Lasagna???  He was Polish for chris'sakes and he fell for this one???

Jump ahead a few years.  He goes to visit family in Pittsburgh that he has not seen in almost 2 decades.  He walks up to one of his aunts, throws his arms around her and gleefully exclaims "LASAGNA!"  Well, of course, she looks at him like he's nuts.   A short time later he is made aware of the fact that lasagna is NOT Polish for I love you but instead is an Italian pasta dish.  He was crushed.  And I got a phone call from Pittsburgh.  I won't share the gory details...

Jump ahead another 20 years.  Sea Squirt.  Oh god, he is so gullible that it's almost criminal for me to be with him at times.  I turned him onto Mexico and he lost his heart to her.  He thinks I "speak" Spanish.  LMAO!!!   Oh, well, he is from the Fox Valley after all...   When we met he didn't know a word in Spanish so I decided to start teaching him some along with a few phrases to get him by when we are down there.  He's a quick learner so all went well.  Then the urge hit me.  I just HAD to teach him something really stupid in Spanish.  Nosotros.  In Spanish it means "we" depending upon the context of use.  By the time I was finished with him he thought it meant "many noses".  Sorry, I just couldn't help myself.

Anyone out there remember Firesign Theater and their 1970's comedy album "I Think We're All Bozo's On This Bus"?   There is a line on that album, " 'Bozotros', from the Spanish 'nosotros', meaning 'many noses' ".  Think about it, it's about clowns on a bus!!!  I love that line.  So, several years ago we're down in Bucerias and the fridge is covered in those little magnets with words on them that you make sentences out of as you sober up.   All of them in Spanish.  And what do I find???  One that says "nosotros"!!!  I was in heaven.  Especially since that was the year we were down there for Halloween and I had brought a selection of foam clown noses to pass around.  The very next day, Sea Squirt is  talking with our good friend who lives next door and "nosotros" reared it's ugly, if not hilarious, head.

I was up on the roof of the house we were staying in catching some rays and swilling margy's when I hear our good friend break into peels of laughter.  Then I hear her say, "He told you WHAT???" followed immediately by "Donn!!!  Get your ass over here NOW!!!"  By the time I get downstairs I am met in the driveway by Sea Squirt and our friend, who has both hands on her hips and patting a flip-flopped foot in the dirt so frantically even the scorpions were running.   With her head cocked at an angle and one eye brow dangerously arched she looks me straight in the eye and says "NOSOTROS???".   Busted.  Then she broke into laughter again, gave me a hug and said, "Priceless!!!".  I love her!!!

Sea Squirt quickly informed me that he will never again trust me around anything even remotely involving a foreign tongue.  Well, he might just be right on that one.  I don't trust myself around foreign tongues either...

Adios!  Which, BTW, is Mandarin for "Got any gum?".

Dum & Dumerer...

Oh, lord, Madison has certainly had a weekend that befits us.  www.channel3000.com has been a plethora of local stupidity on a grand scale.  Humankind will never cease to amaze, confound and depress me.  And keep me laughing what is left of my ass off.  We have opposable thumbs.  Fabulous invention.  What do most of us do with them?  Roll our boogers till they get dry enough to flick them off...  Trust me, I can't make this kind of shit up.

First, there was a train and vehicle "mishap".  Some idiot was racing a train to an intersection crossing.  Never a good thing.  The driver apparently thought that he could make it over the unprotected crossing first.  NOT!!!  Damned near cut the car in half.  Since the driver is no longer with us I plan on nominating him for a "Darwin Award".  That's the award you win when you are just TOO FUCKING STUPID  to be alive.  It's like a Nobel Prize for the shallow end of the gene pool.  And what the fuck is up with unprotected railroad crossings???  A yield sign is not enough in my opinion.

Then there was the idiot with the horses.  Three of them to be exact.  Which he abandoned on the Capital Square to die of hunger, thirst and heat exhaustion.  He had just ridden them here from southern Florida to raise awareness for hunger.  Hunger.  How about you feed your freaking horses, you bastard!!!  What part of the hottest summer in the history of Earth did you miss???  And yes, he is now in jail.  The horses are now in protective custody under the witness protection program and hooked up to saline and glucose IV push therapy.  Much to their delight.

Here's my favorite.  A cop exits the police station to go and grab dinner.  Who does he find leaning up against the side of his squad car in the parking lot?  A TOTALLY brain dead individual smoking a joint the size of a cigar and drinking a 40 ounce of Old English out of a paper bag!!!  Dude, you are in the police station parking lot!!!  You have a rapsheet longer than Grace Jones's tongue!!!  You are waiting outside while a friend of yours bails out  her husband inside the station!!!  Hello???  You are not the shallow end of the gene pool, you are the shore line!!!  Needless to say, he is now sharing a cell with the horse guy.

I guess they don't call us Mad-Town without good reason...